Making Mine Marvel

Behind the scenes of Wastelanders: Star Lord

Hey everyone!

Hope you all had a happy Thanksgiving if you happen to celebrate, and a happy couple of extra days off if you don’t!

So, December’s here, and if all goes well with printing and shipping (hardly a guarantee these days), at the end of the month we’ll see the release of Wastelanders: Star Lord on 12/29!

Featuring 2 outstanding covers, by Josemaria Casanovas and Will Sliney

I thought I might talk a little bit about my process in writing the story, and the learning I did along the way. It’s something I myself had been curious about for a long time - what would I do if I got invited to pitch a Marvel story? Where would I start?

Write Star Lord? Moi?

So, first thing is, I didn’t exactly seek this particular job out - I love the Wasteland Universe, I love Star Lord, but I had no idea they were even planning this book. The editor of the series reached out to me, to ask if I wanted to pitch some ideas – based on some of my previous work that he’d read, he thought I would be a great fit.

I took a deep breath, and tried to play it cool by not writing back immediately. I think I lasted about 20 minutes before shooting back a very enthusiastic yes.

The next step was figuring out what exactly I wanted to write.

Homework

After a couple of discussions with Mark, the editor, I had a good handle on what he was looking for, in terms of when the story would be set, and how it needed to fit in with the continuity. I actually had a lot of leeway in the sense that there were no characters or situations that were off-limits, per se, though I did have to make sure I wasn’t contradicting things that were already established.

Now, I’m pretty well read when it comes to Marvel, and all the “Old Man” books, but it had been a while. So I dove in, concentrating particularly on the two excellent Old Man Quill volumes by Ethan Sacks and Robert Gill, for obvious reasons.

And, I really wanted to understand the bigger picture of where the Wasteland was at, so I read the original Old Man Logan, from Mark Millar and Steve McNiven, all the way up through Dead Man Logan, by Ed Brisson and Mike Henderson.

And, while I was at it, I also read Old Man Hawkeye, Wasteland Avengers, and pretty much anything else I could get my hands on, as well as listening to the podcast that inspired the new series, written by Ben Percy, and starring a bunch of crazy talented people like Chris Elliot, and Danny Glover.

But wait! There’s more!

So, that was the wasteland covered - but what about our boy Quill? If we’re talking the current incarnation of the character, we’re talking about 15 years of stories! That is a lot, and I didn’t really have time to hit every single Guardians story, so for this, I did the highlight reel and read some of what are considered to be epic runs, going back to the original Annihilation event, to Sam Humphries’ Black Vortex saga, through the present day.

It was a lot of reading (and listening), but hardly felt like work at all. What I was really looking for were story hooks - who were some interesting people in Peter Quill’s life that I might be able to bring back into the mix, what were some events I could reference? How would time and the hardships of the Wasteland universe change some of the relationships he’d had with people? How would it change his perspective?

Time to Pitch!

I came out of all that with what I thought were 4 solid ideas, and a fifth that was “ok”, but not as strong as the first ones. I put that one aside, and took a hard look at what I had, deciding on developing what I felt were the strongest three, and keeping the fourth in reserve, in case Mark didn’t like anything from the initial round.

Why hold it back if it was a strong idea? I didn’t want to overwhelm Mark with too much to choose from. He’s a busy guy, working on much bigger books than this every day, and I didn’t want to take up any more of his time than I needed to by making the decision unnecessarily complicated.

Three strong ideas felt like a good foundation to provide a range of choices, but not so many that choosing a winner would get bogged down by all the options.

So, I wrote up short synopses of the chosen three, and pitched them over a phone call.

Luckily, Mark dug them all! But at the end of the day, he had to choose, so he let me know which one he felt was the best fit, and it was off to the races!

Until Next Time, True Believers.

I’ll talk a little bit more about the writing process next time, as this is already getting a little long. But, I hope you guys enjoyed the peek behind the curtain, and that you’ll pick up Wastelanders: Star Lord when it comes out on 12/29!