Interview with Alan Cowsill (April 2021)

Coming out very soon is THE WAY OF THE WARRIOR, a new book from DK that will feature many of your favorite Marvel martial artists, including Daredevil, Elektra, Master Izo, and more.

I interviewed writer Alan Cowsill, who answered many questions about what went into writing the book, his selections, and his own history with martial arts. Many thanks to him and hope you enjoy this look at the project.

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Kuljit Mithra: Nice to chat with you. It was a nice surprise learning about the book, especially because of the Daredevil-related characters that will appear, but also some of the lesser-known Marvel characters that normally don't get featured. So I wanted to ask, how did this special project come to be, and how did you get involved?

Alan Cowsill: I've been working on various projects for DK books since about 2010 when I spent a few months inhouse as an editor prepping the first edition of the DC: Year by Year book. The designer at the time Rob Perry was a big martial arts fan and we spent a fair bit of time chatting about various fighting arts so it was pretty well known by DK editorial that I was a big Kung Fu fan. When they were pitching the Martial Arts book to Marvel they put my name forward as someone with Marvel knowledge and Martial Arts experience. It was a dream gig as I'd read just about every martial arts comic Marvel had done since Shang-Chi first appeared in Avengers weekly back in the UK in the 1970s. Over here in the UK Marvel set up their own office in 1972 and started doing weekly anthologies for the UK market starting with the Mighty World of Marvel back in 1972. Avengers weekly was their third title and eventually reprinted the classic Master of Kung Fu stories. Interesting aside some of those early UK comics had new covers by up and comic artists like Jim Starlin. Anyway, as a kid in the 70s I was caught up in the Kung Fu boom and loved Marvel's take on it.

Mithra: From the description online, the book seems like it's more than just character profiles, it's more like an analysis of their fighting style and techniques. Does that sound about right?

Cowsill: It's mostly character based but I also wanted to go into the training and put the emphasis on the martial arts side of the characters. So with Daredevil for instance there's plenty of details about his training with Stick and the whole Chaste/Hand history. Not that I need an excuse to reread the classic Miller Daredevil but it was wonderful to do so. I was a young comic book dealer when that run was at its height and it was amazing to see the effect on fans. Difficult to appreciate now just how much Miller changed Daredevil as a character. Got to be said though I've been loving the last few years on the title. Think we've seen some of the strongest DD stories for a long time.

Going back to the book, one of the original ideas – and no on else knows this yet – was to divide it up into styles. So we'd have had a Kung Fu section, Karate section and so on... but doing the research it surprised me how few karate based heroes and villains there are. Hardly any in fact. Which surprised me as Karate's such a cool art. Most heroes and villains have ninja or kung fu based techniques. Often you can tell the writers who have had some training as they name styles while others just have characters learning generic martial arts. Anyway, it became pretty obvious early on that the Martial Arts styles approach wouldn't work so we ended up splitting it in the way it is now – with the different sections – including a "Space Fu" one to cover characters like Gamora and Mantis.

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Mithra: Did you also write about any fights or storylines, or is the book concentrating more on the characters themselves?

Cowsill: Mostly character based but with the emphasis on the martial arts aspects of the stories. When selecting the artwork I tried my best to get martial poses for key moments.

Mithra: How did you decide on what characters would be featured, and will there be any that fans will be surprised about?

Cowsill: That was a tough one. I did a huge spreadsheet of just about every character Marvel have who had even shown the slightest bit of Martial Arts training and divided them up into 4 sections – essential characters like Shang-Chi, Iron Fist and so on and then by section 4 relatively minor characters like Junzo Moto (who was in about 6 comics leading the Hand). I was also undecided whether to include Western fighting styles like boxing and wrestling but it seemed too jarring – plus we needed the space so decided to stick to those really associated with Eastern fighting skills. For those who don't know Howard the Duck that well might be surprised to see him in there – but he is a Master of Quack Fu! The story was from the original run and poked fun at the old "Learn Martial Arts in 5 Easy Lessons" ads that would pop up in mid-70s comics.

Mithra: How much research did you have to do for all these fighting techniques and martial arts? What was the most difficult style to wrap your head around?

Cowsill: I've been reading up on various martial arts most of my life and trained in Praying Mantis for a few years and Tai Chi before discovering a great Wing Chun Sifu called Michael Tse who's a student of Ip Man's son Ip Chun. So I'm reasonably well-versed in the knowledge but obviously have some gaps. Think the hardest thing to get my head around is those characters where the writer (or artist) doesn't have much martial arts knowledge so just has them leaping around dramatically. On the flipside one of the more recent stories I reread for the book was Ed Brisson and Mike Perkins' Iron Fist run (and Brubaker's obviously). Had the feeling that those guys had done the research. You could almost feel the action.

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Mithra: I'm aware of many of your comics-related projects and experience, so much like the last question... how much research did you have to do on the characters?

Cowsill: Quite a lot. I read (or in most cases reread) just about every Marvel martial arts comic out there. I also did the picture research for the book so wanted to make sure we got the best images that showed some real martial arts action. I started out as a comic book dealer back when I was a teenager. It was basically a way of getting to read as many comics as possible during my teenage years, so my knowledge is pretty decent but also needs double checking in case I misremembered a key moment... Research is really key for these books I think if they're going to be authentic. I think readers can tell these days if a writer's just grabbed a few images off a server or style guide and popped some generic text next to it.

One of the lucky things - and thanks to Marvel for this – was getting to see the new Shang-Chi series. The first issue was just coming out as we were about to finish the book and obviously it changed a lot of Shang-Chi's history. Marvel sent us advanced copies to make sure we had the latest info. It was a great series too. One of my favourite Shang-Chi stories to date.

Mithra: Many years ago, I worked on an encyclopedia for Marvel and one of the funny things I realized in my research was that a lot of Daredevil's villains died by falling off a building. Were there any funny or strange things you found while writing about all these characters?

Cowsill: I didn't realise that about the rooftops! Now I'll be seeing it every time I read a Daredevil story! One of the stranger things was reading an early Daughters of the Dragon story from Deadly Hands of Kung Fu magazine. It was so dark and grim. One where they take on a drug dealer...

Also came across a Bruce Lee bio in Deadly Hands that I'd totally forgotten about. As I'm a Wing Chun guy that was great to read – and see the great Ip Man cameo.

Mithra: Thanks for the interview. I hope fans got a better idea of what to expect. Any forthcoming projects you can talk about? Maybe another book with DK? Thanks again.

Cowsill: Got a few things coming out soon. Editorially, I've created a Batman Chess Collection for Hero Collector. That's due out anytime now. That was great fun to work on but quite tricky to develop. I love Chess (though I'm rubbish at it) and trying to make sure the characters reflect their chess pieces was a long and tough process. Got a few novels out too. A zombie book called Zombie 18 – that's basically Dawn of the Dead meets Lord of the Flies – all about a group of school kids trying to get home when a zombie-like plague turns everyone over 18 into the undead. And there's Punch Drunk Kisses. That's my attempt to do a Nick Hornby/Shameless type thing. I call it my Sex and Kebabs book. If anyone's ever wondered what working class life in the North of England is like they might like it. Just finishing off a werewolf novel too that should be out in a few months called Feral: Werewolves of Winterdale, which is kind of a working class horror adventure... Cheers for the questions. It's been fun to answer.

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(c) 2021 Kuljit Mithra & Alan Cowsill
Daredevil: The Man Without Fear
http://www.manwithoutfear.com
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