Joss Whedon

With the long-awaited (and discussed) finale of Marvel’s Ultimates 2 finally hitting comic shops last Wednesday, Newsarama thought a in-depth discussion with series artist and co-creator Bryan Hitch was in order. But with a highly influential series nearly six years in the making coming to an end, we also thought the occasion deserved a special touch, and when we heard Buffy creator and Astonishing X-Men writer Joss Whedon was itching to talk Hitch, we knew we had our appropriate exit interview...

In the following discussion, guest Newsarama interviewer Whedon and Hitch naturally discuss The Ultimates - from a creative point-of-view, its impact on Marvel, and of course - they how’s and why’s of its infamous scheduling. But along they way the creators also discuss a possible Millar-Hitch return to The Ultimates some day? Working with one another? Samuel L. Jackson’s Marvel movie future? The 18 months Whedon worked on the Wonder Woman movie; and as expected, Millar and Hitch’s big, secret new Marvel Universe project...

Joss Whedon: Bryan, 1812 was an exciting year. There was a war, a really cool overture, and I think that was when the last issue of Ultimates came out.

Bryan Hitch: I think Columbus might have taken the first issue of Volume One with him on the voyage to America and in a neat twist of temporal mechanics created the U.S. comic book industry. You colonials therefore now celebrate comics on Columbus Day!

Joss: It’s my impression you finished the next (and actual last) one some while ago. Why haven’t we seen it?

Hitchy: Yeah, I finished penciling it before Christmas and, irony being what it is, one of the fastest issues I penciled on the series turns out to be the most delayed. You should have read it by now though so it’s out and finally after too many years, done.

What happened with this one was that firstly it was a little delayed on the script side. Mark [Millar], as you know has been suffering from Crohn’s Disease for a while and in all that time, no matter how ill he got, he kept on trooping with the scripts. It was just that he had such a severe bout in the late summer last year that had him off work for about ten weeks and due to the huge commitment he needed to prioritize Civil War and indeed Ultimate FF ahead of Ultimates, which due to all the late issues I had caused, was the only thing that could be flexible. So there was a small delay on the script and then Paul Neary didn’t start inking until after I’d finished as he’d taken some other stuff on in the meantime. It all got a bit f**ked really but it’s done now and I can spend the rest of my career making up for it.

Joss: It’s my feeling that Ultimates brought Marvel into the modern age in a way no other book did - even effecting the old, non-Ultimate Marvel ’verse. Did you and Mark have that far-reaching an agenda when you started it, or was it just yarn-spinnin’?

Hitchy: Always yarn spinning. You exaggerate charmingly about its impact and cheers for that but as you must know, one can never go into a project looking to change the world. The only thing you can have is the belief in what you are doing and that you will do it do it bloody well. You certainly didn’t expect to open the floodgates to genre TV with Buffy but it’s arguably what happened and Buffy is still a bench mark for how to do it, a barometer of quality. Or did you? You may have sat there typing the first script and though "I’m going to change the world, I am, with Vampire ass-kicking; or so help me, OR I’LL DIE TRYING." No?

You have to remember that five or six years ago (Gads, that long?) Marvel was a different place. It was trying as corporation to emerge from bankruptcy protection and even though the publishing arm was always profitable during those days it was felt that things had stagnated for a while. Joey Q and Bill Jemas wanted fresh thoughts so looked to new people, including us. Bendis and Millar were the writers then and one could argue that different though their approaches were, they clearly occupied the same reality and brought fresh thoughts and voices to Marvel at the time.

Success always breeds influence, though and at the time Ultimates was the biggest hit Marvel had, beating even [Frank] Miller’s Dark Knight sequel. Mark and I didn’t expect that level of success at all, we were just following our guts and our brains but I think you know when you’re on to something. That’s working; when you have the lightning in the bottle. I knew it with Authority and I knew it with Ultimates. I know it with our new Marvel project too, so fingers crossed.

It was going to be a very different book originally. Marvel had wanted us to essentially replicate The Authority. DC had buried that book in non-promotion and although it had been a cult hit, was never a big seller. Jemas argued that in Marvel’s hands a book like that would have been a top ten hit and wanted us to give it a shot with this new Ultimate Universe.

Joe didn’t want them called “the Avengers”, (though Mark and I did,) reasoning that the Avengers sold forty thousand units back then and those hardcore fans would buy it anyway but that association with a failing book wouldn’t help us. How times change. Besides, they weren’t actually avenging anything. I suggested “The Ultimates” and that was the name.

The real influence behind the book though, was the World Trade Centre attack on 9/11. Before that we were talking short bursts of Authority-like super-action and so on but those terrible events made us change our approach totally. Super-terrorism was a phrase used in news reports; we didn’t need supervillains. Destruction on the scale we routinely depicted was happening in front of us and it wasn’t fun. It had global repercussions, a horrific list of fatalities and was happening in our world. Pop culture is at its best when it has a little relevancy - the best Star Trek in the sixties was often social commentary. Zeitgeist and all that. I think a better book emerged from those days but it certainly wasn’t an attempt to, for want of a better phrase, "cash in" on what was happening in New York. It’s just that what happened influenced profoundly and it’s important to remember.

Joss: I’m glad to hear there was a deliberate connection between Authority and Ultimates. Both deal with real-world issues, and god knows the real world did come crashing down on the fantasy community. And to an extent it’s invigorated the Marvel U, with your book and even Civil War. But is it a dead-end at all? Once you’ve admitted that the Hulk kills civilians, how do you maintain the Merry Marvel of it? Or is that era over?

Hitchy: I don’t know. These things go in evolutionary terms and the environmental change tends to dictate what becomes the fittest species at any time. To my mind the flavor of Ultimates had become a little last season anyway and needed a fresh voice whether ours or somebody else. It needed to evolve. Mark successfully evolved the flavor of Authority but it’s either stagnated or devolved since then and we were both aware that we were right to knock Ultimates on the head even though we had much more material to work with and we had really only done the origin of the Avengers in the twenty-six occasionally double sized issues. Maybe if we had done them in twenty-six months...

I don’t think there’s anything you do that can’t be undone later on. You killed Buffy, she came back. Comics can be hard, fun, big, small and they can certainly contradict themselves as often as sales allow but I do think I’d always like to look at the material intelligently. I think it’s time for us to have more Merry Marvel fun now though. Maybe things have gone as far as they can. Time for environmental change in my work possibly.

Joss: I’ll tell you my favorite moment (and it’s hard to choose): Cap bursts in and Hawkeye has wiped out the room. They say they thought he was dead. That little panel of him saying "No such luck" is just devastating. Do you have a favorite moment or sequence?

Hitchy: Many, actually but probably little things nobody else really notices. I like reading reviews that talk about character touches and automatically praises the writing for them, even when they are dialogue free or were never scripted by Mark in the first place. It means much of what I’m really doing is invisible like good acting should be.

That scene you mention is a favorite too. To get the chance to play these little character moments against is a strength of Mark’s writing on the book but he knows I can play them. They are often the result of back and forth too when after reading a draft or when drawing a scene I can point out that such a moment is needed or as the above when given one, milk it. I drew Jan hugging Clint because it’s a real human response. There’s unspoken stuff with Steve there two as he’d been accused of killing Hawkeye’s family and he’s sharing the horror and pain of how they’d all been betrayed.

The scene when Clint’s family was killed was brutal but powerful and would also rank as a favorite because I think we nailed it fully and nobody was expecting the end to that issue. The pay off in issue #13 when Hawkeye confronts Natasha was likewise very satisfying.

Joss: It was, in fact. Let’s talk about that ish, starting with the suitable-for-framing eight-page monster foldout shot. Where did that originate? Were you guys just out to prove that All Star Batman is a wimp, with his teeny six page spread? I kind of feel like this idea pre-dates that, though...

Hitchy: I’m not sure but I only asked for a three-page spread to make the scene a little bigger. Looked at in terms of the whole story, we’d just had a three or four issue (or a year and a half for you counters) fight scene and didn’t think another protracted fight issue would work so we though to build up to a great charge of the heroes and Asgardians and then cut away. I asked for a three-page spread to make it a little more special but Mighty Merry Marching Marvel came back with the suggestion to do eight. I loved the challenge and tried rather than a charge to have a huge panoramic action scene.

It was a real challenge to work on physically as the art was so big but it was really good fun to do. I love drawing big rather than the standard size. I’d often wondered if it was laboring over the micro-details on small art boards (11X17) that contributed to some of the delay in Ultimates. I’d long thought I might be more comfortable working twice up instead so I tried it on the new work and it’s sailing along much faster.

Joss: What was the thought behind book-ending with the sweet Cap flashback?

Hitchy: Apart from the aspect of book-ending the first volume, we’d originally intended to have continuing flashbacks with Cap throughout the run telling the full Steve Rogers story but the only one that survived were the Cap fighting Kleiser on a train and the epilogue. It was also a neat little goodbye and ended with the beginning of the story.

Joss: Hawkeye (correct me if it was someone else) says, "Sorry I ever doubted you." to Thor. Shouldn’t that be "Sorry we smashed you to a pulp and LIT YOU ON FIRE and then imprisoned and drugged you for basically no reason?"

Hitchy: Yeah but Mark’s line was neatly succinct yet implied all of the above. Eliopoulos gets paid by the word too...

Joss: I never quite understood why they went so ape-sh*t on Thor.

Hitchy: We glory in violence but it’s the Viking way. I think it was down to Loki’s manipulation but either way it was fun cool to draw!

Joss: But I loved bringing in the Asgard of it for the final battle - It’s not what I expected in this high-tech universe.

Hitchy: I think that’s also why it went quicker for me, something fresh to keep the dander up. I suggested it when Dan Buckley thought our original issue #12 was too long at 29 pages and said if we had an issue #13 that would give us 44 pages instead of 29 to end the run. That became, by the end, more than seventy pages! We’d wanted to answer the question of Thor’s true heritage and this gave us a way of doing it big time.

It’s a touch anachronistic but was a hoot to do. We’d set up the truth about Thor for sure in Ultimates 2.1 when he’s having lunch with Volstagg. I knew we would be dealing with Loki later so added that character I alone knew would be the real Loki to the background where he’s mentioned and some later panels in other issues too. Once Loki was openly discussed around issue four it was fun for everyone to go back and discover he was there all along. I’m not even sure Mark was in on the Loki gag from the beginning; I don’t remember it being in the script to have him there but without checking I couldn’t say for sure.

Joss: Is there anything you guys wanted to do that you couldn’t?

Hitchy: Loads and loads. I wanted to complete what we set up with Tony dying in the final battle in a noble suicide to save everybody, refusing to be beaten by his tumor. He’d played the game all along and left the Ultimates independent and a world wide force; his legacy and if you read all the issues, we were setting it up from issue one to be this was. Sadly, a victim of our success, the initial freedom to kill whomever we liked in the Ultimate ’verse was rescinded when it became the cash cow so Tony survived. Likewise Fury. I wanted him to go down as a human fighting against a super human.

Joss: I remember having dinner with you years ago and you letting slip that you were killing Tony and I was freaking out yelling "Spoilers! Spoilers!" So your whorish caving in to success actually made for a surprise twist for me. Yay!

Hitchy: In Serenity, after Wash makes the landing against the Reavers, you kill him to set up the idea that anybody could die in what follows. I wanted that same thing here and needed a body count to show that nobody was safe in issues #10-13. Fury was a logical choice but again I was overruled but I did maim him, something I think adds quite a bit of character to him visually. Mark also wrote Jarvis as having survived being shot in the chest by a well placed hip flask but I needed a real victim and got my way with him at least.

We had material that could have gone and gone for years (yes, about six more issues) because we loved these guys and loved working on them but Jeph Loeb needed work desperately so we charitably offered to step aside for him.

Joss: When is someone gonna give the Loeb boy a shot? He shows promise, I tell you!

Hitchy: Mark and I spoke at length last week about Ultimates because we both separately came up with mutually compatible ideas for a return to the book at a later date. It often happens with us that we simultaneously have brainwaves that coincide and here we thought that when we’ve run through the next round of commitments we would like to return to The Ultimates and take it to its next level (for us).

Might never happen but it would be nice if it did. We could have gone on and on creatively, though we both thought it needed a season change now whether from us or others. The industry has changed in the last five years and you always want to try and stay ahead of trends rather than following them or feeling old-fashioned but if we can do what we want in a few years we’d both love to go and do another round of Ultimates. No other project has ever been something either of us wanted to return too...

Joss Whedon: If Nick Fury was on a plane, and there were... I don’t want to say ’snakes’, but... some slithery reptiles, what do you think he might say about that?

Bryan Hitch: It’s a comic book so it would be "get those MOTHER-**@£@!!G snakes off this MOTHER-**@£@!!G plane!" Though if were being dubbed by the same chap who dubbed Eddie Murphy’s colorful metaphors on the UK’s TV version Beverley Hills Cop it would be "Get those melon-farming snakes off this melon farming plane" which is possibly more charming.

Joss: On the serious tip, though, you made a conscious decision to base Fury on Sam Jackson and it works great. But I’ve seen it done - movie stars used as templates for comics characters - too much and not as well. What’s your feeling about using known real-life models in comics?

Hitchy: Normally I wouldn’t have done it but when we pegged Fury as being like Sam Jackson’s Shaft with an eye patch it just stuck so I gave up trying to make him almost-like-but-not-quite and went the whole way, hoping he would be flattered and knowing he loves comics and the Avengers in particular. It worked too because his wife bought him some art from the book as a birthday present and we didn’t get sued! He’s also had talks with Marvel about doing a film version of Nick Fury himself. Go Sammy!

I did it one other time is a scene when Thor looks like Brad Pitt.

Joss: Yeah, I noticed. It was subtle, though.

Hitchy: It was a clumsy attempt to invoke Fincher’s Fight Club and suggest much of Thor’s Asgardian life was in his head. A few folks got it but it just stands out as something, along with a bad Robert Carlyle in volume one I should redraw for posterity.

Joss: As you mentioned, Ultimates carries over some of the feeling of the Authority that you two worked on (albeit separately). The moral ambiguity, the real-world issues of super-powered people among us, and lotso killin’. Do you think a lot about the ethics of the piece you’re working on, or do you just draw bad-ass shit and have a great time?

Hitchy: Yes to both really as I don’t see why one has to preclude the other. I’m likely to go much further than Mark is in the graphic violence areas because unlike film I think comics will allow it, probably because, due to the illustration rather than photography, it’s one further step removed from reality and believability. I guess I don’t think too hard about it and trust my natural instincts will stop us from going to far into the violent or pornographic.

Truth to tell I’m not big on the preachy and being protected sort of stuff that can crop up and when you start a book like this one a certain footing it’s hard not find moral ambiguity. Still it opens up a whole other topic of whether comics or kids are still around or whether there are any kids still reading comics. I don’t remember the ones I was reading twenty-five years ago being preachy or patronizing. I remember Dark Knight, Watchmen. and Superman and even early ones that seem much more intelligent and thoughtful, exciting even than the stuff Marvel and DC put out that has that eight-year old audience in mind. The Incredibles and Doctor Who grab both adult and young audiences without being dull and neither were afraid of hard action or death.

Joss: Do you and Mark come to the work in a similar way? Is there anything you two disagreed on about the book?

Hitchy: Whilst we are very similar in our backgrounds, lives and interests and get on ridiculously well, we agree on almost nothing and I think that friction allows us to constantly challenge each other fuelled by our need to make it good along with our respect for each other’s work. I know that he works differently with me than he does with almost anybody else in that we discuss stuff back and forth before he writes it and even then remains open as I go to anything I might suggest. He says it’s because those suggestions are never fuelled by a need to shortcut and always in the interests of making it work better. At least I think that’s what he said in that thick accent of his. It’s like listening to a sack of mating frogs trying to gargle marbles ... but you get the gist.

Overall on the book though we were entirely simpatico as we are on this new one. Those working relationships are rare and worth pursuing into other projects and we are talking about stuff years from now. I had a similar fit with Warren Ellis, though the way we worked was different. I’ve talked to Damon Lindelof about us working together because, from his writing and our friendship I know it would work. Likewise with you, ’cept you haven’t written anything for me yet except directions to the hotel that time (thanks by the way). How many times have we discussed stuff?

Joss: Well, you always wanna do Spidey, and I always try to think of a Spidey story and always fail. He’s just so wrung out. And now I hear they may put out filmed entertainment based on his adventures as well! Though I can’t see that making any money.

Hitchy: Yeah, we’re all so over that guy. Mind you, millions see his movies yet only 100,000 buy his books. What’s going on there?

Joss: We also talked about that limited, creator-owned awesome spectacle, but we’re so busy all the time. Don’t count me out, though. All right, do. No! Maybe.

Hitchy: So Lunch, maybe? Sometime?

Joss: Favorite character to draw?

Hitchy: Honestly, I really don’t have one, I’m completely into each of them as I do them and they are each the coolest to me as I draw so I can’t pick. If you have a least favorite it probably shouldn’t be there! I initially opposed the introduction of Hawkeye but I think we managed to make him cool and certainly in Volume 2 his arc is the heart of much narrative.

Joss: Describe Mark Millar’s odor.

Hitchy: Sort of peaty with a hint of hops.

Joss: Now you’re going from the ultra-modern to the possibly least-edgy characters in the Marvel ’verse. And how will you guys make them your own?

Hitchy: Dunno. We just sort of started with some intent and I think we both have strong approaches to the material and wouldn’t start unless we had something to say or do with the characters, so I guess you’d be better placed to answer that stuff as an observer when it comes out.

Joss: Are you guys working a specific, limited arc with an over-reaching plan or are you just diving in?

Hitchy: We just dove in with a general idea of the feel we wanted and a specific starter story. Originally intended to be an eight-issue run we having such a great time we’ve decided to go on past twelve and do as many as we can until boredom sets in either with us or the readers!

Joss: That happened with me and Cass on Astonishing. Twelve just wasn’t enough. The love is the love; what can you do?

Hitchy: Keep going until it’s time for a new girl, or Mighty Mark breaks his typing finger.

Joss: On a similar note, you can’t stop making babies and you just had another one.

Hitchy: I can stop, just you watch me tiger...

Joss: But you’re moving really fast on this book. Howzat done? (Seriously. I need to know.)

Hitchy: Wish I knew or I’d go back in time and do Ultimates again. Come to think of it, if I could time travel and get do-overs all over the place, what would I do (certainly not another 26 issues of Ultimates)? What would your do?

Joss: There’s two pages of Fray that really bug me, though I won’t say which. Weak structuring. Then I’d split my time between Return-of-the-Jedi-fixing and Hitler-killing.

Hitchy: I think Lucas is a lesson to us all. Leave the damn films alone; they were okay the first time. Good enough anyway. You wanna fix a final installment go and tell Peter Jackson how bad Return of the King was...

We’re still in the first few weeks of the new nipper (little Edward Henry Hitch or Ted to us) so it could all go oddly awry yet. I think I’m working quicker because it’s not Ultimates. I don’t think I’d realized how burned out I’d become and how difficult it became to work on the book in any sort of efficient manner for the last couple of years. The work is good and I am proud of it but it’s not that good that it warrants the time I seem to have spent working on it. I know that I didn’t spend all that time actually drawing the book. I spent more time worrying about it and self-doubting my way into inertia every issue. You know how that can get right?

Joss: Are you joking? 18 months on Wonder Woman and I never finished a definitive draft. The project was a waste of my time, but it was only a huge waste of my time because I was so ground down. Second-guessing everything, unable to focus... and we knew there couldn’t be an 8th season (on TV) of Buffy not because anything was falling apart; just the same formula, the same structure, the intense effort, was wearing us down. Or was going to. You gotta shake it up.

Hitchy: I was absolutely determined to make sure the new gig didn’t go that way; new book, new habits and so far so plucky.

Joss: Yeah, I’ve seen some of your pencils and they are suh-WEET!

Hitchy: Ta muchos. It’s coming together quite nicely but I’m still finding my feet, though am almost three issues in now so I’d better find them soon!

Joss: Is there any part of this book that’s out of your idiom, that’s scary for you to try and pull off?

Hitchy: Well, it’s a classic and I haven’t worked on the real core repertory before at Marvel so that’s a little scary. If anything though it’s much more my idiom than Ultimates ever was; I had to learn so much to pull that project off the way we wanted it and although I’m bringing all I’ve learned there onto this one it’s a much more natural fit for my inclinations.

Joss: It seems like a good match to your hyper-real, muscular, science-y style, so how are you challenging yourself?

Hitchy: Pushing the drawing as far as I can, finding visual angles I’d never used before; Trying to keep the acting and characterization where I want it; trying to keep it all very fluid, very modern but never at the loss of it’s classic feel. There’s also more design involved than I’ve done in a long time with new locations, sets, props, all the things that put another smile on my face. Just facing a blank sheet of paper on a morning is a challenge!

Joss: Do you think you could start trying to draw some backgrounds?

Hitchy: Nah, waste of time and pencil lead. I can’t stand all those backgrounds that distract you from the figures in all that available white space.

Joss: The book you and Mark are doing and the Marvel ’verse - have been through some pretty seismic changes in the last couple of years. Is your book a continuation of that stuff or is it old school, classic feel? I think it’s self-contained, at any rate, which excites me. Is that right?

Hitchy: ’Sright. Mark was burned out after Civil War and we didn’t want to be tied into any time sensitive launches, just a fun sandbox to play in for a while as we both get the wind in our sails. Typical of us though that the scale of what we’re doing here is growing all the time but it’s the most fun we’ve had in a very long while. I always prefer both in my reading and working to not have things be reliant on any other material elsewhere. I just want it to be the story it is and not have somebody feel they ought to have read anything anywhere else.

Joss: Amen.

Hitchy: I loved crossovers as a reader though so it’s probably me as an adult being all stuffy and territorial.

Joss: Last question: Will you kiss me and stop me from shaking?

Hitchy: It will make you shake more, believe me.