nicole_powers

When Marvel comics wanted to launch Wolverine: Weapon X, a new Wolverine comic in advance of the Hugh Jackman movie, they turned to writer Jason Aaron, who hasn't been a professional writer for very long, but has quickly become one of the pre-eminent comics writers of his generation and one of a handful who's been able to so skillfully write war and crime stories in addition to superhero comics.

Aaron came out of nowhere in 2006 with The Other Side, a supernatural Vietnam war tale about two soldiers on opposite sides of the conflict. It was an intensely personal book for Aaron who cited his late cousin, Vietnam veteran and writer Gustav Hasford (whose Vietnam war novel The Short-Timers became the movie Full Metal Jacket) as one of the major inspirations for the book (and, indeed, for Aaron's writing career). Since then Aaron has created an ongoing crime saga set on an Indian reservation, (Scalped), in addition to writing Hellblazer, Punisher and Black Panther.

SG called up Aaron at his home in Kansas City.

Alex Dueben: This isn't your first time writing the character Wolverine, but how did you end writing a whole new series for Marvel?

Jason Aaron: I did the "Get Mystique" story arc for Wolverine and I'd been talking with John Barber, who's the editor, about doing some more stuff. I had a couple of ideas. Eventually they offered me my own book where I could do all those same things that we'd already been talking about.

AD: What did you want to do with character?

JA: We had talked over a couple of different ideas, stories that we're going to do down the line in Weapon X. The first one is a more of a sci-fi tale than we've seen Wolverine involved in in quite some time. I've said it before, one of the things I love about the character that you can put him in different genres and he works.

In just the stuff I've done so far, I did a single-issue story that was basically a gritty character drama and "Get Mystique" was one long chase basically from start to finish and "Manifest Destiny" was a balls to the walls kung fu story. With Wolverine: Weapon X we'll be trying to mix things up like that from arc to arc, so the first arc is a typical sort of black ops story but the second arc will jump right into the middle of a completely different genre.

AD: You want to keep jumping around to make it accessible for casual readers.

JA: Ideally. I've tried to model it after what Garth Ennis did with Punisher Max, which was a series where he had recurring characters and villains who popped up in a couple of arcs, but the arcs were pretty stand alone. We'll have recurring supporting characters and we'll have an ongoing character arc for Wolverine, but at the end of the day hopefully we'll have relatively stand alone arcs so you can jump right into the book without having read Wolverine at all before.

AD: For so long Wolverine was a character without a past and a few years ago in the comics he ended up remembering his entire history. Is there a handbook explaining where he was when and what he was doing?

JA: If there's a handbook, nobody gave it to me. (laughs) In this book we'll really be focusing on just going forward. We'll have flashbacks and things from Wolverine's past coming back to haunt him, but it's all going to be about new villains, new challenges, and moving things forward.

AD: Did you have an editorial mandate to try to attract new readers and tie in with the movie?

JA: The first arc, we talked about doing something that would evoke the movie, something that would deal with the legacy of Weapon X without rehashing the same stories. Somebody who goes to see the movie and likes it and wants to pick up the book, you want to give them a few elements that they would recognize.

AD: You're also writing another, very different book from Marvel, Ghost Rider, and you're wrapping up the book with a standalone miniseries, Ghost Rider: Heaven's on Fire.

JA: It's basically me finishing out the story the way I wanted to which was getting a new number one out of it and hopefully bringing in a few more readers. I've been doing the book for 13-14 issues or so. It got great reviews, brought in a lot of fans that have never read the series before. So it was just planned especially with me taking over Weapon X, which is obviously the biggest book I've ever done. It seemed like a good time to get a little more spotlight on Ghost Rider.

AD: When you write, do you tend to think in terms of a defined beginning, middle and ending?

JA: It depends. A lot of the stuff I did last year were short arcs. Three issues of Black Panther, a couple issues of Hellblazer. For Ghost Rider I came on with one two-year story. With Wolverine it's obviously much more open-ended. I hope to stick around on this book for a nice long run.

Last year was much more focused on me doing those short runs which is a great way to build your name and get attention. This year I'll be a little more focused on ongoing series. Around the time Ghost Rider finishes up I'll be working on a new Marvel ongoing

AD: Can you say what it is yet?

JA: No, not yet.

AD: Your other book is one of my personal favorites, Scalped. I would imagine that's a story where you figured out the beginning, middle and end of the story.

JA: The ending's been there since the original page. I don't know where all the characters are going to wind up, I don't know all the points along the way and there's never been an issue number, but I would say in general where we're at by the end of this year will be about the midpoint -- the low point in a lot of ways for a lot of the characters. Now whether that translates into us doing 60 issues or 70 issues, I don't know, I can't say, I wouldn't want to say.

AD: For those who don't know the book, we should probably say what it's about.

JA: It's a crime series set on a modern day Indian reservation in South Dakota. It's a story involving an undercover FBI agent, Indian gaming, a murder mystery that stretches back to the nineteen seventies, the militant red power movement of that era. And it's a character drama. It's really about the characters living on this reservation, from the head of the local criminal organization to the undercover FBI agent who's trying to bring him down to people all over the reservation.

AD: I think that's been one of most interesting things is that it started out as a noir, but it's really become the story of a community.

JA: We quickly realized that was going to be the strength of the book. With the third arc, the "Casino Boogie" arc, each issue focused on a different character. That's usually something series do a little later in their run. We figured to do this early because if people don't buy into these characters, they're not going to like the book. We're not going to dazzle them with plot twists. We don't have a great hook like 100 Bullets.

AD: Have you always been interested in Native American history, the American Indian Movement?

JA: I've always been interested in the history, especially of the plains Indians of that region. More recently, the Leonard Peltier story, the story of AIM. And all that just played together with my desire to do a crime series.

AD: You've talked about your cousin Gus Hasford who was a novelist. He wrote The Short-Timers which was adapted into the movie Full Metal Jacket. Was he a big influence on you or did you want to establish yourself as a writer independent of him?

JA: I think I already wanted to be a writer even before I really met him. He definitely reinforced that desire. He was an eccentric guy. He had a book collection of thousands of books. He carried a little notebook with him all the time and was always writing down ideas that he would file in this elaborate filing system. He always had several different books that he was working on at the same time. When I met him he was researching a book on the Civil War writer Ambrose Bierce, working on some sort of sci-fi novel about a war between Japan and Australia, as well as the sequel to his Vietnam War book The Short-Timers. He was a guy who did not graduate high school, but was one of the smartest people and just a voracious reader who could talk about any number of subjects.

AD: Your cousin was a fairly successful writer, though I think all his books are all out of print now.

JA: Yeah. He had three novels published and they're all out of print, but The Short-Timers is pretty easy to track down.

AD: I guess I'm wondering, why comics?

JA: I've been reading comics since I was a kid, but I wasn't actively trying to become a comic book writer because I had no idea how to go about doing that. The only time I ever met comic pros was getting my books signed at Dragon*Con. I thought you had to move to New York to pursue work that way and really in that area you probably did before the rise of the internet. I had dreams of being the next great American novelist and went to college and got an English degree and flirted with journalism. I moved from Alabama to Kansas City and here I was writing film reviews and DVD reviews and had a few short stories published. And over the course of that whole time I was still reading comics.

In 2000 Marvel out of blue set up this talent search contest. I wrote up a one page Wolverine synopsis and dropped it in a box with a huge pile of other synopses at Wizard World Chicago and kind of forgot about it when months later when I get an call out of the blue from an editor at Marvel. Even though that eight-page story didn't lead to anything else at Marvel at the time, which was a little disappointing, for the first time ever I had my foot in the door a little bit. It encouraged me to think I could take a crack at this.

One of the first things I pitched was the story that eventually became The Other Side. I pitched it all over before finally getting an editor at Vertigo to take a look at it.

AD: It's all about persistence.

JA: I was very persistent. Years ago I went to a writers' conference when I was still in Alabama and had sort of an eye opening experience. I didn't know much at the time, but I knew enough to know that I wasn't a very good writer. At this conference it seemed like the people there for the most part were interested in finding out 'how do I get an agent, how do I sell this book.' Of course most of those books, maybe all of them, aren't good enough. They never considered the idea that their book might not be good enough. They all figured they had the next Bridges of Madison County and they just wanted to get it out there.

I was still interested in just trying to become a good enough writer. I always figured if you're just good enough, the rest of it will work itself out. That's one of the main things I tell people who are trying to break in, just make sure you're good enough. Be a harsh critic and don't just go by what your friends tell you. I worked a lot of crappy day jobs where I could goof off and daydream and write at work. If I wasn't writing comics right now, that's probably exactly what I'd be doing.

AD: What I think made The Other Side stand out wasn't just that it was good but that it was so different from anything else.

JA: That was part of the idea. This was obviously the first big thing I was pitching and I wanted something that would hopefully get somebody's attention. Nobody really does war books anymore. Except for Garth Ennis, nobody's done them at all the past few decades.

The goal with really everything I write is to look at it and say is this different? Does it have its own voice? Can I honestly say that if I saw this comic as a reader, would I pick it up and pay three-four bucks to read it? I think if the answer to that is ever no, then you've obviously got to re-examine what you're doing

AD: There's dozens of ordinary superhero books, and plenty of writers and who can do it, so what can you bring to it so that it stands out?

JA: Yeah, but that's not a slam against superhero books. There's a lot of really good stuff being done in the mainstream right now. I think it's a great time to be a comic fan.

AD: I think it's a high point because the mainstream has absorbed so many creators with their own sensibilities.

JA: I think people forget how exciting and shocking it seemed when Brian Michael Bendis started to get so much mainstream Marvel work. Or when Grant Morrison took over JLA [Justice League of America]. Those were bold moves at the time. Companies handing the keys over to these young nutballs who'd been off doing their own stuff for years. But now that seems commonplace. You have a guy like Axel Alonso at Marvel who goes out and looks for people who tell their own stories and have their own voice to bring to Marvel. He's the guy who went out and found Matt Fraction and Rick Remender and me and Duane Swierczynski.

AD: I know most of your work is at Marvel right now. Are there any Marvel characters you're itching to write?

JA: I want to write The Thing.

AD: Why The Thing?

JA: I don't know. The Fantastic Four has been one my favorite comics for years. The Lee-Kirby stuff, I put that run at sort of the top of any run on any comic ever. The Thing is just such a great character...I'd love to get my hands on him. Hopefully somewhere down the line. Especially if I keep saying that in interviews, maybe I'll get my crack.

AD: I'm happy to help.

JA: (laughs) And I'm getting to write Spider-Man a little bit in Wolverine now. I wrote him in just one panel of Ghost Rider a few months ago.

AD: We'd be remiss if we didn't mention your collaborator on Wolverine: Weapon X, artist Ron Garney. What do you like about working with him and what does he bring to the book?

JA: The first thing he brings is that he's having a blast. He's having a lot of fun. He's been really excited about doing Wolverine from the get-go. When Axel [Alonso] offered him "Get Mystique" he was a little skeptical only because he had no idea who the hell I was, but we had a lot of fun with that. We've only met once. We had breakfast together at the New York Con this year. He was up in the morning all bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, looked like he'd already run a couple of miles, and I kinda slid out of bed, not feeling my best. So we're very different, but we hit it off and I think you can see his excitement in the pages.

I think this is some of the best stuff he's ever done. And definitely the best stuff he's done in a long time. You can tell he's so into everything we're doing on Wolverine. Not to mention that the guy can draw his hands off and in terms of action, I love his action scenes. He brings such simplicity and power to all the action scenes and he makes them believable. He's the guy who probably could do most of those things to you if you pissed him off, so he brings a lot of believability to the flips and throws and stabs and punches. He makes me look like I know what I'm talking about.