Rick Remender is leading the charge into Marvel NOW! with Uncanny Avengers. The new book will feature a hybrid team of Earth’s Mightiest Heroes and Children of the Atom. Remender has won acclaim for his work on undercover teams for both franchises (Uncanny X-Force, Secret Avengers) and for making eclectic team rosters work.
Before AvX tie-in issues Remender created an ominous new threat in Secret Avengers. The Masters of Evil are back with a new leader and an entire nation under their control. The Descendants are a new race evolved from the most famous and infamous robots in Marvel history. Remender tells Marvel.com about what’s next for Hawkeye’s covert team.
“I kind of look at [AvX] as an interlude [with the temporary team]. So, coming back into the regular fold, we open up with Hawkeye discovering that things are amiss in Bagalia, the red light nation, where we saw [him] and Captain America take a visit back in SECRET AVENGERS #21.1. And this is the arc where I am wrapping up all of Ed [Brubaker] and Warren Ellis’ Shadow Council stuff, taking all those threads and moving them toward one big story that ties in with the Master of Evil, Bagalia, Ibis [and] the Shadow Council. We drop in a squad of Secret Avengers who expect something is amiss but they don’t have any idea of quite the magnitude of what they’re about to deal with. You always want that escalation.
So Hank Pym and Captain Britain are out dealing with Descendants investigations, trying to figure out what’s going on. We keep that Beast story percolating in the background, and the team here is Hawkeye, Venom, Ant-Man, and Valkyrie being sent down to Bagalia to investigate what’s going on, and that leads us to a four-issue story which I’m just calling “Masters of Evil right” now. The new Masters of Evil and how they all came together has a nice twist that [will] get revealed around issue #30.”
Remender revealed that Uncanny X-Force is getting a new member.
“Well it’s something that we saw Grant Morrison touch upon in his last arc, with the evolution of E.V.A. becoming her own person, and I would put a big Spoiler Warning over this: If you’ve read UNCANNY X-FORCE #27, then you know that Fantomex takes the hit. It was something that Grant had set up as happening in his future story and I thought that it would be nice to respect that and actually show it happen. Beyond that, I also wanted Fantomex to take the hit because this is going to be a very Wolverine-centric arc. All the characters have had a lot of spotlight time in this, but Wolverine has not had a lot of personal stuff to deal with. And here he is now where the methodology of X-Force and what they’ve done with Evan, and then Fantomex cloning and growing a new Evan, have left Wolverine in a bit of a spot where he’s got this student of his who’s Apocalypse. And this is because of Fantomex, and now Fantomex is not there. Fantomex is off the picture so he’s dumped this in Wolverine’s lap to deal with.”
For the entire interview here’s the Marvel.com link.