New Brevoort Formspring

Casting a book, if you’re starting from scratch and it’s not a situation where a creator has come forth with a pitch, is one of the real alchemical processes of being an Editor. It’s not entirely something that can be taught, as it relies on being able to extrapolate based on previous work what creators might work well together and might have the right approach for whatever material you’re trying to do.

In the case of the new DEATHLOK, that series originated when I found out from the AGENTS OF S.H.I.E.L.D. team that they were going to be doing a version of the character on the show, and that they were basing their approach somewhat on the McDuffie/Wright/Guice/Cowan series that I had worked on decades ago. I saw a way to pick up Michael Collins from where he’d last been left and to do something that, while it wouldn’t be the same as what the show was doing, would likely be complementary.

So in casting, I reached out to Nathan Edmondson based on the work he’s been doing on BLACK WIDOW and PUNISHER as well as his WHO IS JAKE ELLIS series. For the particular tone and style of series I had in mind, Nathan seemed to fit the bill. (And then, as we developed the series, the initial idea changed dramatically, as witness the fact that the book focuses on new character Henry Hayes, rather than Michael Collins. That’s all Nathan’s work.)

And Mike Perkins was almost a no-brainer, in that he’s wanted to do a DEATHLOK series since the day he first set foot in Marvel, and hasn’t been shy about saying so. Additionally, based on the work he’d done with me on CAPTAIN AMERICA and other things such as the UNION JACK series he did with Christos Gage, I figured that he too could hit the sort of tone and vibe that we were going for. It also helped that Nathan and Mike had met at conventions previously and talked about working together.

Is Nathan and Mike the “right” team? There’s no absolute way to know that, as we’ll never get to see exactly what some other combination of creators might have done with the same starting point and same feedback from me. But they were the right creators insofar as I was concerned, which is why I hired them for the project in the first place.