Brian Reed Interview

Along with the new look and features at AcmeComics.com, we're going to be presenting exciting new interviews with comics professionals! For the first of the new interviews, we have the honor of speaking with Brian Reed, the writer of Marvel's ongoing Ms. Marvel monthly series and the brand new Captain Marvel mini series!

Mr. Reed also co-wrote the acclaimed Spider-woman Origin mini series and the break out hit New Avengers Illuminati mini series. A true man-of-two-worlds, Brian Reed also has a foot in the world of video games and wrote for Mercenaries 2 and the popular Ultimate Spider-man game.

Ms. Marvel

Jermaine Exum: When you talk about female super heroes, the majority of comic books fans believe that Wonder Woman is the premiere female super-hero in comics. But if you look a little deeper, there's a major player in the Marvel universe that had been cooling her jets over the years until a storyline from 2005 called House of M catapulted her back into her own ongoing series. And she's been busy ever since, eh?

BRIAN REED: Ms. Marvel has very rapidly gone from an "also ran" to the leader of the Mighty Avengers, while also acting as the leader of a super villain hunting strike team code named Lightning Storm. She's also training new heroes as part of the Fifty State Initiative.

JE: But even still, Ms. Marvel is a Marvel character and therefore struggles with those internal challenges that we love to read about so much. And there is where we find the things that distinguish her from other female heroes on the shelf.

BR: What makes her unique is that, even though she's totally on top of the world, she constantly feels like she's failing. And she's recently been succumbing to her baser instincts, allowing enemies to die that she might have saved. There's a lot of dark undertones in her story that we've really started exploring of late.

JE: But then Ms. Marvel isn't really a stranger to dark tones. First you have Avengers #200 and later, Avengers Annual #10, which is one of Brian Bendis' favorite comics. But some really bizarre developments have happened in the life of Ms. Marvel beyond Rogue stealing her powers and personality "permanently." Most people know about Rogue, but I only read Avengers Annual #10 for the first time semi-recently and not only is it just plain odd, its pretty heavy material.

BR: That issue saves the character of Carol Danvers from what was just one of the weirdest/worst Avengers stories ever: Avengers #200 where this guy from another dimension passes into our dimension by impregnating Ms. Marvel with himself. He's then born, grows up in an afternoon, professes his undying love to the woman who just gave birth to him, then takes her off to his dimension to live happily ever after. Avengers Annual #10 brings Carol back and gives her the chance to scream at the other Avengers about just how stupid that whole plot was, and just how stupid they were for letting her go. It's also when Carol and Rogue have their fateful meeting, when Spider-Woman and Carol first get to know one another, and when Carol becomes a lot of the person we know today.

JE: When I look back at original Ms. Marvel comics it really looked like she was set to be the next big character in the Marvel universe. But various things happened to her over time to the point where, just like Spider-woman and Iron Fist, this promising character was sidelined for a generation of readers. Kurt Busiek put Ms. Marvel out there again in his Avengers volume three run, but not long after she vanished again. But now she's out there and in the driver's seat. Is all that really just a cyclical thing or does Carol have just have fans inside Marvel right now?

BR: Characters come in cycles, and those cycles are really tied to the creators of the day. The current batch of guys writing Marvel comics were all kids when Carol was first making a splash in the pages of her own book and X-Men. So now that we're all of the age where we're at play in the fields of the Marvel Universe, we've found this character we knew and missed and brought her back. I imagine you'll see the same thing in another 10 years or so with 1990's characters that fell by the wayside.

JE: I know that some people reading this just won't have been familiar with Ms. Marvel or maybe didn't know she was ative again. For those whose interest has been piqued, where is Ms. Marvel at right now and when can new readers jump on? And who can people expect to see in the supporting cast of her series?

BR: Issue #21 starts a brand new story arc. Even though it's tying up plot threads from the first three issues of the series, I also strove to make it new reader friendly. As far as guest stars go, Machine Man from Nextwave is part of Ms. Marvel's strike team, as well as Sleepwalker, who has arrived for the 90's revival a few years early.

Acme Comics has a Ms. Marvel display on the main sales floor which features Ms. Marvel tpb #1: Best of the Best, Ms. Marvel tpb #2: Civil War, and Essential Ms. Marvel volume 1 which offers the complete 1970s Ms. Marvel run, Avengers annual #10, and more!

Illuminati

JE: Readers picking up the New Avengers series in trade paperback noticed an unusual grouping of Marvel characters in the Sentry arc. Those readers saw Iron Man and other heroes meeting to discuss the return of Robert Reynolds. That was the first time we saw the group but as we would find out later it was hardly their first meeting. Who are the members of the Marvel Universe's best kept secret, the Illuminati?

BR: The Illuminati are a group of the most powerful men on Earth (Reed Richards, Tony Stark, Prince Namor, Black Bolt, Professor Charles Xavier, and Doctor Stephen Strange) who came together with the idea that if they all kept one another informed of what was happening in their own little corner of the world, than the planet as a whole would be safer.

JE: That sounds really good. Representatives from each corner of the Marvel Universe letting each other know what's going on in their respective areas. That makes a lot of sense.

BR: This rapidly blossomed into "if we try to control some of these events, head trouble off at the pass, then we'll maybe do even better." And from there, the trouble started. In fact, the trouble grew so big that the boys are now staring a Skrull invasion of Earth square in the face. And it's an invasion that they made possible.

JE: That's serious trouble, as revealed in the fifth and final issue of the Illuminati mini series from last week. But back to the start of the mini,how much research did you have to do when delving into the key Marvel storylines that each issue of the mini would focus on? Had you previously read Infinity Gauntlet, Secret Wars II, or Marvel Boy or did you check any of them out for the first time when scripting?

BR: I had read them all years ago, but I went back and read them again before writing anything for the new series. There was a phase last summer where I was an Infinity Gauntlet authority. I knew facts about Secret Wars II that were so esoteric, Bendis claimed I was making them up. It's frightening how much random trivia I cram into my brain on a given project, then jettison when I'm done. I had to look up what all the Infinity Gems were the other week because I couldn't remember them all.

JE: Though the group officially broke apart before Civil War due to a disagreement over what should happen to the Hulk and the impending hero registration, there's no limit to the stories from the past that could involve the Illuminati's secret involvement or response. Atlantis Attacks, Armor Wars, the Montesi Formula, Jenkins. Inhumans mini, and Onslaught come to mind since they are each pivotal stories from the past that directly involve an Illuminati member. Can we expect another Illuminati mini soon?

BR: I don't know what plans Marvel has got on that front. Maybe? I know the series sold well, and people seemed to enjoy what we were doing. If there's a good story there to tell, odds are it will get told. But I have no idea if or when that would go down.

JE: So if Marvel's bad guys had their own version of the Illuminati, who do you think might be in it?

BR: While I don't know who would be in the group, Matt Fraction did come up with the name "Illumi-naughty" and if there's any justice in the universe, that is what such a team would be called.

New Avengers Illuminati was one of Acme Comics' best selling mini series in recent memory and will be collected into a Marvel Premiere Hardcover in January 2008. The group first appeared in New Avengers #7 which can be found in New Avengers tpb #2 The Sentry. The creation and dissolving of the Illuminati can be found in the New Avengers Illiminati one-shot, reprinted in Road to Civil War tpb.

Captain Marvel

JE: I'm 31 and as such pretty much totally missed out on Mar-vell, Marvel's hero from another world. The very first time I saw Captain Marvel was when the Death of Captain Marvel graphic novel was on prominent display at our original downtown location. I was a kid then and I knew some of the Marvel super heroes on the cover, but I had never seen Captain Marvel before. And seeing Marvel's representation of Death cradling the hero was a little creepy to me. I'm part of the generation who has little to no knowledge of Mar-vell because of the hit for the team he took in the 80s. Are you also part of that generation of fans or did you have experience with the character from before his death?

BR: He was pretty much a trivia question for me before Stephen Wacker asked if I wanted to pitch for the mini-series. I had read The Life & Death of Captain Marvel a few years back just because I knew of his ties to Ms. Marvel and wanted to see some of his stories. I got to know more about him researching the Kree/Skrull war for the first issue of Illuminati, but I'd never really read enough to know who he was until it was time to write this mini-series.

JE: In the 1980s Mar-vell perished in a way that no other hero had before. During one of his many battles against evil-doers on Earth, Mar-vell had encountered deadly chemicals that would lead to him developing an incurable form of cancer that would eventually take his life despite the best efforts of Marvel's finest. Years later though during the heat of the Civil War event, Mar-vell was pulled from the past into the turbulent and probably unrecognizable Marvel Universe where he was convinced to join the Pro-registration side. So here he is ready to go for old fans and brand new ones that have perhaps only heard of the character. How would you describe Captain Marvel for those who had not seen him before the Civil War: The Return one shot?

BR: For other people new to the character: Mar-Vell is a soldier, part of the alien race of Kree, who ends up on Earth, doing the super hero thing, rejected by his own people after he helps stop the Kree/Skrull war without giving either side a final victory. He's a soldier and he ends up dying, not in war, but flat on his back. A victim of cancer. As the mini-series opens, we learn that Mar-Vell has traveled from the time after cancer was in his body, but before he's sick. He knows he is going to die, but he also knows he's been given a last chance to make his death worth something. So Mar-Vell quickly finds himself on the front lines of a new Skrull war-- the Secret Invasion.

JE: How much pressure are you under as the caretaker of Mar-vell? Not only will new fans be looking closely at how the character distinguishes himself in the crowded Marvel Universe, but many people hold his final story high on a pedistal and will be running your work under a microscope.

BR: I did want to make sure not to invalidate any of the old Captain Marvel stories, most specifically his death. Because that is a great tale that I think has aged really well and is still a pretty key moment in Marvel history. So in that respect, there was some self-induced pressure.

JE: Still it seems daunting to me to have to work with a character that is deeply established, yet because of his circumstances and surroundings is, in a way, new.

BR: In a lot of ways, it's no different than any other character. You make sure you're putting enough information on the page for new readers, but not so much that you bog them down or bore long time fans.

JE: You.ve worked with some amazing artists during your time at Marvel. You worked with Jimmy Cheung on New Avengers Illuminati, the late Mike Wieringo on Ms. Marvel, and now you're paired up with Lee Weeks on Captain Marvel. Lee is one of my personal favorite artists ever since his work on Daredevil and does not get nearly enough credit as one of the best traditional comic artist around. Are you part of the school of writers that puts together a script with a particular artist in mind, to play to his particular strengths, or do you generate a script without the artist in particular influencing it?

BR: I learned early on how much better your stories can be if you cater to a particular artists' skills. The trick a lot of the time has been that I've been pretty far ahead on scripts, and a new artist has come onboard and started drawing things I wrote for someone else. This happened to Mike Wieringo on Ms. Marvel, who found himself drawing things I'd originally crafted for Roberto DeLaTorre. He did a stellar job though, and really made the story his own. With Jimmy Cheung, we knew who was drawing the book before we ever wrote a single word, and Bendis had worked with him before, so we knew exactly how to cater to him and make him make us look far better than we maybe deserve to look. Captain Marvel was written in a vacuum. I had no idea who would be drawing it when I wrote it, and that can go bad on you if you aren't lucky. But I sub-consciously aimed it at Lee Weeks' style, and didn't even realize I'd done it until Wacker said he'd talked to Lee about the book and Lee was interested. Lee is a perfect fit for the book, and has brought a lot of ideas to the table that I didn't have initially. I'm so very, very happy with what he's doing on the book.

Video Games

JE: Before breaking into comics, your roots were in another field that some say goes hand-in-hand with comics. Tell us about your position in the video game world. What properties have you worked on in the past and what is on the horizon that we can look out for?

BR: I started out in games in the spring of '96 testing the expansion pack for WarCraft II. That led to a job at DreamWorks Interactive, where I was part of the punchline that is Trespasser, then I moved on through a couple different jobs including a short stint with a Spyro the Dragon game (but the folks running that company decided paying their employees was optional), before landing at Treyarch and being lead designer on Ultimate Spider-man. Last year I went full-time writer/freelance and ventured out into the world. Since then I wrote Spider-Man: Friend or Foe for Activision, and Mercenaries 2 for Pandemic/EA. I'm currently working on another unannounced Activision game for release in 2008.

JE: My first system was something called the Intelivision and it had a controller that kind of looked like a telephone receiver. But I'm also just the right age to have been around for the birth of the Super Nintendo. Did you have any background with video games from your youth?

BR: I'm old school. Atari 2600, represent. I've been a video gamer since I knew there were video games. Arcade games pre-Pac-Man... I remember when the Star Wars videogame was like something out of the future because you could hear Obi-Wan's voice as you played. I remember when the Super Nintendo was this amazing thing and you couldn't imagine that anything could ever make prettier graphics.

JE: Ah yes, Mode 7 Graphics courtesty of the Super NES! So as a gamer turned developer, are there any games or people that you've learned from?

BR: As far as learning from games, it's a lot like learning from other writing. You get bits and pieces here and there where you understand what the creator was doing, and you take those bits and fold them into your craft. With games, I used to really study anything Shigeru Miyamoto was part of, and I'd try to integrate those lessons into my own designs.

JE: How is the process of writing a game different from writing a comic script? Is game scripting a static format or does it follow a different pattern than the traditional comic book script?

BR: As far as stories go in games, there hasn't been much to learn from. Proper storytelling in games is still in its infancy. A week ago I would have told you Bioshock was the current top of the line in story-telling, but I just played through Portal and the way they convey the story to you is so much more streamlined and in-world than Bioshock that I feel like the whole genre just took another leap forward. The trick with game writing though is that you're usually trying to fit your work into the nooks and crannies afforded to you by the game play, and how you can tell your story, and how it fits in the game is radically different from one project to the next.

JE: Would you say you're a game collector or do you play through and then move onto the next thing?

BR: I used to be much more of a collector than I am now. I'd keep games around forever just to have them on hand if I wanted to show some design element to a programmer or another designer. Nowadays I see them much more as something that I play once then tend to forget I own.

JE: Anyone who knows me, knows that I'm about as disconnected as one can be from current games. I have no idea what's even out there. What would you say are the top five games in the shelf right now?

BR: As for what's on shelves right now, I think my top five games are Portal (part of The Orange Box collection), Bioshock, Dead Rising, Eye of Judgement, and Everyday Shooter. Those are some wildly different games, and won't appeal to everyone, but there's something unique and magical about each and every one of them.

JE: Were you aware of the Ultimate Marvel comic line before your involvement with the Ultimate Spider-man game?

BR: Yeah, a friend of mine had turned me on to Ultimate Spider-Man about a year before the game came along. I was really excited when we went from being "a Spider-Man game" to "an Ultimate Spider-Man game" because it gave us a focus and when you're looking at 40+ years of history and trying to decide where to plat your flag, it's important to have someplace to start.

JE: Once Ultimate Spider-man was completed and on your television, were you satisfied with the finished product?

BR: The finished game is like any finished project-- you always see places you would have done things differently, and you always wish you'd had "another six months," but I've had a lot of people tell me how much they love the game and its story, so I guess we did something right.

JE: And now you are firmly entrenched in the world of comics as well. Anything about writing comics that defied your expectations coming from the video game world?

BR: Nothing has really jumped out and surprised me with comics writing, but I admit that the month-in-month-out constantly churning up stories exercise isn't as harsh as I thought it would be. I was really worried at first that I wouldn't be able to keep up with the demands of always having new stories to tell, but I've found that the more you do it, the more you want to do it, and the more stories you find to tell.

General

JE: What made you consider throwing your hat into the comic writing world? I've read all of your Marvel Comics work and you have really taken to it quite well.

BR: I decided when I was about 10 or 11 years old that I wanted to be a writer. And ever since then, I've been writing stories of various lengths, shapes and sizes. I completely stumbled backwards into the comic writing thing, and I couldn't be having more fun. I was a huge Marvel fan growing up, and to be allowed to play in that sandbox is a really great honor for me.

JE: Do you get out to many comic cons? What's it like sitting on the other side of the table from a fan with twenty books with your name on them to be signed?

BR: Yeah, I've done a few cons now, and they're great fun. They're also incredibly humbling. You get people coming up to you with stacks of stuff you've wrote and they tell you how much they enjoy it, and all you can think is "you spent all this money to buy stories that I wrote" and it really reminds you of just how lucky you are to be sitting at that table, saying hello to these great people.

JE: Now that you're on the inside you must surely have met some comic book movers and shakers of today and yesterday. How has that been for you?

BR: Before I got into games, I was an assistant at a public relations firm, and I got so completely broke of the whole "oh, wow, a famous person" thing that now when I meet a writer or artist whose work I enjoy, it's much more of a feeling that I'm meeting someone else who works at the same office I do. I always enjoy meeting guys who have entertained, or inspired me-- and I find that meeting them usually ends up in an exchange of Xbox Live names, and then a later exchange of bullets and laser beams.

JE: Being a comic writer with multiple things on his plate means being busy. Are you able to find time to keep up with what's on the new comics shelf? And if so, what comic series are you currently enjoying?

BR: I read a lot of Marvel stuff, but by no means all of it. The book I get most excited about when I see a new issue is probably Powers, although I'm absolutely in love with Fear Agent and Doktor Sleepless at the moment. Mouse Guard continues to be fantastic. I have really been getting a kick out of the absolute crazy scope of the Green Lantern series of late, with the Sinestro Corps war going on. I've got pretty eclectic tastes in comics, so there's a lot I'm enjoying right now.

JE: Are there any surprises for you on the shelf or has that been sacrificed as something you lose to become a comic creator?

BR: I'm fortunate to count Bendis and Ed Brubaker amongst my friends, so I know a lot of what's going on, or coming up. I still get some nice surprises. For example, I didn't know what Peter David was doing with She-Hulk until I read it.

JE: Ok, that brings us to the end of our little piece. One last question before we wrap. You got to play with Spider-woman, you have Mar-vell and Ms. Marvel under your care now. You even got to take the Beyonder for a brief spin. Are there any other underutilized characters you would like to have a try at someday?

BR: Everybody wants a crack at Cloak & Dagger. I'm no different.

 

Brian Reed's Ms. Marvel is available in two trade paperback volumes Best of the Best and Civil War. The newest issue on shelves is #21. Spider-woman Origin by Reed, Bendis, and the Luna Brothers is available in trade paperback now. Issues of New Avengers Illuminati are getting scarce but will be available in premiere hardcover soon for those who missed the incredible five issue mini series!

Brian's website is TheSavageBreakfast.com and he can also be found online in his own creator forum at Jinxworld.com