Novelist Charlie Huston had quite a weekend at the 1st annual New York Comic-Con. From sitting on Friday’s Mondo Marvel panel with the likes of Marvel Editor-in-Chief Joe Quesada, Brian Michael Bendis and Tom DeFalco, to appearing at the PopCultureShock booth for a signing where he came face-to-face with Moon Knight’s #1 fan, Kevin Moyer (of ComicGeekSpeak and the Moon Knight Yahoo! Group), and survived –- Huston made quite a splash in his first convention appearance as a comics writer. First, Quesada praised his take on Moon Knight as “one of the greatest reinvigorations of a Marvel character in years,” and later announced that he’d also be writing the Ultimates Annual.

PopCultureShock checked in with Huston for more information.

PCS: So...not a bad Con for you, hunh? Lots of Moon Knight buzz; cross-promotion for Already Dead and your two previous novels; and then Marvel goes and announces that you're writing the Annual for one of their most popular titles, The Ultimates! How does it feel to be Charlie Huston right now?

Charlie Huston: I am King Kong, motherfucker!

How'd you score such a plum assignment? Certainly suggests Joe Quesada's being sincere in his hype of how great he thinks your Moon Knight story is going to be.

Huston: I picture a long line on Marvel’s top writer’s being struck down by the hand of God until there was no choice but to ask me. Really, something like this is luck. Some better and more experienced people were already overloaded and my name came up. They must have thought it’d be funny to make me follow Millar.

The story features Captain America and the Falcon on a road trip. What are these two characters like in the Ultimate Universe, and what are you having them doing?

Huston: When I read Millar’s version of Cap, I’m always struck not by the idealism and patriotism, but the blind devotion to his country and his 1940s morality. To me, he’s a borderline fascist with no qualms whatsoever about making absolute right/wrong judgments and acting on them. Which I think makes him a great character, if not a guy I want to hang with. The Falcon hasn’t been in the Ultimate Universe long enough to be quite so clearly defined to me, but the simple fact that he’s a highly educated, intellectual, contemporary black American makes him a unique entity in Cap’s experience. What I pitched Marvel was a story that brings one of Cap’s WWII enemies into the contemporary UU, and puts him on the road with The Falcon as they try to find this guy. There’s going to be a legit super-threat to deal with, but there’s also going to be stuff like Cap and Sam rolling into a community where people still think the Jim Crow laws are a good idea. Along the way Sam’s gonna get an education in the value of establishing your ethics and sticking to them without equivocation, and Cap’s gonna find out who Martin Luther King and Chuck Berry are.

And for those of you who are worried and think this sounds like a suck idea for a comic book, be comforted, there’s gonna be man-to-man aerial battles, a tribute to the final chase in “The Road Warrior”, alien cattle mutilations, and we’ll learn what happens when Cap and Sam get a visit from the KKK. Hint: hard to get bloodstains out of those white robes.

Did you choose the characters, or did Marvel specifically request a story featuring them?

Huston: Knowing I have a pretty tight schedule, they offered up the whole cast, but told me I was free to focus on one or two characters. I had a couple “Captain America and The Falcon” comics when I was reeeeally young (I’m talking before I knew how to read) that I used to flip through all the time. Just three or four issues that I looked at over and over; I’d make up my own stories to go with them. And I had exactly three superhero dolls ever: Spider-Man, The Lizard, The Falcon. The Falcon was far and away my favorite. So I locked onto the idea of a Cap and Sam story right away. As it turned out, that relationship was something Marvel was looking to play with.

Where does it fit with Mark Millar's current storyline and Jeph Loeb's upcoming run? Is it intended to be a standalone story that new readers will be able to latch on to?

Huston: I haven’t read the end of Millar’s run yet, but my plan is to pick up right in the aftermath of his destruction of civilization as we know it. No plans to connect to Loeb’s run unless I get a request. The story should stand alone pretty well. The reader will meet the other Ultimates and witness some of the UGTA consequences, but they should be able to go for the ride with out a guidebook.

Is there an artist attached yet? And when is it scheduled to be released?

Huston: Should be an artist announced in the next week or so. And I believe the book will come out in July.

What's the latest on Moon Knight? You mentioned at the Con that you're working on the second arc right now. With the first arc originally intended as a mini-series with a loose connection to current continuity, where does it fit now as an ongoing? Post-House of M / pre-Civil War? Post-Civil War? Is Dick Grayson gong to be Moon Knight when it's all said and done?

Huston: I’m looking at the first arc as predating the onset of Civil War by a few months. Just enough time for the other heroes in the MU to know Moon Knight is back on the scene and to develop some ideas about him. The first issue of the second arc should come out toward the end of the Civil War run, but the events are meant to be read as occurring more toward the middle of that story. It is absolutely not a CW crossover, but there will be some CW influence felt in the book. I knew for a long while that if I did a second arc I’d want to bring in some other Marvel characters to interact with Moon Knight and help establish where he stands. I think it would have been willfully foolish to try and do this while CW is going on and pretend like it’s not happening.

With your primary career as a novelist, what convinced you to take on the second arc? Any plans for more beyond that?

Huston: Well, you work on something you really enjoy, even a character you didn’t create, and it’s hard not to get attached. I told Axel Alonso a while back that if there was an opportunity to do a second mini I’d like first shot. I felt good about the scripts I’d written and the shape I’d put on Moon Knight, and I was hoping I’d get a crack at putting him in play in the general MU, further defining him, before other writers start putting their imprints on him. Mostly that’s just me being selfish, but what the fuck. He offered me a second mini pretty early on and it evolved into the second arc of the ongoing. It helped that the timing suited my writing schedule. Whether I do any more will be determined by how the book does and whether I can keep finding the time.

Let's throw in a quick plug for Already Dead. What's the story there?

Huston: ALREADY DEAD is the first book in a series of horror noirs featuring vampire toughguy/fixer Joe Pitt. It’s pure pulp set in a contemporary Manhattan with an undead demimonde run by warring clans and gangs of vampires. All you need to know: zombie brain eating in the first five pages. Book one is out. Book two to follow late this year. Hoping to do five or six in all.

One more plug before I go. My second Henry Thompson crime thriller, SIX BAD THINGS, has been nominated for this year’s Best Paperback Original Edgar Award. If I may blow my own dick for a moment, that’s the Oscar of the mystery world. Read the fucking book. It’s good.

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Check out Charlie Huston's web site, www.pulpnoir.com, for more information on his novels - CAUGHT STEALING, SIX BAD THINGS, and ALREADY DEAD - as well as updates on Moon Knight and The Ultimates Annual.