Iron Man with Spencer Ackerman!

Spencer Ackerman is a Pulitzer Prize winning journalist and writer, whose written Reign of Terror: How the 9/11 Era Destabilized America and Produced Trump, Waller vs Wildstorm and now is writing Iron Man!

Two weeks ago, my friend Doug (For Every Kind of Geek) and I got to sit down with him to talk about his and Julius Ohta’s new Iron Man run! 

[This interview has been edited for clarity.]

Zee: To start us off, something at GateCrashers that we love doing an interview in front of every interview is asking what your favorite sandwiches. So, to go from there, what’s your favorite? Also, as a billionaire, what’s the fanciest sandwich you think Tony Stark has ever had, and do you think he liked it?

Spencer Ackerman: So, there is a place in Bed-Stuy, Brooklyn called “Greenberg’s”. There’s a vegan bacon, egg, and cheese that I really like, and I get it with a hash brown put in. That sandwich is life. I love it. While this isn’t vegan, there’s also a place called Court Street Grocers, elsewhere in Brooklyn. They do this Italian-style sub that uses sweet potato instead of any meat, and this pretty much gives away that I’m a vegetarian, but they have a lot of really good meat-based sandwiches I remember, so no shade there. Tony would definitely get one of those. And I think as a billionaire, he’s hitting those… what is it, Like $23-$24 Katz’s pastramis really hard.

Zee: That’s very fair.

Doug: I also, as another Brooklyn native, I appreciate the Greenberg Bagels drop. I love that place.

Ackerman: That place is rad, isn’t it?

Doug: Mhm.

Ackerman: What do you like from there? What’s your go to?

Doug: It’s funny because I’m not a vegetarian, so I go all-in on the bacon, egg, and cheese, and I’ve made it a sort of pet project to just go down the menu and try every item, and I haven’t been disappointed so far. I’ve loved everything on that.

Ackerman: Yeah. Good call.

Zee: Well, I’m from Toronto so I don’t have any input on this. (laughs)

Doug: Getting a little bit deeper into character stuff, obviously, we know your background, you come in from a pretty heavy political journalist background. What specifically drew you to the character of Iron Man? And I guess moving forward from that, how did you end up on this title? What steps did you take to get here?

Ackerman: Are you asking me specifically about the professional path or are you asking me about Iron Man as a character that I enjoy?

Doug: Oh, I guess a little bit of both.

Ackerman: So, what I love about Iron Man, is how often writers, whether it’s Kurt Busiek, whether it’s Len Kaminski, Roger Stern, certainly Matt Fraction, certainly Brian Michael Bendis, very often use Tony Stark, Iron Man, and Stark Industries as a way of reckoning with real life military technological and geopolitical and geoeconomic developments. That’s always drawn me to the character. I do like it when– particularly in the wilder post-Vietnam Seventies– writers start kind of approaching Iron Man from somewhat of a more subversive perspective. Politically, it felt a lot like tacit, perhaps intended corrective, to the way we meet Iron Man during the Vietnam War. And the way in the background of that origin story, the Vietnam War is portrayed as a valorous enterprise in which the United States is liberating Vietnam from a Chinese overlord of the sort that initially imprisons Tony Stark in origin version 1.0. 

The way this (book) happened was something that I never expected could actually be a real life possibility which is on a whim earlier this year, I decided to let Marvel editorial know that I had written Waller vs. Wildstorm. I sent in PDFs of those issues, and the really talented editor Sarah Brunstad, who was just in the process of taking over the book, reached out to me and asked me if I’d be interested in pitching for it.

Now, my ambition for sending those issues in to Marvel was that maybe I would get a chance to write like an eight-pager or a backup story in an annual or something like that. And Sarah instead was like: “So, what would you do with an ongoing Iron Man series? And I just hit the mood at that point and it’s been a truly amazing last eight to nine months.

Doug: Oh, so you’re, you’re really getting into it? That’s exciting.

Ackerman: Yeah. Writing an ongoing comic for the first time. No pressure. Writing a character like Iron Man and an ongoing for the first time. No pressure, nothing like that.

Doug: I love that. Kind of following up on that, in an ongoing, you sort of get the chance to really kind of boil your thoughts down on whatever character or maybe group you’re writing. You kind of touched on this in your previous answer, but I’m curious: we talked a lot about Iron Man as an icon, but what do you think of Tony Stark as an individual? What do you think of the guy behind the mask, and what would be your thesis for that character?

Ackerman: A heroic character who has no choice but to operate behind a veil that wealth creates, that is going to keep him in important ways distant from the world and viewing the world as an abstraction.

Doug: That’s incredible. I love that read on him. Another thing that I’m interested in is obviously, you know, you, you mentioned that this is your first ongoing comic. You’ve written Waller vs. Wildstorm in a more self-contained way. I’m curious because you also have a very extensive background in non-fiction, and obviously with comics, there’s a bit of a sliding scale on this. But I’m wondering, when you’re writing this, are you bleeding more into fiction or nonfiction? Is your Iron Man going for something more grounded or are you going higher concept? Are you going abstract with what you’re trying to tell?

Ackerman: If what you mean is “Is this my journalism on, like, a six panel grid?”, it’s not. The mandate for this book is to be an intense superhero book. I’ve done a lot of really bleak journalism, including reporting from war zones. I wanna have fun with writing for a change and like, I want my writing to be fun. So, inevitably you’ll see stuff taken from the real world. I love when Marvel is the world outside your window, and at the same time I don’t want that to overshadow this being a real fun, big superhero comic. I have two favorite eras of Iron Man- no disrespect to all the other fantastic creators– but they’re the Matt Fraction and Salvador Larroca run, which did high concept and superhero action to absolute perfection, and the Kurt Busiek and Sean Chen/Patrick Zircher’s run, which is widescreen before there was Brian Hitch widescreen, during an era in which Kurt Busiek had the superhero game in a chokehold. And I go back to those runs a lot. You’ll see references to those runs, real quick, in mine. Does that answer your question?

Doug: Oh, yeah. Yeah, I think that that gave me more than I could have ever hoped for. I love that. I mean, obviously everyone shouts out Fraction. I love the fact that you’re going with Busiek because I also love his run. I feel like it’s one that doesn’t get talked about a lot, but coming off of Heroes Reborn and stuff, it’s fantastic.

Ackerman: Hard agree. I think it suffers from problems that you would normally love to have, which is at the same time, Busick is writing an all-time classic run of Avengers with Carlos Pacheco that’s kind of destined to overshadow Iron Man. And we’re right on the verge of like the Adi Granov redesign that makes like a kind of– especially because of its impact on the MCU– a kind of indelible visual impression that I would argue operates as like a curtain close for the eras of Iron Man before and a curtain raise for all of them after, which is also a good segue to say this book makes a very deliberate decision to pivot away from every Extremis-influenced Iron Man design. You’ll see absolutely incredible visionary artwork from a guy who is destined to be a superstar in comics named Julius Ohta. Julius is, at this point, my boy and when you guys look at what he is designing and the thought that goes into it, as well as the patterns of design-based thinking that he possesses, it’s going to blow you away. And I’ll tell you, because of how different this is going to look, I’ve had moments where I’ve been worried about what the reception for it is going to be. And I’m shocked and extremely pleased that the overwhelming majority of the early reaction I’ve seen on social media to this is going, is like seeing the vision and going along with it and supporting it, and I don’t take any of that for granted. I’m extremely grateful for it because I know comic fandom, and I think if you stick with this, you’ll see that the armor designs are gonna keep on coming and we’re going for something that has a story explanation, and not just Tony iterating for the sake of– whether you want to call it– ADHD or restless genius. Not that these two things are mutually exclusive. You’ll see just absolutely unforgettable art from a rising star.

Zee: Oh, yeah. Love to hear that.

I just want to comment: your Iron Man run is the first Iron Man run I’m gonna be pulling monthly. So I’m really excited, of course. To build on our previous point. So how did you and Julius Ohta (pronounced “Oh-twah”) start working together? Were you familiar with each other before Iron Man, or was it through Iron Man that you got to know each other?

Ackerman: So when Julius got the book– first of all, both of us owe being on this run together to Sarah– that’s the Sarah Brunstad casting moment, I could not be more thrilled with it. He’s in Brazil. So, I told him from the start, “I don’t think this book will be good if it’s me telling you what to do.” I asked him, “Tell me what you love to draw, tell me what you hate to draw. And I might not always be able to give you everything you love and I might not always be able to avoid giving you stuff you hate, but when we get there, let’s just work around this and find something we both like instead of one or the other”. You know, having to pivot in a direction they think is wrong and we talk over WhatsApp pretty frequently. Both of us have children, so we relate on that level as well, and also know that that means you can’t be blowing up these guys’ phones every time you have an Iron Man-related brain fart. Like there, there has to be a measure of respecting that. We’ve got to do other stuff with our day from this, even if we might not always want to, and then we get to bullshit with each other. I really love it, and I think it’s got us a book where you can see the enthusiasm coming off the page from both of us. And we got to a point where there’s ups and downs with it as there should be when you’ve got two people with creative vision and we’ve come to a point where now before I script, I send Julius a quick message. It’s like, “When can we get on a call? Because this thing is due in like five days and I got like, really break it down now and I wanna make sure that the stuff that you want in this issue and the way you see it being paced is reflected in the first draft rather than us having to go back at a later stage.” And in the process, I’ll tell you as a journalist, particularly as someone who’s been at a daily newspaper, who’s been in an online magazine, and so on, I’m very used to assembly line production when it comes to this stuff, and one of the things that twenty years– more or less– in a newsroom teaches you is like flag stuff that you’re not sure about early on, even if you think obviously the other people we have caught this or they already know it. Stuff can always fall through the cracks and you’re never going to regret speaking up early on to make sure that we’re all going in the direction we need to be going.

Zee: Right. I mean, it’s interesting because like, this is something we see sometimes, but I’ve been seeing a lot recently, especially from the “Distinguished Competition” because I got to read Absolute Batman, is how much I love when you can read a book and you can see that it is a pure collaboration between a writer and an artist versus a writer just writing something and then delivering it to an artist. I love when you can look at a book and be like, “Okay, they’ve had conversations around the story and how it should work before going in and doing their thing.” So it’s a big vote of confidence that you’re also doing this for Iron Man, and that makes it very exciting.

Ackerman: Well, I’m happy that you brought up Batman even though– Hey, I’m looking forward to Absolute Batman. I think Nick Dragotta is a genius, Scott Snyder is a genius. But the reason why I wanted to interject is just because like the gold standard for in, in my opinion, for a writer/artist collaboration is every time Greg Capullo and Scott Snyder talk about working with one another, and by the end of them talking, they’re practically in tears, you’re almost in tears. And you just like these two very different people who start out in such completely different creative places get over the initial difficulties of working together and just become like, bros who truly love each other. I want that, you know? Luckily Julius and I have not yet had moments that have tested our collaboration yet. This stuff can really be a grind sometimes, as I am coming to learn, and it’s better to do it with someone you’re having fun with and enjoy working with and put in some work to maintain and strengthen that relationship with.

Zee: Yeah, for sure. I mean, sorry, I know we’re gonna talk about that for now, I guess, but Snyder and Capullo’s Batman is the book that really got me into reading comics. It is so foundational to how I view the medium. So whenever I judge a book, that’s like the standard, in some ways, that I compare it to where a writer and artist working together are in sync with one another. Perfectly-oiled cogs in a machine. So, hopefully that’s the case with Iron Man, obviously.

Ackerman: Yeah, I mean, I know where you’re coming from, but something that you don’t always want to hear as someone who’s about to debut a comic book is like, “I’m going to compare this to the Snyder/Capullo Batman”.

Zee: (awkwardly laughs) Yeah. Yeah, totally. To build on to you saying that you’ve been working in a newspaper and you understand the assembly line production– to go deeper into that, when you worked on Waller vs. Wildstorm, you co-wrote that with Evan Narcisse. How different is it to go from writing your nonfiction to co-writing something with someone to writing something completely by yourself?

Ackerman: Well, it’s baby steps and gradations. So when I write a script, I have friends of mine who are comic book writers that I can quickly go to and be like, “Oh God, save me from obvious mistakes that I don’t see.” And Evan, who was my friend before we did, Waller vs. Wildstorm is just gonna be one of those people. I learned some of the most practical lessons about comics and certainly about writing comics on deadline. Lessons so important about how to write comics that they ended up teaching me on a deeper level how to read comics. I learned that from Evan when Evan wrote Rise of The Black Panther, which I think is simply one of the best ‘Year One’s ever done. That guy really deserves his flowers for that book.

I think that is just an exquisite six-issue series. The ambition that’s in that book ever since made me just kind of annoyingly nudge and be like, “So can I see your script? How did you do this? Why this panel? Why not that?” All of that. So I couldn’t have had a better and more supportive person ease me into the process of comics production. And there are certain things that writing a 32 page-per-issue Black Label out-of-continuity series that comes out like every three months, realistically speaking, that simply don’t translate to like writing Iron Man every month. The production cycle is real compressed and real intense. You are frequently working on three issues at a time that are in different stages of production. And that’s kind of where I have to go rely on journalistic experience, because at any given time, particularly if you’re in a newsroom, you’re never working on one story. You’re not going to get the luxury, as a staff reporter, of only having one iron in a fire and then when that one is ready, take it out, let it cool down. You start looking around at ingots and thinking, “What should the next one be?” No. News is breaking right now. Your colleague needs you to make a call because you have a source that they don’t, right now. Your editor suddenly decides that while they had approved your idea at 10:00, it’s 2:00 now and doesn’t it seem like this other thing which may or may not be your priority is more important to work on. And by the way, you’ve also got sources who are reaching out to you on completely other different stuff that you may or may not have any time to work on and they may have some short turnaround, like issues to contend with, of their own. And then you’ve got the competition that drops a big story that now you’ve got– you know, like that. That is the reality of journalism as a physical practice. So, when the production cycle gets kind of intense, that’s where you at least can turn to and say, “Well, because I’m making it up, accuracy doesn’t have to guide me in a period that is completely unforgiving for accurate and thoughtful journalism.”

Zee: Yeah, yeah, yeah, for sure. I mean, do I know anybody else who got into comics from journalism? Probably not. Sorry.

Ackerman: Denny O’Neill.

Zee: Oh, Denny O’Neil. Yeah.

Ackerman: Ta-Nehisi Coates, I think possibly Ann Nocenti.

Zee: Probably. I was thinking more like people have interviewed. (laughs)

Ackerman: Oh, Okay.

Zee: No, no, it’s all good.

Doug: I’m, I’m so glad that you brought up Denny O’Neil, though. Because thinking about Denny O’Neil and obviously thinking about all of the other big names that Iron Man has had over the years, you know, Michelinie, Busiek, Fraction, Bendis, Kieron Gillen. Iron Man, even though he’s not like- I guess he is now- but he’s not like an, A-list premier character. He’s still someone with an incredible amount of history and an incredible amount of talented people who have worked to shape that history. How does it feel going from again, an incredible book, but something that was very self-contained to stepping into you know, the Marvel Universe– this big shared history and adding your own voice to that?

Ackerman: You know, I’d be lying if I didn’t say that there are times when I felt the pressure. It is easy to be intimidated by the talents that have come before on this book specifically. So it becomes important to not let yourself be intimidated. Something that I learned from journalism is that you can’t write if you are afraid of the material. You will paralyze yourself and not ever put yourself in position to produce your best work. I am very grateful and very lucky that recent Iron Man writers– I wanna shout out Gerry Duggan, I wanna shout out Chris Cantwell– have talked me through it, imparted their lessons of writing the character and their experience shared with me. Just what it’s like. Let me leave it at that.

Doug: Fantastic answer. 

Zee: It’s interesting because like, I had a question about something, but like, since your love for Iron Man is shining too, I guess it makes sense. I was wondering what made you want to– I guess it does make sense that when it comes to weapons, you would want to channel it through Iron Man, but also I know that you really love Magneto. But I also know, as someone who’s read a lot of Marvel Comics stuff, like usually military stuff is more relegated to Captain America stories. So what made you sort of want to go in? And I guess you’ve answered that already, so you don’t have to, but like what made you specifically be like: “Okay, this has to be an Iron Man story more than any other character”?

Ackerman: Well, there’s also a period that I well and truly love: the Dark Reign era in between Civil War and Siege. I guess between Secret Invasion and Siege, but basically between Civil War and Siege. What we’ve got is really a renaissance for the character and part of that renaissance was making Iron Man Director of S.H.I.E.L.D. Bringing the kind of background of Iron Man, in his capacity as Tony Stark and his capacity as CEO of first Stark Industries, and then Stark-Fujikawa, and then Stark Unlimited, he’s supplying the– perhaps not the weaponry anymore– but tremendously advanced technology. Busiek, to my great relief and foundational benefit, establishes on-panel during his run that even though Tony is not selling the military weapons anymore, he is still selling a lot of stuff. So you’ve got a circumstance in which these kinds of military and espionage questions intertwined with technological development, intertwined with economic development– that looks a whole lot like our world– have an expression in the legacy and the character history of Iron Man. I also have the tremendous luck of Gerry’s excellent run ending with Iron Man triumphing over a villain who has brought Stark Industries back into weapons production. And if you read the last issue of Gerry’s, Invincible Iron Man #20, nowhere on that page does Iron Man get around to getting out of weapons production again.

So I wanted to start right there. I wanted to start pretty much the moment that Gerry’s run ends. We pick right up and you got a whole lot of story potential there of the kind of stories that I’m already drawn to telling.

Zee: Yeah, for sure. I was wondering actually, because of the setup of Gerry’s last issue, is that something that you both collaborated on where you told him where you wanted to leave it off and then you picked it up from there, or was that just something like him naturally passing the baton? How did that come about?

Ackerman: I was lucky enough to get the draft of Gerry’s final script before my pitch had more or less gotten through. So, I mean, they wouldn’t have given me the script before that happened. But I don’t think I needed to request that of Gerry. I think he had so much that he had to tie together to kind of get the character in position to finish the arc that he had started both in Iron Man and in X-Men, and likely there wasn’t really panel space for a boardroom scene in which Tony Stark and the Stark Unlimited Board are like, “not this anymore”. The important thing is that Gerry gets him not making genocide robots anymore, and from there, it just seemed like a serendipitous opportunity. 

Zee: Yeah, totally. Building off from that actually: Because Gerry’s Iron Man run was so involved in the X-Men and that wider world, is your run going to be more focused on the character or is there a lot of connective tissue with the rest of the Marvel Universe?

Ackerman: There’s connective tissue with the rest of the Marvel Universe for sure, but it’s not an X-Men book. It is not gonna be playing on the X-Men side of things. The X-Men have had a fresh reset. Iron Man is kind of experiencing that too. He’s not usually a character that plays that heavily in the X-Men side of things, so he won’t be doing that now. I loved what Gerry did in bringing him there. It worked exquisitely. I have really big shoes to fill. But there will be connective tissue with the rest of the Marvel Universe. And that’s all I should say about that.

Doug: All right. Delving back into Tony’s character because you did mention that he’s in a bit of a reset.

Ackerman: To be really clear, I don’t mean any kind of continuity reset. I just mean, like in the natural course of a book stopping and a new one beginning and a creative team turning over and an editor turning over and all of that.

Doug: Yeah. Absolutely. I guess what I’m so fascinated by, in Tony’s character, especially, is that because he’s always kind of torn between the two extremes, he’s got a lot of past personal baggage and he’s got such a strong focus on the future. He’s always kind of in a bit of a cycle between those two, he’s always kind of like moving around. And I guess with that in mind, how are you feeling about tackling that kind of cyclical character growth in this series? How do you kind of address the urge for Tony to move forward? Obviously, I don’t wanna prompt any spoilers, but knowing that he’s been in this place so often, do you think like that empowers you, do you think you can tell a deeper story in that, or do you feel inspired to kind of build something new and kind of take him off in a direction that like nobody’s ever seen before?

Ackerman: I think that tackling a character like this, you want to draw really deeply on his character, history, and his continuity. There have been so many incredible Iron Man stories that your approach can be either A) “I have to kick all of this away and do purely the thing that I’m focused on doing” or it can be B) “I have such a sturdy foundation to stand on for these characters, let’s see what feels right and what feels intuitive about this character based on the fact that this is not, pick your obscure character.” This is– and I could never have imagined this when I was growing up in the 1980s, when I was a kid and started reading Marvel comics– but like most people alive know who Iron Man is. Shocking! 

But I’d rather be the kind of writer who takes what others have done and uses that as a foundation to offer what hopefully in the course of feeling familiar in the course of making choices that fans of the character recognize as like Tony Stark choices, Iron Man things. We bring you something that you haven’t seen before. We bring you visual elements you haven’t seen before, we bring you environments that Tony has been in that you haven’t seen if not ever before very often or in a long time. And challenges for Tony Stark that feel not just commensurate with the kind of powerful character he is with the kind of history and legacy that he has, but feel oftentimes overwhelming for that character. Maybe the most challenging part of writing Iron Man is having to constantly think: “How do I beat Tony Stark?”

Doug: I love that. That’s such an incredible read on that. 

Zee: From the design of the armor and from the general premise, it feels like there’s this almost medieval theme to the story, right? It’s interesting because Iron Man is usually a critique of the modern world. Why did you necessarily go for the imagery behind that? What was the choice behind making him look like a medieval guy in medieval armor and a sword fighting like these oil corporations? What was the thought process behind that?

Ackerman: I don’t know how to answer that question without spoiling the first issue, so it’s gonna be difficult and my answer may not be satisfying. But I wanted to emphasize a theme of resilience that calls back to a premodern world that must exist if we are to survive in the modern world.

Zee: Interesting. That’s a satisfying answer to me. And from there, I suppose, I know you mentioned how what inspired you for Iron Man was going to a weapons manufacturing expo, if I recall correctly. But other than that, how much of the real world have you been looking at as inspiration? I remember because I know you said that earlier that you’re trying to look to have fun where your journalism has been very serious and very dark. But the reason I’m asking this is because Deniz Camp had a similar answer for me where he told me that his inspiration for Ultimates was looking at a lot of the real world rather than anything sort of in comics and then presenting it to us through that comic book lens. So I was wondering if that’s what you’ve been doing for Iron Man as well.

Ackerman: I would say so. In all forms right now, a really good answer is to be like Deniz Camp. I hope to be like Deniz Camp, not only creatively but sales wise. Deniz is a friend of mine and I’ve been a fan of his thanks to 20th Century Men and I’ve loved seeing Ultimates come together. It’s a spectacular comic book. If people out there aren’t reading Ultimates, they’re, they’re missing out and should correct that immediately. I just keep getting blown away issue by issue. I didn’t know if anything could top issue three and the way he reinvented– I don’t know if I want to spoil what he does in issue three– but reinvented a character, a foundational character for Marvel Comics, and then he does issue four. And I think the internet went insane. And should have, I think. Dennis and I have some similar outlooks about what inspires us and what makes us wanna tell the kinds of stories that we do. I am trying a bit to counter-program that for myself. Like, I want an Iron Man comic to have really big robots. I think that’s important. 

Zee: Big robots are cool.

Ackerman: I want to make a really fun and very big superhero comic that can go to both of these places and feel organically at home.

Zee: Right. Yeah, that makes sense to me. And I think it is important to, I think even with comics– it’s always funny when people are like “comic books aren’t political” or whatever when so much of our comics or like so much of art or good art is influenced by our politics. So, you know, and I’m sure that you would do that with Iron Man anyway, but it’s like, it’s good to know where your headspace is at.

Ackerman: Well, I also just want to say that, I hope I’ve done this in such a way that you don’t have to share my politics to like this book. That’s my goal. There are moments in both this book for sure, but also in Waller vs Wildstorm, where you have characters and where you have developments that specifically laugh at or frustrate what a reader might infer as my politics. So I don’t want that to be a barrier to entry or too straining for anyone. I want a story that provokes thought. I don’t want a story that tells you what to think. I find those boring.

Zee: Yeah, for sure. 

Doug: Yeah, I was gonna say that’s actually a great segue into something that I want to ask. You mentioned a lot about recapturing the spectacle of what Iron Man is all about. And I guess to kind revise this, is your Iron Man something for a specific audience or an audience who are expecting a specific tone or is it something that you’re kind of trying to make more accessible? And I guess in that process, were there any challenges that kind of enhanced your creativity, kind of walking that tightrope?

Ackerman: So I’ll tell you what I don’t want the book to be. I don’t want the book to be grimdark, and it’s not. I didn’t want to do a really super tonal shift that I don’t like. Iron Man can be a book that goes to some dark places, those Director of S.H.I.E.L.D. issues in particular really go there and I really like those books. So you can touch on that. But I want a book that feels intense, that feels relentless, that feels like these are real challenges that are closing in. But our stories about heroism and our stories about making the important ethical choice in the moment and having the courage, praying for the foresight to be able to see what that decision is and then to stick with it through its trials and then having set up certain moral frameworks that the character operates in, go to subsequent arcs that shatter them and rebuild both stakes and ethical questions in a different and destabilizing way. And then when that arc is done, shatter them and do it again. And that kind of reconstruction plays with a sense of what moral equilibrium is and how, when that’s destabilized, that can feel overwhelming and it can also feel potentially transformative in ways that are both real, real bad and also hopeful. I love that.

Doug: Yeah, I, you, you kind of touched on it before, but I feel like the word to define Iron Man as a character if you had to like, really boil it down to one word is “resilience”.

Ackerman: I believe that. I believe that.

Doug: It’s all about experiencing that constant destruction and then rebuilding. It’s, I think what makes him so enduring as a character?

Ackerman: Sorry, I gotta just interject to give him his flowers for that. No better name was given to him than Fraction renaming that company “Stark Resilient”.

Doug: I completely agree. It’s just an incredible move.

Ackerman: He got it. He got it. When you’ve got to write in constrained spaces like a comics panel, like a tweet, like a poem, whatever. Economy and elegance are more valuable than gold. And I guess it’s a weird thing to say, “economy more valuable than gold”, but like narrative economy,  naming efficiency, and the ability to capture a big concept in two words is a supreme achievement and one that I chase now.

Doug: Gosh, it’s so funny that we kind of got into that because I had a very similar question lined up but just in case. What is your favorite– I guess you could say– element, concept of this character that you’ve written so far?

Ackerman: Determination

Doug: Love it. I guess there is a bit of a kind of divergence here but I feel like I had to bring it up. We’re seeing the return of the Iron Monger in this run. I find that so fascinating because that’s a character who obviously is a big part of [Tony’s] supporting cast, but hasn’t really been around in a long time. I guess I’m just curious. Do you have– and again, without spoiling anything– do you have any plans to kind of similarly re-invent other bits of Tony’s supporting cast?

Ackerman: Well, I don’t want to imply that there’s anything wrong with the supporting cast. You’ll see major supporting cast members in this book. So no, I don’t wanna reinvent the supporting cast. I wanna bring some characters back. I wanna give characters their shine. You will see that in issues four and five. But I’m not reinventing Tony Stark. So I don’t wanna reinvent the supporting cast.

Doug: I guess the phrasing I used on that is wrong. I always love seeing Iron Man’s supporting cast kind of reflect back on the character. I think they’re incredible.

Ackerman: That, you will definitely see.

Doug: Okay, excellent. I guess one more thing that I’m kind of interested in is the specific voice for the character. We’ve seen a big shift in how the character talks– how he carries himself– because of the movie adaptations. I mean, Robert Downey Jr. made an indelible mark on that character. I think he refined a lot of what worked about the character. I think he added his own personal spin. I’m just curious,, are you kind of looking to any of the broader adaptations, movie or otherwise, to inform your take on this character?

Ackerman: So because of being a journalist and the journalist’s necessary focus on backing up what is reported. I have pulled out my Iron Man notebook and I’ve gone to the second page of my Iron Man notebook. I have to cover up something to show this to you, but I wrote down a maxim that I try and take into writing the character– that I’ll put up to the camera– that says only 15% to 20% maximum RDJ.

Doug: I love it. You boiled it down to a science.

Ackerman: Robert Downey Junior is part inevitably at this point of the character’s voice. But I don’t want to give you me doing a Robert Downey Jr. impression acting as Iron Man.

I think that some of the quippyness can always be fun, but Iron Man, particularly in his own book, I don’t– and this is no disrespect to Robert Downey Jr nor the Marvel Cinematic Universe so like overlords don’t cancel me for this– but like the, the danger with making Iron Man relentlessly quippy is he sounds like Spider-Man, and I don’t want that. I think that someone who got the Tony Stark voice down really well, who I go to for guidance on this is Chris Cantwell. If you read Chris’s twenty issues of Iron Man, particularly at twenty issues where like Iron Man is under the influence, we get a character that is a genius and is an emotionally fragile person going through a period of deep trial. And I really loved the way that in those circumstances, Chris wrote a character like that and I draw upon that way more than I want to let myself draw on Robert Downey Jr or, I don’t or– you know, let me just put it there.

Doug: Yeah, I, yeah, I wholeheartedly agree with you and I think that I think especially Cantwell’s Iron Man doesn’t get the universal praise that I think it should be getting because it, more than most adaptations, gets that this guy is human. He has incredible potential, but he’s also dealing with a lot, and like any life, it’s a constant struggle between those.

Ackerman: There are certain heroes who are really their alter ego, right? Bruce Wayne is a mask for Batman. But Iron Man is Tony Stark. He’s Tony Stark. Like when the Avengers fight together, it feels more natural for them to just call him “Tony” than to call him “Iron Man”, and he is at all times, Tony Stark in the armor. The armor is not permitting Tony Stark to adopt a new persona. The armor is enhancing the persona of Tony Stark and that’s how I wanted to write that.

Doug: I love that. I couldn’t have phrased it better myself.

Zee: I’d like to add on to that conversation about how Tony Stark is Iron Man in a different way compared to other heroes. I’m usually against superheroes revealing their secret identities because I like that divide of those worlds, but I feel like Iron Man is one of those characters where combining them makes more sense than keeping them separate. So I’m glad you view it that way and I am also glad you are drawing influence from Cantwell’s run because, like Doug said, it should receive its flowers. I think it’s highly underrated. It’s one of my three favourite Iron Man runs of all time.

Ackerman: Totally agree.

Zee: I’m glad we’re going there. I guess to follow up somewhat on you taking influence from Cantwell’s Iron Man as well: What other sort of comics or books are you looking at or fascinated by in terms of structure or thematic appeal or story for Iron Man?

Ackerman: Well, I go back to– Now I read the Fraction/Larrocca stuff as a matter of craft.

Zee: I hate to interrupt you but I mean, I don’t necessarily mean in terms of just Iron Man, just like any books or comics in general.

Ackerman: This is not to reflect on the substance of what I’m writing. But to write comics and to appreciate narrative real estate, the first pre-Batman, pre-“Born Again” Frank Miller Daredevil is a masterpiece and a masterpiece of pacing.

A masterpiece of B, C, D, down to like G-plot development that integrates how to characterize through action. So, like early into getting this job, but before importantly, my first paycheck for this job, my local comic store, Bulletproof Comics on Nostrand Avenue in Brooklyn was doing a big graphic novel clearance sale, and they had the Miller Daredevil, the Miller/Janson Daredevil collection which is $100 for 30% off. And I was like, this is definitely my treat to myself. Because I’ve read that stuff, I have some single issues of it. I’ve read it on Marvel Unlimited, but like, I’ve never had the full collection of the full run to just sit down and physically page through and just look at how a young genius at the beginning of his virtuosity created a comic book that in like 1979-1980 that felt like no other and felt like as soon as it was done, like all brilliant ideas, it felt inevitable, but it was never inevitable. It was because someone’s genius– multiple people’s genius– made that happen.

Zee: Yeah, I mean, I feel that way about, since you said Miller, Miller and Mazzucchelli’s Batman: Year One too, which to me is still the best “Year One” story ever and also my favorite graphic novel of all time because it is such a marriage of a great writer and artist as well as great pacing, because nowadays I feel like a lot of four-issue miniseries don’t get enough leg room to do the story they want to tell. But in four issues, Miller and Mazzucchelli tell a perfect story from beginning to end, which I guess it did start from “Born Again”, but “Born Again” is also something I didn’t read until like a few years ago. But to that end, actually, I am interested, since you also said you read on Marvel Unlimited, do you prefer the physical reading experience or do you prefer reading digitally?

Ackerman: Yeah, I do prefer the physical reading experience. Anyway anyone wants to read comics and also needs to read comics– because of the realities of how expensive this habit is– is cool with me. If I’m reading, I need to not have a device in front of me. It’s hard enough for me to read on a kindle without wanting to do something else on a different electronic device. And also, the process of journalism is such that you feel a real anxious withdrawal when you unplug from something. And if I unplug from something while not unplugging from the device that brings that thing to me, I’m not gonna unplug it all. So I really, really do prefer to read a book that is a collection of paper.

Zee: Yeah. No, I’m the same way. I mean, when I went back home earlier this summer, I had all ten trade paperbacks of Snyder/Capullo Batman and I just sat down and for three weeks, that’s all I read because now I just usually read on my iPad and I stepped away and reading physically is so nice and it helps me get real invested into a book in a way that reading digitally does not make me feel. But outside of what you’re looking at in structure, what comics, books, movies, shows in general have you been reading/watching and enjoying lately? 

Ackerman: Let’s see, the last book I read is The Message by Ta-Nehisi Coates. Everyone should really read that one. It’s out this week– or, we’re doing this on– I guess October 2nd. So it’s out the week of October 2nd. But that’s Ta-Nehisi– who I’m privileged to call a friend of mine– is quite possibly the best and most important writer working in the English language and to be able to see how he weaves together what seems like three different stories– one taking place in Senegal, one taking place in South Carolina, one taking place in Israel/Palestine– as one story is a remarkable feat and one that makes his achievements as a writer, risk overshadowing his achievements as a reporter, which- he’s also an excellent reporter. 

Currently I’m about halfway through There are Rivers In the Sky by Elif Shafak, the British-Turkish novelist. I love her work. If you’ve read The Bastard of Istanbul, if you’ve read the Forty Rules of Love, she could really do no wrong. And this latest novel of hers is also a story that spans vastly different cultures, vastly different time spans. It starts in the Bronze Age. It’s a tremendous book. 

Comics-wise, what am I reading right now? The Ultimates, which I love. My favorite ongoing series, possibly of all time, is Lazarus by Greg Rucka and Michael Lark, and I understand that’s gonna come back pretty soon. I’m thrilled for that. Someone else whose comics I turn to for inspiration about pacing, about story, about subject, about characterization: Greg Rucka is always gonna be there, whether it’s Lazarus, whether it’s The Forged, whether it’s Gotham Central, whether it’s Checkmate. His Checkmate was such an influence on Waller vs. Wildstorm. Once you ask that question, I’m super worried about neglecting anything, so I might have to run back to my long boxes but Saladin Ahmed’s Daredevil, I love. NYX by Lanzing and Kelly is looking real good. Al Ewing’s Immortal Thor. My friend Tini Howard just finished up the best Catwoman since Darwin Cooke, I think those Catwoman issues are incredible. You should really check those out. I could really go on and on. What even is my pull list these days? It’s a lot, you know? Jeez.

Zee: Do you regularly go to the comic shop?

Ackerman: I do, yeah. But I’ll leave it there because now I’m worried about who I’m not naming, who I’m forgetting, and who might think that I’m snubbing them. So, let me stop there. Something I’m very much looking forward to is Gerry Duggan’s West Coast Avengers.

Zee: Yeah, that got teased and I’m excited to check that out.

Doug: It looks pretty fun, yeah.

Ackerman: Sorry, can I just add one more?

Zee: Yeah, yeah, sure. As many as you want.

Ackerman: Something I also feel should get more of a shine is Ryan North’s Fantastic Four. (Doug and I went “YES.”) Just an astonishing book, and I feel like superhero comics have– for good reasons that I support– gotten into kind of a mode of telling long, unfolding stories. And so it can be really fun embracing when a writer like Ryan– Jonathan Hickman, did this with X-Men, too– and Ryan isn’t doing the same thing, but like you’ll read it done in one story in the Fantastic Four. Ben and Johnny working in the supermarket. What a great issue.

I love that. Ryan North rules.

Zee: Since you bring him up. as a big, big fan of Jonathan Hickman, and Doug can attest to this–

Doug: Oh yeah, I’m right there with you.

Zee: (laughs) I never thought that I would love a Fantastic Four run as much as I love Hickman’s. And so I’m glad that North is reaching that status and because I’m having so much fun with that book. It’s such a great treat every month.

Doug: Yeah, I was gonna say going back to what you were saying about kind of narrative efficiency, it strikes a very similar balance to me, at least as Doctor Who. It’s very high concept, it gets into a lot of very interesting thematic ideas and it does it all in a very self-contained way, and I can’t get enough of that.

Ackerman: This has to be the part where I admit I know nothing about Doctor Who, sorry about that.

Doug: It’s niche, but it’s getting broader. It’ll be here soon.

Zee: And since you also mentioned Gotham Central: Gotham Central, I think, is my favorite Rucka work– I know Brubaker also works on it, so, I guess a Rucka/Brubaker joint– and that’s a book that whenever people ask me– because I’ve read too much Batman– whenever people ask me “What Batman book I should read?”, I always point them towards the direction of Gotham Central, because I love that we have a book that’s like “We know there’s this character who is as integral to the city as the city itself, but we are going to place that character in a very tertiary position and look at him how the people perceive him”. And it’s an idea that I really wish inspired more books to do that sort of thing where, you know, it would be really cool if we got like a Daily Bugle series at Marvel that was looking at Spider-Man from the perspective of a regular New Yorker. You know, I think that’s such an interesting idea that I wish blew up.

Ackerman: Just to put Gotham Central in its historical position, exactly the way that Miller changes the game with Daredevil in a way that once you read, it feels inevitable, feels like someone must have produced this- Gotham Central is that good an idea, and that well-executed that to do a “Batman without Batman”, it feels like it should have been thought of long before Greg and Michael and Ed did it, but it could never have been because these particular geniuses had to come up with it and had to convince DC to take what I think even today– If you just say, “Oh, this book is Gotham without Batman”, the natural impulse is “I don’t want to read that. If I want to read a Batman book, I expect Batman to be there.” And then you’ll have to be like, “But no, this is better than 85% of Batman.” (laughs)

Zee: It’s in my top 10 best Batman books of the century. It’s phenomenal. And I think if you’re someone, like– I like to look at books outside of a character to sort of understand the character. For example, my favorite X-Man is Cyclops, and so to really understand the character, I ended up buying the Art of War and then I ended up reading the Art of War and that made me understand Cyclops. In a similar way, I guess, because Batman is in it, it doesn’t necessarily count, but I feel like if you really want to understand Batman or just to read a great crime procedural that’s also critiquing police systems, you should be reading Gotham Central.

Ackerman: I mean, no notes.

Doug: I guess this is my broader take on it, but I think it also just speaks to the medium of comics as a long form serialized mythology because, you know, it seems like such a simple idea in the moment to say “Gotham without Batman”, but I feel like we can only really get there after so many people iterate on it to find what Gotham is, who these people are, what themes we’re exploring. I’ll never get tired of comics just because you can always build up on them, you can reinvent them, you can iterate on them in so many fascinating ways.

Zee: Yeah. Since we’re actually talking about them and since they have so many similarities, like, I might as well just ask the natural question: they’re both rich billionaires. They both play with technology in their arsenal. 

What do you think is the core difference that makes other than the mask that makes Batman “Batman”, and that makes Iron Man “Iron Man” to you?

Ackerman: Tony’s relationship with trauma and his relationship with the outside world is not Bruce Wayne’s. And I feel like from Batman’s perspective, Bruce Wayne died in the alley and everything about where you take that character needs to take that into account. And that’s just not Tony Stark. Tony Stark is not trying to get rid of Tony Stark or replace Tony Stark with Iron Man. When Iron Man fucks up, it’s usually because of Tony Stark misjudging the relationship between himself, his creations and the outside world. And then also Batman’s relationship with the concept of control is not Iron Man’s relationship with the concept of control. I suppose, also family as well. Which is, which is much more– I don’t know. Did I pass the test? I guess that’s how I would see it.

Zee: No, no, you’re good. I mean, it’s always interesting to get new perspectives on Batman, especially from people who don’t see him in the way that I do because it always keeps things fresh. If I could pass a comic book recommendation– I don’t know if you’ve been reading it– Ram V’s Detective Comics that just ended. Phenomenal.

Ackerman: Oh, I’ve heard really good things about that. I need to check that out. 

Zee: Yeah, I think to me it is the best comic to come out of the Big Two since 2020.

Doug: Okay, bit of a departure, I was kind of building up to the interview on this. Basically, we got a lot of discussion about this in the news. So I want to know from the source how integral is reading your Iron Man to understanding Robert Downey Jr’s return as Doctor Doom in the Marvel Cinematic Universe.

Zee: (laughs)

Ackerman: What is your other question?

Doug: (laughs)

Zee: My other question was actually related to Coates. Since Coates had an interesting time when he wrote two Marvel Comics and then he went straight back to journalism. I guess it’s sort of a more long-term question for you since you are just getting into comics, but is your goal to keep writing more comics or is it a thing where you want to make a statement on a few characters and then make your way back to journalism? Like right now, what are you thinking?

Ackerman: I’d like to write comic books.

Zee: Yeah, that’s fair, that’s a good answer. Thank you so much for your time on this interview. Super-excited to read Iron Man. Super-excited to read anything else you’ve got coming up, obviously.

Ackerman: Well, thanks so much. This was a lot of fun.

Zee: Yeah, of course. If you get time, maybe after the first arc, we should definitely get back and do this again.

Ackerman: That’d be great.

Doug: And I’m so sorry to keep you, but one more brief question since you’re Brooklyn based, just curious, are you gonna be manning a booth at New York Comic Con?

Ackerman: I will be at New York Comic Con at the Bulletproof Comics Booth, Booth 4000, for all four days. I won’t be an Artist Alley. I haven’t earned my stripes for that yet, I don’t think. But every day of New York Comic Con, I’ll be signing at the Bulletproof table, table 4000, and I run a newsletter called Forever Wars, which you can subscribe to at Forever-Wars.com. I will have my Comic Con schedule published there really soon.

Doug: Awesome. I love that you shouted out Bulletproof because that’s also my LCS!

Ackerman: Oh, man! I’m sure our paths, if they haven’t already crossed, will cross. 

You can find Ackerman’s work in print and digitally! Iron Man #1 comes out October 23rd!