Broken Frontier

Coming off his near 5-year run on The Incredible Hulk, the amazing Greg Pak takes on the Astonishing X-Men. Before his run has even started, the teaser image for his first issue has already set the internet ablaze with buzz: it features punk Storm locking lips with Cyclops. We try and pull some answers about what the heck that is about along with some more details about the book.

Also, Pak is writing a new series for Aspen Comics called Dead Man's Run, a story about a jailbreak from Hell. Read on as Pak shares some exclusive details!

BROKEN FRONTIER: First of all, congratulations on your near five year run on Hulk. It was truly amazing in quality and epic in scale.

GREG PAK: Thanks so much. I had a blast on that book.

BF: So now that you are done with Hulk, how did you wind up on Astonishing X-Men?

GP: It’s kind of a funny thing because Astonishing X-Men was my dream job five years ago because I was writing Phoenix: Endsong when the Astonishing X-Men book was first coming out, when Joss Whedon and John Cassaday were on it. I just thought it was an amazing book and it was a huge influence in what we were doing in Endsong.

I kind of stole that cast [Laughs]. I just thought the vibe of that book was amazing and if I had a dream job in comics it would be to jump on board that book when Joss left. But I ended up doing many other things, including the Hulk, so I have zero complaints.

Now, in a very nice way, things have circled around. I got a call from Nick Lowe, who is the editor of the X-Men books, and he asked if I’d be interested and I said yes, absolutely – and it worked out. Nick and I have worked together a lot on a few different books. The Endsong book, Warsong, and also 1602: New World, so it was a lot of fun to get to work with Nick again and to work with these characters.

As I was catching up on the X-Men , I emailed Nick and I said, “You know, of all the characters – and I love so many Marvel characters – the characters that have the best chance of getting my to mist up and shed a little manly tear are the X-Men. It’s this fantastic soap opera. These writers for years have been building these great relationships between these characters and there were all these great love stories and these fantastic heroic sacrifices. It’s great serial storytelling, and it’s a lot of fun to be part of that.

BF: Not much has been said about what your run will be about, but there is that teaser image of Cyclops locking lips with Storm. What can you tell us about that and the direction you are taking the book in?

GP: I still can’t unveil the central big plot hook because it would be a spoiler. It’s tricky because it’s hard to talk about it without spoiling it, so I am going to jus t talk about the character stuff we are doing. There is a giant, crazy high concept that drives the book, so pick it up because it’s totally in the tradition of great X-Men stories and it’s a lot of fun.

The real hook, honestly, is the characters. Just to reassure folks, because some just don’t know, Astonishing is in continuity. It does matter in terms of the X-universe; it ties into what’s going on. Specifically, we are going to be taking an emotional thread that comes out of Schism and really running with it. Schism is this big groundbreaking thing that is affecting a lot of quarters of the X-universe and with this book we are going to delve deep into how it is affecting Cyclops and Storm in particular, and that big kiss on the cover is a big part of the story, so you don’t want to miss it.  

BF: So is Scott still with Emma?

GP: You’re just going to have to read. It’s totally in continuity. It makes sense in terms of the characters. I know it’s hard to buy and it’s hard to understand when you just look at that cover, but once you pick up the book it will all make sense.

BF: And Storm is in her old punk outfit.

GP: She is indeed. She’s got the Mohawk. We’ve seen the Mohawk come up in previous issues of Astonishing, but, yes, she’s also got the black leather and everything. What’s going on? You’ve got to read it!

BF: I find it very appropriate that your run on Incredible Hulk turned into Incredible Hulks, which is this dysfunctional family of super powered beings, which is very much like the X-Men, so what have you learned from your run on Hulk that has prepared you for writing Astonishing X-Men.

GP: Oh, I hadn’t thought about it like that.

It’s sort of funny because it was probably that time I spent writing Endsong that prepared me for writing Incredible Hulks. It probably went that way because Phoenix: Endsong was the first book that was a team book that dealt with a big group of characters. So yes, with the Hulk we had Planet Hulk and he had the Warbound and they followed him throughout, so he has had a supporting cast, but in terms of a genuine team book, Endsong was the first time I did that.

Probably that set me up in some ways for what I ended up doing with the Hulks. Coming back around to the X-Men, there are some things happening in the Astonishing book, this new status quo that all these characters find themselves in as they come out of Schism, is somewhat similar to the way Hulk built that supporting cast in Planet Hulk. I always have a lot of fun seeing the team come together. There’s a lot of fun in that, and we are going to see some of that in this Astonishing book.

BF: Can you speak about the artist, Mike McKone, and what makes him a good fit for this book?

GP: Pick it up for Mike alone! He’s really doing amazing stuff. X-fans may love him from Exiles. He’s got all those same clean lines and great character work. He’s bringing a whole new texture to the book. He is inking it, as well. It’s just gorgeous. I get so excited every time a new page comes in. He’s having a lot of fun with these relationship things that are going on. He’s also fantastic with the big action stuff, particularly in issue 45, which is our second book in the storyline – it should blow some minds.

BF: Now let’s switch gears and talk about your new book for Aspen, Dead Man’s Run.

GP: I met the guys from Aspen – Frank [Mastromauro], Vince [Hernandez], and Peter [Steigerwald] – years ago and thought they were amazing and we had been looking to see if there was a project we could collaborate on for a while. At the same time, I had been having meetings with the folks at Gale Anne Hurd’s Valhalla Pictures and I met with Gale a couple of times. Gale, legendary producer, of course, produced Aliens and Terminator and now The Walking Dead TV show and is just an amazing, amazing force.

I kind of hit it off with the folks at Valhalla and we had been looking for a project and Ben Roberts at Valhalla came up with this idea. He called me up and said, “Jailbreak from Hell!” And I said, “Yes!” It was one of those things where somebody says just a few words to me and it just all makes sense. It was just like when I was working on Planet Hulk and Joe Quesada said, “Hulk, alien planet, battle axes, gladiator,” and I was like, “Yes!”

BF: [Laughs]

GP: Same thing with this. Jailbreak from Hell. Suddenly all the wheels started turning in my head. I started to see the potential immediately, and as I talked to Ben and Gale about this project it became clear we were all thinking about it the same way. We saw it as a great opportunity to tell a very grounded story about a real person who is thrust into these totally extraordinary circumstances, and we would be able to do this kind of crazy world-building and come up with a whole new vision of Hell, what Hell is all about.

The long story short is, Hell is a place on Earth. It’s a maximum security prison in the California desert and our hero is going to end up descending into Hell in order to bust out the only innocent person in Hell, who happens to be his sister. It’s a big crazy supernatural adventure story. The zero issue that came out earlier this month launches the big story.

BF:  How about the art? What is Tony Parker bringing to the table?

GP:  He’s doing a great job. He’s best known for his Eisner award-nominated Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? from BOOM! Studios. He’s one of those guys who can draw everyday people very well, which is important because this is a story where someone like you or me is thrust into this kind of situation. When you contrast that very believable man on the street with the supernatural elements it really comes through and has some emotional impact.

BF: For the story, you’re saying the prison is literally located on our plane of existence, and that prison is Hell?

GP: Once you get under that big giant pyramid in the middle of the prison, strange things start to happen.

BF: [Laughs] More Hellish things, I imagine. You said the main character is an everyman like you and me, so what about him is unique and what in his life is going to prepare him to do this?

GP: Well, this is something that I haven’t told anybody yet, so you get an exclusive hook here. Everybody in Hell is there for a reason. Everybody is a sinner. Everybody has got their sin, be it big or small. The main character Sam has his own transgression that we are going to learn about as this story goes on. As our story begins, he is a cartographer. He works for the prison.

As we discover, the folks who everybody thinks run the prison actually run the gates around the prison. There’s all the fortification around the prison. The prison itself is run by mysterious characters who we will soon discover. There is a captain, Frank Romano, who is in charge of the security forces that surround this prison, and he becomes a very important character as well. Sam works for Romano, this captain, mapping out whatever parts of Hell they can discover. And that skill may come in handy as the story progresses.

BF: Excellent. What sort of visual tone and style are you and Tony going for?

GP: I would say gritty, emotionally real, and insane. There are certain points when the story is just going to cut loose. The supernatural elements are going to blow off the page and Tony is definitely eating that stuff alive.

There’s a whole world-building aspect of this book that reminds me of Planet Hulk where we got to imagine an entire world from scratch. We are doing a similar kind of thing here where we are figuring out the rules of Hell and building it up from square one. There’s a whole back story, a whole ethos to how this whole thing plays out as the story progresses.

Astonishing X-Men #44 hits stores today. Dead Man's Run #1 arrives on January 11, 2012.