A Whole Lot of Marvel Stuff…

…has dominated my thoughts this week. The X-office hooked all the creators up for a conference call to talk about something pretty amazing that’s about to spin out of X-Force, with Craig and Chris laying down the architecture and the rest of us brainstorming about how we could tie into or mirror the core events if we chose to do so. I don’t mind admitting that I went into that call with very little idea of what I wanted to do, beyond knowing that I wanted to get Rogue mixed up in this. But then while the other guys were talking, the clouds parted, and a dove flew down. A mutant dove, needless to say. And it all came together. And Nick saw that it was good. I’m really psyched for this story, which is probably going to follow straight on from the “Devil at the Crossroads” arc – and which will bring Rogue to the last confrontation in the world that she wants or expects.

Then I solved a logistical problem in issue 4 of the Torch mini. A BIG logistical problem, that had been worrying the hell out of me. It was mostly to do with locations for the action, but also with how we played out certain beats – and what I was afraid of was banging a drum that has been banged very loudly, very recently, and having the story suffer as a result. It was a flaming dove this time, probably non-mutant.

And today I wrote a Gambit short – the whole thing, from the weird little page roughs I draw for myself all the way through to the finished script. It was one of those situations where the story has to fit into quite a small narrative space – where some of the beats before and after are set in stone. They’re often kind of perplexing and fretful to write, but this time it all clicked. Or it seemed to, anyway. Just sent the script in about a half hour ago, and I’m waiting for a response…