Ron Marz, writer of John Carter: Warlord of Marz # 3, talks with Fred Van Lente about Magnus: Robot Fighter #10, both on sale January 7th
RON MARZ: When I was but a small child, my first exposure to comics was a box of my older brother's comics in our basement. It was a box of mostly old Marvels from the '60s, but there were a few Gold Key titles. Magnus made a big impression on me, karate-chopping robots into scrap metal. It's such a pure, simple concept at its core. How did you go about updating that concept for a contemporary audience?
FRED VAN LENTE: Maybe I have a tendency to overthink things too much, but since I went from loving the Russ Manning Magnus stuff in 70s reprints to reading William Gibson cyberpunk in the 80s, so the first thing I had to answer for myself was, Well, why robots? Why would Artificial Intelligences need to be constrained by physical bodies? Or, perhaps more importantly, why would they want to be? So that's where all the robot mythology and the Singularity stuff came from, and all of Magnus's world -- well, worlds -- sort of came out of that.
RM: The other thing that made an impression on me in that box of old books was that Magnus seemed to be wearing a skirt. Now he's wearing pants. Why do you hate skirts, Fred?
FVL: Now, now, Ron, that's unfair. You forget I made my name writing about a guy in a skirt. It's funny, it looks like a skirt on the Gold Key covers but much of the time in the interiors they're just really short hot pants. The skirt/hot pants was too mid-20th century idea of the future for me. Hey, if Spider-Woman and Batgirl have to wear pants now, so does Magnus.
RM: As beautifully simple as the concept of "Magnus vs. robots" is, I suppose there's also a danger of that conflict becoming repetitive. How do you safeguard against that?
FVL: I read a lot, and I mean a lot, on the advancements in robotics and cybernetics since Russ Manning's day, and it gave me a metric ton of inspiration, from the concept of artificially-evolved "soft robots" to the terror of Roko's Basilisk, featured in this arc. It's definitely dressed in a lot of adventure comic trappings but most of my inspiration has come from research that's going on in the real world right now.
RM: So that ending in issue #10. Without being spoilery ... uh, that's a little abrupt. Throwing readers a last-page curve like that is, to me, one of the best things about our job. Do you find it fun?
FVL: I do! What's very cool about Magnus is that it was always conceived as a 12-issue series broken up into three arc/acts, and it's the rare occasion I've been able to execute my plan more or less exactly as-is. And since people know the series is ending at #12, who knows, perhaps the climax of #10 is rather permanent...? (wink)
RM: You've had a few different artists on the series. Have you adjusted the story, or at least the storytelling, for each new art team?
FVL: I have not. Like I said, though there have been a few discoveries and surprises along the way, the story is playing out pretty much as originally outlined. And I've been so lucky to have such great collaborators as Cory Smith, Joe Cooper and Roberto Castro to bring it to life.
RM: We're both "cut me and I bleed blue and orange" Mets fans. Give me a reason to be more optimistic. Don't we need another bat?
FVL: We need a shortstop and at least one outfielder. But they keep telling me pitching wins championships. Maybe one year we'll see evidence of that?
MAGNUS: ROBOT FIGHTER #10 comes out Wednesday, January 7th. Enjoy this preview of issue #10 below!
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