Utkarsh Ambudkar wrote Iron Man’s tale in the latest anthology in the Marvel’s Voices series, Marvel’s Voices: Avengers #1. The comic book, which hits stands on December 6 and gives Earth’s Mightiest Heroes their Marvel’s Voices spotlight, will also include stories for Captain America, Photon, and Ghost Rider.
Over Zoom, I spoke with the actor about why he considers this opportunity to be a dream come true, finding the balance between heart and action, why Tony Stark is such a special character, which heroes he would want to spend a day with, and more. Keep reading for everything he shared!
We are talking all about your new comic book, which I am so excited about. I’m such a Marvel nerd. First of all, can you tell me how this came about and what got you involved?
Utkarsh Ambudkar: Yeah, I got really lucky. A friend of mine in a group I’m in, Freestyle Love Supreme, James Monroe Iglehart, asked me to do a podcast during the pandemic with Lorraine Cink, the woman who wrote Marvel: Powers of a Girl, [which is a] great book, my daughter loves it, by the way, amazing artwork, but she linked me up with some Marvel folks and then I got magically in touch with a guy named Darren Shan over there at Marvel and Darren was super helpful. We tried to get something on the books, Ghosts season two started, I dropped the ball, he got busy and then, luckily, something popped up and he reached out to me again and was like, “Hey, man, do you still want to do this?” I was like, “Oh my God, I thought this was the missed opportunity I was never gonna get back. Yes, sir,” and we got a great artist, Tadam Gyadu, and we are cooking. We’re ready to go.
It was a long but extremely dream-fulfilling prophecy, it’s like a process rather. I’m stoked, this is dream come true stuff for me. I’ve been a voracious reader since youth. My house is full of boxes, thousands upon thousands of these worthless pieces of paper, but priceless to me and I am an every Wednesday comic shop guy. I don’t read them online, I don’t order them, I go to the shop and I go through them with my hands, so that’s kind of the story behind it. Then, I sort of pitched Darren a bunch of ideas and one of them was this Iron Man story about Tony sort of running into a younger version of himself in the form of a supervillain and how he is unable to see the similarities in the struggle that this villain is going through internally and the one that Tony went through in, I believe the seventies, that really iconic storyline and then later on too when Rhodey had to take over the mantle of Iron Man for a little bit because Tony Stark just couldn’t get out of bed.
That’s loosely connected to me in a way where like myself and many other people have had their own journey with substances and trying to get through that. Then, also on getting on the other side of it, being unable to have the perspective to see the similarities in people that are still going through it, right? Once you kind of “kick the habit,” you’re like, how can that person not kick the habit? And you’re like, “Well, bro, it took you a minute too and a lot of help.” So that’s kind of what this story is about spiritually, but it’s sort of packed into an action comedy.
I think that’s the best way to get a message across sometimes is when you get to experience it with action and comedy. That way, you’re kind of left with something after the fact.
It’s not like one of those ones where everybody talks the whole time, it is action-packed, [and] it’s full of fight scenes. For 10 pages, I think six of them are fighting and two of them are at Shawarma Palace. So, it’s just really exciting and I wish I had however many pages a full comic book is.
When you’re writing something like this, it’s always better when you have a history of being a lifelong fan. Can you tell me how you think that added to coming up with the story and the whole experience overall?
What comic books do better than any other medium is that you can really do so much without saying a word and you have a rich canon to go back on. So like the first page, you’re able to revisit all of these things that Tony Stark has done. He had a liaison with the She-Hulk, he’s been up in space, he’s a human being in a metal suit, he’s punched a phoenix, he carried that Star Brand baby all over outer space, he’s been freaking nanites, he’s died and been resurrected so many times, he fought Captain America, he controlled S.H.I.E.L.D. and then lost S.H.I.E.L.D., and then had to fight Norman Osborn. He’s done everything and to know all of that without having to read a Wikipedia page, but to have gone through it in real-time through the embossed covers of the nineties when he had the super mullet, when he was looking like Billy Ray Cyrus, I was like, I’ve been there for a long time, I love the character.
He’s a human being, a flawed human being and that is what makes him special. So, obviously, you want big fights, right? You want dramatic fights, I wanna see action, but it can’t just be that, right? Because the Spider-Man runs of the nineties that everyone talks about, the Ben Reilly years, those get a little bit tough because you’re like, this is a lot of brooding, this is a lot of a guy in the rain just talking. You can’t have just that and then you also can’t have like the early nineties version, which is just Spidey kicking a new bad guy’s butt every week, so to find the balance in that is what’s fun.
Then, what I love about what Marvel has become again, is that heart, right? Like, the real ability to have pathos where for instance, I’ll do an iconic — well, I’ll never match this writing, maybe but not today, but like the iconic scene at the end of Civil War where Captain America and Iron Man are fighting and Cap has won and then, the people that he’s protecting turn on him and his eyes well up with tears, no words, but we know and he surrenders. It’s just like bang, we waited this whole moment for this, for the guy we wanted to win to get to the point of giving up willingly. That is something that Marvel has been able to do, I mean, beautifully, over and over and over again, like through the Ultimate Spider-Man and it’s just… I want to aspire to that sort of triangle of goodness: action, then character, and then heart.
Lastly, I want to give you a fun question: if you could team up with any Avenger and live out a comic book adventure in real life, put yourself either in their place, or team up with them, who would you pick? And what would the adventure be?
The first thing that comes to mind because, unfortunately, I’m an actor now and I’m using my producer mind, so what could I actually do, what do we have the budget for? Honestly, it would be like Hawkeye and I going to get pizza and I think you could fill 22 pages of Clint and I trying to get a slice of pizza and being utterly unable to, if it’s a one-shot. That could be dope. I mean, my favorite characters are kind of like Hawkeye, the more underdog human ones like Moon Knight, who’s a schizophrenic. So, it could be fun to just go on a beat, get in Moon Knight’s cab — the cab driver version, Jake Lockley. I love Danny Rand, I love Iron Fist. It’d be really cool to like… obviously, these guys are make-believe people, [but to] spend a day with Iron Fist.
I think the crazy thing about Danny Rand is like, and they’ve tried to retcon it in so many ways, but that dude is a billionaire. He’s as rich as Tony Stark and we just don’t talk about it. I think it would be really interesting if he’s like, “I don’t have anyone to fight, you wanna go to Monte Carlo?” Then, you go and gamble with Danny Rand, take the PJ to freaking Greece and you’re like, “This is what you do? I thought you were a superhero.” He’s like, “Nah man, I can’t go to space. What am I supposed to do? This is my life most of the time.” Wonder Man, I love Simon, I think he’s great. I love the idea of being a B-list, you know, like, whatever Ben Stiller is in Tropic Thunder, being one of those kind of guys. So, I have lots of favorites but I love those.
Those are pretty good choices.
I had an idea for a comic where it’s a support group for B-list heroes where it’s like, you know, Iron Fist, Wonder Man, they’re all sitting in a circle and he’s like, “I’m literally the strongest one in every room and I can’t get by, they won’t — I can’t do it. They put me on the West Coast.” It’s like for whatever reason these guys just can’t get over.
You know what that reminds me of, I don’t know if you’ve ever seen Fred Claus, but they have that Siblings Anonymous scene and it’s so funny.
Yeah, it’s like that. It’s like Wreck-It Ralph, but I think that’s a three to four-panel joke as opposed to a full story. At least, that’s what I was told.
