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HEROES: Tell us a little about yourself in 30 words or less.
Shawn Connolly: Er... I'm nowhere near as bizarre as I seem? No, wait - that's a lie. Actually, I refuse to answer this question on the grounds that it seems like an invitation for cybersex. :)
H: How did you find MV1?
SC: I'd been a big fan of Randy Lander's "Snap Judgments" reviews on USENET, and one day I decided to check out his web page. Then I saw a link to THE VAULT, his creator-owned series on MV1. I read it. I liked it. I checked out the rest of MV1. I read it. I liked most of it. And I said, "well, hey - why not?" And jumped right in!
H: Lets start with X-Force your first book. Many people have said this isn't the X-Force that some may remember. Tell us a little bit about this team and the new direction for those that may not know.
SC: It better not be! :) I decided, after reading the issues of X-MEN that had been written to that point, that there was a gaping hole there. After the events of X-MEN #72, the X-Men were split into three teams, which encompassed pretty much all the X-folks ever, except for the younger kids who were said to have been sent training with Generation X. Which took X-Force out of the picture entirely.
And that wasn't the X-Force I remembered!
X-Force, to my mind, is the "rebellious youth" of the X-titles. They've got style and panache and a lot of stories to tell, but organization isn't their thing.So I figured they'd have struck out on their own. From that point, it was a matter of finding which undibbed characters I wanted to use and running with it. Mark Bousquet was kind enough to let me use Siryn for my three-part MARVEL PREMIERE arc that introduced the team, and then I was left with Meltdown, Shatterstar, and Bill the Cyborg Lobster (yep!), as well as an original character named Serendipity.
H: What can we expect in X-Force in the future?
SC: Well, more members, for one thing. Caliban will be showing up, though not in the way you may think. Madrox the Multiple Man and Garrison Kane will be joining the team, and there's one other new member... well, it should have happened by the time this sees electronic print. Cannonball will be coming back, after his short stint as a West Coast Avenger. MBQ was nice enough to say, when he realized he didn't need Sam anymore, that I could have him. It's gonna lead to some ties between the two teams that I think might be pretty fun, as well as finally getting Sam and Tabitha back together and proving that Scott and Jean aren't the only stable relationship in the X-books.
We've got a crossover coming up between X-Force and the New Warriors, too, which is gonna lead to some roster-bouncing for the two teams and a fairly close relationship there - the two teams are more similar than most folks might realize, and besides, I'd have tried writing the New Warriors if Randy didn't already have them. :)
H: Now you took over X-Men very quickly after X-Force, and you took the book in a very different direction. Tell us a little bit about why you did this, and were you plan on going.
SC: Well, here's how it is. I had come up with an idea to get the X-books out of their current level of stagnation in the "real" Marvel, that being to address the whole mutant prejudice idea. The then-on-deck writer of X-MEN didn't agree with the idea, but since most of MV1 at large seemed real interested in seeing the type of stories I was talking about, he stepped down - he didn't want to write more traditional X-stories in an environment where people didn't want to read them, which I totally understand. Then I said, "okay, so who wants to write X-MEN?" No one spoke up, so I kinda got stuck with it. :)
H: Do you mind being known as the "MV1 mutant guy"
SC: Not at all! I think that in a heavily Avengers-based fanfic group, which MV1 has always been, the mutant books have a tendency to be reviled and forgotten, which I think is a waste. The X-books have some good stories to be told, just as the Avengers do, and if I can help tell some of those stories, then great!
H: Now on another topic, you have a creator-owned book called "Protect and Serve" tell us a little bit about this book and what we can expect to see in it's future.
SC: PROTECT AND SERVE was born of a long-seated desire to see how cops - ordinary, everyday cops - deal with the particular problems set up in a superhero universe. How do you pick someone out of a lineup when they may be a shapeshifter? How do you apprehend a perpetrator when their accomplice is an Asgardian rock troll? How do you handle guys like AIM, who have plasma guns, when all you've got is a service sidearm? Things like that. It's also a way for me to show that not all heroes wear spandex. P&S has furthered my appreciation for the police, and I hope it does that for some other folks too. Also, there was the fact that I wanted to get a chance to write something for a BE that wasn't Randy, so as to broaden my MV1 horizons. :)
As for future plans, I've got oodles of 'em. Somewhere down the road there'll be some things that tie P&S into THE VAULT's continuity, but most importantly, we find out who the real bad guys are in the current storyline, and attempt to bring them down. I'm shooting for an honest, realistic portrayal of police procedures here, and let me tell you, things move a lot slower for cops than they do for the Avengers...
H: Are there any books on MV1 that you want to get a chance to write?
SC: Oh, tons. IRON MAN would be a dream for me to write, but there's a long line, and the people who're writing it are doing such a great job! NEW WARRIORS would be fun, but right now that book is Randy's baby and it's in very capable hands. I'd love to do fill-in issues for any number of titles - THE VAULT, or HAWKEYE, or SEEKERS or THUNDERBOLTS or even LIBERATORS - but for right now I've got a full plate, and my main concern is telling good stories with the books I do have. I'm considering a GAMBIT limited, or a CABLE limited, or possibly a WILD CARDS limited, but at the moment all I want to do is get some of those hardcore X-haters to maybe look at some of my stories and say "hey! These guys aren't so bad after all!"
Is that too much to ask?
