Scott Kolins has drawn the past, with forays into Thor’s early years in Thor: Blood Oath to the earliest days of the Avengers in Earth’s Mightiest Heroes. He has drawn the present, speeding alongside the Scarlet Speedster in the Flash and returning to the current day Avengers alongside Geoff Johns. Now, we look towards the future as 2007 will herald the return of Canada’s premier super-hero team in it’s latest incarnation, that of Omega Flight.

With all this firmly in mind, we took the opportunity to speak with Scott Kolins and get in on the ground floor of Marvel’s newest launch.

PopCultureShock: When last I got the chance to speak with you, you were working with Mike Oeming on a book featuring a hammer swinging hero who’s roots are in mythology. Now, you’re working on a book with Mike Oeming on a new book featuring a hammer swinging hero who’s roots are in mythology. Is this a coincidence or do you hide a secret love for mythology, hammer swinging or Mike Oeming?

Scott Kolins: Mike’s the one in love with Beta Ray Bill. Well, I really like the guy too – and it’s just coincidence that he was right for this book. I do love Mythology and Thor: Blood Oath with Mike was a true career highlight, so I’m sure some of that will creep into this book. Alpha Flight did have its share of Gods and magic – so we might as well.

The announcement of Omega Flight seems to be coming quite early, as the book isn’t slated to be released till 2007. What point are you at right now? Has page one, panel one been drawn already?

Kolins: All preliminary stuff. Character designs, promo art, finding reference and talking over the direction of the book with the writer and editor. I’ll start on Pg 1 in about a month. November.

Most fans, when they hear “artist”, tend to think they just draw whatever the writer has laid out for them. Just as when fans hear “editor” they tend to think of someone who makes sure there are no mistakes and that everything is turned in on time. But as you mentioned, artists can have a say with the direction a book can take. Do you find a direction or style of storytelling that you find stimulates your creative processes?

Kolins: All I need is a good story. I like all sorts of stories: horror, action, romance, western, sci-fi, mythological and heroic. I do like to have a strong dialogue between me and the writer – as I think it makes for a better book overall. I get to more fully understand where the writer is going and the writer gets the benefit of another friendly pair of eyes trying to help the brew. It’s like me needing help from my colorist. The colorist and I are the visuals of the book – so hopefully our arts match up seamlessly.

For those who aren’t familiar with Alpha Flight, much less familiar with Omega Flight, how would you explain to them the title?

Kolins: I don’t know. They were just very cool. They had that right combination of being super-heroes but not being the same as the FF or Avengers or X-men, despite having some of the same trappings. Big strong guy or a guy covered in a flag. Maybe it’s just me being raised in Wisconsin and loving the North woods thing but somehow Canada was exotic in a neighborly way. I guess the strong Canadian theme helped hold the group together and give them their own identity (every member was created to be in that group – and really wouldn’t fit in any where else). Like being a fan of the Yankees or something. You like the players, the name, the uniforms, and even the team symbol or mascot. Granted, I was a huge John Byrne fan at the time and he could create incredible stories that felt like nothing we had seen before.

How familiar were you with Canada’s premiere super-hero team before you began working on the book?

Kolins: I haven’t read all the 90’s stuff, but I’ve read the Byrne stuff a million times. Alpha Flight 1 – 28, X-men 109, 120,121, 139 & 140 are my Alpha Flight bible.

How did you come to be involved with Omega Flight? What phase of the books inception did you come in on or were you always the artist they had in mind since the beginning?

Kolins: I heard the rumors of the new Alpha book and made inquiries through Tom Brevoort. He passed my name along and I was put on the possible list. At the time Mike Marts was the editor and –as fate would have it – I got the chance to fill-in on Excalibur and show him how I work. Marts liked what he saw, talked it over with Oeming and offered me the gig. We chatted about the book; who was in it and what was going to happen, and that was it. I can’t describe how cool it is to be working on this group. I’ve been waiting for this opportunity my whole career.

Obviously, with a new team there is a new cast of characters that you are able to draw. What character would you have join the team just to get the opportunity to draw them on a regular basis?

Kolins: I completely excited about the cast Omega has to offer, but I would love to have them face off against the Hulk when he comes back. My very first comics were Hulk issues where he bounced around Canada with the Wen-Di-Go and Wolverine. Great stuff.

It seems that some of the characters compromising the new Omega Flight are either all new or gone through some major design changes. How much say did you have visually with these characters and what do you find to be the most important characteristic of a superhero’s costume?

Kolins: I had a fair amount of input on the look of the characters – within the fact that they have a strong history with a certain direction of visuals and personality. You can’t put a dress on the Hulk or a cape on Captain America. As far as most important piece, I like the combination of shapes and detail to help express the look of the character. For Guardian I like the angle of his eyes to mirror the angles of the maple leaf Flag pattern then offset that with the flat cut of the nose area and the rounded flowing contours of his anatomy. I don’t like Guardian to have a Dr. Doom triangular nose – makes him look less sci-fi to me.

If you had the chance to redesign any Marvel character, which character would you choose and what do you feel that their costume is lacking?

Kolins: Jeez, I don’t know. Re-reading my Alpha Flight’s recently, I would’ve liked to redesign Shaman’s costume, I guess. The green & orange one was fun but too super-hero-y. And I didn’t like his black and white costume either. Too scary. I probably would’ve just tweaked the green and orange with a slightly more tribal feel. Most of the designs out there I really like – it’s just a matter of drawing them in the best light. Finding out what is their strongest visual and playing off that. Are they stoic or animated? Is it all in the face or are they the flicker across the screen that you can barely make out. Like the saying goes –there’s not a bad character just a bad writer. Well, same thing goes for artists and characters. A good artist can make anything look good.

I always hear how writers ask the artists of the books they are working on what they would like to draw or what they would like to bring visually to the title. Do you have a standard answer when asked that? What did you tell Michael Oeming when he asked that of you?

Kolins: Well, he didn’t say those words this time. Thor Blood Oath was more open and easy. Omega already has had many eyes on it and it’s just grown more complicated from there. I don’t have to be here for the inception of the book or make the big decisions of who and what the book is going to be about – but I like to be a strong part of the book once we are up and running. Mike’s very informal about how he works. We share emails all the time now and talk every week or so – and I haven’t even started page 1. Geoff Johns was very similar. He and I would talk over issues before Geoff wrote anything. I’m a hopeful writer of my own someday – and I’ve been told I’m pretty useful in story discussions. If Mike asked me right now, I’d tell him that I’d like to play with the format. Stories don’t always have to go ABC. They can go CAB or BAC or whatever. There needs to be a reason do that storywise, but it can help keep things from being dull.

PopCultureShock: With Mike Oeming being an artist/writer, do you find any differences working with him as compared to the less artistic writers you have worked with in the past?

Kolins: Mike generally gives me plenty of room to have fun and can offer more ideas for page layout without locking me into anything. Some writers just write their five panels on every page and leave everything else up to me. Mike will have some of those pages, but will include some graphic ideas for different scenes. This picture runs across the top of 2 pages and has a few panels below or her we need a nine panel grid for effect.

Lately, with the delay in Civil War, the timeliness of artists and writers has been another hot button topic of conversation. Your work on Flash has shown that you are able to keep a pretty tight schedule. How far in advance do you like to be on a monthly book and are there any tips or trick that you have to keep on a schedule like that?

Kolins: The Civil War delay will only help us on Omega. We’ll get more lead time before our first issue comes out. I like to be 4 or 5 months ahead. We were 6 months ahead on Flash but that’s a rare occurrence in this business. Usually Marvel is only 2-3 months ahead, if that. I can do 12 issues a year without a problem – but I like to have good lead time so the colorist isn’t getting jammed. I don’t have any tricks about being monthly, just sit you’re ass down and draw.

Will you be providing the covers to the new series? What do you find to be the positives and negatives of having a cover artist?

Kolins: I hope to be doing the covers. It’s a big honor to do the covers. Getting a different cover artist can help in sales sometimes, but unless it’s a great fit between the inside and cover it usually feels awkward to me to have some else do the covers. I love Mike Mignola, but it’s usually odd to pick up his cover and then try and read the inside if it’s not him. Nothing against the inside artist, it just – this is all about telling stories and the cover is supposed to start that with the reader. I loved Brian Bolland’s Flash covers on my issues, but always felt it was odd to open the book and find me after seeing Brian’s work on the cover. Just two different worlds. Would it have worked to have John Travolta introduce Star Wars back in 1977? He was a big star then and could’ve gotten some attention to the movie, but it would’ve stopped you from getting into the story. I think of covers the same way.

Some artists change or adapt their style from one book to another. Visually, is there anything you are looking at doing with this book to give it a unique feel? Has the book called for any stylistic changes that fans of your work might notice?

Kolins: Still figuring that out – though I don’t see anything drastic. I changed my style way back with the Flash because it was something I wanted to try and I was having a hard time with the traditional style I was using. I’ve been very happy with my open style now and it’s been a very profitable. I did try some more black silhouettes in Beyond! We’ll see. The toughest part has been the coloring. Finding that right counter part to what I’m doing isn’t easy. Colorists have to work their butts off with me. I know; I’ve colored myself.

Omega Flight is the obvious successor to the popular fan favorite title of Alpha Flight, which takes place in Canada. In past volumes of the comic I have seen many Canadians pull apart details such as locations, building designs and even the fact that a character was giving a stripper dollar bills, when in fact Canadians have one dollar coins. Have you been studying up for the artistic chore of reproducing a Canada that will artistically represent the environment specific to the great white north?

Kolins: I’m just beginning that research now. Dollar coins huh? Ok, thanks, I’ll make a note. Though I really hope Mike doesn’t write any stripper scenes in Omega. Who wrote that stuff in Alpha?? Good grief, that’s what comics need: strippers!

And with those words, that will probably be quoted out of context across the Internet, we thank Scott Kolins for stopping by and talking with us. You can check out his artwork currently on Beyond! and in the upcoming Civil War: Choosing Sides.