Are you going to be taking a break from Marvel to focus on creator-owned like Hickman/Remender? If so, I hope this means you'll still be writing Darth Vader.

Yup, I’m still be writing Darth Vader.

It’s less of a deliberate move to writing creator-owned work, and more of a lot of commitments coming to a head, and realising my schedule won’t support anything else like an ongoing - especially when Vader is basically a book and a half. In terms of what I’m committed to write it’s…

DARTH VADER (1.5 Monthly)

WICDIV (Basically Monthly)

MERCURY HEAT (Monthly)

UBER (on haitus, but still being written on a 6-week deadline)

As well as that, PHONOGRAM, SIEGE, CROSSED, ANGELA are all coming out and need me to work on them. Especially Phonogram, that’s not a small amount of work.

Put it like this - as frustrated as I was when I realised that Ludocrats wasn’t going to happen this year, I also realised that taking 3 issues out of my schedule wasn’t a bad thing in any way.

I’m doing a few other small little things, some of which are WFH, some of which aren’t, but they’re usually limited commitment, which is a different thing from an ongoing.

Realising that this is how it was going to be was one of the reasons why I wanted to do SIEGE. A sort of swansong to that era of my work seemed a fun thing to do. I like throwing going away parties.

I think it’s for the best. I’ve enjoyed what I’ve done at Marvel, but I’m aware that I’m starting to feel a little burned out on the MU. Both Iron Man and Young Avengers took more out of me than I was completely aware of at the time, and the work there has often felt hard since that (With the notable exception of SIEGE, which was designed to be a giggle.) That writing Darth Vader was so freeing made me suspect that even if my schedule hadn’t demanded it, I’d be better taking a step away from the MU and superheroes for a bit to recharge. I’ll see where my head’s at in 2016.