INTERVIEW: Waid, Ewing & Zub on Avengers: No Surrender's Month 2 Returns & Revelations

WARNING: This interview contains spoilers for Avengers#681, in stores now.

In the current 16-part “No Surrender” arc running through Marvel Comics Avengers, Earth's Mightiest Heroes have their hands full with an epic crisis wrapped in a cosmic mystery. Their home planet has been stolen by two cosmic entities and turned into a game board for a contest between them. That contest involves their rival bands of pawns, the villainous Black Order and an all-new Lethal Legion, and the few Avengers who have not been frozen by the entities are meant to serve as “obstacles.” Worst of all is the fact that when the contest is over their planet will tossed away like cosmic rubbish. All is not lost, however, as the Avengers are being an assisted by long forgotten teammate Voyager (aka Valerie Vector), who appears to have been a founding member of the team.

In February, “No Surrender” entered the second of its four-month run, and the story's writers Mark Waid, Al Ewing and Jim Zub have been delivering shocking revelations that have deepened the story's ongoing mysteries as well as setting up new players on the board. In Avengers #681, Part seven of “No Surrender,” which features art by Kim Jacinto and Mike Perkins, they did both with a story that revealed the origin of Voyager's powers and how they work, brought a classic Avenger into the main story, and set the stage for the horrifying return of the strongest Avenger of all. CBR spoke with the writers about all of these twists and turns, and the major revelations that preceded them.

CBR: Quite a bit has happened since last time we talked about “No Surrender.” One of the big reveals is that the action in the story is a contest between the Grandmaster and his opponent, the Challenger. The other is that the Grandmaster stole the Challenger's name and his sort of role among the Elders of the Universe. What inspired this angle with the Grandmaster and the creation of the Challenger?

EXCLUSIVE: Art from Avengers #682 by Sean Izaakse and David Curiel

Al Ewing: I think the Challenger was one of those aspects that we decided on at the all-day meeting where we thrashed out “No Surrender's” basic beats - the idea of the Grandmaster playing against an ancient opponent from the dawn of time, who was back for the ultimate rematch. My memory for anything that's not comics continuity is terrible, so I'm not sure when he became the "original Grandmaster" - whether that was something we came up with on the phone, or whether it was something I dropped in when I did the flashback bit. The one thing I remember very clearly is wanting to have a nice contrast between the furious, snarling Challenger of the present - with his signature growl in moments of extreme anger - and the chilled-out friend of Grandmaster in the past. In fact, I think I put down in the script that I wanted past-Challenger to act like Jeff Bridges. Oh, and I ended up using a bit of the cosmology from the Ultimates, since it was lying around.

Jim Zub: Yeah, I think the Challenger first came up during our story summit. Once we decided on the Grandmaster we brainstormed ideas for opponents. There were a bunch of ideas, but they kept taking us further and further away from the core of the game so we circled back to creating a foe zeroed in on who the Grandmaster is and what he's all about. Once we knew that, it all kind of clicked. Al did a stellar job fleshing out Challenger to make him more than just a faceless baddie, humanizing him and his desire for revenge.

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Another revelation was that we learned more about the origin of Voyager. We now know her powers are related to the idea of Quantum Entanglement and the connection she feels to every molecule and atom on Earth. What made you guys decide on Quantum Entanglement as the source of Voyager's powers? And does this sort of explain her connection to Avengers' history? Or is there still more to be revealed about Val's past and powers?

Zub: The Quantum Entanglement elements are Mark's contribution, so I'll leave that to him to discuss. He broadened Valerie's origin story and made her really come alive in that scene.

Mark Waid: Quantum Entanglement is the phenomenon that groups of particles exist whose states cannot be described independent of one another. We've discovered certain pairs of atoms, for instance, where when you affect one, the other mirrors that effect even though it's half a world away. For a teleporter, this seemed like a very good basis for her power -- that she's "related" to every other bit of matter in the universe and can thus "hone in" on wherever she wants to be.

In issue #680 the Original Wasp, Janet Van Dyne, was unfrozen and became part of the struggle for Earth. What does it mean for both you guys as writers and your cast members to have a founding Avenger like Janet back in play?

Ewing: Well, obviously there was a founding Avenger in play already. But it's nice to have a second one. I think when you're telling a giant Avengers story like this one, it's good to have continuity right back to the start, and Janet was a founding Avenger in residence during one of my personal favorite Avengers periods - the Roger Stern/John Buscema era - so obviously it's nice to get the chance to write her.

Zub: She's been through so much over the years and never stopped fighting, so that's obviously a big morale boost for the team. With the challenges still ahead, they'll need everyone they can get.

Waid: Yeah, it's very good to have a second Wasp around just in case, you know, something happens to one of them....

Issue #681 also had both Red Wolf and Hawkeye stepping into the narrative in a major way, and I noticed Hawkeye is also back in his older, masked costume. Can you talk at all about the significance of this for Clint? What made you want to put him back in his sort of classic duds?

Zub: Hawkeye calls that outfit his "formal wear" at one point, and that made me chuckle. With big colorful hero-versus-villain action like this it just felt right to bring the classic look back into the mix. It's also a lot easier to keep an eye on him in pages jam-packed with a dozen or more characters.

Waid: What Zub said. It's a classic look in a book that honors classic Avengers. If I coulda gotten Quicksilver into that green and white costume, I woulda.

Hawkeye has been both a leader of a number of different Avengers teams, and he's coming into the story when one Avengers leader, Sunspot, just took a particularly hard hit from Lethal Legion member, Mentacle, and another, Rogue, is in a pretty dark place having absorbed the powers and psyche of Corvus Glaive. So can you talk at all about his role in the story and his dynamic with other team members?

Ewing: He and Red Wolf get an important moment coming up, is all I'll say there. That's going to say more about their dynamic together than I possibly could here. And Clint has some history with another Avenger that we'll end up dealing with before this ends...

Zub: Clint loves playing the cavalry role here, fearlessly charging in to make a crucial play and save the day. He hasn't been ground down by combat like some of the others who have been chasing the Black Order and Lethal Legion from the start, so the energy boost and optimism he brings is much needed.

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Because of health reasons Kim Jacinto collaborated with Mike Perkins on Avengers #681. What was it like working with these two great artists? How did it feel to watch their pages come in?

Zub: Both artists are delivering top notch storytelling on pages that are densely packed with characters and crazy action. This kind of world-spanning fight-fest is a lot to ask of any artist and both Kim and Mike make it look deceptively easy. We're so fortunate that every artist who has contributed to “No Surrender” has pulled out all the stops.

Waid: The challenges all our artists have to live up to include being able to draw 755 characters on every page. Both Kim and my old friend Mike make it look easy.

Ewing: Kim and Mike are fantastic - each of them sizzles off the page in their own way, making every beat of these gigantic fights both clear and comprehensible and also in-your-face. I'm very happy to have them along.

Finally, it looks like there's a lot of fun and big moments coming up in "No Surrender" including the return of another founding member, one who's emerald hued and known for his “incredible” strength, that's been teased at the end of the last couple issues. Any hints you want to leave us with as the crossover closes out month two and enters month three?

Ewing: That ongoing ending tease is going to keep building until it explodes - and people who like that character are going to get a special extra something in an upcoming issue. Not to mention one of the biggest, most brutal rampages ever committed to paper, and the final stand of at least one Avenger.

Zub: For those about to smash, we salute you.

Waid: Jarvis' role in this story is a little more important than it might at first appear.

Ewing: Also, did I mention this was the last stand of an Avenger? Or two?