At Omnivoracious, we're no strangers to writer Rick Remender's work. We covered his creator-owned series Fear Agent all the way back in 2008 and followed his ascent to Marvel hit-maker on The Punisher. Now, he's writing arguably the best X-Men comic around, Uncanny X-Force, and he was recently named writer for another flagship title: Secret Avengers. A lot has changed since we last spoke with Remender at Emerald City Comicon 2009, and it was great to catch up with him on all of the aforementioned books, how his fandom influences his characters, and more at this year's ECCC 2012.
Omnivoracious.com: Let’s start with the finale of Fear Agent. When we spoke in 2009, you were just beginning the penultimate arc, I Against I, and now the last volume, Out of Step, will release this month. What’s it like to say goodbye to Heath Huston?
Rick Remender: It was nice to get to the end we wanted to. It’s sad not to write Heath anymore. He’s obviously a character that I love writing, and since Tony [Moore] and I created him, it’s been my favorite book to write (at least it was while it was still running). It’s bittersweet: I’m very happy with the ending, but when I see it on the bookshelf there are moments of wishing I were still writing the book.
Omni: How did you arrive at that last scene?
Rick Remender: That’s been the plan since the beginning. I had a couple of potential chapters that could have extended it, but I realized that the end result was still the end result. We hit all the important beats—I don’t think there was any fat on it—and the end result was what I put in that initial document when I cooked the thing up.
Omni: And now you’re onto Uncanny X-Force. You’re writing characters that immediately connect with fans because you’re writing them as characters, with dimension and real motivations. Psylocke’s backstory is so convoluted that it’s made her bland, yet here she’s someone who readers can finally understand. What about her appealed to you?
Rick Remender: It probably has a lot to do with my history with the character. I was a big X-Men fan in the 1980s/early 1990s, and when she started appearing was at the peak of my interest in the series: the Mutant Massacre. That led me to