When Icon vs Hardware #1 debuted in February, DC Comics promised not only a battle royale between these “Milestone titans” but also something that’d “set in motion a chain of events leading to a story bigger than you could ever imagine!” So, how’s this series progressed, and what can we expect for subsequent issues?
Well, AIPT recently got the chance to sit down with Leon Chills, the series’ co-author, ahead of the release of issues #3 and #4. In addition to exploring those issues, Chills provided some insight into his creative process and some of the real-world inspirations and parallels that inform the series.
(Warning: Spoilers ahead for Icon vs. Hardware issue #1-3.)
As a former assistant to his co-author, Reginald Hudlin, Chills admitted that it was “amazing” to work once more with the famed writer-director, before going on to elaborate that “…we have a lot of history that helps us get into that flow state pretty easily when we do our brainstorming. We definitely butt heads, for sure; I think if you’re gonna co-write with someone, you should definitely butt heads or else it’s…you’re not individually bringing enough to the project, right, if you don’t have differing opinions on certain things.”
The aforementioned flow state was the source of a surprise villainous appearance in the series. Speaking on Vandal Savage’s appearance as an adversary, Chills said “Reggie and I [thought that] it’d be cool to have a villain who is immortal or who would be in a time period, a prior time period that he goes back to. And Reggie almost immediately said Vandal Savage…it allowed for an organic way for a villain to be back in that time period and him to have to go up against someone he’s never seen before.”
Courtesy of DC Comics.
Chills went on to say that Vandal is certainly a “competent adversary” for the three leads, citing “Hardware’s manipulation with time” as the reason that things are a bit different in regards to his abilities when compared to the mainline DC universe.
When asked what it would take for Hardware to “leave things as they are,” Chills explained, “I think what he experiences in issue #3 is what causes him to stop. We don’t see all of the years that transpired, but he sticks around from the 15th century up through another 300 years, 400 years and keeps making himself, making it so that he doesn’t age and in all of those years, he learns the lessons that he needs in order to realize he can’t…it’s a fool’s errand to try and fix things from the past.”
Furthermore, Chills referenced Hardware Season One, specifically Metcalf’s betrayal by Edwin Alva, saying that “…after the betrayal that he experienced from Edwin Alva, he’s spiraling a little bit and he’s seeking control…and he’s found it through this time machine where he thinks he can have some sense of control because he can go back and fix things and he will find out that that is…he maybe should’ve just gone to therapy versus using that time machine.”
This was not the only real-world issue present in the series, and in issue #3 in particular, Metcalf’s latest alteration to the time stream poses an interesting thought experiment through an alternative past.
When asked what he thought life might have been like without a Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade, Chills had this to say:
“…The comic gave us the opportunity to do some wish fulfillment. I mean, say, coming off of 2020 and going forward…there just being so much racial conflict across the country, well then what would it look like and what would you have to do? But, in the same way that he learns a lesson that sometimes things have to occur as they are, just like, as ugly as that past is, if it didn’t happen I wouldn’t be sitting here, because I’m African-American, I wasn’t born in Africa, I do my ‘ancestry.com’ it’s a little all over the map, and so that’s just kinda the harsh reality of the situation.”
Courtesy of DC Comics.
Finally, Chills commented on the myriad differences between Icon and Hardware and their Prime Earth counterparts, Superman and Batman, saying “I mean, race makes everything different, you know? They can’t alter the ways in which they’re viewed, for one. No matter what they do for people, all they good that they do, there’s a chance that they’re still viewed as villain by some people of their universe…Batman isn’t gonna go back and think about ‘what can I do to fix white problems?’ you know what I mean?”
He added, “He’s not thinking of it on that level, he’s just thinking of it as crime, good and bad. Whereas someone like Hardware, that’s definitely on his mind, again, especially coming off of what happens with him and Edwin. Icon’s a little different, given that he’s an alien, but he has lived through it, literally, and so he has that experience as well that alters his viewpoint in terms of how he acts as a hero and feeling an extra level of connection to the Black citizens, I would say, more than a Superman or a Batman ever would.”
As for what readers should expect from Chills in the future? Chills mentioned that he would love to create a new character to inhabit the Milestone Universe, and that “the seeds have been planted” for them to be introduced at a later date. What’s more, Chills left AIPT with some teases for the back half of the series:
“… there will be a ton of adversaries for them to fight against and, on the flip side, there are more heroes in Dakota than Icon, Rocket, and Hardware, so they may be forced to help when there’s Confederate soldiers marching through their neighborhood.”
Icon vs. Hardware issue #4 is due out August 1 (with an FOC of Sunday, July 9).
Courtesy of DC Comics.
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