The Corner Box

NEXTWAVE: Agents of H.A.T.E.: The Finale! A Corner Box Deep Dive S2Ep12

• David & John • Season 2 • Episode 11

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John & David wrap up their deeper dive into Nextwave: Agents of H.A.T.E.! The guys make a noble attempt at trying to explain The Captain’s drunken origin, Machine Man’s dark origins, Elsa’s childhood training origins, Forbush Man’s pot, the magic of the Warren Ellis/Stuart Immonen collaboration, the Crayon Butchery Variant, Nextwave’s crazy covers, fun Easter eggs in each issue, and the greatest line in all comics. Also, David makes yet another shocking (to him) discovery.

Timestamp Segments

  • [01:48] The origin of The Captain.
  • [02:25] Kicking cops?
  • [03:57] John’s favorite Dirk Anger scene.
  • [06:09] The Crayon Butchery Variant.
  • [08:53] Machine Man’s origins.
  • [10:02] Crazy characters.
  • [11:24] Nextwave goes down?
  • [12:40] The greatest line in comics.
  • [15:02] Elsa’s childhood origins.
  • [16:30] Forbush Man’s pot.
  • [19:17] Where’s Tabitha?
  • [21:25] Nextwave’s covers.
  • [22:49] Stuart Immonen’s 6 double-page spreads.
  • [24:54] The big finale.
  • [26:26] A few extras.
  • [27:43] Nextwave’s legacy.
  • [28:46] David’s shocking discovery.
  • [29:21] Marvel continuity.
  • [30:26] Stuart Immonen’s changing styles.

Notable Quotes

  • “Nextwave doesn’t work, at all, if Stuart Immonen isn’t drawing it.”
  • “I don’t think issue 2’s were planned, at all, when issue 1’s were written.”
  • “Mark Millar licks goats.”
  • “You must buy 6 copies of this comic now.”

Relevant Links

David's Fun Stuff!
Did Someone Say Fun Time? Let's GO!

John is at PugW!
Pug Worldwide

For transcripts and show notes!
www.thecornerbox.club

Errata & Shout Outs
sktchd.com
Dave Harper's article

Books Mentioned

Welcome to The Corner Box, where your hosts, David Hedgecock and John Barber, lean into their decades of comic book industry experience, writing, drawing, editing, and publishing. They'll talk to fellow professionals, deep dive into influential and overlooked works, and analyze the state of the art and business of comics and pop culture. Thanks for joining us on The Corner Box.


[00:28] David Hedgecock: Hey, everybody. Welcome back to The Corner Box. I'm your host, David Hedgecock, and with me, as always, is my good friend, the magnificent John Barber. We went a little long, last time. So, we're going to dive right back into our very deep dive into Nextwave: Agents of H.A.T.E., the Warren Ellis and Stuart Immonen 12-issue series from back in the day. Alright, let's go.

We move on to Issue #3 and #4, and in Issue #3 and #4, a cat creature of some sort inhabits the body of this dirty cop and possesses this cop. He is a really awful police officer, who's not a good guy, at all. They established in the beginning of the story that this cop's just a piece of crap, basically, but this cat creature alien thing habits him, possesses him, takes him over, and for some reason, that causes him to be able to start grafting machine parts onto him, and by the time we get to Issue #2, he's a Voltron-sized Robocop, is rampaging through the city, and Nextwave has to come in and clean the mess up. In Issues #3 and 4, this is where we get the origin story of The Captain. definitely drunk. It's so stupid. He's just basically in an alley, and these two aliens see him, and they're like, “yeah, maybe we should give the powers to this guy,” and they give him the powers, and he notices them. He thinks they're leprechauns and then beats them up to try to get their gold, and that is the origin story of The Captain.


[02:15] John Barber: He thought, when you hit leprechauns, they turned into gold coins. That's not even the thing about leprechauns. So good.


[02:25] David: The conclusion of Issue #4, which is the end of the second 2-issue story arc, the cat alien creature is pulled out of the cop, the giant robot’s destroyed, cat creatures pulled out of the cop, Tabitha Boom-Boom nonchalantly explodes the cat alien thing into a million bits, and then she looks to the police officer, and he's like, “I'm the police,” and he's down on his knees, he's obviously messed up, and she goes, “oh, man. You're a cop?” and he says, “yeah, I'm a cop,” and she says, “you're kidding me,” and then she says, “I hate cops,” and then she starts kicking him. She starts kicking him over and over, and then the [Machine] Man, Aaron Stack, comes up and says, “hey, what's going on?” and she says, “he's a cop,” and then he starts kicking him, too. So, a cop, they're the most annoying fleshy ones. Thankfully, Monica Rambeau shows up and puts an end to the nonsense, but I'm really glad they established that the police officer was not a good guy in the beginning, because not that it makes it that much better, but palatable.


[03:36] John: Thankfully, they leave him alone with his friends, who clearly kill him by the end of the issue.


[03:43] David: Yeah. Again, not a good cop. Villain by any account. That's not why they're kicking him. Tabitha or the [Machine] Man, they're--


[03:53] John: They don't know that. They’re not aware of that.


[03:55] David: That's so awful.


[03:56] John: Yeah. This is one of my favorite bits of anything, is the scene with Dirk Anger, who's the Nick Fury-type. It's a one-page scene. 6 panels. Panel one’s a door. Panel two, you cut inside. It's the side view of Dirk Anger, and he's talking on the radio. Panel three, you pull back, and he's sitting on a giant 6-shooter, the barrel of which goes forward and then loops back in a U-shape directly toward his head. He's got a big lever that's connected. You can see the lever connected, mechanically, to the trigger of this giant revolver, and then on the ground below the revolver and the scaffolding that’s holding it upright, are five bullets, and it's the next panel, the same angle, he pulls the lever, the hammer goes back, and just click, and then he looks down and says, “I'm so alone.” I remember seeing this in black and white, just being blown away. I don't know. All the stuff that Sienkiewicz and Frank Miller were doing, in Elektra: Assassin with crazy S.H.I.E.L.D. stuff, just solidified into one really clear panel. One of the reasons this thing works is, Warren Ellis is coming up with all these ideas, but the other part of it is that Stuart Immonen is completely on board, understands what's going on, completely enhances all of it, and then manages to tell all the story that's in there, because there's a terrible version of the scene that doesn't work, but the fact that you see these five bullets on the ground explains what's going on. There's no question of, how is this going? The storytelling is complicated and interesting, but clear, which is fantastic.


[05:33] David: Nextwave doesn't work, at all, if Stuart Immonen isn't drawing it. It certainly is the combination of the two. The magic happens between the two, but without Stuart, I don't see how this thing could have ever been pulled off the way it is. There's another scene, I think, in the first few issues that I don't really talk about, but Dirk Anger is wearing this giant telephone, old school telephone. It’s supposed to be some sort of upscale telecommunication device. The panel-to-panel is just that. He pulls the joke off really well. So, we move on to Issues #5 and #6. In Issue #5, we get the Crayon Edition, and I got some marketing copy. So, by Issue #5, it seems maybe sales weren't exactly where they needed to be. So, they're bringing up the hype machine a little bit to get things back up. So, they try the Crayon Edition with Issue #5, and this was the marketing copy for that.

Do you love Nextwave: Agents of H.A.T.E.? An avid fan of coloring books? Boxers or briefs? Well, you're in luck because you, the reader, get to be the colorist for a very special Variant issue of Nextwave: Agents of H.A.T.E. For Nextwave: Agents of H.A.T.E. #5, Marvel is releasing both a regular version, as well as a Crayon Butchery Variant. Now you can not only read, but COLOR, Monica, the Captain, Boom-Boom, Machine Man, and all your favorite Nextwave characters. Be careful with Dirk Anger. He'll get mad (angry?) if you mess up. Plus, you can make the myriad of explosions drawn by Stuart Immonen and Wade Von Grawbadger all sorts of pretty colors, like magenta. Mmmmm…magenta. Tell your local comic retailer that you want your Crayon Butchery Variant! Yes, CRAYON BUTCHERY VARIANT!!! Marvel is putting the crayon in your hands with this very special Nextwave: Agents of H.A.T.E #5 Crayon Butchery Variant. Just remember to try to stay inside the lines, or it's your head. Oooga booga.

That's how they do a contest with CBR, Comic Book Resources. I think they do a contest in it. So, if you color it and turn it in, you were going to win an original piece of art, I think from Stuart Immonen, but I thought that was a pretty funny way to do a very crass marketing ploy. I remember, at the time, when this came out, it was very blatantly, I'm sure it was Warren Ellis that was saying this, “we just want you to buy 2 copies. Just buy 2,” which is funny, in a day and age when Issue #5 of any kind that has at least more variants.


[07:57] John: Yeah.


[07:59] David: We're so far beyond the pale of what this is, but anyway, that was pretty good. The Issue #5 and #6 really seemed to get things rolling, in terms of things starting to get a little unhinged. First of all, Dirk Anger, himself, truly does start becoming unhinged, and then in this issue, there’s so much good stuff in this one. In this one, is the scene where we see the [Machine] Man, you said that Ralph Macchio was a little upset about that, or he had returned to revisit this scene? So, we do get a scene in Issue #5 of [Machine] Man standing in front of these celestial gods, and they're looking down on him in judgment. They're just basically like, “you're such a f*ckin’ loser,” and they basically just boot him out of celestialism, and that's how Warren Ellis resolves the whole celestial storyline for [Machine] Man.


[08:53] John: Yeah. It's funny, I really like the original Machine Man. The weird origin of Machine Man is, he is a spinoff of 2001. Jack Kirby created him in Marvel's 2001 comic, and spun him off in his own series. That 2001. For some reason, I randomly picked up an issue of Machine Man, and it happened to be one that I already owned from when I was a kid. I don't know where it is, but I remember reading it in high school, or something. It's got a number of goofy scenes. Machine Man's at this party and this woman comes up to him and says, “someone's turned on the music, R2D2. I’ll dance if you'll dance,” and Machine Man says, “sorry. I never dance at funerals, especially when the corpse is still warm,” and then he starts walking away, and this guy says, “leaving so soon?” “It's much later than you think.” “I’m not sorry to see him go. Despite his tricks, he's a drag,” and then the Machine Man's outside the door. He's like, “merrymaking on the eve of destruction. It's just not my style. I wonder if Noah felt this way before the rains came,” and you’re just like, “man, this guy is a downer. They're not wrong. The celestials are kind of right about him.”


[10:01] David: Yeah, that's pretty good. So, we get a resolution to [Machine] Man and learn a little bit about where he's been. Also in this issue, Dirk Anger throws a kitchen sink literally at Nextwave. We get cuddly koala bears of death. We get the Assault Pterosuit Flock, which is a bunch of guys in pterodactyl suits flying around with lasers. We get Samurai Batch 23, which is basically robot samurais. We also get a flashback scene for Tabitha Boom-Boom, where Elsa Bloodstone turns to her, at one point, and says, “you sure you can handle all this?” because they're in the middle of this fight with all this crazy stuff, and Tabitha flashes back to a scene where Cable from X-force, her former headmaster or group leader, whatever you want to call him, is saying, “Tabitha, quickly. To me, my X-Bait. Help me lift my gun. Technorganic prolapse imminent,” and then it cuts back to her, in present time, where she says, “I've had to handle worse things than robots with big swords.” The Technorganic Prolapsed Sphincter of Cable is mentioned in this issue, and that's where we leave off Issue #5.

Issue #6 introduces homicide crabs, and Dirk Anger and the H.A.T.E. team, throwing all this stuff at the Nextwave team, are winning, and it looks like, in Issue #6, that Nextwave is going down, and then [Machine] Man, Aaron Stack, shows up, he quickly infiltrates the H.A.T.E. aerosubmarine, and produces a flowery dress, that he goes outside and holds in front of Dirk Anger from outside, and says, “if you don't leave right now, I'm going to burn this dress,” and it's a dress that Dirk Anger wears to soothe himself. So, Dirk immediately calls all the troops off, and they run away, and [Machine] Man gives him back the dress, and that's how Issue #6 ends, John.


[12:18] John: Yes, it does.


[12:20] David: Victory through dress threatening. It just keeps getting sillier from there. In Issue #7 and #8, Dread Rorkannu, not to be confused with Dread Dormammu, shows up and releases the Mindless Ones, and this issue has the greatest line, I think, I've ever read, and the funniest line I've ever seen in a comic book. We cut to a scene with Dirk Anger. He's very upset. He's very frustrated and sad, because in the last issue, he's been defeated, and he's just moping, and more suicidal than ever. So, he's in the commissary, putting some drug cocktail together. It's not clear, but there's pills on the desk, and he's got some weird pink stuff that he's mixing and eating. It's obvious there's pills in there, in whatever he's eating. Over the loudspeaker, it says, whoever's talking to him is bringing good news to him, like “hey, Dread Rorkannu and the Mindless Ones are going to take down Nextwave,” and he's all, wait, what?” and the guy says, “yeah, we don't have to intervene, Sir. We can just watch them kill the Nextwave Squad. I've prepared your special vibrating chair and everything,” and this is the genius of Stuart Immonen. He draws these great faces of Dirk Anger, going from just angry and frustrated, and mopey, to just incredibly excited. He's slapping the bowl of this concoction, of whatever he's eating, off the table, he says, “Hot damn. Get me a case of vodka, 8 loose women, and a stomach pump, stat. Imma watch TV,” and I wish this was video, so we could show that picture of his face. It’s so funny.


[14:12] John: Yeah. He sells that scene.


[14:15] David: He sells that so well. That's Issue #7. by Issue #8, you've got Mindless Ones basically opening the issue with a dance scene.


[14:24] John: The Mindless Ones are going around being normal Mindless Ones fighting, until the last page of the first issue in this story arc. One of them picks up a hat, and then they're all riding skateboards. I don’t know if there's ever any explanation for this, is there?


[14:39] David: No. The only explanation is that the Mindless Ones start doing the mindless things that we as humans do. Because they've taken over the town, they’re essentially taking over the mindless activities of the humans in the town, but that's not stated, explicitly. That's just inferred through the art, and it's pretty funny. It's a nice way to set it up to just, no comment. Just do it. We get Elsa's origins of sorts, in this. We get her as a baby, an infant, where her dad's just throwing her into these various awful pits of vipers and battling demons, and stuff, and she's 3.


[15:17] John: Well, she's an infant with a spoon and she gets dropped in that hole.


[15:21] David: Train her and toughen her up.


[15:22] John: Yeah, but it pays off a little bit later when she goes, “I learned that trick using a baby spoon.”


[15:29] David: That's right. There's a couple more great lines. Dread Rorkannu, at one point, says, “you violated my gate of fire, which is not the title of an adult movie,” which I thought was pretty on the nose, but also really funny. By the end of this issue, Dirk Anger accidentally hangs himself. He does actually do the deed and kill himself, which is a bit of a shock. When you're reading the book, you’re like, “oh, crap. He killed himself.”


[15:52] John: Yeah. It doesn't come up immediately. So, he's fine. He's just dead.


[15:57] David: And by the end of the issue, The Captain Rorkannu, the Dread Mad Wizard from another realm. He defeats him with a scrub brush from a toilet, and it's not clear exactly what he's doing with that scrub brush, but it's awful, whatever it is, and that's how we end the fourth 2-issue story arc. Issue #9 and #10 reintroduces Forbush Man to the Marvel Universe, along with the New Paramount, which is just a collection of superheroes that, I guess, probably, I know Forbush Man existed before. Forbush Man in the Marvel Universe was just a cartoonish character with a pot over his head and two eye holes cut out of the pot, so he could see. I don't know anything much more about Forbush Man than that. He’s a sidekick. He's not really part of--


[16:47] John: He was in Not Brand Echh, which was the name of a Marvel parody comic. I've never read very much of that. I do think he had already been established to exist in the actual Marvel Universe, but I'm not 100% positive where, or in what way. The other heroes, I think, they're all the parody versions of the Marvel heroes from Not Brand Echh.


[17:12] David: Oh, okay. The Nextwave team goes about defeating all the New Paramounts rather handily, until they get to Forbush Man, who it's revealed, has one of the most powerful powers in all of the Marvel Universe, when he takes his pan hat off, and this is where things get really crazy and cool. Forbush Man has a power of the mind, where he places all of the team into these alternate realms, in their minds, locking them and slowly killing them, or they're dying in these scenarios that they're acting out in their minds, and we see what each of the different heroes are living through in their heads, and I think there was a discussion about this, but Stuart Immonen chooses to render each one of these stories that are happening, in the minds of the characters, in a different style. Immonen is just out there, just doing Mike Mignola, and it's perfect. So, he does a Paul Pope-ish look. I don't know who he's aping on the second one.


[18:20] John: The second was Dan Clowes.


[18:22] David: Oh, Dan Clowes. Okay. So, thank you. He does a Dan Clowes thing. Then he does John Paul Leon, I think, is who he's doing next, and then in the final one, he's doing, I'm telling you, man, it's Mike Mignola. Elsa Bloodstone’s story is this perfect little Mike Mignola homage, and it's incredible that he's doing this in the middle of a book where he's drawing in his Nextwave style, as well.


[18:47] John: The Mike Mignola thing is pitch perfect. That’s the one that’s the most evident to look at. It isn’t that he rendered it like Mike Mignola, or something. It's the Mike Mignola panels. They're structured like that.


[19:01] David: It's structured, yeah. Its structure, its camera placements, the whole thing. It's spot on. I was like, “oh, man. Did he just pull pages out of some Hellboy and then just trace them, or something?” It's spot on. Anyway, Forbush Man is luckily defeated. So, all the characters are slowly dying, except for Tabitha, who we don't see. We cut back to Nextwave, the reality of the book, and Tabitha is standing there, and apparently, she's such a brainless teen that the mind control powers don't even work on her, at all, and she just easily takes Forbush Man out.


[19:38] John: So, one of the things that I think is fascinating is, and I don't really know if this is true or not, I don't think issue twos were planned, at all, when issue ones were written, because there are a lot of times, just to pivot on what these things are about, where Issue #1 is not about Forbush Man's mental powers and these other universes. It's a really a big riff on all of the stuff that had come out after The Authority that Warren Ellis and Bryan Hitch had made, down to making fun of the specific names that they would use. The Surgery, the Vestry Disease. It's really a parody of The Monarchy, which was a vague spin-off-ish thing that Wildstorm put out. Then it, inexplicably, for a moment, sets up Tabitha, wearing the European flag on her shirt, and a full-page is devoted to just talking about her wearing that shirt, and then it doesn't come up until the very last page, where she says, “do you think this letter on my chest stands for America?” In response to being a victim, which is a parody of Mark Millar's bit in Ultimates, “do you think this A on my head stands for France?” about surrendering. It's such a parody, or reference to, or whatever, of the post-Authority superhero universe. The logo is the old Ultimate logo, and it completely pivots into this totally different version of the story that is completely satisfying, in the context of Nextwave. It's great, but it seemed like he was setting up a problem for himself at the end of the first issue, and then it's like, “well, here's how you can--”


[21:13] David: Just ignore it. Yeah. So, we get, sadly, to the last two issues. Maybe not sadly for our listeners, at this point. Issue #11 has the only Civil War cover. Nextwave largely ignores Civil War, but the cover just states clearly, on the cover, it says, “not part of a Marvel Comics event,” and also, [Machine] Man is standing in the background, holding up a sign that says, “Mark Millar licks goats.”


[21:44] John: I believe that was Nick's line, and I can't remember if Stuart or Warren came up with some lines for these, and one of them had to get replaced, for some reason, or if they just came in blank and Stuart was just like “Nick and Sean, you guys figure out some lines,”” because the covers in this comic are super crazy, for the time. They don't look like anything, we haven't got into that, at all, but it comes up here because it’s the one that's a straight-up Civil War parody, the half-cover they were doing, except the bottom’s a dark checkered pattern, instead of—


[22:18] David: Yeah, the red. […] color.


[22:21] John: Yeah. “We don't care” is the lead sign on that cover. That's what you put on your penultimate issue – “we don't care.”


[22:29] David: “Please love us.” “Mark Millar licks goats.” Fantastic cover. In Issue #11, we learned that Dirk Anger is still around. He's just a zombie now, and wanting to eat people's brains, but still able to act pretty much effectively, as the leader of H.A.T.E. still, or as effectively he ever is. This is the issue, Issue #11 is where Stuart Immonen, once again, just shows that he is insanely good, and Ellis sets him up for success with six double-page spreads. It's one long, the characters are running down this tunnel, and in this tunnel, is an onslaught of different monsters and bad guys, attacking them as they're running through this tunnel. So, you just get this side-scrolling videogame-style look in each of these double-page spreads, and one of the things, in the marketing, that they were encouraging people to do, was to rip all of these double-page spreads out of your comic book, so you could lay them all next to each other, and you could see it all in one thing. The implication being that you were going to buy another-- well, they didn't imply, they said, “you'll have to buy a second copy, so you have one copy that's still in mint condition.”


[23:44] John: The third spread says, “you must buy 6 copies of this comic now.”


[23:47] David: Oh, that's right. Even better. Yeah, it tells you to buy 6 copies, so you can lay all the spreads next to each other, but it is a really fun, cool series of double-page spreads that you get in here, annoyingly interrupted by double-page spreads of ads, in each one, but still really fun and really cool, and I am tempted to go buy six issues of this, so I can lay it all out like that.


[24:12] John: I will say, that is a beat that lands better in the trade paperback than it did in the comic. I loved that in that Groo comic I was talking about a couple of weeks ago. A similar “keep turning the spread. We can't believe it's a spread,” but it just keeps going, and it ends with Giant Gorilla Wolverine, and a bunch of tiny monkey Wolverines, a snake built into an airplane that it is flying, or a squadron of those, bananas with clocks, time bomb bananas that also have fuses. It's crazy and wild, and fun. Blue pirates.


[24:49] David: Elvis M.O.D.O.K.


[24:50] John: Oh, that's right. Elvis M.O.D.O.K.


[24:52] David: Issue #11 really delivers, art-wise, and then Issue #12 is the big finale. Prior to this, we think we've met the big bad, who is the leader of the Beyond Corporation, but in Issue #12, we learn that, no, he's not actually the real one. It is actually a Baby M.O.D.O.K, which is revealed to be the ultimate villain, and you're laughing in shock, for a moment, and then you turn the page, and Baby M.O.D.O.K. is also killed, and it's revealed that this female Baby M.O.D.O.K. is not even the ultimate bad guy of the Beyond Corporation. In fact, it's Devil Dinosaur.


[25:29] John: Who’s wearing a smoking jacket and holding a glass of champagne, and speaks with a British accent.


[25:36] David: So, Devil Dinosaur is the ultimate big bad of The Beyond Corporation. He's eaten Moon-Boy and is just angry.


[25:45] John: The best part is when he drinks the champagne and it dribbles down the side of his mouth, but he just keeps talking. There's all these little visual beats that nobody brings up, but that are so well played. By this point, Ralph Macchio had given up, and was like, “well if they did that to Fin Fang Foom, I just know that's not the real Devil Dinosaur.”


[26:07] David: Macchio’s brain’s just breaking. It's already broken, at this point. It's hilarious. This is the thing that got Ralph Macchio out of comics.


[26:16] John: Just talked to Ralph yesterday. He's not out of comics. 


[26:18] David: Oh, okay. That is Nextwave, everybody. This deep dive’s getting deep. I want to throw in a couple of extra things, John. A couple of other things that I thought of interest, of this book, and you noted as well, already, was the letters page for this particular series was rather entertaining, as well. The letters page was answered by the Beyond Corporation’s Lettermattic 7053, and it would answer the letter columns in just a humorous manner, keeping well in the theme of the story itself, and at one point, I think the Lettermattic gets taken out and a different Lettermattic replaces it. It's some fun shenanigans in the back, but definitely worth noting, definitely showing how much thought and time was put into this particular series. Nick Lowe himself, who was editor, I'm sure was doing a lot of that stuff.


[27:13] John: Nick and Sean Ryan. Sean Ryan would go on to write Suicide Squad and wrote on a TV show about the Wayne Corporation. Sean was at Marvel and DC for a long time, a freelance writer, and still is. You get comics that you have to do sometimes when you're working places. Usually, you try to find the things you can like about every comic.


[27:32] David: For sure.


[27:33] John: And have a good time with everything, but then there are some that are just super special, and for those guys, Nextwave was a super special book, and a great legacy. This really is a comic that you can just pick up today. You don't need to know the background, and stuff. All the background’s laid out in here. Even though, a lot of it is directed at stuff from that time period, there are pieces of it that are dated. I mean, the references to the SuicideGirls, the website, which wouldn't happen now, for 6 different reasons, not all of which have to do with the content of the SuicideGirls, but just you're not going to mention a real website in a Marvel comic anymore. How do they get away with that? Anyway, sorry. Go ahead. You were talking letters columns. I just got into how much everybody loved it, who was working on it.


[28:17] David: No, that's good. Nick Lowe and his brother create a theme song. We already listened to that, but how many comic books give their own theme song? Thought that was very clever.


[28:25] John: Yeah. I don't remember what the circumstances were. Everybody was okay with it, but because of music rights, Nick and Sean writing the letters column is owned by Marvel, because it's a thing that's part of their deal, but him writing a piece of music isn't. Anyway. It's all copacetic.


[28:43] David: Sure, but […] that. Something that shocked me, that I learned, was this series, I think it was the first issues, but this series, Nextwave, was on the Best of 2007 Young Adult Library Services Association List. The libraries recommended this thing to young adults. I was like, “whoa. Really? I don't know.” It won 3 Eagle Awards in 2006, it won Favorite Comic Book Story published in 2006, for Issues #1 through #6, and it also won Favorite Comics Villain, which was Dirk Anger. So, I thought that was pretty funny. The original intent of Nextwave was for it to be its own separate universe, but since it ended, it has been confirmed, essentially, that it is part of the 616. There have been several issues worth of material and other various projects that confirm that these things did happen in the 616, and they get explained off in various ways. So, not all of it has been fully explained, because I don't know how you could, but the things that need to be explained, get explained. So, this does count. It counts.


[29:56] John: I think […] edited the next Machine Man story, did a story in Marvel Comics Presents. Not everything in Marvel Comics Presents is necessarily in continuity. We did have stuff that was not in there, but by then, we’d decided it was going to be in continuity. By then, I was sitting in the same office as Nick.


[30:13] David: So, there's our deep dive on Nextwave: Agents of H.A.T.E., an all-timer.


[30:19] John: Absolutely.


[30:24] David: That's it. I'm talked out.


[30:25] John: One thing to say about this, though, as much as Stuart was, not a tough sell, but a sell to get him onto these books, he refines the cartoony, not looser, but less detailed - not even less detailed, really - just less realistic style that he started in Ultimate Fantastic Four and Ultimate X-Men, and he'd refined this back into something a little more, I don't know if stable’s the right word - a little more mainstream-ish, but not much, in Ultimate Spiderman. In a lot of ways, this looks so much like a modern Marvel comic, because so many people are doing the stuff that he was doing, which is, there being a slightly more commercial version of the characters, and then doing these fully-CG backgrounds. I mean, you can tell, just out of the fact that this stuff came out every 30 days, that he'd modeled a lot of the stuff in 3D. It all looks like part of the page, but the cityscape - he's not Katsuhiro Otomo, or somebody, sitting there with a protractor, drawing the cityscapes. There are 3D-modeled buildings, or at least, the shapes of them. It's almost weird how much this looks like contemporary Marvel Comics, in a way it didn't, at the time it was coming out.


[31:31] David: Yeah. It's a good note. Immonen, himself, I think, that's what you're saying is, this is where he fully refined that style in one direction. He pulls it back a little bit after this, but this really is where he digs into it. Is that what you were suggesting, as well?


[31:46] John: Yeah. I think you can modulate the style as he goes on. So, I think, even scene-to-scene sometimes, he'll exaggerate more, or less. I mean, he has that ability. He has an ability to draw stuff super realistically, or to draw extremely cartoon-ly.


[32:05] David: Yeah, it's crazy to think what this guy was doing 5 or 6 years before this, what his style looked like, five years earlier. It’s totally radically different from where he's at.


[32:17] John: He was really changing project-to-project in a lot of stuff. Like I said, I think it was to the detriment of him being able to build up a huge following immediately, the way people would just grab on to certain artists, because you might like his style on one book, but not like it on another. I mean, he's doing stuff at Top Shelf, at this point. He was doing full-on alternative comic-style stuff, at the same time.


[32:38] David: I don't remember that. I think he did a book with Mark Waid. Was it Secret Identity?


[32:45] John: Was it the Superman In The Real World one?


[32:46] David: No. I'm thinking about the Gorilla Comics thing, the creator-owned thing that he did. His style was really different.


[32:56] John: Yeah, I know what you’re talking about.


[32:57] David: Anyway, yeah, he’s a real chameleon, but you’re right. This style that he's using here, and moving forward, really does define an age.


[33:06] John: This, and Hawkeye, I think, a few years later, are big books, in the way stuff started to shake out to look, and act, in a lot of ways. Love it. Glad we talked about it, at length. Thanks for sticking along with us.


[33:19] David: Hopefully, somebody stuck till the end. Thanks, everybody, for diving into Nextwave: Agents of H.A.T.E. with us. I hope you enjoyed walking your dog four times, while listening to this. We'll see you all next time, on The Corner Box.


[33:33] John: Bye.


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