“The Death Of Wolverine” was just the beginning. Though Marvel’s most popular mutant may be dead and gone by the end of 2014, in January of 2015 the publisher will be launching a new weekly comic focused on all the sharp, sharp characters he’s left behind.
Marvel Comics
The news will be announced officially later today (October 11) at Marvel’s “DEATH OF WOLVERINE – THE LOGAN LEGACY” panel at New York Comic-Con, but MTV News is pleased to exclusively bring you the information on the next big step in Logan’s un-life, right here, right now.
Written by Charles Soule (“Death Of Wolverine”) and Ray Fawkes (“The Logan Legacy”), with art by Nick Bradshaw, the ongoing weekly finds Mystique, Daken, Sabretooth, X-23 and a few mystery characters uncovering secrets behind Wolverine’s death… As well as a healthy dose of good old fighting.
To find out more about the series – as well as show off covers and some interior art – we talked to Soule, Fawkes and Editor Mike Marts over e-mail:
Marvel Comics
MTV News: Congrats on the new series, guys, but I’ve got to ask: how long are you going to wait before one of the cast shouts, “WOLVERIIIIINES!!!” while going down in a hail of bullets?
Mike Marts: Page 1, Panel 1!
Charles Soule: It doesn’t happen on every page, but it happens quite a bit. There are certain ingredients to a series like this that I feel are somewhat non-negotiable – fundamental parts of the architecture you can’t ignore. A “horror” movie without anything scary isn’t a horror movie. An “action” movie set entirely in a diner with two people talking isn’t actually an action movie. Similarly, a series entitled “Wolverines” without near-constant heroic sacrifices by high-school aged rebels isn’t worth the name.
Ray Fawkes: You might well ask “How long will it be between scenes like that?”
Marvel Comics
MTV: Slightly more seriously, how’d this project come together? And how does it flow out of the end of “Death Of Wolverine?”
Marts: It developed organically out of post-”Death of Wolverine” conversations we had with Charles. We combined those conversations with this strange obsession that Katie and I have with the weekly comics format, and voila! “Wolverines” was born.
Soule: One of the main ideas with “Death Of Wolverine” from the start was to see what new things could come out of it – how was the Marvel Universe might be affected by Logan’s death. Some of that is explored in the fall series coming out right after the death (“The Weapon X Project” and “The Logan Legacy”), but we decided it would be fun to delve a little more deeply, and that’s where “Wolverines” began.
Fawkes: These guys are the ones who brought the project together, and then they brought me in – so I bow to their answers on this one.
MTV: Since this is a weekly series, what’s the structure like? Is it solo issues, full-on team, or something else?
Marts: Ongoing narrative… Each chapter leads directly to the next. A true serial with cliffhangers!
Soule: That’s right! As the scripts have come together, the adjective I’ve started to use is “gonzo.” Crazy stuff happens constantly – one of the nice things about this particular group (X-23, Daken, Mystique, Sabretooth and Lady Deathstrike, plus a new character I can’t wait for people to meet) is that they don’t have to always act in a particularly heroic way – and it’s certainly not predictable. Deathstrike doesn’t solve problems the same way, say, Captain America would – and she doesn’t have to, either. It opens a lot of story possibilities I think Ray and I are having a great time with. It’s very fast-paced, and very exciting.
Fawkes: Yes – it’s all very organic and speedy, and Charles and I are enjoying batting the individual chapters back and forth, setting up horrible cliffhangers for each other to deal with along the way.
Marvel Comics
MTV: You’ve got a ton of characters related to Wolverine’s legacy here… How do all the characters fit in, and what are their reactions to Wolverine’s death?
Marts: As varied as the characters!
Soule: It’s all over the map. Wolverine’s death is an inciting event, but the characters really do begin to take on their own lives quite quickly. They’re not all just sitting around moping about Logan’s death (or celebrating it, more likely). They’re off to the races on page 1. (After the hail of bullets thing, anyway.)
Fawkes: And those different reactions often do lead to clashes, of course. They may not be defined by Wolverine’s death, but he is the only thing some of them have in common. So their takeaways from his passing are amplified in relation to one another.
Marvel Comics
MTV: One character you don’t have is Wolverine. Is it difficult at all to write a series where the main focus character is off screen the whole time?
Marts: Who said we don’t have Wolverine? 😉
Soule: Yup. 😉 really hits it right on the head.
Fawkes: I say nothing.
MTV: Seriously though, is this just a comic book adaptation of “Red Dawn?” Be honest.
Marts: Um… Next question?
Soule: Wolverrrriiiiinnnnne [hail of bullets].[/hail]
Marvel Comics
“Wolverines” hits stores weekly from Marvel in January, 2015.
Alex Zalben
Writer/Editor at MTV News. You can follow him on Twitter, but not in real life because that would be weird.
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