Hans Rodionoff Dishes on Damage Control, Future Plans and Connection to Galactus (Exclusive)
Marvel brought back the cleanup company Damage Control last year in a five-issue limited series, that took readers behind the scenes to see how disasters and superhero battles are cleaned up. Hans Rodionoff was one of the writers behind Damage Control, along with The Goldbergs creator Adam Goldberg. Together with artists Will Robson, Jay Fosgitt, and Nathan Stockman, they introduced readers to Gus, a new employee at Damage Control who clumsily worked his way through different departments while meeting a lot of random Marvel heroes. Damage Control also revealed an unknown connection between Gus and the Marvel cosmic entity Galactus, teasing a pretty interesting origin story.
ComicBook.com spoke to Hans Rodionoff after Damage Control wrapped up to learn more about Gus and Galactus, Rodionoff's favorite Damage Control departments, plans for a future installment in the future, and more. The trade paperback collection of Damage Control also goes on sale March 28th. If you're curious about reviews of Damage Control, ComicBook.com's Matthew Aguilar wrapped up his review of the first issue by saying Damage Control "was a truly pleasant surprise and delivered a world of charm and mayhem that I cannot wait to return to next month."
Damage Control's Connection to Galactus
ComicBook.com: Gus, Damage Control's central character, went from a bumbling intern to the secret son of Galactus. Can you take us through the thought process that went into linking Gus to the Devourer of Worlds?
Hans Rodionoff: Having had some jobs that made me want to hit the snooze button and call in sick, I'm pretty familiar with workplace woes. You have annoying co-workers and horrible bosses and people eating your food out of the refrigerator – but one of the main things that can really make a job feel like a dead-end treadmill is nepotism. There's nothing more soul-crushing than paying your dues, working hard at a position for a long time and doing a great job, feeling like you're right on the cusp of a promotion – and then suddenly the Big Boss's nephew shows up and the rug gets pulled out from underneath you.
We felt like Dwayne McDuffie had done such a great job of setting up the main characters and the premise of Damage Control, that we didn't want this new series to focus on the things that he had already established, that would have felt like a lateral move. We wanted to create a new character who would be a newcomer to Damage Control – that would allow us to introduce a new reader to the characters and the premise without having to do too much exposition.
Once we knew that we wanted our main character to be a newcomer to Damage Control, and we also wanted to tell a story about nepotism in the workplace, we started thinking about what the absolute worst case of nepotistic hire might be, and who would be powerful enough to have enough leverage over Anne Marie Hoag, so that she would agree to giving this kid a job at Damage Control – especially if that person was supremely unqualified and really awful at every task they were given.
It could only be Galactus.
After we knew we wanted this to be the story of ultimate cosmic nepotism, everything just kinda fell into place – literally. I'd just read Thor #1, where Galactus falls into Asgard after having a run-in with the King in Black, and the tip of one of the spokes on his helmet was broken off. Adam and I were joking about it, what happened to the little fragment? And Adam said, "It flew to Earth and was attracted by all the other lost souls at Oberlin."
And that's how Gus D'Vore was born.
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Guest Stars
Out of all of the different Damage Control departments and guest stars that show up throughout the series, which would you say were your favorites, and why?
I have two favorite departments – the first being Research and Development, because I love Eugene Strausser. He's so brilliant and so broken at his core. I especially liked the issue of the series that took place in the R&D department, "Bring on the Bad Gus" because it was the first real hint that there was something different about Gus, and that just being in his presence rekindled Eugene's desire to be a supervillain.
My other favorite department of Damage Control is Search and Rescue – because Lenny and Trull and the crew are the practical side of Damage Control. They're the ones that are actually out in the field, dealing with the repercussions of superhuman events. And my absolute favorite character from the Search and Rescue issue, "Trentonn the Terrible" was Nathan Mehr, the insurance adjuster. I created Nathan a long time ago to be the protagonist in the Man-Thing mini-series I did with Kyle Hotz. Nathan is my version of Kolchak the Night Stalker or Cal McDonald. I love supernatural detectives, but I wanted to create a guy who was not a traditional detective or FBI agent, but he's formidable because he's pragmatic, logic-driven and direct. Nathan is the ultimate skeptic, he doesn't believe in the supernatural at all, which makes him a really great person to head the claims department for Damage Control.
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Future Plans for Damage Control
The finale of Damage Control is left open-ended, with Gus heading off with a Galactus seed in hand that can implode the universe. Are there currently any plans for a follow-up in the future, either in another Damage Control series or somewhere else?
Adam and I come from film and television writing, and we write comics with the same approach. We acted as if we were writing episodes for a Damage Control television series, and we wanted to set it up so that it could have many seasons. So, yes – this comic series was meant to tell the origin story of Gus D'Vore, whom we have a lot of plans for. One of the challenges of Damage Control is that it's not immediately clear who the antagonist is. They do good work for the world and rebuild after superhuman events, so who is the natural adversary for that company? There can be corporate enemies and hostile takeovers and other Succession-type of stories, but we really wanted to create a potential antagonist that would be holding a grudge against Damage Control – and who better than a cosmic entity with a troubled history with the company?
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Other Projects
Outside of Marvel, do you have any other upcoming comic book or TV projects that are keeping you busy nowadays?
We're writing several new comic and graphic novel projects that will be coming out this year, and we're in post-production right now on a new Muppet show that follows Electric Mayhem as they attempt to record their first album. As a little treat for anyone that's read this whole interview all the way to the end, there may be a creepy glowing Easter egg-thing that hauntingly whispers Gus's name in one of the episodes.
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