- In reality good guys sometimes do not win and people die. And that has to be part of their lives otherwise it just becomes a video game... life isn't like that. And I always thought, my thought was the stories we tell in comics shouldn't be like that either. If there is risk for the reader, then the victory is that much sweeter. And you can, something can happen that can catch you by surprise and can have that much power and heart.
- If you wanted one book to summarize all that the X-Men is about in terms of character and conflict and theme, I'd have to say that "God Loves, Man Kills" was it. If you could only read one X-Men graphic novel start with that. Because for me the X-Men is not about superheroes and supervillains, it is about people, and how you deal with the challenge of life and the choices you have to make every day...That for me is why Magneto is so important. Xavier is spoke for; he has made his choices, he is a hero. Magneto is a work in progress. He is not evil. He is defined by his past. But that definition drives him to disaster. The question for him is... is he the victim of his destiny, or can he change it? Can he grow? I'm not sure, I'd like to think he can.
- King Arthur had a dream of a world where might served right, instead of subjugating it. His knights of the Round Table were the agents of that dream ... and his sword, Excalibur, the Symbol of it. He died, the table was destroyed, his knights mostly slain - yet the dream survived. They became legend - and the sword, the means of keeping the legend alive and vital through the ages... The sword Excalibur, represented Hope. It was light in the darkness of fear and ignorance and hate. Do we want - have we the right - to snuff it out?
- On Alan Moore: If he could plot, we'd all have to get together and kill him.
- When I first started writing Magneto, I started asking things like, "Where does he come from? Who was he? Why is he doing what he's doing? And when did this all begin?" For me, the beginning of his story was answering the questions, "Why is he such a passionate supporter of mutant rights? Was he oppressed?" Bear in mind, I was trying to figure out the formative elements of Magneto's life back in the late '70s. There's an obvious one 25 years earlier in World War II. Magneto is in his late middle age at this point, so I assumed he was an adolescent during the War. What would have defined him? The Holocaust. And from that point on, everything just flowed naturally.
- There was nothing that could be readily done to make Charles Xavier better as a person or as leader of the X-Men. He was already essentially perfect. All that could be done with him was diminishment. With Magneto, you had someone who was always striving for a goal from the perspective of, "I am a decent person. I am not a villain. I'm trying to make things better for my people. Why don't they understand what I'm doing?" That makes him a flawed, admirable, and potentially redeemable central character.
- On Magneto: Does he see himself as a villain? No. He sees himself as a hero. It's just that he sees baseline humanity the potential villain; the oppressive state. They're the Neanderthal to his Cro-Magnon. He's the next step in evolution, and baseline humanity has to get out of the way.
- I was originally playing with Magneto in terms of 1975. We're now over 50 years later. So the companion reality of the world has, I guessed, advanced, but because of his origin Magneto is locked in a specific point and time, which I think is for the best. He is defined by the Holocaust and everything he does is defined by that.
- I learned to write comics in a world where you had to balance and hook people with enthusiasm, but you also had to bear in mind that the newsstand might not get every issue in sequence. So, every issue has a new reader, and you have to establish who the characters are, what the reality is. That's why in Marvel Team-Up #100, which introduced Karma, the first five pages are seeing what her possession can do. She's never seen Spider-Man before, but she's discovering what he can do through brilliant visuals. But along the way, as she discovers what's going on, so do the readers. You have readers saying, "I've read Spider-Man for 50 years, I know all this shit!" But for new readers, they come in and want to read new stories, maybe they head over to Team-Up or Amazing Spider-Man, and they'll start reading that book.
- The point is: we take nothing for granted. Yes, established readers might find it a little boring, but we take it from the perspective that if we sell 100 issues this month, we want to sell 110 next month. And maybe, when you have a big event issue with a cool new artist, you can suddenly find yourself selling 7.9 million. That's the idea.
- You know, sometimes one structures things out quite a ways, but the problem with that is the unexpected. A storyline that might work with Artist A might not be as effective with Artist B. Or, a character might surface in the foreground or out of left field, and it might strike the artist's fancy or my fancy, and then perhaps you want to go down that road. Or, as sometimes happens, you write an issue that turns out to be a total dud-in which case Archie Goodwin's motto comes into effect: "It's a POS, you've got 30 days to fix it." Because that's comics as a medium.
- Each issue is a step up an infinite ladder that will make it better for the creators, for the company, and in a little way for the characters... and to bring in as many readers as humanly possible. Because if they buy it, maybe they'll tell their friends. But if I'm going to create a character that's the next best thing since a comfy chair, I want the sales to justify that. I want it to come out and be Avengers: Endgame (2019) and sell 3 billion dollars at the box office. Is that greedy? Yes, but I have enough faith in my characters that the readers get an equal amount of satisfaction, and come back and tell their friends.
- Going back to Stan Lee, and learning from the guy who built the Marvel universe. From Stan's perspective, issues were single issues-they proceed, they come to an end. That doesn't mean the characters don't progress, but each issue itself is self-contained because back then, the distribution sucked, and as a reader, you could never guarantee when you got the next issue. So you would need to find a way to play in that reality. But, as Stan would say, if it's a great concept, you can get two-issues, like "Days of Future Past." But the last five pages have to be something to tease you back for the next issue.
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