The amusing thing about 'X-Force' is that it was highly rated - and hated - in about equal measure, Which suited me just fine. If no-one's feathers were a little ruffled, we probably wouldn't have been doing our jobs right.
Over at Marvel, I have a five-part series coming out very soon. The books or chapters will appear weekly. It's called '5 Ronin' and features some iconic Marvel heroes as you've never seen them.
'The Names' is planned as a nine-part series. I have a kind of road map: I know the final scene of episode nine. But as to exactly how we get there, what detours or horrible accidents we might have to pass through, I like to keep that a little fluid.
Work changes over time, as you change and the world changes.
I'm continuing to write and love 'Hellblazer.' Also, I'm writing a 'Flashpoint' mini-series ' with art by George Perez - which features Shade the Changing Man and Enchantress.
What 'Flashpoint' does is examine the inherent inconsistencies in Shade's past and attempt to explain it and give it some logic.
Any team that has Shade as their leader is bound to have a pretty directionless quality. But when Cyborg asks Shade to gather the Secret Seven together and help him stop the war between Wonder Woman and Aquaman, Shade agrees - albeit reluctantly.
The DCU Constantine has to be the guy we know and love, with his same failings - otherwise what's the point of using him? But as I'm writing him, he's younger and has perhaps been through a bit less than the battered, aging old sod we meet in Vertigo.
The first 'Bad Company' was a kind of reaction to the Vietnam war - or at least a reaction to how Vietnam had entered the cultural life through films and books.
One thing we never did with 'Bad Company' was talk down to our reader. And we certainly don't do that with the new story, 'Bad Company, First Casualties.'
'The Names' is a story about a woman who might feel that she's in a kind of maze. She's unable to find her way forward or out because she can't see the whole picture.
There are some characters in 'The Names' who are very much heroes and others who can only be called villains. But generally, as we get to know them, we see most of the characters are, or at least become, quite nuanced.
For DC, I'm working on the new 'Red Lanterns' and 'JLA Dark.' Both of these are very different books, which is great for me. I've heard 'JLA Dark' described as a team of people with supernatural powers - but that's only half the story.
'Red Lanterns' is obviously about rage, but more it's about how rage affects people - alien and human. I'll be getting into the characters of some of those insane Red Lanterns whom we've generally only seen spitting vomit in the background.
I'm working on a new creator-owned series for Vertigo called 'The Discipline.'
With 'Hollow Circus,' I used a family story that haunted me as a kid, one of those anecdotes about a family member that would rarely be spoken of in front of the children.
Charles Kiss is a legendary James Bond-style British spy. And McGrath is the young idealist who is given the task of following in his footsteps. It's a mission that forces McGrath to question everything he thought he believed in.
'Greek Street' is a very strange beast. I think of it as 'The Long Good Friday' meets 'Agamemnon.' A way of using those fantastically rich stories from Greek tragedy to take a look at our world and to explore some of the things I think about this world.
I've always been interested in the Greek tragedies. A few years back, I re-read a translation of the 'The Oresteia,' and that stayed with me, and slowly this idea of using some of those old legends and plays to tell a new story about modern urban life began to form.
As our characters in our 'X-FORCE' began to push at the boundaries of what 'X-FORCE' was, it made perfect story sense for the team to change their name.
