Marvel's weekly WAR MACHINE

By: Tony Whitt
Date: Wednesday, September 12, 2001

The Marvel MAX line breaks new ground this month, and not just with adult content and added violence. Chuck Austen's series, U.S. WAR MACHINE - one of three titles launching the MAX line - is a weekly black and white format comic book priced at only $1.50. It's a bold move for Marvel, and as far as Austen's concerned, it's the wave of the future.

Austen, whose recent work on Brian Michael Bendis' ELEKTRA has turned the head of many a comic book fan, started out as a commercial illustrator, but soon moved into comics in the 1980s because of his love for the medium. His first big break came with Alan Moore and MIRACLEMAN in 1986, under the auspices of Eclipse Comics (under the name Chuck Beckem). He also did work for Slave Labor Graphics, Malibu, and Rip-Off Press. Eventually, however, Austen left comics for a time to pursue other work.

"I'd actually moved over into the animation field," Austen says, "working on shows like KING OF THE HILL and THE SIMPSONS, as well as some smaller projects, like TRIPPING THE RIFT, a CG animated short that's been shopped around as a series or film [co-created and co-produced with Chris Moeller and available for viewing at www.trippingtherift.com]. Now I'm back and I couldn't be happier about it."

Austen's background in animation has heavily influenced the creation of U.S. WAR MACHINE, a series whose production is more akin to the fast-paced manga of Japan than any comic currently on the American market. The black and white format resulted from a happy accident, one which changed the way the series would be produced and marketed.

"I sent WAR MACHINE to [Marvel Chief Editor Joe] Quesada cold as a pitch proposal for a monthly color comic," Austen says, "but the sample pages I sent were in grey-toned black and white. The process I was using involved a lot of animation techniques, and I told Joe off-handedly that I could probably turn out a book a week with little problem. He decided he wanted me to put my money where my mouth was, and actually produce a weekly black and white, manga-style comic. I lined up the crew, and a few months later we're just finishing up the tenth issue.

"We decided to do black and white because we both realized that we had a common goal: to reach as wide an audience as possible as quickly as possible," he continues. "The world has changed and we're competing with some fast moving but expensive forms of entertainment. Computer games are sixty bucks a pop. Cable is sixty bucks a month. Joe and I (and Bill Jemas) believed that if we could return comics to their original purpose as cheap, disposable forms of entertainment that competed [with the spectacle of] a Hollywood movie, we might recharge the industry in a new and vigorous way. My dream was to see people reading it and folding it up into their back pocket while eating ice-cream."

But it's more than a marketing gimmick; it's quite a story as well. Though U.S. WAR MACHINE is set in a fictional near future, one separate from the current Marvel Universe, its story is grounded firmly in the real world and current affairs.

"DARPA and the US government are heavily involved with creating a better soldier," Austen explains. "They're doing this, not through any Captain America super-soldier serum, but through technology. Early designs for prototypes involve helmets with everything from night-vision and world-wide communications arrays to GPS systems. They also include mechanical limb support, or exoskeletons that can assist the soldier in carrying more weight longer distances. Some also include light-weight body-armor.

"I took this concept to a logical conclusion, using something already in the Marvel Universe - the War Machine," he continues. "Originally, the War Machine was just another variant in Iron Man's arsenal, but it evolved into something more. I wondered what would happen if this armor existed in the real world and the government got hold of it, something they'd dearly love right now. Would the inventor, Tony Stark, one of the greatest scientific minds and avowed pacifists of our day, be happy about it? Would he stop production because of his moral beliefs? With a weapon this powerful, could our military just ignore it and let it go?

"Add in a world-ending threat, some cool action sequences and a cast of colorful characters and I thought it was a fun premise. Apparently Joe Quesada did as well."

Tony Stark and the War Machine design, however, are really the only recognizable elements of the Marvel Universe in this otherwise groundbreaking concept. In every other way, the world of U.S. WAR MACHINE is unique unto itself.

"This is the Marvel Universe if super powers, for the most part, did not exist," Austen says. "Anything Tony Stark created does or will, at some point in a future series, exist. But that's the end of the connection. This is a great WHAT IF story: what if Tony Stark existed in the real world and created the War Machine armor, then told the government they couldn't have it?"

The plans of our own government are not the only real world concerns that influenced Austen in the creation of the series. He was also inspired by current events, such as "the tensions and race wars in Eastern Europe and the Middle East [and] the violence in my own town, violence that people not only commit, but relish committing. U.S. WAR MACHINE is a chance to expend all my negative feelings about this situation in a creative way, as well as a lot of positive feelings and hopes."

As positive as that venting will be, it'll also be a violent and bloody one. All the MAX titles are being marketed towards a more mature readership, and U.S. WAR MACHINE will be no exception. Austen says we'll see all the violence, strong language, and adult situations that would garner any film an R rating.

"I never worked under the Code, thank God," Austen says, "but the level of suspense and characterization I'm allowed in the mature line would never have made it through under the Code's evil eye. I do some pretty horrible things to the characters in U.S. WAR MACHINE, but they have purpose and consequence and allow a level of emotional involvement that the Code would prevent. It would have been a shame to short-change those ideas. I love this story and have had a great time doing it. I would have been less proud of a Code-neutered version."

Despite the recent controversy when printer American Color Graphics decided not to print ALIAS #1 due to its "offensive" contents, Austen is not in the least concerned about a negative backlash against U.S. WAR MACHINE.

"Controversy is good," he says. "Anything that stirs up that much interest and gets people talking is always good. And someone will print it. Not everyone sees everything the same way, let alone as 'offensive and unprintable.' And ACG was perfectly within their rights to not print ALIAS. If something offends you, you shouldn't have to do it or see it. It's not like they destroyed the original art so no one could ever see it."

Despite the potential for controversy - or perhaps because of it - Austen admits to being incredibly excited by the project.

"It excites me that it's weekly and still 24 pages," he says. "It's not a monthly broken into weekly installments. It excites me that it's a story Marvel allowed me to do with no interference whatsoever. It excites me that I've been so supported creatively by a company and a group of individuals like Joe, Bill, Smitty and Ralph, people who love the project as much as I do and put their all into making it work. It excites the hell out of me that I got to tell this story, a story that's been percolating in my head for over a year now, one that I thought I'd never get to do because no one knew who the hell I was."

If readers aren't excited enough by all this, Austen has a foolproof way to get those copies sold:

"I'd yell, 'Buy U.S. WAR MACHINE! It's only a buck fifty!' Then I'd stuff it in their pants and run away screaming, 'They're stealing! They're stealing!' They'd have to buy it then. Or go to jail. Which would you choose?"