Mike Allred: A Force To Be Reckoned With

By Mike Jozic

It came as a bit of a surprise to me when I heard that Mike Allred would be taking over the art chores on Marvel's latest incarnation of X-Force, and I was even more shocked to hear that The Atomics would be coming to an end as a result. I spoke with Mike about six months ago and he discussed, at length, how thrilled he was to be writing and illustrating The Atomics through his very own company, AAA Pop Comics. He was elated to be on his own, publishing comics and controlling the final product the way he always wanted to, and only entertained assignments from the Big Companies as a sideline or distractions, at best. His immediate future was bright and filled with Madman and Atomics projects as far as the eye could see.

Recently, that's all changed.

In a recent catch-up interview, Mike revealed some of the whys and hows of his move to Marvel, as well as his plans for the forseeable future, mutant and AAA Pop-related.

Mike Jozic: The last time we spoke, you had dedicated your life to The Atomics, but only scant months later, we find that you're the regular artist on Marvel's retooled X-Force? What happened there?

Mike Allred: I was given the ideal of ideal situations with Marvel. A fantastic editor by the name of Axel Alonso, who used to be at Vertigo but was just swayed over there, he and Joe Quesada are making a huge effort to persuade talent who wouldn't normally be working for Marvel to go over there. The offer which I was given was to completely revamp, along with Peter Milligan, X-Force. Just completely start it over again from scratch. All new characters…everything. So, I am going to do that.

You know I was doing that Spider-Man/Iron Man thing, right?

Jozic: Yeah.

Allred: That was the door that opened the rest of this.

So, after I finish the Savage Dragon story arc, The Atomics will end with issue 16. And it has a wonderful sense of closure. But also, at the very end, it will say, "Madman and The Atomics will return in Madman Atomic Comics."

Jozic: Do you know how much of a gap fans can expect between the first series shutting down and the new one starting up?

Allred: Here's my best guess. We actually have enough stuff to have something come out from AAA all through 2001.

Jozic: Spaceman?

Allred: The Spaceman Special, which I'm doing with this Pixar artist, Laurence Marvit. He's doing these painted backgrounds and then the characters are done typically, the way we do it. It just has this spectacular animated feel to it.

So, there's that as well as the four issues of the Madman Picture Exhibition Gallery…

Jozic: There's going to be four issues?

Allred: There is over 130 different pieces. I mean, this thing is jam-packed. Bruce Timm did a dozen different pieces.

Jozic: Seriously? [laughs]

Allred: Yeah. There's some people who did three or four different pieces, but there is over 120 different artists and we may have to do five issues because some people are coming in now with pieces.

Jozic: So, if you've got Bruce Timm doing a dozen different pieces, for example, does that mean you will be publishing all of them?

Allred: We're going to try to.

Jozic: Oh really?

Allred: I think it was in Madman Comics #4 we had a few pages showing what Bruce had done, but even there we didn't publish everything. We might take the best of those, then show the ones that haven't been. It's a matter of page count. We're trying to work it out now.

Jozic: That's a pretty bold endeavor.

Allred: Yeah. Jay Stephens is [also] doing a Madman/Jetcat Special, and then there's the various collections, too. The first thing we'll be doing is the next collection. We're collecting the Savage Dragon story. We're also going to have a hardcover collection of the whole series, so we'll be busy. Like I said, AAA will have at least one, if not two, things out every month.

I just did artwork for the Spy Kids happy meal box for Robert Rodriguez. The first one comes out in March and he's already shooting the second one. They're so sure it will be successful that they didn't want to wait for it to be successful and then all the kids will be grown up.

Jozic: And this is from Nickelodeon?

Allred: No, this is Miramax. This is Miramax' first family film. The first time Miramax has gone down this whole merchandising route.

So, he's doing Spy Kids, otherwise he'd be into production on the Madman film.

Jozic: Is there a studio lined up for that yet?

Allred: What, for Madman?

Jozic: Yeah.

Allred: Well, Miramax is good to go. Or Dimension, it's up to Robert. He still is talking about taking to FOX or New Line.

Jozic: Well, he still has the option, right?

Allred: Yeah, it's all in his pocket.

In the meantime, Robert and I are doing a three issue comicbook story together completely [separate] from the film. Whether that comes before, during or after the film is yet to be seen, but, in any event, no matter what I'm doing, if the film does get made and if it is finished a year from now, that's when Madman Atomic Comics would come out.

Jozic: That makes sense.

Allred: Except for Specials like Madman/Jetcat and…

Jozic: What about Madman in Space?

Allred: Madman in Space would be the first story arc in Madman Atomic Comics.

Jozic: Okay. The last time we talked you had mentioned it as a Special project.

Allred: That was when I thought that I would continue doing The Atomics monthly.

With The Atomics, we have this very loyal fan base, but it feels like we're preaching to the converted every month. So, with what Marvel is offering me right now, it's re-ignited me. Every time I work with a good writer it's time to kind of move outside of myself and stretch and grow, and the circumstances are just phenomenal. The feedback is amazing and I think, when all is said and don, what is most important is building our audience. More people are going to see Spider-Man/Iron Man, which was a major reason for doing it, but then also, a monthly X-Force comic which is our book, it's completely ours, we can build a much, much, much, much, larger audience at the same time. And when we do go back to Madman Atomic Comics, hopefully we'll really benefit from that.

Jozic: You've worked with Peter before, haven't you?

Allred: Yeah. I did a short Shade the Changing Man story.

Jozic: That was a great story.

Allred: And he's a great writer. I've been a big fan of Peter's. When I first started getting excited about comics again in the mid to late eighties, the stuff he was doing with Brendan McCarthy like Freakwave and Paradax…Wow! I've been a huge fan. So when I did that Shade story I was thrilling to that, and now, man, this is a huge leap from doing a short story and we're actually collaborating.

Jozic: You said that the feedback to the news was "amazing" earlier, exactly what kind of a response are you getting?

Allred: There are a lot of people who seem to be genuinely excited about this, but there are also a lot of people who are angry or negative about it.

Jozic: Because of the current team being booted off for you guys?

Allred: Well, the team who used to be on X-Force - Warren Ellis for one - [are] not too pleased. But I can't speak effectively on that. I'm not well informed. He's not a fan of Marvel.

Jozic: No. [laughs]

Allred: Well, what can I say? I hope he likes what we do.

I've only ever done one book for Marvel before.

Jozic: Untold Tales of Spider-Man?

Allred: Yeah. I mean, I've done a lot of merchandising stuff for them from pogs to what have you, but this is my first real beep.

It's a relief in some ways because someone else is using their brain and…it's just the perfect thing right now. It times out so nice because the Savage Dragon arc really does wrap up everything with The Atomics, and it was time to do something else. And I was struggling with what to do to get Madman out in the spotlight again. So, with this situation and talking to Robert Rodriguez about his intentions with the film, it just seems like we need to just splash out there the best possible presence. To me, it feels like we kind of need to break into this group that's never looked at our stuff before, and what's also great as far as the art on X-Force is concerned, it's exactly how we're working now. We'll be turning in the book complete on disc. Nobody's inking me, Laura's coloring, so it's a wonderful feeling of freedom and support. I'm very optimistic about it.

Jozic: And you won't be leaving The Atomics the same way you left Madman years ago.

Allred: Exactly. That's crucial. I mean, there's some sense of conclusion with [issue 12], and then loose ends are nicely tied up by the end of the next four issues with the Savage Dragon. And these four issues are just one big bam of [an arc]. I'm really happy with it.

Jozic: Will you be involved at all with Erik's World's Greatest Comic Magazine! project?

Allred: No. I was asked but I just couldn't take on anything else.

Jozic: Okay.

Allred: Robert was hard-pressed to get me to do this happy meal artwork. [laughs]

Jozic: You can't turn down happy meal artwork.

Allred: No. Talk about a big audience. [laughs] Of course, nobody will know that I did it.

Jozic: We'll put out the word.

Allred: There you go.

	Mike Jozic has spent the last several years interviewing comic book creators and other entertainment related personalities for various publications. He has been published both online and in print, with his work appearing in The Comics Journal, FearsMag.com and Silver Bullet Comicbooks. He maintains his own website at www.meanwhile.net and currently serves as the Features Editor for SBC.

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