With artist Jason Fabok's first issue of Justice League (issue #36) with writer Geoff Johns now out on shelves, we talked to the duo about working together for the first time, the scary timing of the Amazo Virus storyline coming out when the Ebola virus has re-emerged, and how they designed that Bat-biohazard suit.

Justice League #36 cover

Check out what they had to say, then let us know your thoughts in the comments.

Justice League #37 cover

First off, congratulations on the new gig, Jason.Thanks a lot.It's so great to have Jay as a partner on this book. Talking about the book and where it's going, it's really been a lot of fun. His artwork is unbelievable. His storytelling's great. In the beginning, it really gives a great sense of atmosphere, character, action -- it's all just dynamite.[Laughs] Yeah, yeah. I redrew that thing, like, three times. There are a lot of pages in this issue that I redrew multiple times. That was probably one of the reasons why I didn't get any free days off during that first issue. Your first impression is so important in anything, and coming after artists like Jim Lee, Ivan Reis, and Doug Mahnke, I felt like I was put into the major leagues and yet I was just a guy starting in the little leagues. I don't know, I felt so out of my league, and I felt like, "Man, I've really got to put my best foot forward."I think the first issue, I'm really proud of it. I got the issues in today, and I'm looking through it. I think it's the one issue I'm the most proud of in my life. But I still see all the places where I felt the stress, and I think for me as an artist it's the kind of thing where I really gain momentum on a book and I get comfortable with it. I think it's like anything else; you just calm down, and you're really able to just let the art come out of you naturally, rather than overthinking it a lot of the time. But I still feel like this first issue is a great foot forward for me, and Geoff gave me everything I wanted to draw in that first issue.I was telling Geoff, you know, sometimes you're working on a book, like a Batman book, and your favorite pages to draw are the Batman pages. But you know there are going to be other pages in there that you're not too stoked to draw because maybe there's a bunch of cops on there that you don't really care too much about -- it's not the most exciting thing to draw. But with Geoff's League, even the pages that don't have Superman and Batman on 'em have Lex Luthor and Wonder Woman and the Flash, and all of these great characters. You just can't help but get so stoked for that when you're drawing that. It's like, every day and every way there's a page that you're like, "Man, I can't wait to draw this. I can't wait to draw that panel. I can't wait to draw Lex Luthor." To me, that just really gets you fired up. Every single day when you look at the script and you know what you're going to draw that day, it's just a lot of fun.And I can say, in that first issue, again, the atmosphere in the opening, the action with Batman and Superman, and the spread of Luthor examining the Justice League and his conversation with Diana -- all that stuff is so varied in its content. It's a challenge for a lot of artists. I think Jason makes it look incredibly seamless, but that's a lot of different skill sets when you're breaking down the story.One of the challenges of that first issue was really to put Jay through those paces, because it's preparing him for everything else we're going to do. I think with the stuff he's got coming up it's really fun working with him because I've never worked with him before. We're really learning. I'm learning about my writing and connecting with his art in every page we do. It just gets more and more fine-tuned. I'm really excited about that. It's just really fun to work with somebody -- I tend to work with the same artists, and I love working with the same artists -- so it's a real pleasure to forge a new partner in crime with Jay.I also have to say, when I first read this first script, I said to my wife, "Man, I think Geoff's taking it easy on me. He didn't give me a two-page spread with 20,000 characters fighting." Because growing up reading all these great comics, like Blackest Night and all this kind of stuff, there's always these crazy pages, and that was the one thing I said to my wife: "He's going easy on me for these first issues," but I know in the back of my mind that's going to come at some point. I'm excited for that, but I'm also terrified for that at the same time.Yeah, that's actually coming incredibly soon, Jay. Prepare yourself.Oh, no! [Laughs]I can't hold off very long when it comes to that stuff.We'll see!I had actually designed a biohazard suit during my Detective Comics run when Batman was fighting Clayface, but I wasn't really happy with that version of it. I was considering redoing that and bringing it back just to keep the continuity between it all, but Geoff had described this suit with a big Batman logo, bright, on the front. I thought, "That's such a cool visual element to it." I wanted it to be sleek and cool-looking, while still based on hazmat suits -- but also, something that would look really cool in a movie.The way that I tend to think about things visually is -- because when I grew up I wanted to be a filmmaker -- for me comic books are like film on the page. So I really wanted something you would maybe see in a Batman/Superman movie or something like that. So when I think visually about a character costume, that's how I think. The other part I think about is, "Man, this could make a cool action figure someday."[Laughs] Exactly, exactly.I'm just throwing that out there for DC Collectibles.That is a very good point, Jay.Yeah, it's fun. I actually like that Batman took the time to put a hazmat symbol on it.Yeah! [Laughs] The logo, we kind of designed this Bat-hazmat logo, and it just so happened that the Bat symbol fits perfectly into the biohazard logo. It was just meant to be when it came to that design. I want that on a shirt or something.Yes!Obviously, it's really weird and strangely timely, I guess, that the fear of the unknown -- and the origin of this story came from a couple different ideas. But first off, how do you challenge the Justice League with a world-level threat that they've never been challenged with before? Thinking about it, if humans have become superhuman or metahuman, what if another species on Earth started to evolve into a superhuman species to almost combat that? This was of course designed and perpetuated by Luthor, but it's almost like a meta-virus -- and that's kind of how they refer to it. It's the next stage in disease. If people are worried about a man who can fly and lift a car and shoot heat vision out of his eyes, imagine the hysteria and panic that comes from a virus that survives indefinitely outside of the human body and does what it does to both humans and metahumans and reacts to them differently, as you see in the issue. On top of all that, there's a lot of secrets as to why it was designed in the first place, what it's supposed to do, what Luthor's keeping pretty close to the vest. We'll uncover those in the storyline, but the whole idea was to challenge the Justice League with something they couldn't reason with. What's the motivation of a virus, you know? How do you combat something like that? Some of that fear, when I was thinking about the story was like, they're not prepared for it. In a weird way, I think a lot of people feel like we're not prepared for something like that. We say this in the second issue, but when we talk about the Black Plague, we take all of that to say that was hundreds of years ago, and all these people died. The truth is, it's still around. 2,000 people a year die from the Plague. That disease is still here. And people are like, "Oh, smallpox is eradicated." Well, actually, it's not eradicated. There are two stocks of it, one at the CDC and one over at Russia's version of the CDC; they have some there too.This stuff is more dangerous probably than nuclear weapons. The potential for disease is I think pretty frightening, and that's what we wanted to tap into and see how a team like the Justice League could unify and face something like that. One of the terrifying things is the people that can best combat it, if they get sick, then what happens? You've got to rely on other people. Right now, the Justice League is down to a few members, and they're forced to rely on Lex Luthor. They obviously causes a lot of strain and stress in the team. We'll see how that plays out in this story. But I guess it's ironic. It's also timely. It's a little scary. But yeah, we started the storyline back in May, so it was a little strange when it all happened.He's a new character, Patient Zero. We'll learn more about him next issue. Part of the thing we wanted to do was create new stuff. That's one of our goals with the book, to really create some new stuff.No, not for this arc. I threw out a couple ideas to him for maybe something else in the future.Which we're going to do actually.Awesome, that's neat. But yeah, I really feel like I've read so many different things that Geoff has written over the years. For me it's surreal because I've been a huge fan of Geoff Johns and his writing for years. He's one of my favorite comic writers, and that was one of my goals in my career: I really wanted to work with Geoff. So for me it's really just been a thing about just trusting him. I have to say, we just finished our second issue together, but I like that with this book, it's just a really deep collaboration that I haven't really had in my career.When you're collaborating with a writer, and he's willing to listen to the ideas that you have, it really helps to give you as an artist such a boost in your confidence, in delivering things, and knowing that you can take little chances here and there with maybe the way you're drawing a scene or adding something into a panel, and the writer's not going to flip out on you -- just having this great collaboration like that, and Geoff allowing me to play as well. He's allowing me to design these characters in the way I kind of see them in my head or allowing me to tell the story in those ways and having some trust coming back this way. I always love the opportunity to create characters. Patient Zero is kind of a cool zombie dude, and I had a lot of fun drawing him. There's a character in the next issue that's coming up that we kind of hint at. I had a blast drawing him and creating this new look for this character, try to do something a little different.Even getting to draw Captain Cold in a hazmat suit. Like I mentioned, I like to think more cinematically, like, "What would this look like on the screen?" But sometimes -- Captain Cold is one of my favorite villains, so designing a Captain Cold hazmat suit, I just thought it'd be funny if he's still wearing a parka on top of the hazmat and the mask. It's goofy, it's kinda cheesy, but it works. I kind of feel like I'm a little bit more free with some of that stuff, playing around and having fun with these characters. Knowing that the story's going to be a great story, I can kind of play with some of those things. So yeah, working with Geoff's been great. I've loved it. It's the kind of thing where I've been waiting to work with a writer like this my whole life. I'm just trusting in him and trusting where he's going to take the story. I'm happy with that and having a blast.Well, Jay and I both see this as a great opportunity, and working on the Justice League is the biggest opportunity there is. We've talked a lot about where we're taking the book and where we're taking the cast of characters. It really is focusing on the core Justice League post-Luthor, and Shazam, and Green Lantern's going to come back soon for the big Darkseid War storyline.Yes, he's coming back! But what we talk a lot about is the scope of what we want to make with this book. Really, with Jason coming on-board, I think it was a chance for both of us to sit down and just talk about Justice League. Our goal is to do these big, world-threatening epics, but very, very character-centric. We want to focus on character and the backdrop of these threats and how these superhumans, who are extremely different but work together and most of them have been friends for a long time, are pretty close and they care about one another. Even Luthor, in a strange way, cares about these people.But our goal with this book is to try and deliver the very best-quality book we can do. Justice League deserves the best, and we're trying to give it our all. We appreciate everybody checking it out, but I really encourage people who haven't seen the book or haven't ever read it -- Jay's first issue is designed to be an issue anyone can pick up, and you can jump right into the story. That's really what we want to do: this big, world-threatening, character-driven, accessible story. That's what we're going to be doing for the foreseeable future on the book.Yeah, and from an artistic perspective, I just want to give readers their money's worth with every single page and every single panel. I'm so excited to see where Geoff and I can take the book. I mentioned my favorite Geoff Johns story -- the first one I ever read -- and that was Blackest Night. It made me a fan of [Ivan Rice? (18:29)] and Geoff. I'm looking forward to -- as we ramp up and keep going through these stories -- to creating my version of Blackest Night and really doing something that -- I really feel like I'm doing something right now that I'm going to be really proud of in my career. I hope fans will come along for the ride, like Geoff mentioned. I'm just really, really excited and really happy to get this opportunity.One of the great things, too, you'll see Jason do is, there's a lot of new characters. Wonder Woman's got a kick-ass new costume in this. We've kind of given her this battle mode costume. We're going to be playing around with a lot of this. What we want to do is expand. The resources our characters go to are getting a little more detailed on how the Justice League prepare for things. They're not locked into one way. Just like Batman has a lot of different suits, our other characters will draw on resources, both personal and practical. We're going to bring more of the DC Universe into Justice League as it starts to affect more of the DC Universe. We have a couple things that are gonna change some of the characters and alter both heroes and villains. That's where we're going. And Jay, I just got the last page of #37. It's freaking perfect. It's amazing.Thanks. That was one I drew twice too. [Laughs]

Joshua is IGN’s Comics Editor. If Game of Thrones, Spider-Man, or Super Smash Bros. are frequently used words in your vocabulary, you’ll want to follow him on Twitter and IGN