Ivan Brandon is up to his eyeballs in robots. Between his creator-owned series NYC Mech, his 24Seven series of short story compilations, and his Machine Man project in Marvel Comics Presents, the guy can't throw a donut without hitting some kind of sentient mechanical life form. He's also just taken the reins on an online-exclusive Secret Invasion tie-in from Marvel, and just returned from a months-long sabbatical in South America.--Matt Springer

Heavy Ink: Let's start with a big one: Why robots? What's the fascination?

Ivan Brandon: The funny thing is beyond NYC Mech, they all sort of grew their own legs without my help. We'd gotten a lot of interest from other creators who wanted to play in the NYC Mech world in some way and we took that and built 24seven out of it, trying to give them more room and a bigger stage to play on, something that wouldn't just speak to our own existing readership. With Machine Man, my editor suggested him and I loved the idea more for the fact that he's the perfect Marvel/Kirby weirdo than for him being a robot.

That said, ROBOTS! Who doesn't love 'em? When they run things, it might get me in good.

HI: What about robots make them interesting from a character point-of-view? Are there stories you feel like you can tell with robots that you can't tell with human protagonists?

IB: I think characters are characters, honestly. I set out to make them all as real as possible, metal or otherwise. With robots, it's maybe a bit harder to get the reader to fear their demise, or to care about their broken "heart," but in the end the goals are about the same and I don't get more writing one thing over the other.

HI: Do you think artificial intelligence and robotics will become an increasingly commonplace part of humanity's daily living, or do you think it will remain solely the province of science fiction?

IB: Oh, I think it's obvious those things are moving very quickly into our lives. I think a lot of it's a lot closer than people are aware of... the robotics work being done out there has had very little mainstream coverage and I think the average person would find it incredibly jarring to know what's possible TODAY.

HI: What's next for your NYCMech series and 24Seven?

IB: Right now, unfortunately, both are on a bit of a hiatus. The latter is a huge huge endeavor and takes a lot more of my time than I have handy right now, so...barring an addition of another dozen hours in a day, I'm going to have to hold off on subsequent volumes until I launch the various and sundry new series (serieses?) I have up my sleeves. NYC Mech has a lot of work being done on its behalf right now, but none of it in comics. Once that stuff gets squared and done, and the right story presents itself, we'll be back to conquer the human race.

HI: You're working on Machine Man right now for Marvel (yet another robot!)...what's your take on the character? Are you using Warren Ellis' riff from NextWAVE as a starting point?

IB: Well, the Ellis/Immonen take is the character's current "face", so yeah, but the story really plays with most of the incarnations, especially Kirby's original take. It's hard to get too far into explaining it without spoiling what's a really strange structural animal...let's say being a Kirby character is what drives the Ellis character to drink, if that makes any sense to anyone. Also, let's say that Niko Henrichon is really great at drawing the Hulk, and a dozen other characters I won't name for the sake of being a horrible person.

HI: I know you've spent the past four months in South America working and waiting out the winter months in NYC (smart move). Did you find the trip to be inspiring from a storytelling standpoint--did you notice things that will influence the stories you're telling?

IB: Thanks, and yeah, absolutely. It's hard to express in that while, yeah, I might use the landscapes, in the future, in one of my works, there are larger intangible effects on my general social perception that really sink in deeper. A lot of it just boils down to noting the differences in cultures and habits, and by extension, general needs...beyond economics, why one country doesn't have (or want) certain things another has. A lot of it, too, is seeing my own country from the eyes of an outsider...even the misconceptions, and there are a ton, give you a different sense of social action and reaction.

HI: How did you become involved with the Secret Invasion: Home Invasion project over at Marvel? Were you in on the viral marketing from the start, or brought in later?

IB: The myspace stuff was already in the works when my editor called to offer me the gig. I read the dialogue scripts at first and later watched the videos as they worked on getting them in shape to show the public. Kinsey's myspace page was up for a while before the videos started hitting...I resisted friending her, much as I wanted to wish her luck on getting a date for the prom.

HI: What's unique about telling stories this way, from a writing perspective? Right now the tale has become a comic but the story started as a video blog, MySpace page, and more. How do you craft a story for that specialized format?

IB: We obsess with smaller things, basically...we make sure that everything's as clear and inviting as possible so that the potential newbies all feel comfortable and the existing readers stay with us. We try to make each page an event, of sorts. Some bigger than others, but something has to HAPPEN on every single page.

HI: How will Home Invasion tie into the Secret Invasion story going forward? Are you coordinating at all with the editors and creators on the Secret Invasion books?

IB: I think all of the Secret Invasion titles live on their own two feet, to whatever degree, beyond the obvious interconnections...they all have their own stuff going on and ours will dip in and out of that larger picture while dealing with its unique and specific catastrophes. There's a lot of coordinating going on, but thankfully most of it's done through my editor.

HI: Are you a Skrull?

IB: Wait and see!