Someone is going to kill the Watcher. While this sounds like a pretty big deal, people might not realize the full repercussions of what could result from this. With his death, a greater mystery unfolds as huge secrets will be revealed. The person in possession of these secrets could do all sorts of bad things. Two group of heroes will investigate the mystery but this could change quite a bit of the Marvel Universe.
During a press conference with Marvel, Jason Aaron, Tom Brevoort, and Axel Alonso, we found out quite a bit as they made it clear just how big this could be.
ORIGINAL SIN is an eight-issue event spanning the entire Marvel Universe. It starts on the moon with the dead body of Uatu, the Watcher. The death is discovered by a variety of Marvel heroes. The murderer has made off with valuable technology and even more valuable information that the Watcher carried. Every secret and every skeleton from the Marvel Universe will be revealed. Those secrets are going to shake the Marvel Universe.
Jason Aaron: When the heroes find the Watcher's body on the moon, his eyes are gone. They don't really know what that means but we start to learn that his eyes are the secret to unlocking everything he's witnessed over the years. Whoever holds one of those eyes, pretty early on in the series, is basically able to explode a bomb full of secrets and able to unleash all these various secrets of the Marvel Universe out into the wild.
Tom Brevoort: This is the ultimate NSA leak of the Marvel Universe. This is the guy that has seen everything and knows where all the bodies are buried. Including the bodies that none of our readers even know are there. Every one of his dark secrets has fallen into potentially the wrong hands.
Question: That explosion of information, can you guys talk a little about that?
JA: There's so much we can't talk about. One of the big questions is, WHO has this eye? Presumably it's our killer. What do they want to do with it? Why did they take it? It's in issue #2 that everything kind of explodes. Literally. We get this explosion of secrets. We'll see some of the darkest secrets of our main heroes.
TB: We talked in the past how the structure of this event is different from ones we've done. Up to know, we just said it was a murder mystery and left it at that. With the new information we just revealed, you can understand that once that sort of information detonation goes off and the first wave of secrets and hidden information gets disseminated to our characters--heroes, villains, civilians alike, that is going to set off a multitude of stories that will affect our characters. That information is what's going to drive our tie-in books that will spin out from that point.
The Spider-Man secret will drive a certain number of Spider-Man stories. The Daredevil secret will drive a certain number of Daredevil stories. And so forth and so on. It's a different structure that we're used to doing in that the Daredevil story and the Hulk story don't necessarily intersect. They have the same kick off point and the same underlying idea which is, the worst information, the worst skeleton in the closet of somebody--either Matt Murdock himself or someone close to him or Peter Parker, someone close to him, has been revealed and it causes crazy trouble.
In addition to the NSA of the Marvel Universe, it's also the TMZ of the Marvel Universe. All of the scandalous and salacious ideas we could come up with, will get their moment in the sun. Things will get a lot more personal and emotional for our characters. Each story will be supremely meaty in a way, perhaps, in the past, not every tie-in has been.
Question: To follow up on that, it sounds like the main ORIGINAL SIN series will be about the murder of the Watcher.
TB: Primarily, yes. There are secrets and reveals about long existing Marvel characters, heroes and villains alike, that happens within the core ORIGINAL SIN series.
Axel Alonso: The core series deals more with the murder of the Watcher and can be read independent of everything else.
Question: Now that we have the background, are there any teases you can provide us with?
TB: I think we had two we were willing to put out on the table at this point. This is just the tip of the iceberg to what these things are. In one story, Captain America will learn that somebody close to him has tampered with his memories. Someone has tampered with his mind. Somebody in his immediate orbit and that will have a seismic affect on Cap's relationship with the people around him at a time when he's really supposed to be at the forefront of tracking down the guy that left a dead body on the moon. It's the worst possible time for Cap to deal with something like this.
Secondly, in the world of Spider-Man, we are going to learn that there was somebody else that was bitten by the same radioactive spider that caused the origin of Spider-Man, back in the day. Seeds for that will be brewing in the AMAZING SPIDER-MAN book starting right the new AMAZING #1 and come into fruition in the ORIGINAL SIN series.
AA: All of the ORIGINAL SIN tie-ins will be important. They will represent secrets that will change the characters for the foreseeable future. There will be long term, permanent ramifications for their lives. It might affect the way they look at themselves in the mirror or the way they look at a teammate or friend. It might involve the introduction of someone into their lives they didn't know. Someone they didn't even know existed. There will be at least one instance how you see how the paths of two characters intersected in ways they didn't know.
JA: We'll find out this isn't the first time our murderer has killed someone. Whoever killed the Watcher, you're not going to step up and kill the Watcher your first time you kill somebody. We start to follow a murder trail that takes us to different corners of the Marvel Universe. One of the most fun things for me is writing the different little groups of characters during the investigation. Writing Doctor Strange and Punisher together as a mini-buddy/cop story during this or Gamora, Winter Soldier and Moon Knight together, or Ant-Man and Emma Frost, has been a lot of fun.
Question: Jason, can you touch on why certain characters were assembled?
JA: I don't know what to really say right now except they were assembled for specific reasons. You'll see there's not really a lot of overlap in terms of their individual expertise.
Question: We saw in FF that the Watcher had a mate and an unborn child on the way. Will they have a role here?
JA: Yes. They will be in the MIGHTY AVENGERS tie-in.
Question: Are any of the secrets really going to be TMZ stuff? Are we going to learn that someone had a dog-fighting rink in the back of their house or something?
AA: There's at least one TMZ-worthy story that immediately comes to mind. It's arguable that there's at least 2-3 right from the beginning.
TB: I'm writing down "dog fighting."
JA: I'm going to do that Thor dog fighting story.
Question: With Jason also the writer for Thor, what will Thor's role be in the event?
JA: In the core series, here's there from the beginning. He's the guy that discovers the body. In the THOR series, Tom, what do we want to say?
TB: I think we can say that Thor has a big juicy secret that's about to land on his head. That'll run through the Thor book and the main series as well.
Question: Who watches Earth when there's no Watcher?
JA: That's a very good question. That's a question brought up in issue #1.
Question: How long is the event?
TB: It's eight issues, twice a month for four months.
Question: You guys mention "The Watcher's eye" but he has two eyes.
JA: Sounds like maybe you've read issue #3? Yeah, he did have two eyes...They'll both come into play somehow.
TB: In issue #6, his nose...
Question: Will all the heroes involved in the mystery become aware of everyone's dark secrets?
TB: Some of them will become aware of some. I don't know if we can say that all of them will become aware of them all. The secrets don't just involve the heroes. It affects the villains and supporting cast members.
Question: It was brought up that AvX ended with the death of a bald guy and this one starts with the death of a bald guy. Tom said this was topical. Are Jason, Tom, and Marvel trying to make a statement on the number of people with bald heads and should people with bald heads in the Marvel Universe fear they're going to get killed too?
TB: Brian Bendis has nothing to worry about.
JA: I've been bald since 1994. I can safely say I have nothing against bald people.
You can read the full solicits for issues 1 & 2 HERE. ORIGINAL SIN begins in May by Jason Aaron and Mike Deodato. The zero issue by Mark Waid and Jim Cheung is out in April.