Justin Jordan
Team 7 was part of the history of the Image Universe, it contained a Black Ops military team who’s members would go on to be the future Super Heroes or parents of Super Heroes in the Wildstorm portion of the Image Universe. As the Wildstorm Universe had blended with the DC Universe in the New 52, we see a new Team 7 emerge, in two week with Team 7 #0. Team 7 writer Justin Jordan was nice enough to stop by First Comics News to catch our reader up to speed before the zero issue hits the stands.
First Comics News: Is Team 7 aUS counter measure against Superman and the heroes or a world wide counter measure?
Justin Jordan: They’re not quite a counter measure against superheroes, per se. What they’re actually doing is developing the counter measures. The situation the world governments are in during the time period we’re in is roughly the same as if someone used an atomic bomb when no one knew that splitting the atom was even possible. There’s this huge thing happening that almost nobody saw coming and that they have absolutely no response to.
So what Team 7 is doing is responding to superhuman activity, or suspected superhuman activity, assessing the situation and trying to figure out what the best response would be. But they’re not cape killers. The answer to their problem is sometimes that nothing at all needs to be done. And sometimes it’s that they need to kill someone. The individual team members opinions vary from being positive about superhumans to being fairly paranoid about them and everything in between.
As far as scope, they theoretically shouldn’t be operating outside of theUS. Theoretically. In practice, they’re covert ops and they go wherever they need to go to do what they think needs doing.
1st: Who does the team answer to?
Justin: Immediately, John Lynch. He’s the one who assembled the team and tasks them with their missions. Lynch himself has people higher up the food chain that he answers to, and you get a hint of these folks in the first pages of the zero issue, but exactly who they are is something we’re keeping up our sleeve for the time being.
1st: All 7 team members are connected to ongoing comics, how do they fit together?
Justin: The benefit of being set in the past is that we can explore the connections these various characters have. Some of them know each other prior to Team 7 and some of them meet here for the first time.
But one thing we wanted to do when we were picking out the characters on the team was make sure that there was a reason all these characters are here. There is a reason each of them was selected, which you see in the zero issue, and they all fit a particular role on the team.It actually wasn’t too bad to coordinate this part of the character’s pasts; the new 52 means that this part of their past is still up for grabs, for the most part. The trickiest part, actually, was coordinating the zero issues, which are largely origin issues of some sort, and some of what they show is stuff that takes place during the Team 7 era. So that took some doing.
1st: Are all the stories set in the past, or will the comic catch up to the present?
Justin: For the foreseeable future, it’s all set five years in the past. Or, at least, it starts there. We do have a long range plan in place for where the series is going and what it leads into, an event that changes the lives of everyone who survives it forever. And it’s an awesome story that I hope I get to tell.
That said, we’ve discussed where to go after that, and if the series will continue. I would certainly like to bring the Team into the present day DCU although it would, out of necessity, not be all the same members.
But realistically, we’re so far out from that point that it’s all just ideas. First we need to get through the first two years, and then we can switch it up.
Original Team7
1st: Are Dinah Lance, Amanda Waller, Steve Trevor, John Lynch, Alex Fairchild, Cole Cash and Slade Wilson the only members of Team 7 or just the first members of the team?
Justin: Nope. They’re not actually even all the first members of the team. One thing that people have been sort of assuming is that because the name is Team 7 is that there are 7 people on it, which isn’t true. There are actually eight or nine people on the team at the start of the series, depending on whether you count Lynch as a team member.
There are three brand new characters that are on the team initially and no, they aren’t redshirts. Some of them have deep connections to what’s happened in the past of the DCU and what is happening in the present, but you’re going to need to read the book to see just how they’re connected.
1st: Obviously several members are active monthly in the new 52 universe, how do you put the characters in jeopardy if the reader knows they will make it to the present day?
Michael Cray “Deathblow” from Grifter #9
Justin: Clones!
The more serious answer is that I don’t really regard that as a huge problem because, truth be told, we’re used to that. I mean, when you watch Justified, do you really believe that Raylon or Boyd orWinonaare going to bite it? Or that Batman is actually going to get killed?
What people are interested in, I think, is what happens to characters they’re interested. I’m tempted to say like there , but I’m certainly fascinated by characters in fiction that I don’t actually like. I’m looking at you, Walter White.
So while there are characters I can’t kill, that doesn’t mean that the emotional stakes aren’t there. These are people who are operating in a really grey area, both legally and morally, and that takes a toll on the people doing. So what I’m hoping and taking the really round about way of saying is that fans dig the journey even when they know where it’s going for some of the characters.
That said, some stuff happens that I’m pretty sure you won’t expect. It just doesn’t involve killing Amanda Waller or Steve Trevor.
Team member Cole Cash from Grifter #9
1st: Michael Cray is already active in the DCU as Deathblow, is he still connected to Team 7?
Justin: Maybe. I love Cray, and I would have liked to have him on the team from the get go, but he was already spoken for.
1st: Will either Marc Slayton or Jackson Dane show up at some point?
Justin: The boring and not particularly illuminating answer is maybe and probably not. Dane, while a member of the original Team 7 is still, I think, owned by Whilce Portacio and not a part of the Wildstorm universe in the sense that most of the characters are. With Slayton, I’m just being cryptic.
1st: Was there a Team 6 prior to Team 7, or does everything start with Team 7?
Justin: There are other teams, yes, and a reason why this is Team 7, but the relationship isn’t a chronological one. This actually sort of goes back to what I said about the number of people on the team. If you look at the Seal teams, which is where we’re drawing the inspiration from, organizationally, you’ll see that there are a bunch of teams, with hundreds of members, with varying tasks for each team. All of the teams other than Team 7 have the same very general purpose, but they’re doing different stuff.
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