Creator / Al Ewing

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A rising star at Marvel Comics. After a few years writing for 2000 AD (mostly Judge Dredd and Zombo ^note and a Fanfic👁 Image
of 52 from Ralph Dibny's perspective), he got his first gig at Marvel with the digital series Iron Man: Fatal Frontier, and the rest is history.

Ewing is best known for his work on "second-string" Avengers titles such as Mighty Avengers, New Avengers, U.S.Avengers, and Ultimates, as well as the critically acclaimed Loki: Agent of Asgard, The Immortal Hulk, and X-Men Red (2022).

Signature elements of his work include continuity deep-dives that often weave together inconsistent characterisation into a cohesive arc, giving love to lower-tier characters in need of it, explorations of philosophical ideas, and — in his lighter works — a love of funny character intro captions.

Ewing has also worked on Jennifer Blood for Dynamite and the 2014 Doctor Who Eleventh Doctor comics for Titan. In 2020, he launched his creator-owned title We Only Find Them When They're Dead.

In June 2021, Ewing publicly came out as bisexual.

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Tropes associated with Al Ewing:

• Arc Welding: He does establish future story arcs in each issue.
• Arc Words:
  • "Mystery", reflecting the idea of the unknown possibilities beyond all time and space, is a recurring idea in his more cosmic-oriented work. ^note Examples include the Fourth Cosmos being the "true believer who journeys into mystery", the Challenger being trapped within the mystery outside creation, Heimdall being released into the mystery after death, the One Above All and the One Below All respectively stating "the mystery intrigues me" and "the mystery frightens and disgusts me", and S.W.O.R.D. (2020) teleporting past the Mystery to the Farthest Shore.
  • "Help" — as in, the only thing someone really needs to do to be a hero. This idea of a "real hero", who sees someone in need of help and offers it, appears with Ewing's takes on Hyperion, Hercules, and the Mighty Avengers
• Chekhov's Armoury: Somehow can use previous writers' stories as this without their own knowledge. Kieron Gillen said he didn't realize he wrote the first and second parts of the Loki trilogy until Ewing wrote the third.
• Continuity: He knows so much about the Marvel Universe he might well be a human personification of the Marvel Database.
• Creator's Favorite: Monica Rambeau, Blue Marvel, Night Thrasher, Sunspot and Storm.
• Creator Thumbprint:
  • Meta-discussion of the nature of the status quo and the "gravity of expectations" in comics that limits the possibility of change and growth. Especially evident in Loki: Agent of Asgard and The Ultimates, as well as in The Immortal Hulk and Defenders: Beyond.
  • Transitioning between two scenes using narration that connects to thematically to both scenes.
• Death of the Author: Invoked. He's publicly stated that he believes Word of God is meaningless, and that any theories is met with a Shrug of God, leaving fans to come up with their own theories regardless of what's been stated.
• Department of Redundancy Department: All of his Marvel titles have the curious habit of introducing the main cast at the beginning of each issue. Not just the new characters, the regulars too again and again.
• Lemony Narrator: Just look at any issue of Loki:AOA or New Avengers and you'll find at least one caption dripping with snark.
• Foreshadowing: Makes heavy use of this in X-Men Red. It pays to reread his issues.
• Metafiction: This appears in a few of his works. For example, Loki: Agent of Asgard introduces the idea of narrative as a universal force as natural as time and space, and involved Loki gaining meta abilities as part of their reinvention as God of Stories.
• Reconstruction: Lampshaded in his Mighty Avengers run after they've saved the world instead of fighting other superheroes.
• Rewatch Bonus: A hallmark of his work is that almost all of it is better on a reread, as there are a ton of subtle hints that fly over your head the first time you read it.
• Shown Their Work: The dude seems to have read every Marvel comic in existence.
• Shrug of God: Not a believer in the Word of God, so fans asking him about the more trippy (Loki:AoA, Ultimates) stuff he has written generally earns responses of this nature.
• Sliding Scale of Idealism vs. Cynicism: His Marvel works usually falls heavily on the idealistic side, though there are some that lean toward cynicism (the Dum-Dum Duggan backup stories, for example).
• Sliding Scale of Silliness vs. Seriousness: Goes all over the place in his Marvel works, sometimes even within the same issue.
• Take That!: He's made a few swipes at the UK's right-wing Conservative Party.
  • The two face-eating leopard demons in the Best Defense crossover have names reminiscent of two well-known politicians, Boris Johnson (Borss) and Jacob Rees-Mogg (Mog'Rys). (And the existence of face-eating leopard demons is a Shout-Out to this tweet👁 Image
    parodying voters who voted for them.)
  • During Secret Wars (2015) some of Doctor Doom's minions used a paraphrased version of David Cameron's much-mocked "passively tolerant society" speech (which may double as Ascended Fanon, as fan images with the original words added to speech bubbles for other supervillains had previously been shared online).
  • Reportedly, the "never trust a Tory" line spoken by Mr. Horse in Donny Cates' run on Thor was also one of Ewing's contributions.
  • Lycaon from X-Men: Red is a jab at the "enlightened centrist" concept, with the character supposedly "balanced" views only enabling the atrocities of the extremist side (that of Genesis).
• Teasing Creator: When he doesn't practice the shrug.
  Al Ewing: Well, remember that I think "Word Of God" is meaningless, so any theory that needs me to prove it is therefore canonically wrong.👁 Image
  
• Viewers Are Geniuses: All of his series are challenging to some extent but The Ultimates basically requires a physics doctorate and a photographic memory of the Marvel Universe to fully appreciate.
• World of Badass: His thesis statement for Marvel seems to be to remind everybody that their world is this.
• Writing for the Trade: Largely Averted. His work seems to actively avoid this. However, if you read the previous series of the characters, you'll find a treasure load of Easter Eggs.

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