Derek Landy Dials Up an Action-Packed Adventure in All-Out Avengers (Exclusive)
Writing Earth's Mightiest Heroes
ComicBook.com: You've written individual Avengers like Captain America, Iron Man, Falcon, and Winter Soldier before, but how different is it to work with an entire team of Earth's Mightiest Heroes?
Derek Landy: It's been daunting...! I've written exactly one team book before this — the Black Order miniseries — where I barely knew what the hell I was doing, so I'm at least entering into this one with a bit of experience behind me. That said, everything since then has been focused on only two characters at a time, which allows for as much plot as you need and as many small character moments as you want (within reason). But to suddenly go from writing about the Captain America/Iron Man partnership to the whole of the Avengers is quite a leap to make, and gives me a whole new level of respect for the writers who do this and do it so well. I'm very fortunate in that the very idea behind the series allows me to pick and choose who exactly is on the roster every issue, so I haven't yet been overwhelmed by the choice on offer.
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Origin of Series
This is a very unique series since it drops the reader directly into the action starting from the very first page. How did the idea to make this an all-action series come about?
Marvel editor Tom Brevoort approached me with the core idea. He wanted to replicate the experience that comic readers of a certain age all share — those occasions when you wandered into a newsagent (here in Ireland) or a drugstore (over there in the States) and you picked up whatever comic you found on the rack. I snagged random issues of X-Men or Hulk or Spider-Man, always seeming to come in right in the middle of an ongoing story with no idea how it started. In fact, it's only now, with collections and omnibus editions and Marvel Unlimited, that I've been able to find out how so many stories from my childhood began and ended!
So that's the feeling we're trying to capture with All-Out Avengers, where each issue plunges the reader into the middle of the action. The challenge, then, is to have each issue work in and of itself, without a flashback to the "first" part of the story that doesn't actually exist. It's practically an existential crisis of a comic book. All are welcome.
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Avengers Threats
What can you tell us about the threat the Avengers are facing in the first issue?
When Tom approached with the idea, he told me I had free rein. This series is in regular Marvel continuity so the main Avengers team is what I'm working with mostly, but I'm allowed to pretty much feature anyone who's ever been an Avenger — which is practically everyone at this stage. So what do I do when I'm handed absolute freedom? What classic Marvel stories or characters or situations or events do I call back to in the very first issue? My own, of course! Oh yes, I call back to the classic miniseries Black Order: Warlords of Thanos, dealing with some of the repercussions from that senses-shattering adventure! And also we have Evil-Captain Marvel fighting Thor. So, y'know... art.
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Villains to Expect
The trailer for All-Out Avengers features Doctor Doom wielding Mjolnir and Cap's shield. Are there any other recognizable villains that fans should look out for in future issues?
What I'm trying to do with this series is not be so respectful of what other people are doing in their series. I come from the world of books, where I own all my characters and I can do whatever I want with them. But when you write for Marvel, you're playing in the sandpit with a bunch of others, and I'm too damn polite to just grab someone else's toy and play with it for a while.
The toys I've managed to play with, so far, have been two of the classics: Doctor Doom and the Red Skull. We are going to see a few more familiar faces as we go on, though, including a pretty major bad guy that I didn't think Marvel would let me include in such a big way. See, the key to figuring out the series, for me, was finding that overarching thread, the thing that connects all of these seemingly unconnected stories. When I found it, when I realized what was happening, there this villain was, standing there in the shadows. Waiting.
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ALL-OUT AVENGERS #3
DEREK LANDY (W) • GREG LAND (A/C)
Hallelujah, it's raining skulls — Red Skulls, that is!
With an unending swarm of Red Skull LMDs on the loose, the Avengers have one last chance to turn the tide before they're completely overwhelmed — even if that means teaming up with the original Red Skull to do it. Dive right in, dear reader, and get swept away by the action!
