ARK MILLAR KICKS OFF CROHN’S DISEASE VACCINE AUCTION Cashing in some of his celebrity power for a good - and very personal cause, Marvel Civil War writer Mark Millar told Newsarama of his plans to kick off a series of auctions next week to benefit Crohn’s Disease research, a disease from which he currently suffers, and has seen his life dramatically altered as a result.

We spoke with Millar about the auctions, the research, and, well...that Civil War thing...so, if you still haven’t read issue #2, yet, there are some spoilers at the end of the article.

Newsarama: What are you looking to accomplish with the auction? Where will the money go, and what will it do?

Mark Millar: Here’s the situation: There’s a hospital in London where a gastric surgeon has devoted his life to curing Crohn’s. After fifteen years, Professor John Hermon-Taylor and his team at St George’s are on the cusp of a major breakthrough. They’ve proven that Crohn’s isn’t entirely genetic or even chronic and is actually caused by a mycobacterium. He’s worked up a vaccine to cure the disease and the vaccine could be ready as soon as the fourth quarter of next year. However, like everything else, money could slow them down and there’s huge cuts hitting the hospital because the government is slashing budgets next year. I just want to make sure they reach their target as I obviously have a personal interest in this.

NRAMA: So - the auction proceeds are all for the research?

MM: Right. I’ve often found fund-raisers a little daunting because cancer research or environmental causes are so huge we almost feel nothing can happen in our lifetimes. But what fascinates me about this is that this year, working in conjunction with several other hospitals around the world, are less than 18 months away from curing a disease that’s hit me really hard, hit my brother really hard and possibly millions of people around the world. I took a chunk of time off at Christmas and because I didn’t take as much time off as I was supposed to - writing Marvel’s crossover for some of that break - I’ve been really sick the last nine weeks and been in ER several times plus a stay in hospital. After summer, I have to take another chunk of time off, change treatments, cancel my holidays and basically have all my plans for the years screwed up. The notion of a single jab removing this problem for me and all those other people is tantalizing. And this guy is the real deal. I’ve researched this very heavily and GI guys on both sides of the Atlantic as excited about what he’s been doing here. The drug companies, of course, are terrified because, like diabetes, Crohn’s is a huge business and he’s about to obliterate that.

NRAMA: So -speaking of the auction itself - what do you have coming in? What kind of materials are going to be auctioned?

MM: Like I said, I’ve been really rough for the last couple of months so it’s been really low effort on my part. I have three friends helping me with this and I just fired out an email to fifty pals working in comics and the entertainment industry to see what they could donate to the hospital in terms of cool auction stuff or even cash. The response was unbelievable, every getting back to me within a few hours with the most amazing offers. This is something I’d like to promote every Friday so I’ll save a few as surprises, but we’re talking about lunch-dates with comic-creators, rare original art, signed scripts, people offering themselves for book-signings. It’s tremendous. We’ve got comic guys like Bryan Hitch, Neil Gaiman, Steve McNiven, the Kuberts and TV and movie guys like the Dawn of the Dead people, a pal of mine in British TV called Jonathan Ross, Joss Whedon, the Lost guys, the Dr. Who guys and so on. The response has been incredible and we’ll probably have two or three auctions most weeks to accommodate all this. The first one will be by me on Monday and it’s very cool indeed. I think people will be quite into this and we expect to raise a decent amount of cash.

NRAMA: So things kick off on Monday, then?

MM: Yep. The auctions are going to run every Monday, starting with this one I’ll be launching later today. Like I said, we’re starting with one item on auction, but next week there should be several so readers should check into Newsarama on Mondays and see what’s coming up. In terms of how much cash we’re looking for, the simple answer is as much as possible. The trials next year cost £700,000 which sounds a lot, but they’ve already for £400,000 from the government and I’d like to raise as close to £100,000 for them as I can. Friends are making private donations too (as am I) so please feel free to send even a small donation to the paypal account below.

The paypal details are: www.paypal.co.uk with jhermon@sgul.ac.uk .

If someone wants to send cheques they can do this to.

Prof. John Hermon Taylor St George’s Hospital Medical School Jenner Wing Cranmer Terrace London , SW17 ORE.

Exempt Charity - Tax Ref: X66491

Please make cheques payable to "St George’s University of London" with RLB0057 written on the back, and mailed direct to Prof. Hermon-Taylor

You can also help in other ways. The first is by linking these weekly auctions to as many sites as you can around the net. When the Lost guys have their auction running, it would be great if readers could maybe spread this across all the appropriate TV boards I’ve maybe never even seen. Just getting this out there to as many possible places every week will take the amount we raise through the stratosphere. The Monday Millarworld Auction starts today and will run as long as we need to.

NRAMA: Okay, so I have to ask. I know you’ve been out sick and Marvel have had to do all your PR on Civil War with the press, but let’s get a quick reaction to what must be pretty much the biggest week of your professional life. What do you think of all the attention around Civil War #2?

MM: I’m pretty chuffed. It feels a little unreal because I’m so far away from all the madness in the States. I’m really only seeing the internet reaction as opposed to this huge mainstream media interest the office is having to deal with. I told Marvel a few weeks back that I was too sick to finish my scripts and spend hours on the phone with journalists and so I’ve completely avoided any publicity for this whatsoever and allowed them to handle this completely by themselves. And they’ve done a great job. I honestly couldn’t be happier. Also, given that we’ve moved the Spidey mythos forward in the most radical way I’m surprised and delighted by the insanely positive fan response. I remember killing The Hornet and getting hate mail so this seemed like a dangerous move in many ways. But people have responded really well. This is a step for Spidey that’s so much more than him leaving school and going to college or leaving college and becoming a husband. This is a massive, massive development in the story, but maybe people were ready for something a little different. Whatever, it seems to have really struck a chord. I’m really happy for the retailers today because this week has been the biggest week in the stores for them since the early nineties. As a guy who broke into comics just as the industry was collapsing, I’m just pleased to her good news like that.

NRAMA: I know you aren’t doing interviews as such right now and want to focus the few hours a day you have on finishing your scripts, but any hints as to what’s coming up?

MM: Not really. But anyone who thinks we’ve blown our wad with issue #2 is in for a pleasant surprise. I’ve pleaded with Marvel to keep details of this series secret because numbers are great anyway and I don’t think we need to leak anything to inflate sales. The sales are there so I want to use that opportunity to surprise people and let them get find out about this story as they turn the pages. The original Crisis was like a 12 month epileptic fit to me because it was shock after shock and I had no idea what was coming next. I’d like to replicate that same experience for people here and it’s funny because readers genuinely have no idea what’s coming. I would like to take the opportunity to thank all the guys I’ve been working with on Civil War. They’ve been endlessly patient with me disappearing to hospital and my late scripts and constant rewrites. Tom Brevoort has been especially amazing, both in terms of organization and in keeping me safe through the minefield of Marvel continuity. Tom knows all and that’s been invaluable. He’s also been a font of good ideas and letting me know which of mine suck and which are good. Joe, I have to say, has been brilliant. He asked me to write the crossover last year when it was the Superheroes vs SHIELD concept and has been so trusting and hands off with his babies I’ve never seen anything like it. I said I didn’t want to do a crossover unless I could really shake things up and move things forward— like the good crossovers from my childhood— and he agreed. He just let me go nuts and most of this stuff you’ve yet to see. The Marvel Universe is not the same place in issue seven that in was in issue one, but that’s not a comment on where it was before. I just wanted to move everyone’s story forward and have them in a brand new place.

I planted the seeds of some of this stuff in my Wolverine run with the utopian plans of Iron Man, Reed and Hank Pym and planned to do this in the original Civil War series I was going to do with Hitchy next year, but it’s worked out so much better here. The idea of what a superhero is and does gets something of a facelift over the next six months and this plan I’ve devised called The Initiative, which Tom has already hinted at, is my plan for revamping the company as much as the characters. You won’t get all the details until issue five, but hints will be sprinkled liberally across the next couple of issues as Marvel let me revamp quite a few of their core concepts. Finally, I’d like to thank all the other writers tying in with this book. Because I was out sick, I was an absolute aurocrat and completely uncollaborative with this book. Normally, the writer of the crossover is available for calls and emails 24/7, but because I was on hospital and even writing this in bed I had to just write my story and ask the guys to write around me with their tie-in books. It has to be said that the guys were brilliant in this regard and never once complained, despite the fact that I was messing with all their characters and they were often left to pick up the pieces in their own books or the tie-ins. The one upside of this is that I think we’ve stumbled on a new way of doing crossovers that makes them really reader friendly. Sometimes the co-ordination makes it really impossible for people to pick up the event without picking up the tie-ins and it’s very easy to get lost. Quite accidentally, I’ve written a crossover that’s very self-contained and where the story is all there in seven issues and the tie-ins branch out of these scenes and fill in the details. We didn’t plan it this way, but I think it’s a nice piece of serendipity and maybe the way these things should be done from now on.

NRAMA: Any last thoughts on Spidey?

MM: Just well done Joe for chipping that into the mix. I had all my plans worked out and who was doing what and I knew I wanted the superheroes to try to regain public trust by telling everyone who they were. I needed names willing to take off their mask and expected to get a real C-lister or a B-Lister at best. Joe cackled that Cuban Scarface laugh of his at the meeting when I made my request and suggested the big one. The flagship character. It actually took me ten minutes to realize he wasn’t joking and it took me an hour to come around to the idea. But he was right. It moves the story forward. It’s the next chapter in his life and it’s very exciting to be a part of that.