By Brian Truitt, USA TODAY
Matt Fraction likens writing the upcoming Marvel Comics mega-event Fear Itself to playing bass with The Who ? a dream come true.
Marvel Comics
Fear Itself makes its debut as a seven-issue monthly miniseries on April 6. "We glibly demolish midtown Manhattan on a weekly basis," says writer Matt Fraction.
Marvel Comics
Fear Itself makes its debut as a seven-issue monthly miniseries on April 6. "We glibly demolish midtown Manhattan on a weekly basis," says writer Matt Fraction.
It's just too bad that in doing so, he's subjecting the company's greatest superheroes to their worst nightmares.
Fear Itself makes its debut as a seven-issue monthly miniseries on April 6, and not only will it feature Marvel's "Big Three" ? Iron Man, Thor and the original Captain America, Steve Rogers ? but it will also spawn several tie-in stories in other books as well as new titles (such as an Alpha Flight relaunch in June) from top Marvel creators. There also will be an exclusive weekly digital series, Fear Itself: The Worthy, that begins April 27.
Fraction is the first guy to tell you that there are a lot of chapters to the story, but he promises that readers and fans who are tired of "feeling ripped off by these crossovers that require a Ph.D. in back story and a million dollars to keep up" can get all they need from his main series.
"This is all the greatest hits," Fraction says. "You don't need anything else. The deep cuts are for you to find if you want."
The concept arose a year ago from a meeting of Marvel minds to figure out an event series that could tie together Thor and Captain America, whose movies will be released in theaters this summer. "It's about this hungry, craven, forgotten god and his mission to remake the world in his image," says Fraction, who hatched the idea with fellow scribe Ed Brubaker.
Written by Brubaker, a Fear Itself prologue came out last week that was partly based in 1942, when Nazi supervillain the Red Skull tried to conjure a mystical weapon to help Hitler fight the Allies during World War II but was thwarted by Captain America.
Now, with the Red Skull dead and his daughter Sin taking her dad's namesake as the new Red Skull, she has decided to succeed where he failed. In Fear Itself, she ends up resurrecting a long-exiled Norse deity, The Serpent, that feeds on fear and chaos the way other gods feed on faith, honor or tribute.
"He's the thing under your bed or the monster in the closet," says Fraction, who adds that The Serpent's arrival is preceded by eight mystical hammers (much like Thor's Mjolnir) falling in different corners of the world. They call out to the "Worthy": eight heroes and villains who will turn the world into a war zone.
"They're really let loose to cut a swath through the civilized world," says Tom Brevoort, Fear Itself editor and Marvel's senior vice president of publishing. "As things escalate, the world is Afghanistan: a place where, at any point, something could explode or fall out of the sky or come crashing down."
The series will be the supervillain equivalent of a coming-out party for Sin, the new Red Skull who recently had her face horribly burned off and is one of the Worthy. She's a new bad guy for a new era, Brevoort says, much like her father was a relevant Cap enemy for fans in the 1940s.
"She's sort of the ultimate trust-fund kid," Fraction says. "She's inherited the role of the Red Skull, but she hasn't actually done any of the hard work to earn it."
The writer says his first act is all about toppling the characters' safety and well-being as this threat begins to destroy "the very fabric of polite society."
"We glibly demolish midtown Manhattan on a weekly basis," he says. "But this is about taking the time to make sure we're seeing that and feeling that and sensing that and understanding what that means. Every brick counts, every hit counts, every explosion affects something.
"We get to see what happens when Captain America feels fear, and not just an 'Oh, geez, I hope I'm not late for work' fear but genuine, bone-chilling 'Boo!' fear."
Brevoort says many of the book's themes are drawn from real fears we face every day, and the positive and negative ways people respond to them. "This is a globe that's living in the shadow of fear. It's not like our heroes (haven't) fought fearsome things before, but the larger context gives it that extra layer for people to tap into."
Doing Fear Itself has been a tiny source of fear for Fraction, who has been writing monthly adventures in The Invincible Iron Man and Thor, since it's by far his biggest project to date. But it has been tempered by an equal amount of excitement.
"It really is a game-changing, status-quo-upending, earth-shaking Event. With a capital 'E,' " Fraction says. "This is the biggest thing in the universe, and it's all power chords and I love it."
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