Marvel's Gerry Duggan Talks Reassembling the Uncanny Avengers (Exclusive)

By Jamie Lovett - July 14, 2023 02:53 pm EDT

The Avengers Unity Squad will assemble again for a new Uncanny Avengers series launching this August from Marvel Comics. Gerry Duggan, who previously wrote Uncanny Avengers when it relaunched for its third volume in 2015, is returning to write an Avengers Unity Squad that includes some familiar faces (Captain America, Rogue, Deadpool, Quicksilver), and some surprising newcomers (Psylocke, Penance). This time around, Duggan is working with artist Javier Garrón, hot off his run on Avengers, and Marte Garcia, the definitive colorist of the Krakoan era of X-Men, to tell a tale set during the Fal of X, in the aftermath of a Hellfire Gala that changes everything for mutants.

ComicBook.com had the chance to talk to Duggan via video chat about the new Uncanny Avengers series, touching on some related projects -- his continuing work on X-Men and Invincible Iron Man, which will crossover for the coming wedding of Tony Stark and Emma Frost -- along the way. Marvel Comics also provided an exclusive first look at Uncanny Avengers ahead of its August 16th debut (and final order cutoff date of July 17th), which reveals the lineup of the new Mutant Liberation Front: Fenris, Blob, Wildside, and the mysterious Captain Krakoa. Check out our conversation and those preview pages below.

Jamie Lovett, ComicBook.com: Tell me about the genesis of the new Uncanny Avengers series. Is this an idea that came out of discussions with the now legendary X-office group chat, or did you go to Marvel with the idea of reviving Uncanny Avengers? Do the plans date back to Captain Krakoa's debut in X-Men?

Greedy Duggan: It was a couple of ideas that came together organically. We had some stories that were possibilities coming out of the events that kick off Fall of X that were not necessarily X books. Tom Brevoort was looking for a way to celebrate the 60th anniversary of both the Avengers and the X-Men and was wondering if there was some road here for an Uncanny Avengers title. I jumped on the phone with him and we talked about how there was a great Avengers story coming out of some of the mess that we were making for the mutants as a kickoff point.

And there's an element that anytime I reach for Ben Urich, I always feel like I'm telling a story that has a chance to be a book that might transcend the silos that we keep these characters in. I hesitate to say "important," but Ben Urich to me has always been one of those wonderful lens characters into the Marvel Universe. And so, Ben's in the background of this one like he was in the background of the first year of X-Men that I had the privilege of writing on.

You wrote Uncanny Avengers previously, but at a very different time for mutants in the Marvel universe, when seemingly every X-Men fan felt aggrieved by how small the X-Men line was. Now feels like the polar opposite, like every Avenger has a book that ties into X-Men stuff. Did plans for Uncanny Avengers lead that charge and spawn the plans for Iron Man getting involved in the X-Men and all the rest? Or was it all almost a coincidence or zeitgeist type of thing?:

The Iron Man piece of it all came from an interesting place in that the document that I first turned into Jonathan [Hickman] and to Jordan [White] and to CB [Cebulski] when I proposed to follow Jonathan, I had made a big point that I thought, what had come before was a remarkable gift to those characters, but I also said the cupboard is empty in terms of our villains, and so there had to be a reinvestment period. There had to be new fresh blood if we weren't going to break Krakoa in that way. When you have Pepe Larraz as your collaborator, you can get away with anything. And so, to spend some time and invest in new villains, the better we are to those villains, the more we can give them in terms of page count and story, the better off I think you're going to be long term.

And it became Feilong, who, I think, is a great villain for anyone right now. But he presented as this wonderful piece that could knock over Iron Man, and then ask how far down could we push him. We didn't call this "Armor Wars III," but spiritually, that is how we're approaching the book. He went to war to keep his technology out of the hands of some great threats, and even some tomato cans -- some of the folks that ended up with Stark Tech were not exactly the A-list of the book -- but he went to the mat for that. And now it's in these killing machines that even Magneto would have a hard time with. When you wear a metal suit to work for a living, you worry a lot about Magneto, and so all of that technology got baked into these Sentinels and it's almost an insurmountable problem, which is great.

One of the most liberating things was hearing Mark Waid say the words, "Oh, I don't know how they always get out of it. Sometimes I write to a cliffhanger and I'll let them surprise me." That became very liberating. We do have a plan. Some of the details remain squishy, and when those areas are not as baked as, say, your finale, that becomes an opportunity to go, "Oh wait, this is a place where there is a great Avengers story for the 60th."

We have Orchis as a real fascist threat in the Marvel universe, and the key to this working is Steve Rogers, Captain America, being in this book. His thoughts on Krakoa are not that he was ever against it, but that he was sad that his fellow Americans felt like they had to depart America to have health and safety and to live in a way that was not threatening to them. That was stinging for him. But here is a wonderful place for both our villains to have their moment on stage and for our heroes to be able to rebut that, and I think Uncanny Avengers is going to surprise some folks.

Also, we didn't set out for it, but there are a couple of romances that I don't want to give up at the end. I hope they stick around.

That should be interesting. X-Men fans are always eager to hear about romances.

They are, but you know what? There's also a villain romance in this that I hope will make everyone feel like they've got some goose flesh on their neck. It's a creepy one. That's the gold standard is to make everyone feel something, and sometimes, it's the creeps.

I don't want to get too off-topic here, but you mentioned Iron Man and Mark Wait, and I do want to say that I appreciate what feels like you calling Waid's bluff with the upcoming wedding of Tony Stark and Emma Frost. Because I remember he just threw that out there in History of the Marvel Universe.

It was a super late addition to the book, but on July 26th, assuming that we don't have leaks before, we're going to have a 72-page Hellfire Gala and it's an event in a can. We worked so hard on it. I remember by the time we got done with a lettering draft, there was something like 600 individual notes and changes and tweaks because it went across all the offices.

Then there's a 20-page Iron Man story that ships the same day and they need to be read in the order. You need to read Hellfire Gala and then Iron Man, and you'll start to see by the end of that issue of Iron Man where this relationship has its honest roots. And I know in comic books, there's a lot of shenanigans. I promise you that a finger won't be phasing through the ring. There will be a wedding that you will all be invited to.

Also, we've gotten really good (I hope) at knowing what we can give away, what we can turn to sales, and say, "This isn't the surprise." The wedding of Tony and Emma is not a surprise. I don't want it to be a surprise. I want how some of these things happen and the orbits that these characters take to be the pleasurable surprise. I think everyone is right when they're saying, "How on earth would they possibly get along? Is it real? Is it not real?"

I think this one lands really well. It's really been a treat. It's hard. I do feel sometimes like I'm a greedy person. The whole time I felt like a greedy person getting Marauders and having that cast and having Matteo (Lolli) and Russell (Dauterman) at the start. All of that was supposed to hit because I had a wonderful cast, and I had wonderful collaborators. It would have been me if that stuff had not landed. So again, really privileged.

I always approach these Hellfire Galas as act breaks and one big story, and here it is, five years later, we're now executing ideas specifically in the Hellfire Gala that were part of year one story sessions on the street after the retreat on our way from a dinner to a pub, things that have been a part of this since Marauders was called X-Men: Buccaneers as a placeholder. So what a privilege it has been to have such a long amount of rope. I never, ever have experienced anything like that, and I hope everyone has fun with that ride.

Yes. I think any book that has Rogue and Steve Rogers on it -- Steve trained Rogue up to be a wonderful Avenger -- I think it's safe to say you're going to see some personality conflicts. I deliberately wanted Wade on that team. Back in the day, I was asked to come in after Rick [Remender] was sunsetting on the book and we had to remake what an Avengers team would be with a diminished Steve. We had Old Man Rogers at that point, and he was lacking. He needed a few good soldiers. This is a very different team dealing with a very different issue. We're making available this year's Free Comic Book Day: Avengers. That had a flash forward to the night of the Gala, so we know that this book is inheriting both an attack on the X-Men in New York and an assassination attempt on Steve Rogers. Cyclops' fate is up in the air. A lot happens. The mutants have been very successful for a long time, and how long did anyone think that Orchis was going to sit around and take it?

What can you tell me about the roster that you chose? You mentioned Steve Rogers as the cornerstone of the whole thing. There are a few familiar characters, people who were part of the previous Uncanny Avengers team, and then some newcomers. I don't think I would've expected Monet to be part of an Avengers team ever, but here we are. How did you go about selecting your team for this?

Well, that was the real joy of the first issue was how that works. The fun thing about collaborating is having that aspect to something of, "Oh, this is coming back in a way that is totally different than I would have imagined." It is a little X heavy on the front end of it, but we haven't quite revealed all of the cast. There are some more Avengers to come. Avengers to be named later, as we'll say.

I think Steve's reaction to their trajectory will be surprising to some people. They're not known for their kid gloves, right? Psylocke, in particular, is a pretty stabby Avenger on a team that already has Deadpool.

I think Deadpool may surprise people in this book. This is a little bit of a different Deadpool. This is the good soldier Deadpool that Steve Rogers was trying to mold, and then, Wade's great bad luck, which I think is his real superpower, he followed Captain America, Steve Rogers, almost blindly and never knew that it was a corrupted Steve Rogers from the events of Secret Empire. So there is this relationship that they have that I think is wonderful where this is also Steve trying to give Wade a mulligan on that. You can come into this cold without having read any of the previous stories, but if your comic brain has marinated in that stuff, I hope you're going to find some of the extra layers that we're baking into it.

Quicksilver and Monet have been some of my favorites. They have some great sparks that I think, I hope people will enjoy. And by the way, we haven't talked about him, but it's Javier's book. Wait till you see what Javier and Marte have done. It's, I think, their best work.

And I know it's hard. We're a little obnoxious sometimes when we are holding back a lot of story. There is a heel in Captain Krakoa. There is a villain there, and he has some other folks behind him that we want you to experience in the pages, I hope, rather than leaks online.

I did not even consider conversations between Quicksilver and Monet, which we got some of back in X-Factor, but the arrogance-off that could occur between them should be fun.

I tell you, what an unexpected joy. Sometimes those choices make us look good, like, "Wow, they planned all this stuff," and then you realize, "Oh, these two characters would not want to be in the same room together." That's a little bit of the Deadpool muscle memory too, and even Savage Avengers, with Conan, Peter Parker didn't last a full issue. He was like, "I got to get away from this guy," but that's what made it so fun.

What can you say about the tone and style that you are trying to craft with Javier and Marte? Would you call this a very straightforward, action-heavy superhero book, or are you trying to veer into other genres at certain points?

You know what, it's a great question. I've always been a noir guy. I love my night scenes and my rain, and going back to your first question about the Slack that we're all in, we are entering a phase called Fall of X. It is also largely going to debut at the end of summer and the beginning of autumn. We are trying to remind ourselves if you need a sunny page scene, take it. If you need a day in the sun, take it. Otherwise, remind our artists, it's Fall of X, it's the fall. Let's see leaves turning, rain, and night lights.

I hope this doesn't give away too much, but we try to remind each other about what it would've been like to be in the French Resistance. What are you doing right now? How can you be effective? How can you be a superhero but maybe not be seen flying through Midtown Manhattan and keeping your head on a swivel? The world has always been dangerous, but the world for a lot of these characters is a lot more dangerous now. Javier and Marte are bringing that into really crisp view. Lots of night stuff, a lot of big action, things I think you'll see in an Avengers book that -- let's just say they have some people to avenge.

We know we've got Feilong and Orchis, and we've got whoever it is playing Captain Krakoa at this point. Are these going to be the big bads for the foreseeable future or are we mixing in a lot of other villains?

Some other characters are stepping into a villain role. I think you'll need to wait and see how Captain Krakoa presents, but it's insidious in that Captain Krakoa, we already know, was meant to be, symbolically, the spiritual warrior of Krakoa. Cyclops couldn't live with that as a lie, and that comes back around too. Anytime you are telling a story with Steve Rogers and you are dealing with false flags and truth and justice, it's a great opportunity to lean into what makes these characters so iconic. The truth about Captain Krakoa is going to be a bitter one for a lot of folks. What happens when good folks are misled by untrue statements and misinformation? There are times when making the 616 seem like the world outside our window is difficult, and that's one of the ways that we're telling a story, I think, that can be relevant.

We've got the Uncanny Avengers, but there's also the X-Men, which was a team that Cyclops and Jean Grey refounded to be this beacon to remind humans that mutants hadn't forgotten their neighbors. The Avengers Unity Squad serves a similar purpose. What will be the relationship between the two teams?

It's a great question and it will come into focus in the August books. I was trying to write the three titles that I'm privileged right now -- X-Men, the Unity Squad in Uncanny Avengers, and Iron Man -- and It was very helpful to write the next few months all at the same time. Sometimes I like to do a sprint and knock out a couple of issues of something at once and that was counterproductive. I very quickly set aside some scripts and didn't turn them in until they were put alongside each other, because they do reflect each other in interesting ways.

But it's a great question and it does play out in a scene in all three of August's books that are reflected in different ways. I wish I could be more on the nose, but it would be spoiling a lot of stuff. I think everyone is expecting a rough ride this summer, and that's okay because I don't think anyone will expect quite how devastating it is. It was hard even though we knew we were going here for a long time, and we have such wonderful artists, and when the pages started pouring in for this stuff, I got mad at me. They're wonderful, really wonderful pages, but I was like, "Phew, man, alright."

I feel like there should be a scale that goes from one to Avengers vs. X-Men to measure how relations between the X-Men and the Avengers are at any given point.

Well, that's the really fun thing about this one is that we've always gotten a lot of grist out of that AvX vibe, and believe me, there's a layer of that here too. But there's also something satisfying in the way that this has made some really strange bedfellows. I can't wait to see what everyone's reaction to the summer books is, because anytime you can chip away at what is a classic hero and a classic villain and you end up being able to put them into the same orbits, I think you have a chance to have some real fun, and everyone is beholden to a couple of folks that they would rather not be beholden to.

There's also an Avengers book that's going on with a team that notably does not include Steve Rogers. Is that also going to be something we'll see, how the Unity Squad bumps up against the other Avengers, or are they living in separate worlds for now?

The Unity Squad is occupying the space between what is at first a creeping fascism and then a very overt fascism. Jed [MacKay] and CF [Villa]'s Avengers team is wonderful and I went with my hat in my hand to the rest of the team and said, "Hey, I would never ask you to use anyone, but is it possible for you to use this Mark Nil stealth armor on Tony for a little bit as he's more or less publicly seeming to have stopped wearing the suit?"

Feilong owns it all, and the really fun thing about that is he's a wonderful Lex Luther and he's also a superpowered Brainiac for this capitalist inventor, recovering alcoholic/superhero that I love. I was reading all of those comics, and so when we say, "Hey, what if this? What if this? What if this?" sometimes, those "What if?"s don't respect the editorial offices. "What if this? What if this?" Well, that's great, if that other writer would love to do it. In this case, I got to be very greedy, and I was like, "Well, I am the other writer, so thank you for that notion," because this becomes a wonderful opportunity to explore what happens when your friends are attacked and how do we respond when there is a need to avenge someone, to truly avenge someone, and maybe a lot of someones. That becomes such a gift of a place to be able to take these characters into a conflict that is an important one that could reshape a lot of things in the Marvel universe.

But I know where Jed is going, and Jed has this wonderful story that is going to play out next year with some of the biggest characters and biggest artists, and we'll see how my stuff may feed into that or be sorted by them. We'll see. But it's a wonderful time right now to be a fan of either of these titles and both of these titles, I hope. Even though some really bad things are going to be happening to the characters, I've always felt like my job was to torture them. It's regrettable, but we have to present them with problems that they can overcome or I think everyone would be bored.

Was there any thought given to an Avengers Unity Squad fan vote to choose the final member of the team? Or is one fan-voted character enough for you to wrap your head around?

I think people are going to be pretty much all done with fan votes after this year's Hellfire Gala. That was a wonderful idea. I hope everyone had fun with it. I know that every character is someone's favorite. I worried a little bit about the temperature of some of the stuff. It was always meant to be fun. We did try to have election security. We could tell when a character had received fraudulent votes and so we just zeroed those out and left all the others. Some of these votes were really close. I think this year's was the closest.

But it presents a challenge, especially to me as a writer, to be able to not know who's going to be on the team and how that will play out. But I will tell you, I think one of the most interesting things when we look back at this era, will probably be the Firestar story that will come into focus as a result of her having been a fan vote winner. She's been both an Avenger and an X-Man, so I'm excited to see what comes of that.

I think we made a lot of good hay of that. And that was a gift, right? Talking before about being open to, "Mark Waid put this in the comic book, or "Oh god, the fans are giving you Firestar," now those are both two really fun, important things that you just have to be open to. We've had a big, multi-year plan, but those are the opportunities that you just have to be open to. You have to be flexible, and I hope it's fun.

But to answer your question, one fan vote is enough for me. I also have a hard time believing that [editor Tom Brevoort] would do a fan vote.

I have to confess, my 8-year-old daughter loves really old cartoons and stumbled across Spider-Man and His Amazing Friends and has loved Firestar ever since. I had to vote for Firestar on her behalf.

I'm glad you did. And you know what? She got a nice new suit from Pepe. Not every character is so lucky, and I think it's a forever gift. I think that her suit in that cartoon was very simple for the animators. In comic books, we can gussy things up a little bit. I think I'm going to a Hellfire Gala this year, which feels like I'm now in the multiverse. but it's really interesting.

We talk about those on-ramps, and cartoons are a wonderful on-ramp, there's a whole group of X-Men fandom that came in from the cartoon and I largely missed it. I didn't have a TV from the time I left my parents' house in '92 until I got out to Los Angeles 10 years later. Or I did, and I was getting tapes of The Simpsons or something. It was a different era, but yeah.

Before I let you go, are there any final words you'd like to leave with the fans who are reading this interview?

I'm always grateful. I don't take anyone's interest for granted. I know comics are always an expensive entertainment item and we are cognizant of that, and we want to give you the best bang for your buck, and that's why we try to keep as much story close to the vest. You'll see right away on the first page of Uncanny Avengers why this is an important Avengers and X-Men story. And I think by the end of that first issue, you'll realize that the aggressor, the villains are going to set the tone for this, and it's a really ugly tone. I wish our heroes the best. I hope you're along for the ride.

Uncanny Avengers #1 goes on sale on August 16th. The final order cutoff date for the issue is July 17th. Official solicitation information follows.

UNCANNY AVENGERS #1 (OF 5)
MARVEL COMICS
JUN230831
(W) Jonathan Hickman, Gerry Duggan (A/CA) Garron, Javier
The FALL OF X calls for the return of the Avengers' Unity Squad! Innocent people and world leaders are dead after simultaneous attacks on the U.S. and Krakoan governments, and that means one thing: It's time for a new squad of Avengers. False-flag attacks meant to whip up anti-mutant hysteria are unfolding, and hey, some of Steve Rogers' best friends are mutants. Your new unity squad is: Captain America, Rogue, Deadpool, Quicksilver, Psylocke and Monet. They must solve the mystery of who the new, murderous Captain Krakoa is – and stop his team of killers from igniting the fires of a new world war. PLUS: A bonus page written by Jonathan Hickman – WHO ARE THE G.O.D.S.?
Rated T
In Shops: Aug 16, 2023
SRP: $4.99

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