In October we will return to a world ravaged by a plague that had turned most of Earth’s heroes into raving cannibalistic monsters. Jonathan Maberry is back to continue on from events that unfolded in ‘Marvel Universe vs Punisher’ and ‘Marvel Universe vs Wolverine’ in a four issue mini-series ‘Marvel Universe vs The Avengers
“The story is intensely personal, as all stories of great cultural trauma,” Maberry says. “These are horror stories, and ‘Marvel Universe vs The Avengers’ takes the horror down to a very personal level. We are no longer witnessing the world’s hurt or the cultural hurt, we’re inside the head – and heart — of a man who is experiencing the most personal kind of hurt.” The man he is referring to here is Clint Barton aka Hawkeye.
“The story is told from Hawkeye’s perspective, but most of the big guns are there: Thor, Hulk — red and green versions — Iron Man, Giant Man, Luke Cage, Black Widow, Mockingbird, Spider-Man, and others,” reveals the writer. “We also check in on the kids at Avengers Academy. The events in these four issues cut a bloody swath across the entire Avengers landscape.”
“The world is becoming a horror show and no one has the power to stop it,” Maberry explains. “Then we look down at the street-level, at a man like Hawkeye who has no super powers and who isn’t really the go-to guy for a world-threatening crisis and for reasons we’ll explore in the story, he doesn’t succumb to the plague as quickly. More and more of the responsibility for this fight falls to him, and he’s extremely mortal.”
“View that same thing from another perspective and you see someone who has never been as powerful as his teammates, and yet he’s always held the line, always done his part. So, maybe he’s the kind of hero we need in a world where super powers are no longer the answer.”
“The world itself is broken, and the storytelling reflects that,” Maberry offers. “There is no longer an orderly pace to history, and if humanity survives, the history that’s taught will come from fragments of memory and experiences.”
“I wanted to get inside the phenomenon of becoming ‘powerless.’ Many of the heroes lose their heroic status by becoming monsters; we have characters struggling to continue to be heroes while knowing that they are transforming into the enemy. The government and even groups like S.H.I.E.L.D. can’t stop this. The greatest brains on the planet—Reed Richards, Hank Pym, T’Challa—can’t solve this problem. We see how different characters cope with their friends/team-mates and loved ones becoming monsters.”
But in the end it’s all coming down to one man. The man with the arrows.
“That is a special kind of horror, and it’s a special kind of heroic tale,” Maberry promises. “I think people are going to bond pretty heavily with Hawkeye in this tale.”