Excited about WEAPON H! Cory Smith and I are having a heck of a lot of fun and the interview gives a sense of the deeper emotional story we’re exploring with this ludicrous, over the top premise.

Here’s an excerpt from the new interview at Marvel.com:

Marvel.com: Is it difficult to write/draw the juxtaposition between military discipline and unbridled power in one character?

Greg Pak: I’m having a great time with it. I’ve written Hulk stories for years—a little over a decade, in fact! I’ve written a scientist as a Hulk (Banner), a barbarian as a Hulk (Skaar), and a cocky kid as a Hulk (Amadeus). But now I’m writing a grunt, a trained, disciplined soldier as a Hulk. And that’s a great new dynamic that opens up a whole set of new stories and themes to play with.

Cory Smith: I really like what Greg and co. have set up with Clay’s military background and how that would affect/influence a guy with this much power. He’s this unstoppable force of nature with the discipline to command or restrain that part of himself as he needs it. It’s kind of unprecedented, really. (And a whole lot of fun to draw when he cuts loose.)

Read the whole interview here!

And ask your local comic shop to pre-order issue #1, coming in the spring!

CBR has just posted an interview with yours truly about the new WEAPON H book I’m writing and Cory Smith is drawing, along with some of Cory’s gorgeous art! Check out the excerpt below:

CBR: As a reader, it’s been interesting watching the development of Weapon H as he moves from mysterious character to antagonist to hero of his own story. What can you tell us about the evolution of the character from a creative and editorial standpoint? When you were first working on the character, did you ever think you’d be writing him in his own series?

Greg Pak: As a Wolverine/Hulk hybrid, Weapon H looks like a marketer’s dream, right? But the character developed organically through the story. Back when we were developing the “Weapons of Mutant Destruction” storyline, we established that the Weapon X scientists were collecting DNA from various mutants to turn people into killing machines. I said, “Well, we’ve got the Hulk in the book now. Seems like they’d want to collect Hulk DNA, too.” Suddenly, we had a Wolverine-Hulk hybrid on our hands.

We eventually revealed this Wolverine-Hulk hybrid as the ultimate weapon that Weapon X had been developing. And in the subsequent story that Fred Van Lente and I cowrote in Weapon X, we revealed that the man who was turned into this Wolverine-Hulk hybrid was Clay, a former soldier turned Eaglestar military contractor who’d been drugged and shipped out to Weapon X when he started challenging Eaglestar’s brutal operating procedure.

I loved all of this because it was a chance to explore familiar tropes of Wolverine and Hulk through a different kind of character. The big danger of both Wolverine and the Hulk is, traditionally, that they can lose control, go berserk. But Clay was chosen for this procedure because he has intense military discipline. The idea is that he’s the perfect weapon because he can control this tremendous power. But now Clay’s free from Weapon X — so the question is what a person with this tremendous discipline is going to do with this terrifying power?

Read the whole interview here!

Very happy to report that Marvel’s launching WEAPON H, a new series written by yours truly with art by Cory Smith! The gorgeous cover above is by Leinil Yu.

WEAPON H stars the mysterious soldier who was amped up with Hulk and Wolverine DNA in the WEAPONS OF MUTANT DESTRUCTION story earlier this year. The series is gonna be a blast — huge, bombastic action with searching emotional subtext worthy of a Hulk/Wolverine hybrid. Also, MONSTERS, starting with a terrifying new Wendigo in issue #1!

The series starts in March. Cory’s already started drawing, and the pages are incredible. Call your local shops and add it to your pull lists, friends!

Read the press release at Newsarama.