Hickman made his Marvel debut last month with Secret Warriors #1. This dark espionage series features the return of Nick Fury to an ongoing series alongside his team of young recruits. Among other things, this series has already made a name for itself through issue #1's surprising twist. As Hickman and co-plotter Brian Michael Bendis revealed, S.H.I.E.L.D. has been a puppet organization controlled by HYDRA since the very beginning.
This twist has been the source of both excitement and disbelief among readers. How can such a radical change fit in with the many stories that have come before. We turned to Hickman himself and discussed this new development at some length. He also talked about the extensive work that went into crafting the Secret Warriors bible and what he has in store for upcoming issues. Fans of Hickman's indy work will be pleased to know he talks about the current status of A Red Mass For Mars and his upcoming book Plus.
As a special bonus, scattered throughout this interview are exclusive preview pages from Secret Warriors #3, due out on April 1st.
IGN Comics: Bendis has a pretty distinct voice as a writer. Did you ever feel the need to modify your own voice as you began the process of scripting the series in order to mesh with the style we saw in those first few issues of Mighty Avengers?
Jonathan Hickman: No, not at all. And I don't think that Brian would have wanted me to do that anyway. As a matter of fact, I recall my first draft was pretty close to what ended up being published. We wanted to maybe ramp up the excitement turn up the volume a little bit. I remember Brian in his notes said we needed more of that Nightly News stuff. [laughs] Brian was pretty clear that he wanted to hear my voice. I got the book because of my voice, and that's how we wanted it to be.
As far as continuity stuff and whether it's consistent with the Secret Warriors stuff in Mighty, I think we're close enough that we didn't really worry too much. We knew that Secret Warriors was going to be the definitive document for those characters. Those issues of Mighty aren't going to be collected in the trade or anything like that.
IGN Comics: So it's an incentive to go back and check out those earlier issues?
Hickman: I just don't think it's part of the plan to put the Mighty stuff in there right now. I have no idea what we're going to do with the trade yet. I'm assuming we'll do the first six issues and that eight-page Dark Reign piece and the back-matter I did for the first issue, and that will be the first trade.
IGN Comics: I've been hearing a lot about this bible you wrote for the series. Can you talk about what went into writing the Secret Warriors bible and how far along you've planned out the series?
Hickman: Sure. This is my first Marvel gig, obviously. I didn't know what the standard operating procedure was for prepping a regular series. I assumed that, for the most part, you didn't just say, "I'm going to do the new Nick Fury book," and just write the first issue and make it up as you go along. I figured you needed a kind of broad-ranging plan. Now, My idea of broad, long-reaching planning is obviously a little more extensive the guys at Marvel were used to. I did a 60-issue outline. I did a style guide saying which characters were in there and how they should look - pictures from earlier books. I wrote a little manifesto and all these character interaction maps and things like that.
It was pretty comprehensive. A lot of it was overkill, I would guess. Looking back on it now and seeing how things evolved, it was probably too much. It certainly prepared me for writing the book in a pretty comprehensive manner. It certainly helped me get my thoughts straight.
IGN Comics: I'm wondering how far into the actual scripting process you are now and if you already find yourself making significant changes from the bible as you've been going along.
Hickman: I'm getting ready to turn in issue #4. Normally I would be further along than that, but I did the Dark Reign: Fantastic Four mini, and I wanted to finish that because I'm also supposed to start writing the Fantastic Four ongoing. I quickly realized with the Fantastic Four stuff that I didn't want it to cross-pollinate. I needed to go ahead and knock that out. I turned in the last issue of that before I got back to Secret Warriors.
But to directly answer your question, I've deviated a little bit. What's happened is that, instead of me veering off the path I've set up, things have gotten a little bit more complex. It's like I'm adding more layers as opposed to diverging. It does look like I'm going to get off the rails around issue #12 or something like that because of some changes we want to make. After that, it's probably going to vary wildly. But again, it was a good exercise. I certainly don't think it hurt the book, and I don't think that kind of process is an inherently bad thing. It's just very time consuming. Sometimes you don't have the luxury of putting that kind of effort into it. I'm kind of doing the same thing for my ongoing FF run.
IGN Comics: Looking at issue #2, you had the scene with all the characters in the restaurant and Phobos made various predictions about their respective futures. Were you basically pulling from plotlines and ideas you have written down in the bible?
Hickman: Yeah. The phrasing he's using is very exact. Some of that stuff can be read two different ways. I won't be diverging from that material, and yes, that stuff is already in there.
IGN Comics: For me, that's one of the bigger mysteries surrounding the series right now. What's going on with Phobos' powers? You also wrote the Xbox scene in the first issue, and it all seems to be implying that there's a lot more going on with Phobos that might seem apparent on the surface.
Hickman: Well, he doesn't just have the power to make people afraid or that kind of deal. He's not a mutant or somebody that got their powers artificially. He's a god. Not a demi-god or anything like that – a straight-up god. That stuff gets pretty complex. I really, really want to tell that story, and we're going to get to Ares and Phobos and all of that in about issue #10 or 11, I think. That's very cool. All of it's worked out and makes sense. He's a very, very cool character to write.
IGN Comics: I want to move onto Daisy next. What qualities do you think Nick Fury sees in Daisy that make her a fitting team leader?
Hickman: I think that Daisy is Nick Fury when he was younger and more idealistic. The more romantic version of himself. As you get older you look back on your childhood and adolescence and you remember those times fondly, and you think about if you had done a couple things differently how much better your life would have turned out. Nick sees Daisy as himself. She's just as driven and just as committed and just as righteous, but maybe with the right kind of instruction she could be even better than he is. That's kind of what he's trying to do. Whether he'll succeed is really up to Daisy and up to Nick. Her willingness to learn and believe in him, and his ability to not use people up like he's been doing for years. We'll see.
IGN Comics: Do you think she's in danger of becoming too much like him, especially given how dark the Marvel Universe is right now?
Hickman: I think they're children fighting a war. That's never a good thing. I think you can draw some logical conclusions of where some stuff is going to go from that. But when you have instances of tragedy and you have instances where you challenge the morality of an individual because of the things they're involved in and what they see, they can either become cold and callous or become the dark version of themselves, or they can do some amalgam of both of those things, or they can stop and realize they don't want to live that life. I think that's not just true for Daisy, that's true for all the kids that are going to be in this. Nick Fury is getting ready to wage a war, and there are always casualties in that type of situation.
IGN Comics: The big reveal in the first issue is that S.H.I.E.L.D. from the beginning has been under HYDRA's control. That obviously affects a lot of stories going back several decades. How much work would you say you and Bendis did to go back and reconcile this revelation with all those older stories and make sure the idea didn't dredge up too many problems?
Hickman: There are two things that I think are relevant here. Number one – we did extensive research. We read all the Steranko stuff and we read all the early stories and relevant mini-series. Obviously, Bendis had done some pretty significant Nick Fury stuff himself. We're not lazy writers. It fell on me to do a lot of that research. I have a pretty good track record of doing phenomenal amounts of research in my work. The problem with that is that my stuff at Image – we didn't sell very many copies of that. But the people that read my stuff know that I'm going to do all that research. I have a little bit of rope and trust with the, other people don't know that and they're just going to have to be skeptical.
When telling these stories, a lot of people have used Nick Fury as window dressing. This is one of the reasons why Bendis took him off the stage for a while – to increase his importance and relevance. Nick Fury and S.H.I.E.L.D. would show up in every series anytime you needed an army of good guys or whatever. HYDRA would show up if you needed an army of bad guys to get the hell beaten out of them.
There have been 5,000 Nick Fury stories over the years at Marvel. I don't believe you do a service to Marvel or the reader or the property if you treat all 5000 of those stories equally. I think that there are touch points that are very, very important – the origin of the character, the first run, the big events they've been a part of over the years. But I don't think it matters as much if Nick Fury and his kid got in a fight in two pages of a mini-series in 1989. I don't think that's as relevant as the stuff Steranko did years ago. I think you have to be very careful about what is important continuity and what isn't. Some writers call that super-consistency, and that's what you go for. I think that's a fair term. Those are my feelings on continuity and how all that stuff should be treated.
Saying that, this is a spy book, and if you believe we gave away the sum total of the big surprise of the inner workings of our entire story on the last page of the first issue.... [laughs] One – you're going to be an easy mark and we're going to get to surprise you a whole lot. Two – you need to realize this is a very, very long term, sophisticated story. I didn't tell you the end of it on the last page of the first issue.
IGN Comics: That sounds pretty fair to me.
Hickman: Did you have trouble with it?
IGN Comics: No, I really liked the reveal. There's not necessarily anything that immediately came to mind as not making sense. But like I said, it's something that extends back so far that you just automatically wonder whether it really can fit in with everything that came before.
Hickman: There are a dozen follow-up questions you can ask. What about when Nick Fury reformed S.H.I.E.L.D. after it was taken over by rogue LMD's? What about all the times he and Strucker fought? What about every time that HYDRA was going to destroy the world or something and Nick Fury stopped them? Was it HYDRA intentionally stopping themselves? All of these are fair and logical questions. It just doesn't mean that the answers are that simple. [laughs] I don't want to give it away. It's just so much more than these simple surface machinations that seem to be apparent.
IGN Comics: Personally, I think that should be all anyone needs to hear to at least accept the twist for the time being and move on.
Hickman: Oh no, I'm sure somebody on the Internet is going to say bulls**t to that. That's okay.
IGN Comics: I've seen responses along those lines, but I think you've just proved it's better to wait and see before passing that type of judgment.
Hickman: I think response online has been really good to the book. People who are willing to accept that we're going to tell a story seem really, really excited about the book. Even people that are skeptical about whether or not it'll fit in continuity for the most part, besides the people who are seemingly upset at Marvel in general for a never-ending cascade of retcons or whatever the proper terminology is. People who are just generally skeptical seem to be interested still. We're very, very pleased with both the numbers on the book and what the response seems to be. We're pretty jacked. But I feel their pain, I guess. I've asked the questions. They're smart questions.
IGN Comics: One specific question regarding the HYDRA situation I do want to ask is how H.A.M.M.E.R. fits into all this. From what Bendis has shown, Osborn has picked up ex-S.H.I.E.L.D. Agents and ex-HYDRA soldiers to fill the ranks. Is he part of this whole web of intrigue? Is H.A.M.M.E.R. directly connected to HYDRA at all?
Hickman: All of that is in issue #7. That's the beginning of the next arc of Secret Warriors. You're going to find out what happened to all the S.H.I.E.L.D. agents in issue #4. That's the title, actually - "Whatever Happened to the Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.?". For more details you're just going to have to check it out. The cool thing about Dark Reign is the dynamic of bad guys being in charge. In our case, that sets up a situation where HYDRA has agendas, and Norman Osborn's people have agendas. Are they competing, or are they able to co-habit? That's what we'll see.
IGN Comics: Are HYDRA and H.A.M.M.E.R. basically the two dual-threats that the Secret Warriors will face over the course of these stories?
Hickman: No, those aren't the only threats they'll face.
IGN Comics: One of the big questions I've been seeing online about issue #2 involves the identities of the new HYDRA ruling council. Many readers don't necessarily recognize these other HYDRA members or know their stories. Could you briefly go down the list and talk about who these other five characters are and what they bring to the table?
Hickman: Viper is clearly Viper. Her history is long and storied, and so is Strucker's. Madame HYDRA - we don't know anything about her. The Hive – we don't know anything about him. The Kraken – we don't know anything about him. And Gorgon has been resurrected. Issue #3 gets into who all the different HYDRA members are. It's supposed to be mysterious. You're not supposed to know who they all are in the first issue. It's meant to be ambiguous. It's not the last time we'll do that.
I know a lot of readers are used to reading comics, and either because it's the first issue and people feel like they have to write introductions to every character that's introduced, or just that people are used to the comic book shorthand where when you see two characters, they call each other by name and say a line of dialogue like "Remember when we used to be in the JLA together?" Right? I don't subscribe to that type of storytelling. I believe that comic book readers are more sophisticated than that in general, and obviously they can read. I don't feel the need to dumb down the content just because most people have historically done it because they felt it was necessary. I think that people are going to be okay that I don't tell you who a character is in issue #2 if I'm going to tell you in issue #3.
It's okay to be curious about the character and wonder who this cool-looking person is that you've never seen before. Or maybe you have seen them before and they're just in disguise. Maybe he's somebody's kid. Whatever. Think about it for a while, and when you come back a month later you'll either be right or wrong and you'll be surprised or angry. But either way, you'll feel something, and that'll be a whole lot better than "Oh yeah, right, whatever." I just don't subscribe to that type of storytelling in general. I feel you have to be clear in the first issue, which is why I did the whole rundown of who the characters were at the very beginning.
But beyond that, if you dug the first issue, you're going to get the second issue, and if you got the first two issues I feel like you're probably going to get the third because we laid out enough cool stuff out there and we're telling a very dynamic and interesting story and it definitely makes you ask questions, and then I think we'll get you back for #3. At the end of #3, we're probably going to leave you asking more questions. That's just how the book's going to work. It's a spy story. You don't get to know everything. Unless you're really smart and figure it all out. Make sense?
IGN Comics: Makes sense. I'm particularly curious about Gorgon. Last time we saw him during Mark Millar's first Wolverine run, he was basically leading both HYDRA and the Hand, and he was making kissy-face with Strucker's wife while he was doing it. Is this the kind of guy Strucker really wants to be bringing back to the fold? Is Gorgon going to deign to being one of six ruling members?
Hickman: I think that his return implies there will be an internal dynamic with the six heads of HYDRA. They're evil, evil people. I doubt very seriously they're going to get along. But there's a reason he brought them back, and there's a reason the six people in charge are as ominous and impressive as they are. They've been collected for a reason. This isn't "get your ass kicked by every B-List Marvel hero" HYDRA. That's not what we're doing anymore. This is going to be a very formidable organization. Part of the deal here is that we're trying to rehabilitate HYDRA as a Marvel entity and make them a whole lot more dangerous and scary ad relevant. You don't do that by having some crappy B-List villain running it. And part of it's Mark Millar's fault. He made a really cool character, and we had to bring him back.
IGN Comics: I certainly can't blame you for that.
Hickman: Mark Millar is Mark Millar, and when he's firing on all cylinders like he was during that Wolverine story there's a lot of quality material. Someone was bound to use Gorgon, so I didn't feel bad about it.
IGN Comics: That also leads to another question. Since Gorgon was leader of the Hand when he died, and now that Elektra has been revealed as a Skrull, does leadership sort of roll back to him? Are the Hand going to play any sort of role in Secret Warriors alongside HYDRA and H.A.M.M.E.R. and everyone else?
Hickman: No, there's no plan for that right now. I think Ed Brubaker is dealing with all of that in Daredevil right now. There's a disconnect there. Gorgon is a full-on head of HYDRA. It's a full-time job. He doesn't need that part-time Hand work.
IGN Comics: I really enjoyed the back-matter you put in the first issue. Do you have plans in future issues to put in more of that supplementary material in the back?
Hickman: If they'll let me. If Marvel will let me from time to time I'll definitely throw up data all over the page. I have a propensity to do that. That stuff is fun, and more important than being fun, it's actually very relevant to the stories and the book in general. All of that material I put in there is going to get used. It's a very, very effective way of adding a whole lot of history to your book in a short number of pages. The people that are really dedicated to the book and are really interested and really into it are going to get a lot out of that. Any chance I get to do that I certainly will.
IGN Comics: One thing I always wondered when I heard you were going to be attached to this series was whether you might contribute to the art. You have a very distinctive style, and it reminds me of Steranko's work a fair bit. I'm wondering if you've thought about just jamming out one of those Steranko-style collage images for a cover or something.
Hickman: I think one of the rules we had for the book is that we didn't want to do any Steranko homages. We wanted to make it our own. So no, I don't know that it would be a good idea of me to to try and do a Steranko riff. That one Steranko cover may be the most ripped off cover in Marvel history. I'm really busy writing for Marvel, and for the most part, that's what they're interested. I don't know, I may do a variant cover or something at some point. That may be a lot of fun. But for right now, I'm pretty much just writing at Marvel.
I've got other stuff at Image. I've got a little book called Plus that I'm going to do sometime this year, which is all my art. That's an itch I need to scratch occasionally, and that's probably where I'll be doing it. Stefano Caselli is just killing the art in Secret Warriors anyway. I would never want to impose myself on that. And Jimmy Cheung is doing the covers. I mean, come on. [laughs] I would just embarrass myself, right?
IGN Comics: I was going to touch on Plus before we ended off, but as long as you brought it up I might as well ask about it now. What can you reveal about the book right now?
Hickman: I can talk about it a little. I'd love to. It's going to be either 48 or 56 pages. It'll be out from Image. It's going to be like three 16-page stories in each issue, and either one or two issues a year. I'm not sure yet. It'll come out whenever I have time. They'll all be little self-contained stories, and each one will be drawn in a different style. One will be more graphic design-y and one will be painterly and one I have no idea what I'm doing. It'll look cool. All the art will be by me, and it's going to be for people that really dig my indy stuff and want more of that. Again, it's also a creative outlet for me so I can just kind of dance a little bit.
The three stories in the first issue are going to be "In the Valley in the Garden of Eden", "Feel Better Now", and I think the third one right now is going to be either a story called "The Tribe, The Clan, The Band" or this story called "Celestial Broheimians" that I really wanted to do and I couldn't get anyone else to buy. [laughs] I think it's going to be the best thing ever. One of those has a horror theme, and one is kind of a psychology/societal mash-up. It's really weird. "Feel Better Now" is just bizarre. "Celestial Brohemians" will be about retired druggie, covert, ex-spook kind of guys that have to deal with second wave, feminist, Soviet, cryogenically frozen space girls. [laughs]
Anyway, it's just bizarre, fun stuff. It should be really good.
IGN Comics: It certainly sounds interesting. Are the stories thematically connected at all, or are they just completely separate and self-contained?
Hickman: They really are all completely different. They all scratch a different itch, and it's all stuff I'm working out. Marrying graphic design and sequential art is a really big deal for me. All of this does that in a different manner. And I'm big on marrying analog and digital art too. I think one of them is going to be fully painted but with all this Illustrator stuff on top. We'll see. I'm still working it out in my head, but I'll be caught up with all my Marvel stuff by June and then I'll probably get really heavily into that. It should be fun.
IGN Comics: So it sounds like it'll be a pretty late-2009 release at this point.
Hickman: Yeah, probably. Me and Ryan Bodenheim are trying really hard – him trying harder than I am – to get Red Mass For Mars done and out so we can get the last couple issues in people's hands. I know they've been waiting on it. I've got just a little bit more to do on the Pax Romana trade so we can get that out. That's late as well. I know I've been a little tardy on some of my Image stuff, but it's only because I've gotten really busy and not because I've been a lazy s**t.
IGN Comics: I want to get into Dark Reign: Fantastic Four for a little bit as well.
Hickman: Oh yeah, shoot.
IGN Comics: What led to the creation of the mini-series in the first place? Was it due to the fact that Millar's Fantastic Four is operating a little behind the continuity of Marvel's other books. Did they want an FF series that could reflect the changes brought about by Dark Reign?
Hickman: I think there are a bunch of different reasons for why it popped up. One, we did want to do a Dark Reign tie-in. Two, we thought it would be a really, really good idea for me to do a dry run on a Fantastic Four mini before I started writing the regular series.
IGN Comics: So they had already picked you to take over Fantastic Four before this mini came about?
Hickman: Yeah, I think so. I know that I had pitched it and the pitch was well-received. I don't know if we had actually pulled the trigger. All of that happened right on top of each other. It wasn't like I wrote Dark Reign: Fantastic Four and turned it in and then Tom [Brevoort] said, "Okay, you've got the regular gig." As a matter of fact, one of the reasons for me doing the mini was to get used to writing the characters. That ended up being a flawed and futile attempt because it hasn't worked out that way. What actually ended up happening first was that all the cool stuff I wanted to do I ended up saving for the regular Fantastic Four run. Why would I stick all the things I really want to do in the Dark Reign run, right? And I just continuously found myself doing that.
And at the same time, I was really trying to come up with all this great FF stuff, and I was really hitting a lot of good beats. It was preventing me from doing the Dark Reign mini to my satisfaction. So we just decided to take it in an entirely different direction. I say we, but I may have been off the reservation a little bit. I just decided to take it in a completely different direction. I stuck to my outline, but it just became this whole different animal. I don't know that the going back to training wheels methodology served its purpose. It helped a little, I guess. I feel really, really good about the FF ongoing.
The third reason why we're doing the Dark Reign mini, and the reason why I was actually interested in doing it, is because I don't think anybody has done, well, good job isn't the right word. Marvel has had all of this major stuff going on in the last few years, and Reed has been right at the heart of all of it. And yet it feels like in the FF Mark is doing his own thing. It is in continuity, of course, but not really directly addressing that stuff. Mark's run is just a really cool adventure story. When Straczynski was doing the book it was during Civil War, but it was more individual stories. And McDuffie took over afterwards, and he kind of did this bridge story, but I don't know that it addressed in the manner we're doing in this mini the progression of Civil War, Illuminati, Secret Invasion, and all of that leading into Dark Reign.
I thought that was a good opportunity to marry all of those events into one five-issue story and show the progression of consequences. Not just linearly with Reed, which is what we're doing in the Dark Reign mini, but also examining the analogies and the themes that were visited in each one with Ben, Sue, and Johnny. On top of that, we did a cool little kids story with Val and Franklin, which is always a lot of fun. That's what Dark Reign: Fantastic Four is. It's definitely its own animal.
IGN Comics: It sounds like this has become a much different project than how it was initially conceived, but I'm wondering if some of the more basic emotional themes are something that might carry over into your ongoing run. The first issue had Reed struggling with the idea that he has all this intelligence and all these abilities, and yet he's failed to make the world a better place in the way he feels he should have. That seems like good fodder for a more long term exploration of his character.
Hickman: Sure, yeah. I think that Reed is a very interesting character. A lot of people have written him well. I think that there's a deeper story to tell there, and we're definitely scratching it in this mini-series. The answer to that is yes... pretty much. [laughs] I'm sorry, that's a terrible answer. But the answer is yes, kind of.
IGN Comics: Anything else you want to add about the various books we've talked about?
Hickman: I will say that Secret Warriors #3 is the best issue of the series so far. I reread it today turning in my lettering notes, and it's my favorite. I really think that book gets better and better with each issue. I'm really happy with how that's going. And Fantastic Four is going to be really, really cool when we get to the full run on that thing. Should be good.
IGN Comics: I'm looking forward to all of it. Thanks for taking so much time to talk, Jonathan.
Hickman: I appreciate it. It was good talking to you, Jesse.