Source: Comicbookresources
If you missed last months New Avengers # 53 you missed Brother Voodoobecoming Marvel Sorcerer Supreme . In the interview with CBR Bendis covers several things his approach to the character, the name change fr0m Brother Voodoo to Doctor Voodoo, and the confirmation of a new series for the character written by Rick Remender .
Here’s a few excerpts from the article :
“If you hear the pitch of who Doctor Voodoo is, you go, ‘Hey that’s pretty interesting,’” Bendis said. Doctor Voodoo had to learn magic to stop a powerful sorcerer and avenge his brother’s murder. “His dead brother’s soul is inside him so he’s got this constant voice telling him what to do. He was a reluctant hero who had things thrust upon him and those characters are always the best.
“We also thought him not knowing he was going to be chosen as the next Sorcerer Supreme opened up different layers of magic as well,” Bendis continued. “Sometimes lazy writers would write Doctor Strange as a wash away, but there was a lot of logic to his powers. With Doctor Voodoo, if you do your research on Voodoo and use it as the template to build your fantasy, there’s a lot of cool stuff you can do there. It’s a new bag of tricks.”
Pages from “New Avengers” #54
Once Jericho Drumm was chosen as the next Sorcerer Supreme, Bendis undertook an extensive amount of research on the subject of real-life Voodoo. “I felt like Voodoo was something I knew nothing about and writers are supposed to do research, so I felt I needed to learn a lot. I spent most of the winter reading books on Voodoo, what it means and its history. I was in New York and I had all these books on me and [Marvel Editorin-Chief] Joe Quesada asked, ‘What are those for?’ I said they were for Brother Voodoo and mentioned that part of the problem with the character was that no one had really done a god damn bit of research on Voodoo. I didn’t really use any of my research but I felt better writing him. I felt like I understood where he came from and what was going on.”
In writing scenes with the newly appointed Doctor Voodoo, Bendis found the dynamic between the character and the spirit of his deceased brother to be highly enjoyable. “I imagined if my brother, who I adore, lived inside me, I would punch myself in the face about 85 times a day. It’s like there’s someone just over your shoulder constantly bothering you and they won’t go away. That’s a very unique dynamic in the Marvel Universe and I thought it was a lot of fun to write.”
Additionally, Doctor Voodoo is simply a curiosity in the Marvel Universe. “Doctor Voodoo has also been by himself a lot. He’s popped in and out of some adventures, but his relationships to the rest of the Marvel Universe are unique; it’s like no one knows what to make of him,” Bendis explained. “You’ve got all that, which is very interesting, but now there’s the question of what does it mean now that he’s Sorcerer Supreme? What did the Eye of Agamotto bring him? And how does that mix with the abilities he already has? So the amount of stories that can be told with the character is overwhelming. There’s hundreds of brand new stories. This also opens up a lot of brand new stories for Doctor Strange. He’s no longer Sorcerer Supreme, but he’s not out of the picture. He’s in more of a mentoring position now.”
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This post was written by Lobo on June 19, 2009
