Tuesday Q&A: Jeff Parker
The prolific writer talks about staying on the Hood’s good side during Dark Reign, plus AGENTS OF ATLAS, EXILES and more
Posted May 26, 2009 12:00 am
Updated May 29, 2009 9:50 am
By Kevin Mahadeo
Beginning this week, join writer Jeff Parker for a look under the Hood with his latest limited series exploring the personal life of the Marvel Universe's kingpin of killers in DARK REIGN: THE HOOD.
"It goes back to where he started when Brian K. Vaughan and Kyle Hotz did the initial limited series with him," says Parker. "We get to see the more human side and I think readers will be surprised expecting not being able to sympathize with him and then they do."
Parker says the book takes the Hood down the thin gray line between hero and villain and allows readers to better understand the once-reluctant criminal's actions. Along with his work on THE HOOD, Parker also explores the path of the questionable villain with his ongoing series AGENTS OF ATLAS, which finds the Atlas Corporation pretending to work alongside Norman Osborn, and quantum leaps his way across the Marvel omniverse in the recently re-launched reality hopping title EXILES.
Parker took some time out from his busy schedule to talk about Parker Robbins' softer side, unleashing the Hulk on the Agents of Atlas and his desire to make sure Professor X doesn't end up with a moon-sized head.
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DARK REIGN:
THE HOOD #1
cover by
Marko
Djurdjevic |
Marvel.com: You've said DARK REIGN: THE HOOD takes things back to the original Hood limited series, and even brings back the Hood's girlfriend. Are they still just dating or are they married at this point?
Jeff Parker: She's still a girlfriend; or a baby-mama as I like to say. [
Laughs]
Marvel.com: When the Hood first started off, he acted as a criminal for a few good reasons, one of which was that girlfriend. Recently, we've seen him more or less embrace villainy as the new Kingpin. Which side will we be seeing in the new series?
Jeff Parker: We're trying to make it all mesh together. He's certainly a lot more powerful than he used to be and has a lot more influence, but in many ways he's still hustling. It's like people who suddenly find themselves in a bigger job find that the whole "hustling to keep their lives together" doesn't go away. It just scales up. He's still trying to take care of his mother. Now his girlfriend has their child, who is about a year old and trying to learn how to walk. And of course now he's worried that he doesn't want anybody to get close to them and know about his family. It actually just ramps up the tension of it and scales up everything that was already there.
 |
DARK REIGN:
THE HOOD #2
cover by
Marko
Djurdjevic |
Marvel.com: As this is a Dark Reign tie-in, will we be seeing a lot of villains appear, especially someone like Norman Osborn considering his standing in the Marvel U?
Jeff Parker: Yeah. We see one of [the Hood's] meetings with the Cabal and how that goes down for him. He realizes that everyone there is a big deal and has been doing this stuff a lot longer than him. Really, his best thing is to keep his mouth shut and let everybody just
assume he's a badass. [
Laughs] Which he is, but not on a Doctor Doom level by any means.
Marvel.com: What's his relationship like with Norman Osborn? Do they talk at all or does Norman just call him when he needs something done?
Jeff Parker: They way we handle it is that they talk when they need something done. At one point, you'll see some of the Hood's mob get rounded up and obviously he has to put in a call to Osborn to get them freed. That's kind of their understanding. And when Osborn wants something done, like have the Punisher killed, he doesn't want to dirty his hands so he goes to the Hood and says, "You're perfect for this sort of thing. Send your people out to kill him."
 |
DARK REIGN:
THE HOOD #3
cover by
Marko
Djurdjevic |
Marvel.com: "Hey, you're expendable and you have goons. You do this."
Jeff Parker: Goons are important. [
Laughs]
Marvel.com: You mention his powers, and it has been revealed that his hood is connected to Dormammu. Are we going to be seeing more about that here?
Jeff Parker: That's actually a big part of our series. [Our story] falls in time a little before some of his other appearances [in NEW AVENGERS]. He's a little worried about how much influence Dormammu has over what he does and he starts taking steps to try and do something about it. In one issue he's actually going to meet Satana because he needs a magic expert to tell him exactly what's going on and what he's dealing with.
Marvel.com: I like how when he needs a magic expert he goes for the attractive female magic expert as opposed to anyone else.
Jeff Parker: Yeah. Well, his weak spot seems to be women. He can be as tough as ever with any men, but he always gets a lot hung up over women.
 |
AGENTS OF
ATLAS #6
cover by
Leinil Francis Yu |
Marvel.com: Speaking of men getting hung up over women, that reminds me of Venus from over in AGENTS OF ATLAS. In that title, the team is trying to pretend to be the bad guys in order to take down Osborn. What exactly is their game plan?
Jeff Parker: They're trying [the] subtle approach. They got into Osborn's head briefly and they're trying to find ways to undermine him instead of taking him on directly, because no one seems to be having any luck with that. But unfortunately, they start getting enough of their own problems, and you can't just keep fighting the government because you got to take care of what's going on with you.
Marvel.com: Recently, we saw them try to secretly foil their own weapons deal in order to save lives while still maintaining good credit with Norman. Are we going to see more of that: them trying to appear bad but still walking the good line?
Jeff Parker: You'll see more of that. But at this point, they may have crossed too many lines where even if they tried to admit to people they're not really [bad], who is going to believe them? So, the necessity of going undercover like this has made it hard for them and guaranteed that they're going to get into a lot of fights with Marvel heroes.
 |
AGENTS OF
ATLAS #7
cover by
Leinil Francis Yu |
Marvel.com: The Agents of Atlas have always been this sort of underground, secret team. Even tying into Dark Reign they're keeping with that theme. Do you prefer it being this way where they're not straight out in the open and appearing everything in the Marvel Universe?
Jeff Parker: Oh yeah. It's a tricky line to walk. I want them to interact with more characters because it's a big, fun playground. But at the same time, every book has its own agenda going on and there's big plans in place for where the whole storyline of the Marvel Universe is going. So, we're going to try to step where it makes sense to go and be our own book as much as possible. So far, everybody who has appeared in the book fit in there pretty logically.
Marvel.com: Can you talk about some other people you may be bringing in logically?
Jeff Parker: Obviously the next one is the Sub-Mariner, so we're going to spend some time with that. Then, a bigger one will be the Hulk in issue #8. That's one I've been wanting to do for a while because it's fun to just wind Hulk up and let him go and watch how they have to deal with him.
 |
AGENTS OF
ATLAS #8
cover by
Leinil Francis Yu |
Marvel.com: How are they going to deal with him? I guess they always have Venus as their trump card to pull out...
Jeff Parker: Well, they think the same way. "Hey, we've got Venus." But then the situation in issue #8, right before he started changing into the Hulk these creeps in this lab injected him with all sorts of drugs, so his body is trying to burn off all these chemicals and there's no reasoning or seducing him at the moment. He's just crazy Hulk and it's generally like being in a giant pinball machine with him like that. He doesn't really say much beyond "Rawr." [
Laughs]
Marvel.com: You said the Hulk is someone you always wanted to play with, but is there anyone else you really, really want to bring into the book at some point?
Jeff Parker: I'd like to them to run across the Fantastic Four at some point. I've always thought that'd be a natural because I think of the FF as being the first step of the super heroes out of the Atlas Comics era. They're sort of a combination of what they were doing then with the monster books and the romance stuff and even the Human Torch, who was a Golden Age character. So, I'd really like to have them meet up, but not in quite the way you'd expect.
 |
EXILES #3 cover
by Dave Bullock |
Marvel.com: You're also working on EXILES. This new takes the book back to its roots of reality leaping. You look at the realities in the early days of a TV show like "Sliders" and they were based on some level of logical digression. That is, what if America lost the Revolution or the atomic bomb was never invented. Do you plan on taking a similar approach in coming up with the realities you'll be visiting?
Jeff Parker: My big thing is that I don't want them to be arbitrary. "Here, Professor X has an enormous moon-sized head." We're making an effort to show why each planet they go to is the way it is. And to build in the fact that it's not a play world. These are real worlds, so what they do there matters. I like playing with the science fiction of it and showing if everything is different, where the point diverges. And we tend to have the Exiles find that stuff out on their own. [They] used to have it spoon fed to them, but now they have to feel out the place and find things out on their own.
Marvel.com: Panther is one of the new characters you created for the series and he has received much praise from fans. Are you surprised with how popular he ended up being?
 |
EXILES #4 cover
by Dave Bullock |
Jeff Parker: I was really happy because I was hoping people liked him. One of the things I wanted to do was to finally have a Panther who gets to have some personality. Typically he's always a very serious character and it was fun to just turn that on its head a little bit. So, I'm really glad people are warming up to it.
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