Was there any thought given to an Avengers Unity Squad fan vote to choose the final member of the team? Or is one fan-voted character enough for you to wrap your head around?
I think people are going to be pretty much all done with fan votes after this year's Hellfire Gala. That was a wonderful idea. I hope everyone had fun with it. I know that every character is someone's favorite. I worried a little bit about the temperature of some of the stuff. It was always meant to be fun. We did try to have election security. We could tell when a character had received fraudulent votes and so we just zeroed those out and left all the others. Some of these votes were really close. I think this year's was the closest.
But it presents a challenge, especially to me as a writer, to be able to not know who's going to be on the team and how that will play out. But I will tell you, I think one of the most interesting things when we look back at this era, will probably be the Firestar story that will come into focus as a result of her having been a fan vote winner. She's been both an Avenger and an X-Man, so I'm excited to see what comes of that.
I think we made a lot of good hay of that. And that was a gift, right? Talking before about being open to, "Mark Waid put this in the comic book, or "Oh god, the fans are giving you Firestar," now those are both two really fun, important things that you just have to be open to. We've had a big, multi-year plan, but those are the opportunities that you just have to be open to. You have to be flexible, and I hope it's fun.
But to answer your question, one fan vote is enough for me. I also have a hard time believing that [editor Tom Brevoort] would do a fan vote.