When you're writing about Marvel and DC Comics' super-powered champions and intergalactic heroes, you've got a lot of room to stretch your imagination, but you don't have total freedom. That only comes from launching a creator-owned project where the writer and his artistic collaborators own the characters whose exploits they're chronicling. Writer Charles Soule enjoys both approaches, but is perhaps best known for his work on DC and Marvel's superhero and Star Wars titles.

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That said, his body of creator-owned work is growing, and fans of Soule's work- for-hire books now have a diverse collection of titles they can check out to see how the writer tackles stories with definite beginnings and endings that unfold in worlds he and his collaborators have built, featuring original characters. Those titles include the recently launched Image Comics fantasy dramedy Curse Words with artist Ryan Brown, and the recently concluded sci-fi political thriller Letter 44 he did with artist Alberto Alburquerque for Oni Press. Plus, next year fans will be able to see what Soule can do in a different medium with the debut of his first prose novel, The Oracle Year.

CBR spoke with Soule about all three books, the cross-country Curse Words van tour he and Brown embarked on this summer, and bringing Letter 44 to a close in a time of huge political divides. The writer also made an exclusive announcement that will make Curse Words fans very happy.

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CBR: Curse Words is now into its second arc and this summer you and Ryan embarked on a pretty unique promotional tour for the book. What was it like touring the country in a van?

Charles Soule: It was an incredible experience. We travelled across 21 states. Not quite half the country, but a lot of it, including stops in 26 cities. 14 stores had us come into sign, and the appearances were fantastic. We had lines out the door, signed for hours, all of that. We met extremely enthusiastic fans who had been with Curse Words since the beginning, and I know it helped us build bridges to new readers, too. This whole tour was designed to engage with both the Curse Words faithful as well as fans of our other work – among other things, Ryan did an amazing book for Image called God Hates Astronauts and I've obviously done a lot of Marvel and DC work and some other creator-owned projects. We probably brought out some people who just liked vans, too.

When you put all that together, we met literally thousands of people on this tour, and it was really great. It had its grueling moments, especially keeping up with our regular workloads while driving around the country for pretty much a month, but it was very worthwhile.

To me, Curse Words seems like a unique blend of humor, crazy imaginative fantasy, and human drama. Is that a fair description of what you guys have been aiming for?

I think that's exactly right. That's the mix we're trying to do. The idea is that you pick up an issue, have a great time, laugh at some gags and get wowed by the incredible art and colors, and then maybe a day or so later a moment strikes you, and you sit back and think perhaps that there was more going on than you realized at first glance. Curse Words is built to work as a fantasy book, a humor book, and as a deeper book about things like emotion, heart, families, and the costs of the decisions you make in your life.

I think it's a really perfect synthesis of what Ryan and I bring to the table. He's one of the funniest artists I've ever worked with. His ability to put comedy on the page is unparalleled; I’ve found that’s a very rare skill in comics. He's also a writer, not to mention just a really smart guy. All of that is extremely helpful as we put the book together.

It's very much a joint effort between the two of us. I send him the script. He sends me art. I revise the script based on visual gags he’s added or new designs he's put into the art. The issues evolve until the very last day they go to press. The van tour was excellent for that because we were able to sit, riff, make jokes, and talk about what we wanted the book to be and where we wanted it to go.

Ultimately, we’re trying to make the book as fun to read as it is to make – and I think we’ve done a good job so far.

The other reason people seem to enjoy Curse Words is its unique cast of characters, which include fan favorite, Margaret. What's it like designing characters with Ryan?

Margaret is a great example of the way Ryan and I work on this book. The original reason Margaret exists is Ryan wanted our main character, Wizord, to have a familiar; an animal creature that helped him accomplish his various goals. There wasn’t any reason deeper than Ryan loves drawing animals. So, he arbitrarily picked a koala – as he described it to me, the thinking was just: “Koalas are fun. I've never done a koala in a book before.” Then, when I saw it, I immediately latched on to the idea, because a koala has a vaguely human shape. They have big, soulful eyes, they can pick up and hold things, and have a number of other characteristics we thought would be useful for the character.

So, we knew we’d have a koala, and then the next major creative beat for her was when I chose her name: Margaret. That’s when it all clicked into place; the way she could work in the book beyond just being a fun, cute animal. Curse Words is full of stuff like that - ideas planted early on that grow and blossom into wonderful, complex iterations. It’s hard to describe unless you’re in it, but it’s one of my favorite things about working on the book. Very organic and great.

Margaret’s origin is especially interesting considering the recent revelations about her connection to Wizord and his former flame/foe, Ruby Stitch.

That's definitely true. I don't want to spoil too much about that because I'm sure people still may not have read the first trade or 5 issues yet. This book’s all about the layers and reveals. There's a lot going on. Ultimately it's as much a book about relationships as it is about crazy wizards throwing magic at each other and trying to blow each other out of the sky.

Going forward, is Curse Words a book that can expand and follow other characters besides Wizord? Might we see Ruby Stitch step into the spotlight as well?

Yes, I would say arc two, which covers issues 6-10, is more Ruby's story than Wizord's in many ways. That was intentional. Wizord is around and definitely doing stuff, but the main character who goes through a significant change in the arc is Ruby. Then, moving forward there's another character we've already met who has a big story arc to go through.

We kind of know who Wizord is at this point. He's still the main character, and he's going to evolve more as the book continues, but with a rich cast like this you want to shift the focus from time to time.

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To that end, and this is an exclusive reveal here - between the end of the current arc, which ends in issue #10, and the beginning of arc three, which starts in issue #11, we're doing a Curse Words Holiday Special. It will look at the way all those crazy wizards celebrate various holidays back in their home dimension, the Hole World. I think it'll be a very fun issue. It's going to be drawn by the phenomenal Mike Norton, and we’re very lucky to have him. We wanted to do this to make sure we still have a “Curse Words” issue in stores for everyone who loves it, but also to give Ryan a chance to get ahead on the main storyline.

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Soule Closes the Book on Letter 44

You kicked off Curse Words while you were wrapping up your other creator-owned ongoing series, Letter 44 which just came to a close with issue #35. How does it feel to conclude a long-form comics story with a beginning, middle, and end that you and artist, Alberto Alburquerque, own?

When I was getting into comics it was always the really long runs that were the most influential on my comic reading experience, and my writing style. I'm talking about books like Preacher, Sandman, Alan Moore stuff, things like that. It was my first exposure to the idea that comics can tell novelistic stories, with each issue still working on its own as well. A lot of my longer superhero runs are built with that concept in mind. Swamp Thing was like that. Daredevil is shaping up that way. Red Lanterns was too. They're all long-form stories that have individual chapters that stand on their own.

Creating something with Alberto and seeing it all the way to the end with Letter 44 was such a privilege. So many longer comics projects just never get to the finish line for various reasons. Economics is usually #1, but so many things can scuttle a project before it ends. The fact that we made it to the end of the journey is unbelievable, and I'm so thankful to the readers for supporting, obviously Oni Press for publishing, and Alberto for staying with it the whole time; everybody all along the line has been great. I'm sad to see it go, but I'm so happy we got to do the whole thing.

Fans of your Marvel work might not yet be aware of Letter 44. What do you want potential and curious readers to know about the book?

It's about a U.S. President who on his first day in office gets a secret letter from the outgoing president. It tells him that NASA discovered aliens in the asteroid belt seven years previous, and the outgoing President’s administration chose to cover it up, while making extensive preparations for what they assume is an imminent alien invasion, or at the very least a potentially traumatic first contact situation.

Part of those preparations included a secret crewed mission to the aliens’ “construction site” up in the asteroid belt, to see whatever it is they're building up there. The astronauts have almost reached their destination when the new President takes office, and he has to figure out how he'll take care of them, and what he's going to tell them to do. It has both a real world space mission feel to it - think Interstellar – and of course, a heavy political side, something like The West Wing or House of Cards.

My background as an attorney helped with a lot of the government stuff, and I find presidents fascinating. I’m also a big space travel/space tech aficionado. I put those interests in a blender, mixed them up, and that's Letter 44 I think it worked better than maybe even I expected. People really seemed to enjoy it.

Letter 44 was always a political book, but what's it been like writing it in this time of huge partisan divides and crazy political theater?

The way I wrote Letter 44 was to do full arcs ahead of time. So, I would write six issues worth of material and then Alberto would get to work drawing it. Then I wouldn't really work on it again for six months. Because of that, the timing on the series worked out so that I had written everything, except I believe the last three issues, before this change in the political climate that you're referring to.

That means the last few issues of the book are extremely influenced by what I think is going on in the world today: a deeply divided political landscape where people find it very difficult to communicate with each other if their beliefs are different, which I think is a tragic shame.

It's funny that politics is divisive in a way that other things in the world are not even huge sports rivalries. Fans of rival teams are not going to wish each other dead and dismiss everything the other says as nonsense in the way that we seem to now. There’s also this utter unwillingness to accept objective facts, which is the worst. People are choosing which set of facts they prefer, and not considering the mouthpiece giving them those facts, or even, you know, objective reality. It’s an enormous problem that I literally think is destroying our country – or at the very least rapidly evolving it into something perhaps it shouldn’t be.

I think it's a very strange time. It's the strangest political time of my life. And while I don't wish I had started writing Letter 44 now, because I don't know if I would want to write a book like that now, I am glad that I got to finish it and make a few last statements about what I think the role of a President should be in our society. Most of that is in the last issue, which just came out. The responses I’ve gotten to it have been very positive so far. I know it felt right to me – and again, so grateful I got to write the whole thing just as I wanted to.

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Soule Enters the World of Prose Fiction with The Oracle Year

Letter 44 and Curse Words aren't the only creator-owned tales you've been working on. You also have a novel that will be released next April, The Oracle Year. You mentioned your approach to comics was very novelistic. So was it much of a stretch to move to prose?

What it stretched was time. Doing a novel alongside all the other projects that I have going on in comics was not easy, but I think it was really worthwhile. I wanted to write something in a prose context, and I'm really looking forward to people seeing what I can do over on that side of things.

The premise of the book is this: one day, an anonymous Reddit thread pops up with a list of dates, times, and a brief description of events. They're all in the future, and Reddit being Reddit, people kind of ignore it or make fun of it. Then, one by one, those predictions start coming true.

The world starts to realize that someone has actually predicted the future, and massive speculation begins about who this person could be and why this happened. This person comes to be known as the Oracle, but nobody knows anything about who they might be.

Then an e-mail address appears at the bottom of the same thread accompanied by six words: “This is not all I know.” So, just like an oracle in the olden days, the implication is that you can ask a question, and maybe you’ll get an answer.

That ends up having massive ramifications across the world in all sorts of spheres from politics, to religion, to economics, to entertainment and pop culture. As the story continues, we don't just see the effect of a prophet on the world – we also see the situation from the prophet’s perspective. We learn what the predictions mean and why they were given to the world.

It's globe-spanning, just a cool, epic story about big ideas like destiny and free will. It's definitely for fans of my work on Letter 44 and I think people who enjoy my big, long-run superhero stuff will be really happy here. There are a lot of puzzle pieces that click together the further along you read in the book. I think it's a real page turner. There’s more information about it, as well as pre-order links, up at www.oracleyear.com. Pre-ordering for novels is just as important as for comics, and if people like my stuff, maybe check it out and see if you might want to order it. I would hugely appreciate it.

So is this a story that follows multiple protagonists?

Yes. It's a multiple points of view book like say A Game of Thrones where we bounce around between different perspectives because, as I said, I wanted to explore what religious folks might think about an actual prophet who appears to be real. Or a president. Again, I like writing presidents. So, you'll get a sense of how the U.S. Government is dealing with these things.

I would say if there is a protagonist to the book it's the prophet. We get a good look at his life and how it changes, and see what kind of toll the burden of knowing what's going to happen takes on him. I found that to be a very fascinating challenge.

Do you see yourself doing more novels in the future? Is this something you'd like to do alongside your comic work?

Yeah, absolutely! I'm working on my second book now. I'm not going to say much about that now because I think ideas are best when they're left to cook without being exposed to the light of day. Writing novels is something I hope to continue as part of my writing work moving forward.

Ideally, I'd be doing everything; comics, novels, film and TV work, video games. I have balls in the air for all of those, actually. It's a matter of the projects that land first and the things that I have time to do. Generally speaking though, I couldn't be happier with the writing work I have going on.

Check back soon for part two of our interview with Charles Soule where we'll discuss the various Marvel Comics he's working on.