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Interview: Fred Van Lente Talks Generation Zero

By Matt Conner

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Generation Zero writer Fred Van Lente talks to us about today’s debut of his new Valiant series, showcasing the company’s most powerful teens.

Generation Zero, Valiant’s newest team book, launches today, and Bam Smack Pow had the pleasure of talking with writer Fred Van Lente about what readers can expect.

BAM SMACK POW: You nailed satire with Archer & Armstrong (with a 2014 Harvey nomination for Humor in Comics), but you’ve also written master examples of crime stories with X-Men: Noir, superhero books with Hercules, horror with Marvel Zombies 3 and 4, and science fiction with Cowboys & Aliens. How would you describe the tone or genre of Generation Zero?

FRED VAN LENTE: I settled on the idea of treating the super-powered characters almost like beings of folklore, half-beautiful but half-frightening. Normal people are attracted to them, but the closer they get to them, the much likelier they are to get, well, destroyed. So they’re like the future is to most teens, on the cusp of adulthood and independence: desperately desirable and terrifying.

The characters of Generation Zero came out of Harbinger War and were also prominent in Armor Hunters. When I consulted with my friends, we all remembered really enjoying the kids when they came out. But we could only name Animalia, and maybe a pair of evil twins. This seems to be a natural consequence of introducing a whole team of newcomers – losing people in the shuffle. How do you plan to make your characters stand out from their teammates? Who will get the spotlight in the first story arc of Generation Zero?

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The Zygos Twins are who you were thinking of, yeah, and I have a feeling they’ll be just as memorable here! They don’t appear until issue #2… Harbinger Wars introduced a lot of great characters for the team, but there are a lot of them, so at the outset I had to whittle down the cast into a core team.

Animalia is definitely one of them, with the power to transform into cartoon animals — though she may have outgrown cartoons somewhat and has moved onto anime, so expect some changes there.

Cronus, the leader, can both heal and destroy with a touch. He’s the Che Guevera of this team of teenage rebels — charismatic but devoted. I keep describing him as a benign cult leader.

Telic, his right-hand girl, has been accelerated along the quantum timestream, and is in many ways even more devoted to the cause than Cronus is.

Cloud is a telepath who is tapped into the collective human consciousness at one time. She’s kind of retreated into a childlike posture to cope with her mind being basically one continuous YouTube comments page, it’s driven her a little crazy.

But the breakout character I think will be Gamete the Super-Fetus. You meet her in #2 as well…

As you get to know these characters, which of the team members surprised you?

Part of the reason I had to cut down the number of Gen Zero characters is because there’s a whole new cast introduced in the first issue: Keisha Sherman, our main character, is a seemingly normal 17 year old in the high-tech hub of Rook, Michigan. There’s something mysterious and awful being created in Rook, which is responsible for the town’s success, and it seems to have claimed the life of her boyfriend. At this point Generation Zero is almost like an urban legend among the high school community, so she reaches out to them through this ritualistic method on-line (spoilers) to see if they will help her. I don’t think it’s too spoiler-y to point out almost all of #1 is about her, and her town, her family and friends.

Keisha is definitely my favorite character so far. It’s great to have a fully fleshed out powerless person as a counterpoint to the super-powered folk. How they show up and affect her life is kind of the whole point of the series.

Your characters are teens undercover to help other teens. It sounds like a combination of 21 Jump Street and the best parts of Marvel’s New Warriors. What do you see as the most important issues facing teenagers today, and how do you research those?

Generation Zero only takes on kind of … unusual problems? The kind of problems that really only happen in superhero universes like Valiant’s. Fortunately, there are so very many of them to solve…

Can readers expect to see any appearances from characters we’d know from Harbinger or Archer & Armstrong?

Not at first, but I feel like Faith and the other Harbinger Renegades might be interested in the trouble their former comrades are stirring up, and might be inclined to investigate, no?

Before the Future Of Valiant wave of titles launches, you have a high-profile introduction with 4001 A.D.‘s War Mother one-shot. Fans are going to be digging through Generation Zero looking for clues to her ancestry. Do you see her as a strictly 4001-era character, or will we see connections in your present-day title?

Like Generation Zero, I think you need to give each title a chance to flex its muscles and grow into its own before going nutso with the crossovers. Same thing with War Mother.

How does adapting another writer’s recent creation, and in particular a writer who’s just finished his own Harbinger-Imperium epic, compare to adapting Archer & Armstrong from 1992 for the modern Valiant relaunch?

Josh [Dysart] is one of my best buddies in comics and I’ve tried to keep him in the loop as much as possible, from wine-fueled Skype discussions (at least on my end) and sending him the issues, and I’ve been thrilled he seems to be pleased with the direction we’ve taken. This may be the first original property of the modern Valiant Universe to get its own ongoing series, so let’s all keep our fingers crossed the readers dig it.

This team of psiots is intimately tied to the Harbinger series. How will this team’s mission and tactics differ from what Joshua Dysart did in his book?

Josh did a great job of making the Renegades as dysfunctional and improvisational as Harada was methodical and strategic. Generation Zero is neither of those things: Raised to be human weapons more or less from birth, they have a strong cohesion as a military unit and understand boots-on-the-ground military tactics, but are emotionally immature and largely ignorant about the outside world. They’re kind of superhuman bulls in the China shop and Keisha will soon have to deal with the Pandora’s box she’s unleashed on her town — assuming there’s much of it left standing!

Harbinger Wars, which introduced the kids of Generation Zero, may become a Valiant movie (after Bloodshot and Harbinger). How much does the potential for film adaptation affect the way you write these kids now? Do you have a casting wish list to play these characters?

It doesn’t, I just try to tell the best story I can, always. With kid characters it’s hard to get too invested in casting because they grow up so fast, to coin a cliche. Like we saw with Netflix’s Stranger Things it’s sometimes best to be surprised with unknowns, you know?

Your run on Archer & Armstrong was one of my favorite things Valiant has ever produced, and the first Deluxe edition is the book I loan friends who are thinking they might like Valiant. The main characters have since appeared in other books, like the Dead Drop miniseries or the new A+A. What is it like to see a property you’ve worked on for years shift tones with different creative teams?

Thank you kindly! It’s been hugely gratifying and it seems to be my work that has struck a chord with the most people as of late. A lot of that is just the strength of the original concept and Barry Windsor-Smith’s work on the series, of course.

You’ve been with Valiant since the early days of the 2012 relaunch. What makes working for this publisher different from your other work?

It’s great fun having a small, nimble team working on a shared universe. And the Valiant fans are second to none. They’re a vocal, energized group and it’s great engaging them on-line and at shows.


Read Bam Smack Pow’s review of Generation Zero #1 here. You can pick up your copy at your local comic shop beginning today!

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