Black King
Lord of Darkness
From: http://forum.newsarama.com/showthread.php?t=139149
For the 3 ppl that might actually read this lol.
ARMAGEDDON MAN: CHRISTOS GAGE ON WILDSTORM: ARMAGEDDON
Think of it as DC’s Annihilation.
No, no, no – in a good way. Like the Annihilation crossover running at Marvel, Armageddon is a universe-wide crossover that is looking like it will have lasting implications. All the noise may be in the DC Universe, but over in the Wildstorm universe, writer Christos Gage, along with an army of artists is telling a story with implications that are just as big – or bigger – for their respective universe.
To date, four of the six issues have hit: Midnighter: Armageddon, Welcome to Tranquility: Armageddon, Wetworks, Armageddon, and Gen13: Armageddon. StormWatch PHD: Armageddon hits this week, with Wildcats: Armageddon due in stores on December 26th.
The basic gist - something really, really bad happens in the future of the WildStorm Universe. There’s a super-being battle of epic proportions, the Authority's Carrier has crashed into London, and Void from the Wildcats is plucking heroes from her past (the WSU’s present) and taking them to the future to find out the cause of the Armageddon with then idea that, upon returning to the past, they’ll be able to prevent it.
So far, no one’s had any luck. And the clock is ticking.
We sat down with Gage to find out the inside story on the crossover event story.
Newsarama: Christos, let's start with the broad strokes on Armageddon here - short form, something really bad happens in the near future in the WildStorm Universe, and Void is looking to place people into the future for brief periods to find out what caused it and prevent it from happening, right?
Christos Gage: Exactly. Each issue is a self-contained story in which a single character from the WildStorm universe is taken into the near future, where a major apocalyptic event has devastated the earth. The protagonist encounters the future versions of his or her allies - and, sometimes, enemies - and tries to learn something about what caused this Armageddon, in order to go back and prevent it. Complicating matters is that Void - a very powerful character from the pages of Wildcats - is not completely in control of herself or her actions. Someone or something is restricting her movements, forcing her to seek the help of others and limiting what she can do and say.
NRAMA: So let's run down the clues - we've seen a couple of times that there's a feeling that a full-scale war between super powered beings was a prelude to the catastrophe, but was that battle, in fact, the Armageddon of which Void and the future characters speak of?
CG: That would be telling. Yes, there was a major, global superhuman conflict of some kind that devastated the world, affecting different regions in different ways - for example, causing the perpetual cloud cover over Eastern Europe that we saw in Wetworks: Armageddon, which allowed the Night Tribes of werewolves, vampires, demons and other supernatural monsters to seize control of the region without fearing the sun. Was this global superhuman war the Armageddon, or a symptom of it? Who was behind it? Can it be stopped? These are the questions being raised. They will be answered in the months to come, with some of the clues in Armageddon and much more revealed in the miniseries that follows, Revelations, written by Scott Beatty from a plot by myself, and drawn by up and coming superstar Wes Craig.
NRAMA: Let's start with the first issue - Midnighter. In that issue, we learned that the The Carrier crashed onto London. As said in the issue, it extends into the upper reaches of the atmosphere due to its size. Bluntly, was the crashing of the Carrier, and the resultant ecological/seismic/atmospheric changes it had…was that solely responsible for how the world is shown in the future?
CG: It's certainly conceivable - an asteroid that size hitting Earth would obliterate it. But it was mentioned in Armageddon: Midnighter that members of the Authority, such as The Doctor, were able to slow - though not stop - the crash of the Carrier, sparing our world from the full brunt of the collision. So I'd imagine there had to be other forces at work as well, for this to be a truly global phenomenon.
NRAMA: Right. And also - as was pointed out throughout that issue, with the Carrier wrecked, the Authority no longer had access to the Bleed, and it seemed that all inter-dimensional transport was cut off. Not to drag too much more into this, but does that mean that, despite its recent designation as one of the 52 earths of the DCU, no one can get to it from other universes, or leave it and go to other universes?
CG: It's not as easy or accessible as it once was. Is it impossible? No - as we saw in Armageddon: Tranquility (love that title), a powerful magic-user residing in that town was able to shunt it into a parallel dimension where Armageddon never happened. But it took weeks to cast the spell, indicating that such travel is by no means simple; the kind of casual dimension-hopping the Authority used to get up to is no longer an option. Just to be clear, the events of Armageddon occur in WildStorm's future, so any recent events tied into Countdown (such as the Search For Ray Palmer issue that saw several DC characters enter the WSU) would not be affected.
NRAMA: Let's talk about the POV characters you selected in the miniseries. Why did you go after each, specifically, rather than others? Let's run 'em down by name: Midnighter, Maximum Man, Caitlin, Dane, John Doran, and Nemesis. Can you give a line or three about each and why you picked them compared to others?
CG: Midnighter: From a writer's perspective, he's the most high-profile character, and one I enjoy writing. As for why Void chose him, his neural implants allow his mind to calculate all the possible outcomes of a battle before it's fought. She felt this talent would help him assess the situation and hopefully prevent Armageddon. That's why she chose him over, say, Engineer or Apollo (and for those who've been asking, she didn't pick the Doctor or Jenny Quantum because the Doctor would have gone mad - just as the future Doctor did - due to his close ties with the devastated earth itself, while the unknown status of Jenny's future self made her too risky a candidate). But now that he's been there, is this the one situation that can stump the Midnighter? Did his efforts to help his friends and husband prevent him from gaining the crucial information he needed? We'll have to see. By the way, I'm pleased to say that fans who've clamored for more of the moody, expressive work of Simon Coleby in the WSU may get their wish before too long…
Maximum Man: He was sort of the Superman of his generation. Honestly, I picked him because I like the character, one of my favorites from Gail Simone and Neil Googe's brilliant Welcome To Tranquility series - if you've ever liked Gail's work, pick up the TPB of this one, folks. You don't need to have ever read another WildStorm book to appreciate it - and it's great stuff. As to why Void selected him, as she said, he had a successful track record with this sort of thing. Back in the 1950's, Maximum Man traveled to the then-future of 1989 and prevented an alien invasion. Unfortunately, Armageddon seems like a thornier problem…and Maxi-Man himself is not what he used to be. Incidentally, the art on this issue was provided by regular series maestro Neil Googe (present day bookends) and the talented Horacio Domingues (future sequence), who drew the memorable “flashbacks” to the past in the Nemesis miniseries of a couple years ago.
For Gen13, Caitlin is the strongest of the group, but also the “everywoman” in terms of her POV - her personality is easy for a reader to relate to, which was attractive to me as a writer. Void specifically selected her because she could bring Caitlin to a point where her future self was being held prisoner, drugged and unconscious, thereby preventing any temporal anomalies caused by the past and future versions of the same person coming into contact. This is a recurring theme in each of the issues - obviously Void wants to avoid that, so it affects her selection. Fans of old-school Gen13 should pick this up - they'll love Jonboy Myers' work on this issue.
In Wetworks - which seems to be the readers' surprise favorite of the Armageddon issues so far; the incredibly detailed art of Brandon Badeaux really blew people away - Dane was the logical choice both for me and Void because, quite simply, he is the leader. His vast experience fighting enemies both conventional and supernatural made him the best selection. Unfortunately, due to his immersion in the world of the supernatural, he made the mistake of assuming that Armageddon was in fact the Biblical Armageddon, so he's now chasing the wrong trail back in the present…
Coming to the two books that have yet to hit shelves, StormWatch: PHD and Wildcats/Nemesis, I'm going to be a bit more coy. I will say that the StormWatch issue is my fond farewell to the characters I had the pleasure of writing for twelve issues - at least, as a team - and will reflect some pretty radical status quo changes between present and future. John, as the leader of the group and a true everyman in that he has no superhuman powers, was the choice both because of his leadership and because he brings the perspective of the normal humans who suffer the most in Armageddon. The art on that issue is beautifully executed by Leandro Fernandez, a fan favorite for his work on Garth Ennis' Punisher MAX, among others. As for Nemesis, she is both connected to the Wildcats and separate from them, which may be why she is the choice for the final episode…or perhaps other factors come into play. The fact that she is one of the stars of the upcoming Revelations miniseries (along with Savant and the new Backlash) seems to indicate that she may have some success in figuring out how to go about preventing the Apocalypse. The art on this one is by Talent Caldwell, who drew raves for his collaboration with Gail Simone on Gen13.
NRAMA: You've swung back and forth a little on the issues in regards to the characters being able to suss out why happened in the future, from Midnighter almost getting it to others not even being able to get a larger worldview than their own circumstances in the future. That said, the picture of the future post-Armageddon is pretty grim. Can you run down what we do know from the issues so far? The Carrier has crashed, Tranquility is spared (and possibly no longer there thanks to the second spell), the Night Tribes have amped up thanks to the blocking of the sun, and the Coda warriors…well - let's let you explain the WSU post-Armageddon…
CG: You've summed it up pretty well. The Authority was hit hard. Something caused the shielding around the baby universe that powered the Carrier to break down, which threatened to annihilate the WSU if the baby universe expanded. Jenny Quantum saved reality by teleporting the baby universe somewhere else - but she hasn't been seen since. The Doctor was driven mad by the devastation happening to the Earth - to which he is finely attuned - and wandered off into the post-Apocalyptic landscape, his mind a ruin. Apollo, Swift and Jack Hawksmoor all suffered injuries or alterations to their powers, while the destruction of most technology has hampered the Engineer. England's been devastated by the Carrier's crash on London; the giant vessel remains there, its bulk so vast that its topmost levels extend into the upper atmosphere.
The town of Tranquility was spared thanks to the power of its residents, and by the end of the issue, was shunted by means of a magic spell to a parallel reality where Armageddon never happened. Does this mean more Tranquility is on the horizon? As the Magic 8-ball would say, signs point to yes - but first, check it out in Revelations #3!
As we already mentioned, the Night Tribes have overrun Eastern Europe, thanks to the sun being blotted out by a “nuclear winter” type of perpetual cloud cover. Wetworks is the spearhead of the resistance, with aid from the former Deathblow supporting character Sister Mary and other allies.
As the members of Gen13 discovered, in America, a rogue member of the Coda named Devin, who'd been thought dead, is re-forming that band of warrior-women from female survivors of the disaster.
And in the final two installments, we'll find out what befell New York and Los Angeles. Hint: it ain't pretty.
NRAMA: As you mentioned earlier, and as we learned in Wetworks - Void's not free in the future. Is the person holding her responsible for the Armageddon?
CG: Void is indeed the prisoner of some external force or entity. As for whether the being holding her is responsible for Armageddon or just benefiting somehow, we'll find out…though not until 2008.
NRAMA: Probably a weird order for all of this, but let's go back to the beginning - when you were pitched this project in the first place, what hooked you on it?
CG: Ben Abernathy, my editor on StormWatch PHD, had approached me with the idea some time ago. At first I was reluctant because, although I love a good post-apocalyptic future story - “Days of Future Past” and “Armageddon 2001” are all-time favorites of mine, to say nothing of films like The Terminator - I felt like the genre had been pretty well mined. But as Ben continued to explain what he was thinking of, I realized this was the chance to tell a kind of story we've all seen before in comics, yet in a way that has the kind of lasting repercussions we've never seen before. More, I cannot say at this time…
NRAMA: You've been around the WSU since the reboot - was this a part of the larger plan from the start, or a later add on?
CG: You'd have to ask Ben, but my impression is that the idea for Armageddon came after the reboot was conceived - though probably sooner than many people think.
NRAMA: How much of the world was established from the original idea that was given to you, and how much room did you have to play around and create the respective futures of the characters and the larger characteristics that we discussed earlier?
CG: As always, Ben and the rest of the folks at WildStorm - including Jim Lee, who created many of these characters and who I certainly wouldn't have blamed for being protective of them - were great about giving me free rein. Ben and I batted around a lot of ideas, and I honestly couldn't tell you what specific pieces of the puzzle came from whom; the goal was to arrive at the best ideas we could. In terms of the writing I had all the leeway I could ask for. Ben brought in incredible artistic talent on the books, folks I think are really making names for themselves with this and their other work, and the star power of Mike McKone (who drew my very first Marvel story in Spider-Man Unlimited #12!) to do the covers. This was a fantastic opportunity for me to let my imagination run wild.
NRAMA: Before you tackled the specific writing of the individual issues, how did you (and Ben) structure things out? There's almost a whiff of a Seven Soldiers thing here - where the characters are all working together, but don't know it…but not quite. How would you describe the larger structure of the Armageddon miniseries? Overall, this is a mystery story, correct?
CG: Yes and no - there is the larger mystery of what caused Armageddon (and trying to stop it) at the core of things, of course, but independent of that, we also wanted each issue to tell a satisfying story in and of itself, as well as highlight the characters involved so that both new and longtime readers were invested in what was happening to them. Your Seven Soldiers analogy is a really good one - there is a larger tapestry being woven, and all the characters are a part of it, even if they're not aware of how they relate to each other.
NRAMA: In writing this, you've had to essentially step in and write an issue of every major WSU series, and capture the characters, as well as the voice (both inner and outer) of a single POV character. You've been playing in the WSU for a while now, but how much of a challenge was all of that? Were any characters tougher to pick up than others? Were any easier?
CG: It was a challenge, but a welcome challenge. I did my best to capture the essence of the characters, by researching their previous appearances and history, and portraying them accurately in the context of the story. I'll leave it up to the readers to decide whether I succeeded. I can say that the StormWatch: PHD characters were the easiest to capture, naturally, since I'd created many of them and written the rest for some time. The toughest may have been the Tranquility characters, because unlike all the others they've never been written by anyone else except for one person, Gail Simone. The last thing I wanted to do was ape Gail's style (or any other writer's) because that always leads to bad writing…but on the other hand, there had only ever been one interpretation of the characters. It was a tough line to walk, and it'll probably be a while before I have enough distance to decide if I succeeded (though Gail was her usual classy, sweet self in complimenting me on my handling of the characters).
NRAMA: Okay - on to what's to come…Stormwatch PHD: Armageddon hits this week. You said you’re loathe to get into details, but broad strokes - how does this play into solving the larger mystery that Void's pushing them towards?
CG: The PHD installment, out of all of them, will give us the widest view of the post-Armageddon earth, as well as revealing where the various team members are in the future - and there are sure to be some surprises in store for readers. It also functions as a sort of unofficial 13th issue of StormWatch: PHD, picking up after #12. But as for revealing who's behind it all, that may have to wait a bit longer.
NRAMA: And Wildcats: Armageddon - as we’ve discussed, Nemesis is the lead there, so what part of the world do we see through her eyes?
CG: We see Los Angeles, and the HALO corporation, headquarters of the Wildcats. And we see a shocking post-Armageddon status quo change for at least one very major character.
NRAMA: During the con season, you made a pretty bold statement about the scheduling/shipping of this miniseries in regards to Ben's hair. You want to recap, and give the odds of having a bald editor by the time this is done?
CG: Gladly. At Comic-Con in San Diego, I could see the fans in attendance had some doubts about the ability of WildStorm to release a bi-weekly series on time, given the delays on Authority and Wildcats (everyone forgets that StormWatch: PHD was always on time!). So I made a bold guarantee. I thought back to my youth, watching Wrestlemania One, in which Andre The Giant took on Big John Studd. If Studd lost, he had to lat Andre cut his hair. I figured that was pretty high stakes, so I asserted that if Armageddon did not ship on time…Ben Abernathy would shave his head. (Hey, I'm not gonna risk MY hair! The scripts were in on time, okay?) We're now four issues in, and the barber's chair is still empty. But there are two issues to go, either one of which could result in the clippers being fired up…
NRAMA: Wrapping things up, not to have you spoil things for us, but the miniseries ends with Wildcats: Armageddon - no bookend, no extra-sized special issue. In fact, all we have is Wildstorm: Revelations - which “explodes out of the pages of Armageddon.” Are the words “a possible” fading slowly out from in front of “future of the Wildstorm Universe” here when it comes to Armageddon and Revelations?
CG: Without spoiling anything, I will say that the Armageddon issues are not just entertaining done-in-one depictions of a possible future that you'll never see again. We're not introducing ideas, concepts and new character status quos just for fun. Make of that what you will!
NRAMA: We'll be catching up with you and Scott shortly, but for now, what can you say about WS: Revelations?
CG: Nemesis, Backlash and Savant set off on a tour of the WildStorm Universe to try to prevent the horrors of Armageddon from coming to pass. By the time it's over, they'll have visited nearly every major WildStorm character, fought the Authority, fought each other naked, Backlash will have reconnected with her Dad (the original Backlash), and Nemesis will have eaten more chicken than you'd think a woman that size could put away.
The art is by Wes Craig, who is doing career-best work, with gorgeous covers by Ivan Reis. And the hard part of the writing is being handled by Scott Beatty (I got to dump a bunch of wacky ideas in his lap without really thinking through the implications, and he's crafted it into a terrific blend of road trip/mystery/superhero action), who authored most of the books on my DCU reference shelf as well as some memorable Nightwing stories, and whose sinister role in Armageddon has yet to be fully revealed! Big things are coming, folks - hop on board now! We can't let Ben escape this with a full head of hair!
For the 3 ppl that might actually read this lol.