VS. 
Our interview this week celebrates the release of Uncanny X-Men #500, written by Matt Fraction, with Ed Brubaker, Terry Dodson, and Greg Land. Honestly. It's Fraction's son Henry that's the true star of the video, the cutest kid around, so be sure to check out his shenanigans (including tossing a pen at me!). The audio is kind of touch and go, though, so be sure and check out the transcript below as well.
A kung fu billionaire. The West Wing with super heroes. An analog boy in a digital world. Questionably legal cross-dimensional incest between alter ego super spy siblings.
These are the hooks for the books that I, as a 20-something college graduate whiling away my formative years reading funny books, want to read.
Those are the stories that Matt Fraction writes. He's three steps ahead of everyone, and sometimes it seems even himself. Casanova, his creator owned book from Image, makes my head hurt, in a good way, like only Watchmen can. And when he tells Xylon to travel back in time so that he can meet up with his 13-year-old self in order to form what could only be an unholy alliance and burn down the world together, you realize that you'll always be playing catch up.
Then I saw him playing with his son and listened to his mom as she gushed about his work and had him sketch me a baby Watcher on one of my Secret Invasion covers and I got the feeling that he's just a dude that loves comics and baseball, and when you take a leap of faith into a medium of traditional madness and apply yourself, genius could be just around the corner.
Matt ended up being my final interview at HeroesCon. Some of the questions were toned down to preserve the virgin ears of those present, and though both of us were a little worn and weary, he blew my mind nonetheless.
Stephen Mayer: Casanova seems to be one of the most well-plotted series out there right now. In your back matter you talk about a lot of the beats coming to you while you're listening to music or hanging out. How much did you know would happen in advance and how much room did the story have to go where it wanted?
Matt Fraction: I know the big beats. I don't always know how I'm going to get there. I knew the end of #14 before I wrote a word of #8, so, you know, the big ones, but I make up how I get there. Sometimes I change my mind on the way.
SM: And Gabriel Ba will be back?
MF: For volume 3, yeah, yeah.
SM: When Iron Fist started, a lot of folks, especially around our store, thought that since Ed Brubaker's name came first on the book that he was really writing the story and you were just scripting, but as it's moved on you've definitely come to the forefront on that book and now you're writing entire issues by yourself. How did your collaboration with Ed begin and how has it progressed?
MF: Secretly, even when he was doing Detour and Lowlife, he wanted to be writing Iron Fist. Even when he was writing Captain America, he secretly wanted to be writing Iron Fist. When he pitched and Marvel said "you can do it, but you're too busy. You need a co-writer," that was when I got wrapped into it. So that was how it got started. Since I was kind of new at Marvel, Ed kind of showed me the ropes and taught me how to write comics the Marvel way, so to speak. That's how it started and as thing went on, Ed felt the need to less and less to be connected to it. He got busier and busier, and it was always our story, and he was always looking at it before it went away and it evolved over time.
SM: For the upcoming stories in X-Men, you're going to be doing three issue arcs each?
MF: It's not quite planned like that. We're going to be alternating arcs. We plot it together, but we script independently. We both wrote #500, then I do #501, 2, and 3 and Ed comes in at #504.
SM: You said that before your son was born, you were really cranking out your work, getting caught up and getting ahead before he arrived. I was wondering how he's affected your writing process.
MF: I have a lot less time to dilly-dally, describing the color of the rock in the back, the color of the shoe in the corner of the room, that sort of thing. It's been a great lesson in efficiency.
SM: And did you work at Heroes [Aren't Hard to Find] at one point?
MF: I did, I did. I worked at Heroes in '94, I worked three shows. Working retail.
SM: What lessons did you learn from being on the other side of the counter that you've taken with you?
MF: Everybody is somebody's favorite character and shows like this are worth their weight in gold.
SM: Last question. Who would win in a fight: Bearded Matt Fraction or Clean-shaven Matt Fraction?
MF: Oh, clean-shaven! The beard is this big target, a handle. This baby [references Henry] took down bearded Matt Fration. That's why I shaved. I couldn't take having my face yanked off.
SM: Thanks a lot, and we're looking forward to everything coming up!
MF: Thank you, guys!
Matt Fraction won a 2007 Eisner award for his story in Sensational Spider-man Annual #1. He's the writer of Punisher War Journal, Invincible Iron Man, the Thor: Ages of Thunder trilogy, Uncanny X-Men with Ed Brubaker, Secret Invasion: Thor, Immortal Iron Fist, Young Avengers #6 (Hawkeye), and the Order for Marvel and Casanova and the Five Fists of Science from Image. You can see him "blog from his pants" over at MattFraction.com.
