The Big Comic Page got a chance to speak with artist Scott Koblish before he exits X-Men ’92 and returns to Deadpool.
Big Comic Page: Thanks so much for doing this!
Scott Koblish: Yeah no problem.
BCP: With the end of your time with X-Men ’92 let’s start by talking the end of the next issue and the direction of the series. Is there any plan to have the series explore the world of Westchester before Baron Kelly?
SK: Sure. Let’s see Apocalypse becomes an important part at the end of the next issue. The story is left open to continue, but I don’t know if there are any plans to revisit the very beginning of Westchester. I don’t know how Secret Wars ends, but it’ll be interesting to see how Marvel puts the universe back together. You know where no one has been killed.
BCP: I know Bryan Singer had to watch the entire cartoon series to prep for X-Men: Days of Future Past. Did you have to do anything like that for X-Men ’92?
SK: I hadn’t seen them in many years or thought about them in a while. But I rewatched a couple episodes on YouTube since they weren’t on Netflix. What really impressed with how up to date the series was. They could have gone with the X-Men from the sixties but they didn’t, but they did the comic from that week. Jubilee and Gambit were there, even Excalibur was off with Kitty and Nightcrawler and they weren’t in the X-Men. The year before in X-Men issue one was like a reset button and cleared the table for characters like Wolverine, Morph, and Jean Grey wasn’t the Phoenix anymore so yeah.
BCP: Were you nervous about the legacy the animated series left behind?
SK: No Chris and Chad have watched all this stuff and really figured this thing out. Chad even came up with a timeline that had all the events of the animated series and where the comic fits into the greater timeline. I think the story takes place after a week after the last episode that aired in 1997 or something like that. But the nice part is X-Men ’92 isn’t just about the animated series but the licensing at the time. Like in the fourth issue Wolverine cycle makes an appearance. I guess they gave him a motorcycle in the toys with claws out in front, which is exactly what you’d think Wolverine would drive right? But it was fun to get to draw it.
BCP: You mentioned Chris and Chad had a lot of this stuff planned. Did their scripts affect which characters you could and couldn’t put into the background?
SK: Not really. I was very aware of the fact that some of the characters would make an appearance in different roles. Like Trevor Fitzroy shows up in the second or third issue so I had to make sure he wasn’t in the background somewhere. I didn’t want to step on anyone’s toes by adding things so I was really careful about that but I had fun with it at the same time. I don’t think I had ever drawn Strong Guy ever before and I threw in some other characters in the background from that time period as well.
BCP: Why do you think people respond to this particular version of the X-Men?
SK: Everyone I talked to was really excited about this title even people who hadn’t picked up a comic in years. The stories and the dynamics between the characters were solid. Personally I’d really like to see a better structured ending to the Gambit and Rouge’s relationship.
BCP: You do a through the ages kind of thing with Wolverine and Storm. What is your favorite version of the X-Men?
SK: I really enjoyed Brian Bendis’ run with the Uncanny X-Men. He brought older characters back and sort of did a compare and contrast with where the characters were and where they are now. It’s like how your motivations change from when you were a teenager to an adult. I’m just glad Marvel didn’t erased where the X-Men were at in the Bendis run because the last few years have been amazing.
BCP: I love the Sentinels, and the cover of the next issue has ten of them!
SK: Yeah! I got to design the X-10, and then Pepe Larraz did such a beautiful job on the cover and the he one-up-ed me, so I had to step up to the plate again. And I was like I see how this is going to be, let’s do this!
BCP: So was did you have to coerce Chris and Chad to include Deadpool into the X-Force?
SK: No no no that was them. I kept putting Deadpool as far back into the background. Having worked on Deadpool, I didn’t want this to be a story about him. I could have just as easily have put him into the foreground but Cable was more important to this group so I kept trying to put him into the foreground and I tried to lose Deadpool in the crowd or put him up in the back. I really thought it was clever that they had him rescuing the Rej-X’s since Wade himself is so hideous and ugly for him to come back and say he found the ugly one was kind of like a glass house moment for him.
BCP: Before we move on to Deadpool what was your favorite moment in X-Men ’92?
SK: I really love when Cassandra Nova is in their heads specifically Cyclops and Jean’s. The comics were first available online as part of the Infinite Comics, and Matt Miller made it look amazing with his use of colors that popped and they were just so pure. The comic transferred well to print, but I think there was something lost between the mediums.
BCP: Any closing thoughts regarding the X-Men?
SK: I realize that the X-Men bring out the best work out of anyone involved on the series, and that’s not an easy thing to have happen. Everyone is really invested and does the best they can. They have a lot available to them like the relationship between an oppressed minority group versus the world. Do you handle the situation with violence or action? Plus you have all these great villains and not just the super powered ones. For instance, the Hellfire club handles things in a completely different way with the government. Then you have mind readers and mind controllers, which allow for metaphors that you just can’t do with other characters.
BCP: Well know that you will be missed after this issue. Maybe we’ll see you come back for an issue or two.
SK: Thanks. Yeah my schedule is pretty tight at the moment, but I hope I can do something further down the road.
BCP: Alright so let’s talk Deadpool. So I have to ask, what are your first impressions of the Deadpool movie?
SK: First off I tell parents at conventions that the movie is going to be rated R since kids love Deadpool. I mean he’s in video games, comics, and Ultimate Spider-Man. But I’m really happy and excited because it looks like Fox really loves the character and then it comes out in February and I don’t know what that means. You could easily lose the entire east coast just from one snowstorm on a Friday afternoon. And the Deadpool fans will be there, but I can’t imagine the casual movie goer braving a blizzard to see Deadpool. It’ll be interesting to see what happens especially since there isn’t a Deadpool year one per se.
In The New Mutants, he just shows up fully formed. I always say Deadpool has many fathers, but one mother. Since Rob Liefeld essentially gave birth to the character. Over the last 24 years, all these people just kept building up the character from a smart-alecky cipher to someone who I think you need a lot of empathy for when you consider all the things that he has going for him whether it’s comedic or tragic. He’s not just Bugs Bunny, even though he functions that way sometimes but he’s more Pagaliacci like a clown who’s making everyone else laugh but is really having a miserable time.
BCP: I’ve never thought of it that way. Now I feel like the next time I see Deadpool I’m going to be like aww no poor Deadpool.
SK: Yeah, but then he’s also really hyper-competent at his job like he’s really good at his assassin part of his job. I thought the last issue where they killed Deadpool, there are all these inside jokes like where Deadpool buys the farm and there’s that level of the joke telling but he does it to get the villains to a place where there wouldn’t be a lot of civilian casualties and then he traps the villains letting them think they’ve trapped him while he just mows them all down one by one. So on one hand he’s this brutal force but then he’s a really driven character. Then you have his reason for murdering all these guys, he’s doing it because they threatened to destroy the family he’s built around himself over the last two, three years. The level of juggling that Gerry [Duggan], Brain [Posehn], and Mike [Hawthrone] do in that story was just phenomenal.
Even to the point where they tell him to smile at the end. It’s not as if the world is going to end when you smile and enjoy yourself, but for him it does. When he finally is happy, the world finally does ends. All that to say, there are a lot of people trying to build him up, so I hope the movie has its own voice, but I hope it doesn’t lose sight of all that. You know what I mean?
And then there’s the character design, which is just awesome, he’s like Spider-Man with swords, which is just a great idea, and Marvel just didn’t have a character anything like him.
BCP: Well can you tell us what’s in store for Mr. Wade Wilson?
SK: Well there’s Tres Punto Uno, which I don’t know if you knew this, but when Deadpool is translated in the Mexican market he’s called Massacre. So that’s coming in December, and I get to draw a lot of new characters in that one.
Then we’ve got Deadpool #1 coming in November, and I think the book comes out every two weeks. So we can do a complicated story since it’ll be coming out rapidly.
And I actually have to give props to Marvel for taking a chance and letting us do something so convoluted. Because with the release of the movie they could have just had us simplify everything.
Anyways I’ve actually seen the art from the first three issues and Mike has just done such a great job. Oh yeah and then our editors Jordan [White] and Heather’s [Antos] came up with the idea that the alternate covers for issues one through twenty should tell its own story, which would last about a year. So in addition to the crazy story you’re getting every couple weeks, you’re also going to have this additional long story being told one cover at a time, which might get dovetailed into the actual story, but there’s a lot of really fascinating and crazy things coming up. I just hope it all works out. I mean sometimes things fall apart in the execution, but I think everyone is going to be really happy about it.
I can’t talk about what happens in the first couple issues of Deadpool, but I’ll say this, if you’ve been following the series up until now and you’re concerned that thing won’t continue… they do and there will be all sorts of twists and turns but it’s going to be a lot of fun.
BCP: Well I think that’s as good a place to conclude the interview do you think? Now I just need to figure out how to get all those variants.
SK: Yeah. I don’t know how you’re going to do that, but best of luck.
The writer of this piece is: Laurence Almalvez
Laurence has previously written over at Whatculture.com.
Laurence tweets from @IL1511
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