I think the oldest comic I got when I was a kid was an issue of 'World's Finest' - it had a Neal Adams cover with Batman where he had turned into a bat, and he was attacking Superman.
From the get-go, 'Original Sin' was always as much a Nick Fury story as anything else.
'Original Sin' is, for me, a murder mystery with a huge cast that plays out on a grand stage.
Overall, I'm happy how 'Original Sin' has come together. It's an amalgam of all I've done at Marvel, mixing the gritty, violent 'Punisher Max' stuff with the zany, light-hearted 'Wolverine & The X-Men' work.
I love the Marvel movies, but I always feel like we should be a step ahead of the movies. One of the reasons those movies have been so good and so successful is that they've been very good at mining the comics.
We had that first Marvel NOW! retreat where everybody came in and pitched their new books, which was probably the most exciting retreat I've ever been to because it was all brand new.
What's nice is between 'Wolverine and the X-Men' and 'Thor,' I get to write two very different kinds of stories. Both of them really seem to scratch some itches for me.
If you liked my 'Ghost Rider' run, you're going to love what they're doing in 'Punisher.'
An important part of any good mystery story like 'Original Sin' is that it's not just a game of 'Clue' with surprise after surprise after surprise, but the goal is to tell a story in the midst of that. Even once you know the solution to the mysteries, it's far from the whole story.
I was raised Christian; I was raised in the South where everybody's raised Christian, but at this point, I'm 41 years old, and I've been an atheist, at this point, a little more than half my life.
I think it's our job as writers for Marvel Comics to continue to create those type of stories that can be mined instead of just trying to give readers exactly what they see on film.
'Original Sin' is one of those ideas that has been circulating for several years at the Marvel retreats we have a couple times a year. We have all these ideas floating around for a bit before we figure out how to align them.
While the whole 'God Butcher Saga' had elements of fantasy, sci-fi and horror all mixed together, 'The Accursed' is very much high-fantasy. Right out of the gate, we've got elves, talk of fantastic worlds, strange creatures, Malekith riding a flying tiger, as well as more dwarves, giants, trolls and elves than you can possibly count.
You're always trying to do something that, on one hand, honors all those stories, that is still in some way the same character that Stan Lee and Jack Kirby were doing back in the sixties. But, at the same time, you want to be able to tell new stories and not just rehash what's come before.
I just remember how cool and exciting and crazy it seemed when Marvel was giving this new 'Ultimate Spider-Man' title to this crime writer Brian Michael Bendis who had never really done any superhero stuff before.
As a kid, I was definitely a DC guy. I started reading big time in the '80s at the height of the Wolfman/Perez 'New Teen Titans.' That was definitely the book that hooked me.
I've always been fascinated with the history of the Plains Indians and the history of the American Indian Movement in the '70s.
It begins with the kind of story the writers want to tell. We never sit around in those retreats and say, 'We really need to make a change. Let's change this character.' Or throw a dart at the wall and see what hits. It all begins with story.
I don't know about young Thor and King Thor getting their own series someday, although it would be nice if I could write three Thor series at the same time.
I always liked the idea that Thor was the god who'd wake up every day and look at that hammer and not know whether he was going to pick it up. Only the worthy can lift the hammer of Thor, and I love the idea of a god who was always questioning his own worthiness.
