With Ian's varied sensibilities I could see why his licensed efforts were far more than standard fare. I asked him to discuss this further.
Ian Edginton: People tend to think that you put your brain on hold for a [licensed] project...and just churn it out. But actually I think that if somebody's paying you to do a job you should do it to the best of your ability.
That's why this one has been such a hoot to do. I'm amazed that they're letting me get away with certain things. Good fun.
Bruce Costa: It comes out in your storytelling. The two issues I read really fly. It was a treat to watch your characters develop, and the build to your gripping climaxes in each issue was exciting.
Edginton: If you are paying for an Aliens and Predator book, you want shock, horror, surprises - you want everything in there. I have to deliver. It's not the same as doing a Vertigo book or a long-term Marvel book where you can afford to string things out. I like to have a payoff in each issue so people feel as though they're getting their money's worth, especially in the first couple of issues, where you're setting things up. There's a tendency to not deliver until issues three and four. I like people to get their money's worth in every issue they buy.
Costa: I noticed also that you did the careful balance of recapping prior events without interrupting the flow of the story.
Edginton: That's a touch from working for Marvel. Initially you dread it, but with the way the market is at the moment, it's only fair and reasonable to have a little jumping-on point. You can't assume that people have bought the story from issue one. Just to have a half a page to get people into the story is worth the sacrifice, I think.
Costa: How about a recap right now?
Edginton: It starts in medieval Japan with a snake-oil salesman named Li Yat Sen - a bit of a shyster. A deal has gone wrong and he's poisoned [an entire village]. They beat him [nearly] to death, and while he has managed to crawl away, he thinks he's going to die on a cold mountainside. Then, more by luck than judgement, he's saved and made [nearly] immortal when a Predator ship crashes into the mountainside.
We learn that in Japanese folklore the Predator has played a part. A warrior once beat a Predator and ate its heart, which enabled him to live for 200 years. So Li Yat Sen explores the crashed ship and, on the verge of death, finds these Predator bodies. He knows then that his luck has changed.
We cut to the present day, where [the still living Li Yat Sen, now known as Gideon Lee] is a multibillionaire. But he's still the shyster - he's still being manipulative. Lee is trying to lure Predators to Earth now, just for the sake of extending his longevity. He's got specialists working on what's left of the Predator ship, and of course they find a little hidden something in the cargo bay, namely a couple of viable Alien eggs, which happen to hatch and escape. This process actually summons Predators to Earth.
So we've got Aliens and Predators beneath the streets of Tokyo. Also Lee also has his own elite Predator hunting squad to deliver him the Predator organs that he needs to survive. So you have three or four groups of fearsome warriors and creatures all hunting each other.
Thrown into the mix is Becka, a British journalist. She happened to stumble across the Predator hunters in a third world country that had, for the first time in decades, a brief chapter of peace. But Lee sent his mercenaries in to destabilize the government again, because the Predators are drawn by "heat and conflict," as is said in the movie. Becka's cameraman gets killed and she's blamed for it. Her career is ruined, but she maxes out her credit cards, throws everything into a bag, and goes in search of a story. The story that she gets is far more than she ever imagined.
I also want to say that Becka's not necessarily a likeable person. She's a hard-nosed career journalist who doesn't mind who she walks over - the journalist-as-rock-star kind of thing. By the end she's not all full of humility, but she's had some of the rough edges smoothed off of her by what she's seen.
Costa: I am very interested in your character design decisions. Becka, as you've said, gets slammed down hard as a reward for her aggressive nature. But what about Cabot, the mercenary head of the Predator Hunters? How do you make somebody like him sympathetic?
Edginton: Yes, the ex-soldier gun-for-hire. I like to take these characters who initially aren't sympathetic and put them in circumstances that are so against them that you know their fear. Like in the final issue, when there's all hell breaking loose and people are being killed left, right and center, and Lee is clearly a few sandwiches short of a picnic, Cabot grabs Becka and says, "Stuff this!" It's not necessarily as though he sees the light and says "I'll now be a wholesome and good and lovely individual." It's more like, "They don't pay me enough! Fighting humans is one thing, but this is just lunacy! I'm getting out of here!" Then you sympathize, and have a tendency to think, "Yes, I'm with you! I can understand that! Go!" You can empathize with the guy.
I don't think there are actually any nice people in the book. There are people who you can empathize with, like Becka, who gets the rough end of the deal. She's beaten up and loses everything. She's struggling to come back, and you can empathize with her more. But at the end of the day it's unrealistic to have wholly nice people. You know what I mean - people come in degrees of grey, I think. There's nobody wholly white, and very few people are all dark and evil. I used to work in magazine PR for a few years, and I met a lot of grey people. [laughter]
Costa: I'm amazed by the number of subplots you combine. What was it like to tie together such an intricate story? Becka the reporter, Cabot, Lee's aspirations, the aliens - and the over-arching intentions of the Predators!
Edginton: Lee's got the Predator ship, which has made him a big fish in the small pond of Earth. He's got all this technology that he's only been able to unravel a fraction of, but which has given him a huge financial empire. So he thinks he's a smart guy. But the Predators are smarter still! It's people pulling strings, and having their strings pulled.
Costa: Let me get back to some of the decisions you made. Like the way you gave the reader the impression that Lee's Predator Squad was really Predators wiping everybody out. And starting the story in Feudal Japan. You have enough turns in your story to give a guy whiplash!
Edginton: I like to have lots of rugs under people, and then pull them. Like I start in Feudal Japan so that you say, "Oh, it's going to be an old story." Then you go, "Oop! It's modern day! But it's the same guy?" So then you think you're reading about Predators, but you find yourself going, "Oop! They're humans! What the--!?" And then people are so exasperated that they need to buy the second issue just to find out what the hell is going on!
Costa: Oh, yeah! I couldn't stop! I've got photocopies of the first two issues here; it would have driven me nuts to wait a month between them!
Edginton [laughing]: The book is Aliens vs. Predator, but to a certain degree the Aliens are... I want to say secondary, but really tertiary to the story. They crop up, kill and eat people, and then disappear again, but they don't actually get dealt with until issue four.
It's mainly Lee's story and Becka's story, as opposed to Aliens vs. Predator. They're devices; obstructions to be negotiated and navigated. It really is quite a human story. The humans are the monsters, to a certain degree. In fact, in the one-shot I did a little while ago called Aliens: Purge, I deliberately set out to put a spin on it and make the Aliens the good guys. I like to do strange things like that. [laughter]
Costa: I assume you're a big fan of Predator and Aliens films.
Edginton: Yes - I'm a big fan of movies in general. Anything and everything.
Costa: What among the established Aliens and Predator concepts did you most enjoy playing with?
Edginton: Ooh. It's just nice to play with those kinds of toys. But if you look at the Aliens movies and both of the Predator movies, they fall into cliche to a certain degree. You'll have the Predator close to the hero, but cloaked. Or you'll have him repeating a phrase that he's learned off somebody. Or with the Aliens it's generally running around in the dark with a monster running after you. It's great fun and it's high adventure, but it's almost reached a level of cliche now, so I wanted to try to steer it away from that in the comic. I wanted to leave the high adventure but I wanted to build in something a little more fresh. It's still a good seat of the pants movie on a basic level, and so I wanted to get a seat of the pants adventure into the comic. I think that's why Alien IV and the second Predator movie stumbled a little bit - they were rehashing. You've got to go into a new direction. It's why I came up with the idea of the Predator Hunters. Okay, they were in the second movie, but they are using Predator-derived technology - the cloaking, the spears, and things like that. I think that's a nice twist on it.
Costa: Shocked the hell out of me, man!
Edginton: [laughter]
Costa: Really! I started reading the book with a jaded eye, but man, that was such a cool idea! That was the point where the story grabbed me by the throat. Big surprise.
Edginton: And the Hunters not very far from reality today. It's stealth technology, and the way they're dressed they look kind of like Navy SEALS. So it's fairly close to contemporary military hardware. It's stretching the point just a little bit.
Costa: How do you feel that the artists, Alex Maleev and Glenn Fabry, interpreted your thoughts?
Edginton: Initially Alex and I had a bit of a bumpy ride. I think we had different feels for it. But we had a chat and threw some ideas around, and, I mean, he was really good about it. He went back and changed about 12 or 13 pages of artwork on the first issue. I don't think he was told to, I think he just did so for the sake of doing a better project.
Costa: Wow!
Edginton: Which is great. All credit to him. And then, on the second issue, we were working far more like one mind. I could not pick fault in it. It was brilliant. I was really pleased.
As for Glenn's covers, I mean, Glenn is Glenn. Glenn is exceptional. I've known him for a good few years. I just can't fault him. That's why I recommended him for the covers.
Costa: You've got a remarkable amount of experience writing licensed comic book material. When you do, do you feel as though you are writing "in competition" with another medium? Are you driven to make the comics more film-based?
Edginton: I've got a fairly cinematic eye anyway, I like to think. When I'm laying stuff out and I'm running through it in my head, I've got a movie running. Like in the bit where Lee is climbing the mountain, then it's all dark, then he turns to see the ship come zooming overhead, then he's bathed in brilliant light for a second, then you see the crash. To me, that's a movie sequence. So I tend to think cinematically. I don't think that I'm in competition; I'm not thinking, "Whoa, I've got to make this as much of a movie experience as possible!" Just for high-impact scenes and cool sequences, I do movie-style storytelling.
That reminds me - apparently [having the Predators bring Aliens to Earth] was quite a coup. Phil Amara, the editor, said that since the Aliens: Earth War comic that came out back in the '80s, Fox hasn't let anybody bring the Aliens back to Earth because they couldn't find a good enough reason to actually let anybody have Aliens on Earth. But, apparently, the way I did it I was okay.
I didn't even know I got away with something! Blimey!
Aliens vs. Predator: Eternal #1 is the first of four 24-page, full-color issues. It is written by Ian Edginton, drawn by Alex Maleev, with painted covers by Glenn Fabry. The first $2.50 issue ships June 24th.