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Wolverine (2nd series) # 61
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Nocturne, alternate reality daughter of Nightcrawler and the Scarlet Witch, has a prehensile tail much like her fathers, only hers retracts! [Exiles #42] - Submitted by Callan Brunsdon
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 | | | | What a Bunch of Hellions !!! | | |
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| | Author : Iceman (Trevor Cates) | Last Modified : 03-07-05 |
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Click on the images to see an expanded picture
Trevor: I remember when I talked to you last; you said that you had a new mini coming up. How does it feel to be expanding your one book into two and does Marvel have anything else up its sleeve for you two?
Nunzio: We hope Marvel has plenty up their sleeves. But while it may work differently for certain favorites at Marvel, for us, landing work is a slow, over-time process. We have New X-Men and we have the Hellions mini. We have ideas for more, but nothing else directly in the pipeline. It'd be fun if this book does well enough that we could do the same for the Corsairs or Alpha Squadron or another squad, though.
Trevor: A summer vacation in California; what’s the reasoning behind the teen’s trip to California?
Christina: Julian's family lives there and they're wealthy. So Julian can offer his friends a couple of weeks in the sun, lounging by the pool and sightseeing in Los Angeles. It's as good a place as any to spend their summer vacation and far nicer an option than some of these kids have.
Trevor: Can you give the fans a preview of what is going to happen in your mini?
Nunzio: The Hellions start looking into the past of Julian Keller's parents. His family life has hit a major snag, and he's just angry at his folks. But he finds a big secret there - a clue as to how they made their money. And when they dig, they find a guy who can make things happen for them, too. Each Hellion gets one wish - one chance to change their life in any way they want. So the question becomes, what do these kids want? They're not the most altruistic bunch, so will they choose something bad or selfish? And the larger question soon becomes 'what's the price?'
Trevor: Can you two give the fans a rundown of the characters involved in the Hellions?
Christina: The leader of the Hellions is Julian Keller (aka Hellion). As his name would imply, he's got some arrogance issues. He's a 16 year old telekinetic who believes strongly in the superior part of Homo Superior. Julian has led his squad into troublesome situations such as when he led the Hellions to rescue Kevin Ford from the F.B.I. He's been known to show a softer side when dealing with Sofia Mantega (of the New Mutants). He thinks she's attractive and wishes she'd switch sides to be with him. He also really likes squad mate Cessily Kincaid and has a very protective brother/sister relationship with her. As for how I feel about Julian, if I were a teenage girl (and Julian were a real boy), I'd so want to date him. But I always had a thing for dark haired bad boys.
Nunzio: Don't look at me, I was never a bad boy. Julian's very cool. He's grown on me tremendously. When we started writing him, he was just a jerk but we knew early on that making him a one-dimensional Draco Malfoy was probably a bad way to go, so we started to give him other sides. But recently, he's gotten a lot more complex, from a writing point of view, and he's frequently my favorite character to write in New X-Men.
Nunzio: The next member, Julian's flunky, is Brian Cruz (aka Tag). Brian has the ability to "tag" someone (or something) and make that person "it." It's a psionic marker that then makes all the people he targets run away from "it." It's a form of mind control, but a very specific and limited one - we may have him develop it further as he grows up. Brian's personality hasn't been developed as much as his team-mates. We've mostly seen him backing up Julian, and we've shown some of the New Mutants calling him a "yes man." So I don't have much of an opinion on him yet. I am proud of how odd his power is, though. This miniseries will explore Tag a bit. It gives us a chance to show what's behind that follower's mindset we've seen.
Christina: Tag's been hard. We haven't really established him yet and that makes him not yet second nature to write. Doing this mini-series has been good because he's starting to feel more natural. I'm getting a handle on his voice.
Christina: Santo Vaccarro (aka Rockslide) is the team muscle. He's made of rock and has the ability to detach body parts and launch them at you. He currently has no way to retrieve them other than to physically go get them back and reattach them. Santo is very much the bully you knew in high school. He's big, he's strong and he picks on those weaker than him. He particularly likes fighting with David Alleyne of the New Mutants. Santo HATES that he's never been able to land a punch on him. But he's loyal to his teammates. They're his friends and they matter to him. Writing him in Hellions has turned out to be a blast because Santo has become something of the comic relief. His journey in the miniseries is going to be... colorful.
Nunzio: For me the trick with Santo is that he started out as just a visual and not the most unique one at that. He looked very much like the Thing. He's grown by both being redesigned to look less like the Thing and by a concerted effort by us to give him different powers and his own personality. He's become kind of fun to write.
Nunzio: Kevin Ford (aka Wither) was our best known character by virtue of being a former New Mutant and the cause of all the fighting in our first arc of New X-Men. Kevin's got a death touch - anything organic that he touches with his skin withers and dies. Kevin is the artsy brooding one and his inability to touch anyone gives him a pretty bleak outlook on the world. He has a thing for Laurie from our New Mutants squad, but obviously that's an impossible situation. Kevin was introduced in our New Mutants book as a plot point, not a character. He was designed to show just how bad some of these mutations could be. He killed his father, he was a threat to his friends and he ultimately was designed to leave the school. But we do the message board thing and we discovered exactly how much people respond to a character with such a clear "curse" for a power. So we brought him back because of that. Personally, I find him tricky because if he broods too much, I want to smack him. But who wouldn't brood in his situation, you know?
Christina: Yeah, Kevin's tough... I like the broody artsy type. But the weight Kevin carries is SO heavy, it's hard to know how to handle him sometimes. He's growing on me though.
Christina: Cessily Kincaid (aka Mercury), like Santo, started as a visual. She was a background character Keron Grant drew at a table of Julian's friends in New Mutants #2. We liked the design and developed the character around it. She's made of liquid (non toxic) mercury and is a shape shifter. By being non organic, she is the one person Kevin can touch and she, in fact, has a crush on him. Unfortunately, she can see Kevin's attention is focused elsewhere. Cessily has a girl next
door air about her and is generally perky, outgoing and fun. She has a very brother/sister relationship with Julian and is just getting to know Sooraya. She's fun to write. I'm not sure why, but I enjoy her a lot.
Nunzio: I like writing Cessily and people have responded well to her. Wanting someone who doesn't want you seems to be fairly universal. The other thing about Cessily is that she is capable of literally turning herself into anything in order to make herself more appealing to people. As a teenager, that's almost an ideal ability. But it's got to feed some basic insecurity about not being able to be yourself. So when we set out to write her in this miniseries, we set out to explore where those insecurities came from and how they affect her.
 Nunzio: Sooraya Qadir (aka Dust) is another character who comes into this story with a lot of identification. She was created by Grant Morrison during his New X-Men run, and very quickly became an iconic favorite, despite the fact that she only spoke on one or two occasions and was developed more as a concept than a character. She's from Afghanistan, and was captured into slavery before being rescued by the X-Men. She has the ability to turn into a living dust cloud and has been shown to use that ability to flay the flesh off her captors. But the thing that makes her most iconic is her burqa. Sooraya has held true to her religious and cultural beliefs since coming to the United States and wears her burqa to cover herself basically from head to toe. This has led her to a culture clash with her room-mate, Noriko from the New Mutants. As to my opinions, I'd say Sooraya is a tricky, but very rewarding character. There's a very real way in which the burqa symbolizes the oppression of women at the hands of the Taliban in Afghanistan. But that is not all of what it's about. There are reasons why a woman might choose to wear one. Sooraya has left the life behind where she had no choice, but when she got here, she chose to keep the burqa. That's a tough choice to make. People expect us to have someone "teach" Sooraya to be free, but we'd rather walk that line. Freedom means being able to make choices that people like Noriko won't always understand and approve of. The other trick with Sooraya is demystifying her. We found it interesting that in all the time he wrote her, Grant never gave her a last name, showed her face or had her say more than "Turaab" (which translates to dust) and "Professor Xavier... help." We filled in those blanks after getting her in the book, and discovered that some fans preferred the mystery. But without the answers, she's just a mystery - not a character.
Christina: Sooraya was initially supposed to be a member of the New Mutants, but then Jay Guthrie was added to the book and we made the decision to keep Sooraya on the Hellions as the moral center of that team. In retrospect, we kind of like that in the current political atmosphere, we've got an Islamic character who plays the moral heart of the team.
Trevor: What kind of guest appearances can we expect?
 Christina: No major X-guest appearances. The cast is the six new Hellions with appearances by Emma Frost in Issues 1 and 4. Outside the X-verse, expect a couple of B or C list Marvel folk to cameo. We're pretty sure we know who we're going to use, but we're waiting for editorial to clear it - they don't appear until later in the series.
Trevor: Will we see any romantic relationships on their Summer break?
Nunzio: Remarkably (given how much soap opera there is in New X-Men), there's not a lot of major romance in this story. Kevin's still got a crush on Laurie from the New Mutants squad, but it's not like anything can happen. He'd kill her with a touch, right? Cessily has her thing for him, and that may be touched upon.
Trevor: In the preview solicits for the New X-Men, it states that hearts will be broken; it also states that a villain will strike. Can you give us any hints about what will be going on at "Years End"?
Christina: Just your typical end of the year stuff. A school dance, Prizegiving, etc. What with all the bizarre love triangles (or polygons as the case may be) going on, the school dance is bound to be filled with some angst. Look for Laurie to be making a major splash. As for a villain striking... well, it IS the Xavier Institute. What would a semester be without a villainous strike at least once (or several times)? And what happens if that occurs when the X-Men are away (dealing with the beginning of the House of M storyline)?
Trevor: Now I'd like to turn the attention to Mike Marts, the guru of the X-Office. Mr. Marts, What did Marvel see in the two writers of New X-Men that helped
them secure a spot with the company?
Mike Marts: Christina and Nunzio were already well established with their work at Oni and in the independent realm of comic publishing...they'd proven that they could tell exciting character-driven stories with a large rotating cast, which is exactly what we were looking for with NEW MUTANTS, and subsequently, NEW X-MEN. Though I wasn't initially involved with their introduction to Marvel, I know that their pitches were enough to impress our then President, and in turn several members of our editorial staff.
Trevor: Can you tell the fans, from a business perspective, how New X-Men is doing?
Mike Marts: Very well. We're happy to name this the "4th" X-Men title, along with ASTONISHING, UNCANNY and X-MEN. Numbers on our first trade were extremely healthy and we now have our first spin-off title with NEW X-MEN: HELLIONS.
Trevor: What's it like working with Nunzio and Christina?
Mike Marts: Always exciting. There is never a shortage of ideas with this pair. I am in contact with them several times a day, talking about everything from how Michael Ryan draws a page to how we can improve the ending of a particular issue to what we'll name one of the young kids on Rogue's squad of students.
Trevor: What can you tell the public about the Hellion mini that is coming out and are there other plans to bring Nunzio and Christina more title to pen?
Mike Marts: NEW X-MEN: HELLIONS is an exciting look into the Hellions, our resident troublemakers from NXM. Reader reaction to the Hellions characters was almost as strong as that to the New Mutants, so we knew it was only a matter of time before they got to take center stage in their own title. This is our only spin-off title planned at the moment, but who knows what will happen in the future.
Trevor: Thanks for your time guys its always a pleasure talking to you.
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