I can’t recall the last time I saw him in a Marvel book! What inspired you guys to bring him back?

I’m trying to recall his last appearance. I believe the last time my office used him was in, of all things, the GLA limited series we did around the time of “Avengers Disassembled.” I’m pretty sure he’s shown up a couple of places since then, especially since I know the sort of energy look he has originated in a more recent book, and I’m just blanking on what it was. I believe he showed up somewhere with the Rangers within the last couple of years, and I just can’t put my finger on exactly where that was off the top of my head.

[EDITOR: It was in the Scarlet Spider series a few years ago.]

So, yes, we haven’t seen a lot of him, and really, the reason to bring him in was, we looked for an entry level character, a person who makes sense coming into the world of the Avengers and to some degree being the viewpoint of the reader. He had a brief career as an Avenger for a time in the 1990s, but he’s not somebody who’s been around and involved in that world in a long while. Now, he’s suddenly been thrown into the deep end as one of the key players in trying to keep the world safe and deal with these massive crises that the Avengers deal with. He gets to see that from a ground level and very human perspective. He’ll experience this big thing with epic stakes, but people like the Beast, Scarlet Witch, and Thor have done this many times. This isn’t a level that Miguel is used to or comfortable with having to work on.

That helps underline that this is part of what it means to be an Avenger. This is the stuff that the Avengers get into.

Another “No Surrender” character we should talk about is the emerald-hued founder who was in the recent dental-themed teaser, which was designed to raise a lot of questions. When will those questions about the Hulk be answered?

That teaser is definitely an important part of the “No Surrender” story. It’s a more important part of the second half than the first half. So that character will get prominent focus, but there is a reason that teaser says March rather than January. That’s because it’s really more a part of the back eight issues than the front eight issues.

So yes, those big teeth are going to appear in Avengers! So bring your floss. It’s going to be that kind of adventure.

I understand the inciting incident that kicks off “No Surrender” is that the Earth is stolen by a mysterious force.

Yes, The Earth is stolen. That’s how the story opens. To me, that sets the barometer. That sets the level of things we’re dealing with in a very concrete way. Nobody is robbing banks here. Nobody is taking over countries. On page four of the first issue the Earth is stolen! And things just get crazier from there.

That’s obviously an all hands on deck situation for Earth’s Mightiest Heroes, but it begs the typical question you get with shared universe stories; what about characters like the X-Men, and the Inhumans? Or villains and anti-heroes like Wilson Fisk and Victor Von Doom? Do those characters factor into the story? If not, will their absence be addressed?

It’s a little of both. They do factor into the story and their situations are addressed.

In terms of production each issue of “No Surrender” will feature contributions from all three of the story’s writers. What’s it like editing and overseeing this kind of project?

It was surprisingly easy. I honestly thought it was going to be a lot more difficult and daunting. By choosing these three guys to write this I fortunately ended up with a group that had a nice balance of skills and attributes. Also, everybody was really great at making this about the story and not about their individual contributions. They got comfortable with one another very quickly and they were very much self-starters.

Once we started rolling on this it was a fairly aggressive schedule. Right now, you and I are talking at the top of November. The first issue doesn’t come out until January and all 16 scripts are done. It had to be done that way because with the three artists we have working on it, to get all of those issues done you had to start them at a certain date, and at no point did we want to try and write things out of sequence.

So we had a retreat at the top of February where we came in with some half baked, beginning ideas, a chart that had 16 boxes on it, and a stack of index cards. Then over the course of a day we threw ideas around and built the basic structure of the 16 issues.

Then, once all the notes were typed up and we were ready to go, it was a script every two weeks. And very early on these guys were self-starters. The person who was slowing this stuff down the most was me. [Laughs] Because I would be busy doing other things and I couldn’t immediately read the thing that had come in. So sometimes a script would come in and there would be two or three revisions done before I even saw it. Because as they put their various contributions together the writers would talk amongst themselves and decide to make certain changes. They were so good at getting into the engine of this thing, and really working hard to make sure it all worked.

So, like I said, it was surprisingly easy and we’re actually done writing the story. We’re not necessarily done polishing it. As art and lettering comes in, all three of our writers will go over the issues and sand off any last rough edges and make sure everything works.

This is as far ahead as I can ever remember being on anything . . . ever! Given that it comes out weekly once we start down the first hill on the rollercoaster, there’s no stopping if you want to hit every week. So nothing can go awry, and the fact that we’re actually in this position means I feel a great deal of confidence in our ability to not only have it come out every week, but to keep the strong consistency of art that we wanted to have all the way through and to be able to make the end product really good and strong.

Your artists Paco Medina, Pepe Larraz, and Kim Jacinto all have great individual styles and all have done work for you on Avengers books in the past. What made you want to tap them for this particular story? And are they each drawing their own issues? Or will all three of them contribute to each issue as well?

Right now, if all goes well, each artist will do their own issues. The way it’s broken down is Pepe does all the issues of the first month, and at this point he’s working on the fourth of those. I’ve got three issues, and they’re all colored. So Pepe’s going to be there for the first month no problem. Kim Jacinto will do the second month, which will be issues 679-682. Paco Medina will do the third month, which will be parts 9-12. Then the final month we’ll bounce around. I believe Paco does the first one. Then Kim does the second one, and Pepe closes us out with the last two.

Why did I pick them? One, they’re all excellent artists who are adept at drawing a superhero team comic for which there are very specific challenges that are not always the same kind of challenges you get with a solo book. The primary one being is there tends to be a lot more characters to draw. And they all proved that they were adept and skillful at doing that.

Pepe in particular, with his work on Uncanny Avengers, really impressed me. He really took a quantum leap forward on that book in terms of his skill and style. So having him open the story is tremendous, and having him be there to close it will be great. Kim also did some issues of Uncanny Avengers for me. He’s a super talented guy. Has a great style. His characters all look terrific. His action is fabulous. And Paco is one of those guys who’s done a lot of stuff for a long time. He sometimes gets overlooked because he’s been so ubiquitous, but he’s aces! He can draw anybody and everybody. He’ll give you all the characters you want. He never takes a shortcut, and he’s doing fantastic work here as well.

Also, Mark Brooks is doing all 16 of our covers. He’s doing beautiful work. He’s sort of an equal contributor in that typically when we go to a cover artist I’ll give them an idea; something like: character A punching character B. Mark is a more conceptual cover artist though, and the fact that we’re so far ahead means I can give him the scripts to the issues he’s drawing covers for. Then we can talk it through and figure out the best cover image to reflect or springboard out of what’s going on in the book. That means I can take full advantage of Mark’s creativity as well.