The Avengers are known as Earth's Mightiest Heroes, so beating back apocalyptic threats to the planet is part of their mandate. Of course, change is also a crucial and long established component of the team. As far back as 1965's Avengers #16, Marvel Comics' legendary creative team of Stan Lee and Jack Kirby established that the composition of the group is something that should and will constantly shift.

Next year, those two elements along with all the other hallmarks that have made the Avengers such an iconic super team will be celebrated in a 16-part weekly tale that will run through Avengers #675-690 by writers Al Ewing, Jim Zub and Mark Waid, and the art team of Paco Medina, Pepe Larraz and Kim Jacinto. The story, titled “No Surrender,” thrusts the Avengers into a cosmic crises and pits them against two powerful teams of villains. It will serve as a farewell to the current era of Avengers stories and a springboard into the next one.

CBR spoke with editor Tom Brevoort about the story, the villains involved which include both the Black Order and a new incarnation of a classic team of Avengers' foes, and how so far overseeing such a massive endeavor has been surprisingly easy.

CBR: Tom, I've seen "'Avengers Disassembled' for the modern era" being used to describe “No Surrender, " but the scope and scale of the project reminds me though of a different Avengers epic: Kurt Busiek and Carlos Pacheco's Avengers Forever. I know the stories differ in plot, but is “No Surrender” atonal comparable to Avengers Forever?

Tom Brevoort: I think that's a reasonable analogy, in that Avengers Forever brought together a particular crew of Avengers past, present, and future from different time periods to go on a big, time spanning adventure that ultimately brought in more and more characters. “No Surrender” starts with a much bigger cast than that, but is comparable in that it brings a whole bunch of different Avengers together for a story with huge stakes, and a lot of crazy things are going to happen in it.

I think that's certainly in the ballpark for the kind of large scale adventure we're trying to do here.

You've got the lineups of the three current Avengers books that are becoming one for this story. Will we also see some iconic past Avengers like Spider-Man, Wolverine and Doctor Strange? Or perhaps some obscure ones like Jocasta and Ares?

You'll definitely see some, if not all, of those characters at least a little bit through the course of the story. Obviously, with a cast as big as we've got, not everybody can always take center stage. The characters you'll see the most of really are the current Avengers roster, the current Uncanny Avengers roster, the current U.S.Avengers roster, and the Occupy Avengers. You'll also see a couple of other classic Avengers who you haven't seen as much of lately, but they'll get into the mix as well.

Through the course of the story, we cover a lot of characters and a lot of ground. Everybody shows up for at least a panel or two somewhere in the course of the 16 issues.

Will “No Surrender” be entirely contained in the main Avengers books? Or will it spill over into tie-ins and the solo books of the various characters involved?

There are no tie-ins. It is one story, with 16 parts. Everything is in just the one weekly book. As a weekly title, it's a bit of a commitment, but it's no bigger commitment than that. One book, every week for 16 weeks.

One character being reintroduced in “No Surrender” is the former Living Lightning, now just known as Lightning.

Yes! He's not living anymore. [Laughs] Is this foreshadowing? Could be...

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I can't recall the last time I saw him in a Marvel book! What inspired you guys to bring him back?

I'm trying to recall his last appearance. I believe the last time my office used him was in, of all things, the GLA limited series we did around the time of “Avengers Disassembled.” I'm pretty sure he's shown up a couple of places since then, especially since I know the sort of energy look he has originated in a more recent book, and I'm just blanking on what it was. I believe he showed up somewhere with the Rangers within the last couple of years, and I just can't put my finger on exactly where that was off the top of my head.

[EDITOR: It was in the Scarlet Spider series a few years ago.]

So, yes, we haven't seen a lot of him, and really, the reason to bring him in was, we looked for an entry level character, a person who makes sense coming into the world of the Avengers and to some degree being the viewpoint of the reader. He had a brief career as an Avenger for a time in the 1990s, but he's not somebody who's been around and involved in that world in a long while. Now, he's suddenly been thrown into the deep end as one of the key players in trying to keep the world safe and deal with these massive crises that the Avengers deal with. He gets to see that from a ground level and very human perspective. He'll experience this big thing with epic stakes, but people like the Beast, Scarlet Witch, and Thor have done this many times. This isn't a level that Miguel is used to or comfortable with having to work on.

That helps underline that this is part of what it means to be an Avenger. This is the stuff that the Avengers get into.

Another “No Surrender” character we should talk about is the emerald-hued founder who was in the recent dental-themed teaser, which was designed to raise a lot of questions. When will those questions about the Hulk be answered?

That teaser is definitely an important part of the “No Surrender” story. It's a more important part of the second half than the first half. So that character will get prominent focus, but there is a reason that teaser says March rather than January. That's because it's really more a part of the back eight issues than the front eight issues.

So yes, those big teeth are going to appear in Avengers! So bring your floss. It's going to be that kind of adventure.

I understand the inciting incident that kicks off “No Surrender” is that the Earth is stolen by a mysterious force.

Yes, The Earth is stolen. That's how the story opens. To me, that sets the barometer. That sets the level of things we're dealing with in a very concrete way. Nobody is robbing banks here. Nobody is taking over countries. On page four of the first issue the Earth is stolen! And things just get crazier from there.

That's obviously an all hands on deck situation for Earth's Mightiest Heroes, but it begs the typical question you get with shared universe stories; what about characters like the X-Men, and the Inhumans? Or villains and anti-heroes like Wilson Fisk and Victor Von Doom? Do those characters factor into the story? If not, will their absence be addressed?

It's a little of both. They do factor into the story and their situations are addressed.

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What can you tell us about the antagonists the Avengers will face in “No Surrender?”

Through the earliest issues, there are two separate groups of villains that are rampaging and pillaging across the surface of the Earth. One is the Black Order who worked for Thanos in the “Infinity” crossover and we've seen a couple of times since. The other is a new incarnation of the Lethal Legion, which includes some old characters that have been refurbished, and some brand new characters.

So these two bands of big, heavy-scale villains are doing something that brings them into conflict with each other, and by extension the Avengers, as they deal with what they're dealing with. Part of the journey for the Avengers is figuring out what exactly is going on and why it's going on. In addition to the more basic and immediate problem of having to save innocent people and protect the peace, and ultimately get the Earth back to where it's supposed to be before we run out of things like light, heat and gravity.

The Lethal Legion has some history with the Avengers, but when it comes to a team that's sort of the Avenger's opposite number I usually think of the Masters of Evil. Why use the Lethal Legion instead of the Masters?

This is a new version of the Lethal Legion. It uses the name, but it's not specifically connected to any of the previous incarnations of the Lethal Legion.

And as to why we used these guys? The honest answer is, it's a great name that we had and the problem with them is they've always been just like the Masters of Evil, except maybe not as good. So the Masters of Evil were the ones that stuck, and the Lethal Legion were almost like the ones who couldn't quite get their Masters degrees. They're like the Bachelors of Evil or something.

Again, it's a great name that's got good Marvel history. So when we sat down to figure out who the various players would be in this the idea to call this group of characters we're building the Lethal Legion came up. It seemed like a really good fit, too. By the time this is done we'll have a new Lethal Legion. You'll understand who they are and what they're about, how they're different from the Masters of Evil and everybody else. And we'll have another group that can fight the Avengers, the X-Men, the Guardians or whoever when the need arises. We always need more good villains.

What can you tell us about the size of the Lethal Legion?

It's comparable to the Black Order, so it's about 6-7 members. I don't believe they're exactly even. I think one group is slightly larger than the other, but each group is like a team of Avengers. It's almost as though you could put them up against a a group of Avengers. [Laughs]

So in terms of size, they're not comparable to something like the giant sized Masters of Evil that appeared in Roger Stern's “Under Siege” story?

No, but this is certainly a formidable group. I think you could put them up against that particular version of the Masters of Evil and they'd hold their own. But in terms of numbers? No they're not that big.

Based on what you've told me and I've read it sounds like if I were to add genre descriptor tags to “No Surrender” it would, of course, be a superhero, action, epic. But would it also be fair to describe it as a detective/mystery tale as well as a cosmic sci-fi story?

I think both of those things are definitely true. It's also a human drama. Something happens in the first issue that gives the Avengers yet another situation to grapple with and worry about while all this other stuff is going on. So we built a story here that has a lot of different things happening at a lot of different levels. That means each issue can shift the focus around to different characters. We can also play with the tone and hopefully do things that are fun and unexpected.

So it's a big high stakes adventure, but it's also a celebration and examination of what it means to be an Avenger and what the Avengers really stand for and are about when you get down to the core of things.

When it's all said and done I imagine “No Surrender” will have a huge impact on the world of the Avengers. The Avengers touch a lot of corners of the Marvel Universe though. So will the fallout of “No Surrender” ripple out into other corners of the Marvel Universe as well like the cosmic? Or the world of the X-Men?

It will definitely have an impact on stuff beyond just this story. There will be things that come out the other side, and things that immediately become part of the publishing plan as we get into June and July. So, there will be some consequences to this story. Some stuff will be added, and some stuff will change.

Going back to your very first statement the reason we talked about it being akin to “Avengers Disassembled,” apart from the fact that it's a big, apocalyptic story, is that it kind of marks the end of an era for the Avengers. This is kind of the capstone of the last three to five years of Avengers stories. Then once we get to the end it will be a springboard into the next era of Avengers and what that will be like. This story is all about having the biggest party/biggest viking funeral you can have for this era while also setting up and moving into a new era of the Avengers.

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In terms of production each issue of “No Surrender” will feature contributions from all three of the story's writers. What's it like editing and overseeing this kind of project?

It was surprisingly easy. I honestly thought it was going to be a lot more difficult and daunting. By choosing these three guys to write this I fortunately ended up with a group that had a nice balance of skills and attributes. Also, everybody was really great at making this about the story and not about their individual contributions. They got comfortable with one another very quickly and they were very much self-starters.

Once we started rolling on this it was a fairly aggressive schedule. Right now, you and I are talking at the top of November. The first issue doesn't come out until January and all 16 scripts are done. It had to be done that way because with the three artists we have working on it, to get all of those issues done you had to start them at a certain date, and at no point did we want to try and write things out of sequence.

So we had a retreat at the top of February where we came in with some half baked, beginning ideas, a chart that had 16 boxes on it, and a stack of index cards. Then over the course of a day we threw ideas around and built the basic structure of the 16 issues.

Then, once all the notes were typed up and we were ready to go, it was a script every two weeks. And very early on these guys were self-starters. The person who was slowing this stuff down the most was me. [Laughs] Because I would be busy doing other things and I couldn't immediately read the thing that had come in. So sometimes a script would come in and there would be two or three revisions done before I even saw it. Because as they put their various contributions together the writers would talk amongst themselves and decide to make certain changes. They were so good at getting into the engine of this thing, and really working hard to make sure it all worked.

So, like I said, it was surprisingly easy and we're actually done writing the story. We're not necessarily done polishing it. As art and lettering comes in, all three of our writers will go over the issues and sand off any last rough edges and make sure everything works.

This is as far ahead as I can ever remember being on anything . . . ever! Given that it comes out weekly once we start down the first hill on the rollercoaster, there's no stopping if you want to hit every week. So nothing can go awry, and the fact that we're actually in this position means I feel a great deal of confidence in our ability to not only have it come out every week, but to keep the strong consistency of art that we wanted to have all the way through and to be able to make the end product really good and strong.

Your artists Paco Medina, Pepe Larraz, and Kim Jacinto all have great individual styles and all have done work for you on Avengers books in the past. What made you want to tap them for this particular story? And are they each drawing their own issues? Or will all three of them contribute to each issue as well?

Right now, if all goes well, each artist will do their own issues. The way it's broken down is Pepe does all the issues of the first month, and at this point he's working on the fourth of those. I've got three issues, and they're all colored. So Pepe's going to be there for the first month no problem. Kim Jacinto will do the second month, which will be issues 679-682. Paco Medina will do the third month, which will be parts 9-12. Then the final month we'll bounce around. I believe Paco does the first one. Then Kim does the second one, and Pepe closes us out with the last two.

Why did I pick them? One, they're all excellent artists who are adept at drawing a superhero team comic for which there are very specific challenges that are not always the same kind of challenges you get with a solo book. The primary one being is there tends to be a lot more characters to draw. And they all proved that they were adept and skillful at doing that.

Pepe in particular, with his work on Uncanny Avengers, really impressed me. He really took a quantum leap forward on that book in terms of his skill and style. So having him open the story is tremendous, and having him be there to close it will be great. Kim also did some issues of Uncanny Avengers for me. He's a super talented guy. Has a great style. His characters all look terrific. His action is fabulous. And Paco is one of those guys who's done a lot of stuff for a long time. He sometimes gets overlooked because he's been so ubiquitous, but he's aces! He can draw anybody and everybody. He'll give you all the characters you want. He never takes a shortcut, and he's doing fantastic work here as well.

Also, Mark Brooks is doing all 16 of our covers. He's doing beautiful work. He's sort of an equal contributor in that typically when we go to a cover artist I'll give them an idea; something like: character A punching character B. Mark is a more conceptual cover artist though, and the fact that we're so far ahead means I can give him the scripts to the issues he's drawing covers for. Then we can talk it through and figure out the best cover image to reflect or springboard out of what's going on in the book. That means I can take full advantage of Mark's creativity as well.