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Interview by Richard Vasseur
Scott: Born and bred in the Upstate New York hamlet of Marlboro, New York. It was and remains a small town.
Richard: How did you get into writing comics?
Scott: Six years of rejection letters from Marvel and DC! (What was I thinking?! Couldn't I take a hint?!) One time it was so bad I got a rejection letter for a ROBIN story! I was like "Wha -- ?!" I went back in my files to discover I had sent a Robin story TWO YEARS earlier! I had forgotten I had even written it! (Imagine -- it is not bad enough I got rejected! I had to get a note two years later, as if to say "Just wanted you to be aware -- we still hate you!" LOL! Not TOO humbling, eh?)
Pretty much I just stuck with it... often taking an entire day to get on the train, go to Manhattan, meet the editor or assistant editor in the lobby to hand him or her a singlle page treatment, and then get back on the two train ride home. Man, I really was crazy. Who would do something like that? Rejection after rejection after rejection?
Richard: Can you tell us something about the future of Alpha Flight? What can we expect?
Richard: What is the main difference in team dynamics of the newest Alpha Flight incarnation and the original one?
Scott: We'll have to find out. I'm not being glib, but these characters are much too young to really get a handle on exactly how they are going to get along. They will reveal themselves to each other, then to me, then to the audience, over time. An example of this is issue 9, with a surpise marriage proposal that I didn't see coming. Certainly as certain characters shuffle off their moral coil, they characters left behind will react different as a result.
I can say this: That the Original Team had the advantage of everyone WANTING to be on the team (with a few exceptions: NORTHSTAR claiming it was just to keep an eye on his sister. MAC who was really expecting WOLVERINE to lead the team...) whereas this team was pulled together pretty much against its will, only to discover that they are pretty good at what they do. Raw, certainly, but willing to try to continue to work together for the greater good.
Richard: Does writing Alpha Flight differ much from writing X-Men besides the different characters?
Scott: ALPHA FLIGHT feels about a 100,000 % more virginal to me. Like Canada itself, there is just so much more unblemished land and stories to explore. When I wrote the X-MEN, I tried again and again to get rid of the MORLOCKS and GENESHA (the land of the mutant maids?!) because I thought the team worked best when the number of mutants in the world could be counted in the hundreds. It felt unique. Now we have a mutantverse where the UPS guy is likely to have three arms and an eye in the center of his back. Mutants bands? Mutant ghettos? Mutant radio talkshow hosts...?
Most everything that needs to be covered in the X-verse has already been covered. I am eager to examine the AF-verse. If anything, I want it to feel more like the first fifty issues of the original FANTASTIC FOUR where they were constantly exploring brave new worlds and civilizations of heroes and villains.
Richard: What are the differences between working for Darkhorse and Marvel?
Scott: I used to have real relationships with real people during my "heyday" at MARVEL. Now I'm pretty much an e mail that appears on people's computer screens. Hmmm.