CRAVE ONLINE: Speaking of current developments, the Age of Ultron issue just came out, which Christos Gage wrote – and it’s been cooking so long…
DAN SLOTT: It’s been in the works. It was the Free Comic Book Day from two years ago. Or three years ago. I think I remember, in Bryan Hitch’s puberty, he started drawing this…
Right. It seemed like the Spider-Man in the main story was Peter Parker, but the Gage issue says otherwise…
This is something that Brian has been planning and machining and orchestrating for some time. It’s a story he’s very passionate about. We have our master plans, everybody on their books, but even though I sowed the seeds for Superior all the way back in Amazing #600, and then you really start dropping the clues and it keeps building from story arc to story arc, I don’t necessarily go into a Marvel creative summit and go ‘we’re swapping the brain’ and tell people three years ahead of time. I don’t do that.
But you knew you were going to do that three years ago?
If I was still on the book, because I started in the “Brand New Day” era.
That’s another question – with all the Marvel NOW creative shuffles, I had the theory – and you can tell me if this is wrong – that this was just an arc you had planned that was blown up into this bigger deal so you wouldn’t be taken off the book for the stunt, because I know you never want to stop writing Spider-Man.
Yes, but no. This was always the plan. We were very fortunate that it hit around NOW. So much of my Spider-Man career has been pure fluke – me being in the right place at the right time to get the right assignment. We started off as “the braintrust,” and I think at one point I was the only “braintruster” that went onto “the webheads,” which was the second round of “Brand New Day.” It’s a tough gig to work on “Brand New Day,” because you have to read everybody’s scripts, comment on everybody’s stories, you’re getting comments from everybody on your stories, you’re on giant e-mail chains, you’re in conference calls, they’re flying everybody in for mini-spider-summits It was so much more work than just doing a book, even if you’re one of four guys. There were so many extra responsibilities on that book, and that was beginning to wear on me, because I was the only guy running the whole marathon from both teams. I had a lunch with Steve Wacker, I called the lunch and he didn’t know what it was about, and he invited Tom Brevoort along – Tom was my editor on Mighty Avengers at the time. They were like ‘okay, Dan, what do you got?’ What I pitched to them at the lunch was – I knew we were thinking that there’s no way we’re going to keep up the “Brand New Day” experiment indefinitely. It was tough, three times a month to have that all coordinated and coming out. Only Steve Wacker could’ve done that. We knew it was going to come to an end and we always felt that it was around 100 issues. We’ll do 100 issues of “Brand New Day” and go onto the next thing. The writing was on the wall that the next thing was going to be go down to twice a month and do a sister book that would be easier to schedule, which would effectively be Marvel Team-Up, but it would be called Avenging Spider-Man. We already knew the title.
My lunch pitch was ‘I want to make a play for Avenging. I know we’re doing this now, but I’d like to come off ‘Brand New Day’ and go over to Avenging if that’s possible, so I could start working on it now and you’ll have everything ready to go,’ and Steve went ‘no, you can’t do that.’ I went ‘dammit,’ because I thought that was my only lifeboat where I could keep writing Spider-Man. I’d been doing it for so long on the “Brand New Day” team, and Joe Kelly had come on and was really hitting it out of the park with “American Son” and with the Kraven story, “The Grim Hunt.” Even the small stories he was doing – his Rhino two-parter was SO GOOD – with Old Rhino vs. New Rhino and his wife Oksana dies? It was phenomenal. I was looking at those and going ‘this guy is hitting it every damn time.’ If I’m Steve Wacker, I’m saying ‘hey, Joe, stay on.’ Or if I’m not going for Joe, I’m thinking I call up Ed Brubaker, I call up Matt Fraction, the “Brand New Day” experiment is over. This is just the way I assumed it was going to go. So I was looking at this as my only out. I love Spider-Man, I never want to stop writing Spider-Man. If I want to keep writing Spider-Man, I’m jumping to Avenging! I made my big play, and Steve went ‘no.’ I was like ‘fuck! That’s it, I’m done! It’s over!’ And Steve said ‘no, I want you on the main book.’ And I was like ‘ba-doinggg?’ I did not see that coming.
Then Steve laid down the gauntlet and said ‘one condition. I know your speed, I know how you work. If you’re moving onto the next phase, you have to give up Mighty Avengers.’ I was like ‘awwww!’ We were coming right up to “The Heroic Age,” where you’d get to reinvent the book. Marvel was going through a phase for a long time where everybody was locking up the toy chests, and they weren’t letting other people play with other books’ toys – it was the same all around. Everyone was doing it, but there was this feeling, this vibe that the locks were coming off the toy chests. With “Heroic Age,” I was like ‘oh, man, I finally get to do an Avengers book where it’s not Hank Pym and – no offense to everyone who liked my Avengers run – a legion of losers.’ When I was doing Avengers, it really felt like you got to coach the Yankees, and you walked in and they left you the uniforms and took all the players. ‘Go in the farm leagues and find some guys.’ So I stole Hank and Jocasta from my own book, from Initiative. I’m like ‘fuck you, Chris Gage, ha ha ha!’ I’m like the guy who ate the food in the fridge and closed the door and laughed. No, Chris was really cool about it. I felt there were only so many guys I could poach from Initiative without doing the same thing to Chris, so I was like ‘okay, I’ll leave you Tigra, I’ll leave this guy, I’ll leave that guy.’ There were characters they were going to let me have, like Wonder Man, and I was like ‘I only want Wonder Man if I can have the Beast. Can I have the Beast?’ ‘No, you can’t have the Beast.’ There were things that got thrown at me at the last minute – Greg Pak and Fred Van Lente went ‘do you want to play with Hercules?’ I went ‘yes! yes! Give me Hercules!’ They were like ‘okay, but if you take Hercules, you have to take Amadeus Cho.’ I went ‘oh, allll riiiiight.’ But then I started playing with Cho, and he’s now like my favorite guy. At the last second, they threw us Quicksilver, and I was ‘yes, I have another Avenger!’ It really was like ‘here’s who you can have’ as opposed to who you want.
