Originally published March 15th, 2017

CI: Hello Mr. Hastings. Thank you for joining me today. We’re here to talk about your comic that your currently writing, Gwenpool.

Gwenpool has certainly became a fan favorite character amongst many readers, having already crossed over into Champions and Rocket Racoon & Groot, as well as having several other major characters appear in her story. She’s also getting 3 different pop vinyl this month which is pretty impressive for a character who’s solo series has only been around for a year. Did you ever expect the character to be as popular as she is?

CH: No, certainly not, that being said I don’t think you can ever really guess that. But yeah no, when I was first asked to figure out how to make Gwenpool make sense at all, it was sort of just like a silly project. It was like “lets see if we can get anything out of it”. None of us expected her to go on and get a series and I think she’s like in 5 video games or something now. So yeah really unexpected.

CI: Where there any unexpected challenges when it came to writing Gwenpool?

CH: Oh for sure! Her first appearance is a variant cover on a Deadpool book, which I guess was implied that it was Gwen Stacey as Deadpool. And people liked that character design so much that they started doing fan art and cosplay of her, so we decided “alright lets try to make her a real character” but you know it cant be another Gwen Stacy. And we don’t really wanted to make it related to Deadpool, so it was like “how do you take that costume design and how do you make the expectations of what this character might be like and make her make sense without her being tied to Gwen Stacey or Deadpool, which is you know how we came to the idea of making her a person from the real world who, at least when she start off, think of the Marvel Universe like Grand Theft Auto or something where she can just mow down people and it doesn’t matter because they’re not real.

CI: Is there any particular comic or person that you draw inspiration from when writing Gwenpool?

CH: Ah sure, honestly a big one is Grant Morrison’s Animal Man, where Animal Man becomes more and more aware that he’s in a comic book and he’s being messed with by Grant Morrison. So I thought about that quite a bit

CI: Gwen has certainly picked up a myriad of companions, but can I ask is there any particular reason you picked Batroc the Leaper?

CH: Yeah, I’ve always loved Batroc. But Specifically for this book, he kind of represents this early thematic thing we had going on which is on the surface things look very silly but we can get to a real person behind it. You know the idea of a Gwenpool is pretty silly but you know we can bring a little pathos to it by showing how she misses her home, she feels guilty about stuff and she acts really brash and crazy but then she reveals that she’s really insecure. I really liked how silly Batroc is but like but there have been certain takes on him that reveal that he has his own thing going. He doesn’t have superpowers, he trains really hard, he has this obsession with defeating captain America, and I thought having a silly character that we took a little more seriously would make for a really cool mentor character to sort of challenge some of Gwen’s ideas about being a comic book character.

CI: Speaking of supporting cast, is there any one of Gwen’s possie that your particularly fond of?

CH: I really love Cecil the ghost. He’s just had a terrible time. You know Gwen thinks its so cool she’s like you have ghost powers now. This is awesome, you got an upgrade, but he’s like “No, Im dead. Its awful”.

I just like him a lot, because he’s just mopey.

CI: Will we ever see Gwen run into Deadpool, Spider-Gwen, or the newly resurrected Gwen Stacy?

CH: Um Yeah, Marvel actually just revealed a teaser, that Deadpool is actually going to be in issue 13, which comes out in March. It was very exciting. We were just working on this other arc and I had this idea of how Deadpool would fit into it and thankful the editors went with it. We wanted to just have the book solicited but marvel went “NO, this is a big deal. We need to let people know”

CI: Is there any character or series your hoping to have pop up in Gwenpool?

CH: Sure, I love the stuff with the champions, Id like to have more of the champions in Gwenpool if I can fit that at some point in the future

Also coming up we have Kate Bishop, AKA Hawkeye as well as Ghost Rider, Robbie Reese. I like having the other teen characters show up and have their perspective on her.

CI: So Gwenpool, much like half of her inspiration Deadpool, is a mercenary and tends to kill a fair amount of people. But despite that, the comic is very lighthearted. How do you manage to maintain its light hearted tone.

CH: Well we definitely work hard at it. We’ve had instances were Ive taken it too far and the editors had to step it and tone it back a bit. That said a key part of keeping that light tone is gurihiru, their work on the book. They are responsible for a lot of the visual humor and cuteness. They’ll understand for what Im going in a scene comically and they will blow it out completely with their own ideas of how it should be visually portrayed. So a lot of it goes to them.

CI: Will we ever get more details on Gwen’s relationship with her family?

CH: Sure are! We’ll be teasing that out over the current arc, and really diving in around issue #16

CI: To you, what do you think makes Gwenpool different from other 4th wall breaking comedy heroes?

CH: Well lets see, I guess that’s deadpool, She-Hulk, Squirrel Girl.

Well the big thing is that Gwen is completely justified. She came form the real world, she is not from a comic book and that is it. Deadpool is a little crazy and She-Hulk tends to be winky but never really justified 4th wall breaking from a story point of view. But Gwenpool, its at her core. Everything from her comes from that one key concept, that she knows she in a comic book.

CI: Is there any retcon that Gwen herself isn’t a fan of or character that she is a fan of?

CH: Retcon, that funny, I never thought about that. I mean she love Kamala Khan, she loves Jane Foster Thor, she loves spider-man. Part of that is that I wanted to show she is a young reader so she only started reading currently. She’s only read the newer books. She’s also a huge fan of Peter Parker. But those are her favorites, the ones she’s run into so far.

CI: Lastly would you like to leave the readers with any last words before we end?

CH: I mean Im just so happy people are enjoying. It seemed like such a weird idea and Im glad so many readers are on board for it.