By Kiel Phegley
While yesterday's
extended chat with Matt Fraction shined a light on the team up work the writer does with Ed Brubaker on UNCANNY X-MEN and Rick Remender on PUNISHER WAR JOURNAL, Fraction flies solo in the Marvel U just as often with two of the company's high flying-est heroes: the Mighty Thor and the Invincible Iron Man.
With two issues of a planned three issue exploration of the Thunder God's early days—AGES OF THUNDER and REIGN OF BLOOD—soon giving way to the final chapter MAN OF WAR, the writer tackles the modern Mjolnir-wielder with the forthcoming SECRET INVASION: THOR tie-in limited series. On the ongoing front, Fraction helms the unstoppably charming and impossibly dangerous world of Tony Stark in INVINCIBLE IRON MAN, soon to be the solo Iron Man book on the stands. We kept rolling with Fraction for the advance word on both characters including why everyone loves to hate the metal-driven Thor and how the Iron Man film only affected the comic by way of coincidence.
Marvel.com: Your THOR: AGES OF THUNDER issues make me want to smash boulders and yell primal screams at the sky.
Matt Fraction: Sweet. You should totally do that. You should obey that instinct.
Marvel.com: You've spoken a lot about how you want to have that heavy metal/get pumped feeling in the book…I was wondering what you do to prep yourself to write a THOR script? Headbanging seems a likely option.
Matt Fraction: It's just metal. A lot of, like, fist pumping metal helps. I've been doing enough of it now that it just comes. I don't really need mood music or inspiration. I can just tap into my inner hammer guy and blow stuff up. But metal helps. Metal is always good whether you want to go classic and play some [Judas] Priest and [Black] Sabbath or go a little more modern with Wolfmother or Witchcraft. It's all good. As long as you're braining Frost Giants in the head, you can listen to Burt Bacharach.
Marvel.com: The third issue of the series was announced as having the title MAN OF WAR. It's a final showdown between Thor and Odin with humanity caught in the middle and Thor really kind of as the villain. Are you going to try and redeem Thor, bringing him closer to the hero modern times knows, or is that segment of his life just not playing on this series so much?
Matt Fraction: This isn't [about] redemption. This is about the fall. Ultimately, if the gods were always petulant and spoiled and petty as gods always are, then Thor was the most petulant and most petty. It's about his fall—his ultimate sins and transgressions and why he needed to be married to Donald Blake.
Marvel.com: How different has it been putting your mind to using the modern Thor in the upcoming SECRET INVASION: THOR series? Does he feel like a different character, or a more mature version of the primal one you have in AGES OF THUNDER?
Matt Fraction: He's much more likeable in the modern era. He's someone that somebody would actually want to spend time with because he's noble and wise and compassionate, where as the AGES OF THUNDER Thor is a jerk. He's the kind of guy who you want to see take a fall. So it's much more fun writing him in the modern day because he's somebody you can empathize with and root for. For all the spectacular fireworks in AGES OF THUNDER, REIGN OF BLOOD and MAN OF WAR, you ultimately want to see him get smacked.
Marvel.com: Slotting a tie-in series into the broader picture is always a challenge, all things considered. For SECRET INVASION: THOR, I get the impression that you're giving us a little back story before Thor's entrance into the fight in issue #5 of the main series.
Matt Fraction: Basically, it's how he makes up his mind to come down the mountain and go to New York. He's got a lot of issues with a lot of people. He's got a lot of issues with a lot of super heroes. He's back, but he doesn't want anything to do with anybody, and he's made that abundantly clear. This is a story about Thor sort of understanding that his personal issues and problems are dwarfed by this army and this invasion and what it means for a lot of innocent people. Basically, this is what brings Thor to New York at the end of SECRET INVASION #4—his back story.
Marvel.com: Secret Invasion has seen writers turn loads of different aspects of the Marvel landscape into new battlefronts from the magical elements in CAPTAIN BRITAIN to the gods who are in HERCULES. The classic Stan Lee/Jack Kirby THOR was always a pretty great mish-mash of mythology, science fiction and giant monsters. Do you get to play with some of that?
Matt Fraction: No. I don't think that the current THOR series allows for that. It's got much different kind of vibe. I agree with you, and I love all that stuff too, but this is not quite the place for that. This is really Thor realizing the Skrulls are coming and that they're going to go after Broxton—this little city in Oklahoma that Asgard is outside of—just to get to him. And because Thor chose to put Asgard so close to humanity, humanity's going to pay the price. That's really the root of the story, so it's a war story. It's "The Wild Bunch" starring a bunch of Asgardians and a bunch of Skrulls.
Marvel.com: Beta Ray Bill is coming back in this series. He's one of those guys fans are always screaming for—"Bring Bill back!" Did you think to include him because of that strong current of cult favoritism?
Matt Fraction: No disrespect to any of those guys, but I don't really read that stuff. It was just my desire because I love the character and the [Walt] Simonson run [on THOR], and Bill is such a tremendous asset to the toy box. And I felt that if we're going to do a tie-in, there should be some weight there. It should be more of an additive tie-in rather than a subtractive one. Bill's back. We're bringing Bill back. Will Bill stay around? Well, stay tuned, but there's an additive purpose to the [story]. So that was important to me, but I just loved the character. There's a story logic that requires him being there. Like I said, no disrespect to anyone online, but I don't need a message board to tell me how awesome Beta Ray Bill is. I love him, and I love writing him and Thor together. That was just fantastic.
Marvel.com: Speaking of Thor interacting with the Marvel U again, I want to talk a little bit about INVINCIBLE IRON MAN. Did you guys have quite a bit of lead time to prepare this series?
Matt Fraction: Not at all, actually. I got the job right before Christmas and started to script immediately. I got the job at the Marvel retreat this winter and started working on it right after. I hadn't seen the movie or read the script. I had no special access to anything they were planning or doing. I just ended up being real lucky in that I did the Iron Man book I wanted to read and hoped that the movie was the movie I hoped they were making. It turned out we were pretty dead on.
Marvel.com: While the book is very much set in the modern Marvel U with Tony at the head of S.H.I.E.L.D. and all over post-CIVIL WAR status quo nods, it feels very much like a comic book sequel to the movie.
Matt Fraction: I made a lot of educated guesses. I mean, you don't cast Gwyneth Paltrow as Pepper if she's just going to be running around in a bikini dodging falling rocks, you know what I mean? You cast a Maxim girl if that's the role. So they cast Gwyneth for a reason. And I'd already been working with Pepper in THE ORDER, so I had a huge crush on Pepper. I love Pepper, so I was already writing her, and I got to keep writing her and writing her as strong and important. But that was a guess.
And I knew that they had cast Jeff Bridges as Stane, and again, when I was breaking THE ORDER and figuring that out, they announced that. So I thought, "This will be great. I can make the son of Stane the bad guy in THE ORDER, and then there will be a Stane on the board for Marvel when the Iron Man movie comes out" not knowing that I would be writing IRON MAN. But the entire time it was Zeke Stane screwing with the Order from day one. Or if not from day one, from like day four or five.
A lot of it was coincidental. A lot of it was just good guessing, and like I said, I was really hoping they would make the kind of movie that I wanted to see. And boy did they.
Marvel.com: Well, it's more than just guessing. There's definitely a shared take on Tony's character as a super genius playboy inventor that comic fans haven't seen as much of in the wake of CIVIL WAR.
Matt Fraction: Yeah. And again, you don't cast Robert Downey, Jr. if the playboy side isn't going to come out. I just kind of went, "If I was making the movie and this was my cast" you know?
Marvel.com: Overall, what were your hopes in terms of establishing your version of Iron Man by the end of this first arc? How will the story set up the rest of the series moving forward?
Matt Fraction: Well, I said at the beginning that there's a reckoning coming for Tony, and this was interpreted as if I was talking about CIVIL WAR, but I was talking about his entire life. He was a war profiteer and a weapons manufacturer, and this is the story about those chickens coming home to roost to use that cliché again. But this is a story of a reckoning, and Stane is the tip of a very ugly iceberg hiding beneath the surface of Tony's life. He was a weapons manufacturer and designer and profiteer, and then there was everything with CIVIL WAR too. At the end of the series, we're going to see the weight that being Iron Man has on Tony Stark. Both sides of the "Iron" and the "Man" in the title [are] important to me and the price that one pays for being the other is going to be really apparent at the end of our first arc.
Marvel.com: It was recently announced that IRON MAN: DIRECTOR OF S.H.I.E.L.D. will be replaced by WAR MACHINE, making INVINCIBLE IRON MAN the one and only monthly series with Tony. What does it feel like to be leading the charge as it were?
Matt Fraction: Well, it makes me feel like I'm not going to screw anybody up. It's nice to know. Not that I don't enjoy talking to the Knaufs, and they're tremendous writers, but I think both of us were living in fear of "Am I going to have Iron Man say, 'I can't stand radishes!' and then the next issue by the Knaufs comes out and he goes, 'Mmmmm! Radishes! Can't get enough of 'em!'"? There are these little details that you never think to check. On a practical level, there's relief that I'm not going to be actively screwing anybody up with what their plans are.
Marvel.com: Have you spoken at all with Greg Pak about WAR MACHINE? Do you have any interesting building together a small Iron Man "family" of books?
Matt Fraction: I believe there will be a coherency and a consistency, but without getting too where things are going at the end of Secret Invasion, at the end of my arc and at the end of DIRECTOR OF S.H.I.E.L.D. I don't want to get too specific. But everybody's talking to everybody else. We're all marching in the same direction if coming at it from different points.
INVINCIBLE IRON MAN #4 hits stands today while SECRET INVASION: THOR #1 debuts on August 13. For more by Matt Fraction, visit Marvel Digital Comics Unlimited.
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 "INVINCIBLE IRON MAN #4 variant cover by Gabrielle Dell'Otto")
 "INVINCIBLE IRON MAN #6 cover by Salvador Larroca")
