THE KURT BUSIEK AVENGERS INTERVIEW (Page 2 of 3)
--A WONDER MAN: COOLER THAN SUPERMAN EXCLUSIVE--
INTERVIEWER: MIKE McDERMOTT
21-What do you like about Wonder Man and the Beast as a team?
I think they make great buddies. Wonder Man's big and broad and solid and strong, the Beast's bouncy and agile and fast -- there's a nice contrast there. Plus, the Beast's get a great sense of fun and Wonder Man's not as mercurial, but is up for going along with what the Beast comes up with -- they're two very different people, but they play off against each other well.
22-You once said you would like to work on a series were Wonder Man, Vision and the Original Human Torch work together as a group of heroes and I think this would be fantastic, any chance of this idea materializing in the near future?
I think I said I had a story in mind that'd make a good mini-series, not that I wanted to make them into a recognized group. And no, there's no chance of it any time soon.
23-How interested are you in the original Human Torch as a character? Why didn't we see more of him during your Avengers run?
I like the Human Torch quite a bit as a Golden Age hero, and I think there are some very interesting possibilities to him in the present day. But I don't think he's someone who really fits into the
Avengers all that well, and in any case, he was in HEROES FOR HIRE for at least some of my run, and we had plenty of other characters to fill up the pages. If I'd used every character I like, they wouldn't all be able to fit into the mansion.
24-You have said before you oppose to an Avengers West Coast title and have no interest in writing it months ago, is this an absolute decision or you could reconsider?
I can't predict the future, but I still think it's a bad idea, for the same reasons I've said before.
25- Thunderbolts is one of my all time favorite teams. Had you always planned on doing a book about villains on the road to becoming outlaw heroes?
Well, not when I was, like, six. But I've always been intrigued by the idea of redemption, of flawed people making up for what they've done wrong. I was a big fan of the TV show ALIAS SMITH & JONES, which was ripped off from one line of BUTCH CASSIDY AND THE SUNDANCE KID. That was two Western outlaws trying to go straight and stay out of trouble in order to win a pardon. And I introduced a bad guy posing as a hero as early as POWER MAN & IRON FIST #105, and would have done more with him if it
wasn't my last issue. THE LIBERTY PROJECT, which James Fry and I did at Eclipse, was about young super-crooks doing community service as heroes, THE REGULATORS was about super-villains, though they weren't remotely reformed. So I guess you could say it's a recurrent theme.
26- What made you choose those specific characters for the first team of T-Bolts? Do you have plans to return to the T-Bolts someday?
Well, part of the concept was that they were the Masters of Evil in disguise, so I just looked up a complete list of everyone who'd ever been a Master of Evil, eliminated the dead ones, the ones who couldn't easily be disguised (like the Absorbing Man) or those who wouldn't go along with a scheme like
that (like the Enchantress). Then I picked a roster out of the choices that were left. And no plans on my part to return to the series -- it even seems that Marvel's about to revamp them so thoroughly my team wouldn't even be there to go back to, but I don't know the details.
27- You started the Mockingbird's message subplot in Avengers #11, but it was eventually resolved in Thunderbolts 2000 Annual by Fabian Niceiza. Fabian's story focused a lot more on the T-Bolts and left Bobbi's fate very unclear. What were your original plans for her final fate?
I'd have had them rescue Hellcat, thinking she was Bobbi, as Fabes did -- but I'd have had Bobbi's spirit stow away and make it up out of Hell with them, whereupon she'd have a moment to say good-bye and thank you to Hawkeye, before going on to her final reward. I wouldn't have brought her back to life, but I would have rescued her from Mephisto's clutches.
28- One of the last things you did before leaving the T-Bolts was to start up a romantic subplot between Hawkeye and Moonstone. Did you actually intend for them to become a real couple, or just a fling?
I'd have played it as more than a fling, but it wouldn't have lasted. I wanted Moonstone to vamp Hawkeye because she wanted to control him (a big mistake there; Hawkeye never listens to anyone, even if he's sleeping with them), but end up falling for him for real. That'd get her well on the path to reforming for real, and juuuust about when she
was finally around that corner, Hawkeye would find out about the murder of the ruler of Kosmos, and want her to face justice for the crime. She'd have to choose between paying the price and going back on the lam -- and she'd run. But I thought it would be a lively and interesting relationship while it lasted.
29-Do you think Wonder Man would work in another hero group, say the Thunderbolts or as a recurring
guest star in the X-Men like Carol Danvers was for a long time?
I'd rather not see either -- I think that too many people who aren't ex-villains (and Wondy hasn't been a villain for a long time) dilutes the concept of T-Bolts. Hawkeye fits, even though he's been out of the villain game for almost as long, because he's actively leading them toward redemption, or so he
hopes. Simon's not so much a leader or a crusader, so I don't think he'd fit. And he's not a mutant, either, so I'd have similar problems with him becoming an X-Man. Team concepts should be protected; it helps the books stay distinct.
30 How would you define the character of Wonder Man?
I'd say he's a man driven by shame, trying to wall away his past. He was a shy, introverted kid, and his father's constant disapproval made him overcompensate, try to prove himself so hard that it led him into crime and death. Now that he's been resurrected, he's rejected his old self, and tries not to be like that shy and bookish kid. So he's impulsive and outgoing, and he tends to do bonehead things and screw up, before his intellect asserts itself and he deals with the repercussions of whatever he's done. So he's still overcompensating, but in a different way.
That's why he's envious of the Vision -- the Vision is very like Simon was when Simon was young and not
overwhelmed by shame yet, and he doesn't have the memories of failure that Simon has. So the Vision is, in some ways and to Simon's mind only, what Simon could be if he hadn't screwed his life up.
31- In your early issues of Avengers, Hank Pym said he would never again take on the identity of Yellowjacket, yet by the end of your run, he was YJ again. Did you always plan to do this? If not, what changed your mind about Hank as YJ?
I didn't plan to do it from the start, but I didn't change my mind, either. When he said that line, it was because I thought that's what he'd be thinking at the time -- he associated that identity with a lot of bad mistakes, the worst times of his life. So he wouldn't want to go back to it. But at the same time, his only hope of ever being fully healthy again was to confront that side of himself and deal with it rather than shoving it away. So in the end, he became Yellowjacket again as a way of healing -- if he could
face his troubles and cope, then he could finally be well.
32- Is it true that at one point you considered making Triathlon gay? If so, what happened, and when was the decision made?
We hadn't established anything about Triathlon's sexual preference, so when people asked about the possibility of a gay Avenger, I thought that hey, maybe he's gay -- we haven't said one way or the other. But Tri was so controversial, and so many fans had issues with how he got onto the
team, or the racially-charged atmosphere it happened in, that I just didn't want to add one more aspect that would be a hot-button issue -- negative or positive -- with readers. Too many readers already thought of him as a token, so I thought it'd be better to work on getting past that than give another set of readers a reason to see him as a label more than as a character.
33- You had a few scenes during your run with Quicksilver brooding over how he had "failed as a husband and a father". Were those scenes originally meant to build up to something?
Just reintroducing the character and his current situation, really. If I'd stayed on past the Kang War, we'd have built on those scenes -- but they were more of a foundation to build on than a specific
plotline beginning. Just a matter of saying, essentially, "This is who he is right now," and seeing where he went from there.
34-Could you let us in on some of the stuff related to Wonder Man that at different points in your run was planned but later changed?
No, sorry -- I save that kind of stuff in case I might wind up using it elsewhere. I did have one more major Wonder Man story involving Arkon and Thundra, but maybe I'll get to do some version of it in the future.
35- Your series Untold Tales of Spider Man was one of the best Spider Man titles I've read in a long time. Do you have any plans to return to the character or maybe tell some more untold tales of the Webslinger?
I'm glad you liked it -- it was a lot of fun to write. And I'd love to
write Spidey again sometime, but there aren't any concrete plans for that, not at present.
36- You seem to include Wonder Man in most of your Marvel work. The Williams embezzlement trial is
mentioned in the second issue of Marvels, a pre ionic Simon Williams made a brief appearance in Untold Tales of Spider Man and you brought back Wonder Man in one of the best resurrection scenes I've seen in a long time. Is Wonder Man a favorite character of yours that you would include him in so many different stories?
You bet. I like him -- he was "the everyman Avenger" before Thunderstrike was, and right from his reintroduction in AVENGERS in the seventies, I liked the idea of a very human guy with amazingly beyond-human strength. He's flawed, fallible and vulnerable emotionally, but up there with Thor in power level. It's a great dichotomy.
37- You did some of my favorite issues of What If, specifically What If Venom possessed the Punisher, The
Punisher killed Daredevil and What if Spider Man's Parents Destroyed his family. Were there any What If
tales you wanted to write but didn't get the chance to because of other assignments of the cancellation of the series?
Not for those reasons, no. There was one WHAT IF I almost did that got spiked because the editor decided
to concentrate only on the big sellers -- on Spider-Man, Wolverine, the X-Men and the Punisher. At that time, I'd pitched, sold and started to plot "What If Captain America Had Never Joined The Avengers," which involved Cap finding out about Zemo still being alive right after he was revived, so he turned down Avengers membership and headed to South America to lead the local Indians in an uprising against him. It was a story that involved virtually every pro super-crook at Marvel at the time, a big world-conquering plan from Zemo, and Cap winning over some of the villains Zemo had recruited, including Hawkeye, Quicksilver, the Scarlet Witch ... and the newly-created Wonder Man. After their victory over Zemo, they'd have stayed together as a team, and the Avengers would have disbanded in #16. So it was one of those "It all works out in the end" WHAT IFs, but it would've been a lot of fun. Karl Kesel was going to pencil and ink it.
38- In the What If stories I mentioned with the
Punisher, you wrote a very smart and ruthless
Punisher. Will you ever return to write that character a maybe do a story for the regular Punisher series?
I wouldn't mind doing that at all. I like writing the
Punisher -- his voice is a lot of fun, both in captions and in dialogue. Maybe someday.
39- I know you don't like to give advance
information on upcoming work but can we at least get to know if Wonder Man will get to have some major action on the upcoming JLA/Avengers crossover. I didn't see him in the preview pages Wizard posted recently.
You'll have to wait and see.
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