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EVERYTHING X-MEN Wolverine! CyClops! Magneto! jean grey!

Plus: Akira / Neil Gaiman / Crossovers

4 Comic Heroes

It’s the strangest ‘crossover’ of the year, as Vertigo’s two most literary titles – The Unwritten and Fables – get together for a crossover arc that only takes place in one of them. (Confused? So are the characters!) By Stephen Jewell

Once Upon A Time…Once Upon Once Upon Once Upon THE HOTTEST NEWS FOR ALL THINGS COMICS!

hey might not want to call it a crossover per se, but it’s hard to think of ‘The Unwritten Fables’ in

any other terms – even though the structure, promise and implications of this particular comics book ‘event’ are rather different to those of your typical superhero slugfest.

Set to launch in this month’s special, double-sized The Unwritten #50, the five-issue arc of ‘The Unwritten Fables’ sees Tommy Taylor and his meta-fictional friends from one literary-centric Vertigo monthly crash headlong into the mythic cast of a second, Fables, for the very first time. It all makes for a

very different kind of event book as the various denizens of these two worlds cross paths.

“It was a kind of multi-layered thing that happened really slowly,” recalls Unwritten scribe Mike Carey, who – along with his artistic partner Peter Gross – has responsibility for the majority of the workload here,

though there will be some contributions from Fables stalwarts Bill Willingham, its Eisner Award-winning creator, and artist Mark Buckingham too. “Peter used to bump into Bill quite regularly at American conventions, and they’d chat about the two books and how each of them was enjoying the other’s. They’d say, ‘We’d really like to do something together one day’ – and then they’d go away, and meet again the next year!”

So nothing happened?“Not until Shelly Bond became

the editor on The Unwritten and, of course, she was already the editor on Fables, so suddenly it was much more likely to become reality. When Peter mentioned that they’d had this conversation, Shelly was basically, like, ‘Let’s do it’, and it grew from there.”

WITCHES AND WIZARDSOne way in which ‘The Unwritten Fables’ is not a regular sort of

T

The crossover will play out in The Unwritten.

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News The Unwritten Fables

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crossover is that the story only takes place in the pages of one book – The Unwritten – after boy wizard Tom Taylor leaps into yet another fictional world in his quest for answers, and finds the witches of Fabletown waiting for him there.

“Initially it was Bill who was the real driving force behind this happening,” suggests Gross.

“Every time I bumped into him, he insisted that we had to do something with The Unwritten and Fables. But, while the two books are so similar, they’re kind of different as well – so it was hard to think of a way to get a connection between them. Even though they’re really close thematically, we each take a different approach to it. I didn’t know if we’d ever be able to do it, frankly – even though I loved the idea of it – so, when we finally came up with an idea that bridged the gap between them, we were really excited.”

Still, while their input has proved invaluable, Willingham and main Fables artist Mark Buckingham are taking a back seat in proceedings.

“Bill is writing some scenes for us, but I wrote the overview,” explains Carey. “We then all got together – us four creators, and Shelly – and talked it through. We edited notes backwards and forwards with each other, and shaped it together.

“The bulk of the writing will be me, and the bulk of the artwork will be Peter, but Bill and Bucky are both actively involved – and are giving us feedback on the scripts as they come in. So it’s very much a group effort.”

GRIMM TIMESThough the ‘crossover’ is only happening in the pages of one of the two books, there’s a good

chance it will have a lasting impact on events within the regular Fables comic too.

“It’s all rather in flux as to how we’re working on it,” says Gross, referring specifically to how art chores will be handed out. “Bill and Bucky are going to do some of the pages of each issue, and we’re all going to ink Bucky on those. We’re just going to see what’s fun to do, and how much time he has to ink me on other sections as well, so we’re winging it as we go.”

While the more subtle nuances of what’s going on in ‘The Unwritten Fables’ will likely be best appreciated by readers who follow both titles, the team are keen to make sure the central narrative can be grasped sufficiently by fans who only read one of the books – or, indeed, read neither – regularly.

“There’ll be a hell of a lot you miss, but you can do it,” suggests Carey. “Some people will pick up ‘The Unwritten Fables’ arc because they’re Fables fans, and they want to see how these characters work in a different setting. But there will also be people who are regular readers of Unwritten – this story is part of the regular numerical sequence and continuity of our book – who’ll now be meeting the Fables for the first time. Because of this, we provide some quite explicit recapping very early on, and we’ve found ways of putting those briefing points into the story.

“All we know is that the book is definitely going to mean more to people who regularly read either one book or the other – although,

Peter Gross’ dark, otherworldly art.

Fables: inspired by fairytales and folklore.

When we finally came up with a bridge idea

we were really excited

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20 Comic Heroes

It’s far and away the most potent idea the medium has thrown up, this school for ‘gifted youngsters’, this haven for troubled teens coming to grips with their new powers. By Matt Bielby

Children of the AtomS

uperman is a myth of power, Batman of forcing the world to be the way you want it to be, and both have clout – oh yes. But the richest meat in

comics is here: the Children of the Atom.The X-Men are mutants. Specifically,

they’re not regular superheroes, who tend to be normal people gifted with strange abilities by magic or science. Instead they’re a new sub-species, born different to us (and to each other), with strange physicality and abilities that usually become obvious at puberty. One will have wings, another can walk through walls – but these guys, the ones we follow, are the glorious ones, handsome demi-gods despite their oddity and outsider status.

Many, many more will have less enviable powers (secreting adhesive, say, or possessing a body composed of organic paraffin wax), and will inherit the consequent revolting appearances. Sometimes we’ll meet those guys too.

The X-Men is a superhero team built of students and teachers from a special, secluded school where young mutants are taught how to use their powers; they come in all

shapes and sizes, from every country and background, yet to the outside world they remain the shock-troops of a larger, yet more secretive, only semi-visible mass of mutant-kind. Regular folk know these guys are out there, somewhere, but they can’t properly see them. As a consequence mutants are regarded, at worst, as the enemy within – and, even at their very best, as figures of suspicion, never quite to be trusted.

As outsiders living in our midst, Marvel’s mutants reflect every problem suffered by any minority in society, and strong storylines have come from each of these parallels – with racism (anti-Semitism particularly); with homophobia; with fear of communism (back in the day) or of radical Islam (now); with confusion over new youth subcultures.

Heady stuff, the soil from which some rich tales have grown – but, despite this, one feels that much remains untapped. The X-Men’s predicament is so supremely giving in terms of storylines and built-in conflict that we’ve so far only scratched the surface.

In the real world, Batman – with all his resources and ingenuity – would have

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Children of the Atomcleaned up Gotham City by now; Superman would have turned Earth into a paradise, as Marvelman once did. But the X-Men have problems that will never go away, because they’re part of what we are. The world – and the threats it contains – mutates around them, and the X-Men had better get their skates on, just to keep up.

THe Fear FaCTorIt’s easy to understand why regular people are rather scared of the X-Men – the general belief is that they’re the next stage of humanity, a homo superior destined to eventually replace regular base-line humans.

The early Marvel of the first years of the ’60s was built on unhappy, alienated heroes, of course – monsters like the Thing and the Hulk, creepy teens like Spider-Man, men out of time like that revived relic, Captain America. But X-Men, when it was launched in 1963 – towards the end of Stan Lee and Jack Kirby’s first Big Bang of inspiration – took this two or three stages further. Perhaps it went too far, for this wasn’t a hit, not initially.

Why, though has never been quite clear. Maybe America wasn’t quite ready for it, with powerful, frightening teens a more potent image then than they could ever appear to be now? Perhaps it had too many characters, and it was unclear quite who we were meant to cheer for? Was it the cold, mechanical field leader Cyclops, whose eyes we never

saw? The kindly but clearly manipulative Professor X, turning children into an army? The charismatic (but obviously barking) main villain, Magneto? This was a complicated title, and even early on the morality was painted in confusing shades of grey.

But perhaps, more likely, X-Men was simply a victim of Marvel’s growing pains: artist and co-creator Jack Kirby was badly overstretched at this point – he was already doing Fantastic Four, Avengers, Thor and most Marvel covers every month – and X-Men was a book too far. Whatever the reason, he soon handed the title over to the way less dynamic Werner Roth.

Not all of the early X-Men tales are memorable, it’s true, but it’s to Marvel’s credit that this third team of superheroes – after the FF and then the Avengers, who debuted at virtually the same time – should be so distinctly different to what went before.

One point of difference was immediately obvious; we had to learn about these heroes as their adventures went along, with nothing

handed us on a plate. Instead, we were thrown right into the middle of things, with the first action of X-Men #1 being the arrival of Marvel Girl to join an already existing team – a very different introduction to the one we’d enjoyed to both the FF and the Avengers, which had

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28 Comic Heroes

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Comic Heroes 29

Interview Neil Gaiman

One of the great writers to have come from comics, Neil Gaiman only returns to the four-colour world sporadically – but when he does, it’s a real treat. And now, from out of nowhere, he’s bringing his saucy angel, Angela, to Marvel… By Stephen Jewell

heaven, originally created by Gaiman and artist Todd McFarlane to counter the latter’s demonic hero Spawn, but now – suddenly! – she’s a Marvel character. Hot on the heels of her sensational re-emergence at the end of the House of Idea’s latest blockbuster event, Age Of Ultron, she’s due to become a major presence in the Marvel Universe over the coming months.

Angela will next cross paths with the Guardians Of The Galaxy, starting in #5, which Gaiman will co-write with that book’s resident

Like his exquisitely crafted novels, Neil Gaiman’s comic books are rare treats these days. But then – you know,

like busses – it occasionally gets very busy all of a sudden, and this is one such time. In addition to his latest book, the just-released, very personal fantasy The Ocean At The End Of The Lane, and this autumn’s long-awaited return to the character that made his name – in miniseries Sandman: Year Zero – there recently came the surprise news that the Hampshire-born author would soon be making another foray into the Marvel Universe too.

It’s a playground he last explored through two miniseries, 1602 and Eternals, a number of years ago now, and, just as neither of those were quite what most fans had expected, his latest seems similarly out of leftfield.

Angela is an angel who works as a bounty hunter in the employ of

Marvel did an amazing job of keeping it completely secret. I

thought it was a brilliant move

scribe Brian Michael Bendis. “It was meant to have been kept completely secret,” Gaiman tells Comic Heroes when we met up with him during a recent whirlwind trip to London. “My understanding is that Marvel did an amazing job of keeping it completely secret. They wanted the first the world knew about it to be when they opened the comic and went, ‘Oh my God, there she is!’ When they told me they were going to do that, I thought it was a brilliant move.”

Gaiman originally created Angela for March 1993’s Spawn #9, as part

Above: Bounty hunter Angela was originally created for Spawn #9, but has been mildly redesigned (left) for Marvel Now!

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