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Seeley’s Immortal Vampire Warriors Seek Forgiveness From Marvel’s Greatest Heroes

The Marvel Universe is a place of heroes and monsters. To protect the innocent, the former often have to battle and destroy the latter. Is it possible, though, for monsters to overcome their bloodthirsty nature and become heroes? That question became especially resonant during the 2011 Marvel Event, Fear Itself when Japanese vampire Raizo Kodo lead a team of fellow Nosferatu warriors into battle against a possessed Hulk. That team would reappear one year later, where they tried to help Jubilee, who had been transformed into a vampire, curb her bloodlust.

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Raizo and his team of heroic vampires, dubbed the Forgiven, have not been seen since, but that will change next year when writer Tim Seeley and artist Sid Kotian kick off a three-part saga that reintroduces the Forgiven into the Marvel Universe. The miniseries will show what they've been doing all these years and team them with some of Marvel's most iconic heroes. First up will be Spider-Man: Unforgiven, followed by X-Men: Unforgiven, and things conclude in Captain America: Unforgiven. CBR spoke with Seeley about the project, the appeal of telling stories with monstrous heroes, and what it's like bouncing his vampiric cast off of some of Marvel's biggest names. Marvel also shared a look at some of Kotian's art in Spider-Man: Unforgiven, colored by Edgar Delgado.

CBR: One of the big draws of this project has to be the chance to write some monstrous heroes. Those types of characters have been part of the Marvel Universe for quite a while and are experiencing a bit of resurgence. What is it about those types of characters that appeals to you as a writer and fan?

Tim Seeley: The original idea of the Marvel Universe when Stan, Jack, Steve, and the other guys were creating these characters was that they were doing mythological style heroes but giving them feet of clay. That's why Marvel was so appealing at the time. Then getting into the '60s and '70s, they're taking these classic characters; Dracula, Frankenstein, and the Wolf-Man, but they're doing Marvel versions of them. The way Marvel did horror in those days, whether it was in the monthly comics or the magazines, was they were doing the reverse of their heroes. They were taking these mythological monsters but setting them in this very contemporary story. So the way they applied "evil" and "monstrousness" was interesting. They sort of put the Hulk template on Dracula and Frankenstein.

I love the vibe of that stuff, and they never took the edge off those characters. They were still monsters even though they were the stars of the book. So, I tried to bring that Marvel feel of what a monster comic is into this story. It's obviously 2022 and very much set after the heyday of those books. I think that stuff is coming around again, though. You and I have talked about this before in relation to other things; horror tends to come back when society feels like there's an overwhelming panic going on. I think that's helping with the resurgence of these characters

Your central characters in this story are the Forgiven, a team of vampiric warrior heroes who have not appeared in a Marvel comic since 2012. So, many readers will meet these characters for the first time in this story. What do you want them to know about the Forgiven?

I was aware writing this that it has been about a decade since these characters have been seen. So, besides the core concept, you don't need to know too much like how they tied into Fear Itself or how their adventures in the X-Men books played out. Instead, I approached this with the core idea that they're vampires aspiring to be forgiven for the crimes they have committed. So, they have this mentor whose philosophy is to make up for everything they've done by going out and trying to do some amount of good.

In past stories, they've fought against other vampires, but we're approaching them as fighting against other monsters to try and keep the night safe. We've also added the element that they've been doing this for a really long time. When teams like the Avengers and the Fantastic Four get called away to go fight cosmic threats like the Beyonder and Thanos, the Forgiven have stepped up and taken their place while they're gone. The downside of that is they're still vampires. So, every time they do something good, they have to deal with the temptation of snapping and feeding on the humans they've come into contact with.

Who are some Forgiven that you've especially enjoyed writing?

I ended up liking all of them. They're fascinating because they're from different eras. Raizo, their leader, is from Feudal Japan. Other characters have been spaced out from years since then based on when they became a vampire. Most of them didn't have filled-in backstories.

So the fun for me is [that] I'm a research buff, and this story had me researching things like Visigoth barbarians, the Antebellum South, the Old West, and New York in the second decade of the 1900s. I used all that stuff to help fill out where these characters come from, how they're living in 2022, and how they feel about living in a world with the X-Men, Spider-Man, and the Avengers.

So they're a diverse and eclectic bunch?

For sure, and they each think about their curse in a different way. A lot of that is informed by where they came from. If you're a Visigoth barbarian, and you're used to hacking people down, you might have a different take on having to hunt humans [Laughs] than say, someone who was born a vampire. They have conflict among themselves over how they deal with being a vampire.

Jason Aaron's Avengers run set up a status quo where the vampires of the Marvel Universe have their own homeland, Chernobyl, a place overseen by Dracula and Blade, who acts as sheriff. What's it like having that mechanic to play with?

We're very aware of that story, but we don't deal with it much. Because part of what I think makes the Forgiven interesting in this case is they're no longer part of the "Vampire world." That doesn't mean we ignore that stuff. It's just that in this story, Dracula and Blade are not major parts. These vampires have separated themselves from that world, and now their purview is creepy, old, forgotten Marvel monsters and mad scientists. They're more focused on the horror side than just the vampire side.

The way I look at the Forgiven is they've essentially founded a new religion. Essentially, they're all partakers in this faith that Raizo developed. So they're almost a cult. They go out into the world of monsters and preach that you can control being a monster. Part of that means keeping themselves in control.

Each issue of this three-part miniseries teams the Forgiven with a different set of Marvel characters. That suggests the other appeal of this project was the chance to tell three different types of stories featuring these horror heroes.

Absolutely. The way these characters interact with each other involves a different theme each time. That's how I approached each one of their stories. Spider-Man understands what it's like to be on the outside, but he's also a science guy. He's not very comfortable with magic and monster stuff. The X-Men understand the hated and feared thing, but their abilities are something they were born with. If you're afflicted by something, it's a different relationship. Then with Captain America, there's a lot to unpack, but we treated him as one of the inspirations for this faith that Raizo has developed.

What's it like bouncing Spider-Man off the Forgiven? Have you written Spidey before?

I've drawn Spidey a few times, but I've never actually written him. So, that's another character off my bucket list. [Laughs] I had a great time with him. Some of my favorite comics from when I was a kid were when Spidey would get dropped into a story with characters like Morbius, Frankenstein, or the Lobo Brothers. I always loved that stuff because the flexibility of Marvel characters means you can put them in a variety of unusual situations.

I had so much fun with that. In this story, I bring in a villain that I think last appeared in one of the "Rise of the Midnight Sons" era stories. We play that character off Spider-Man and the Forgiven. It's sort of the perfect summation of everything I like about Marvel Comics.

After that, you team the Forgiven with the X-Men who they probably have the most history with.

Yes, they have a history with Jubilee, who was a vampire for quite a while, and when she first became one, she was hanging out with the Forgiven. She ended up being exposed to this faith that they developed. She's sort of one of their early students. So, we pick up that nugget of interesting continuity by having Jubilee bring the X-Men into this. That's because of a case they encounter, which has a clear indication of vampire involvement. So Jubilee calls the Forgiven up, and this story really comes down to what it means to be a mutant and what it means to be an actual blood-drinking monster.

What it means to be a mutant has changed with the rise of the nation, Krakoa. Does that figure into your story?

Yeah, it's a prominent part because, with this new paradigm, mutants can solve all kinds of problems. So the big question we ask right away is, "Can you solve being a vampire? And if so, how would that change things?" Would the Forgiven think that's a good way to go? Does that mess up their faith? I tried to go as character and identity-based as I could because I think that's what makes these characters interesting.

What does it mean for Steve Rogers to team with the Forgiven and to see literal monsters trying to become something better?

A big part of what we play with in this story is Steve is sort of above humanity. The Super Soldier Serum has made him this perfect specimen of what this American Dream could be, but he's down in the ditches fighting with people and fighting for democracy and freedom. That's a huge part of what draws Raizo to him. He sees him as a guy who's sort of like them. He's not one of them, but he insists on being there.

What's it like telling these stories with Sid Kotian? His work on books like Gambit suggests this will be a series packed with fun, kinetic action scenes.

Yeah, Sid is awesome! When we were looking for artists, we wanted to find someone who could do both superhero and horror. That was hard to find, but what we found in Sid is someone who can do the grittiness of monsters really well, but he can also do the pretty people of the X-Men and the fluid motions of Spider-Man. I was surprised by his ability to turn up the horror. He took what I [wrote] and created some full-on Gene Colan-style '70s horror stuff.

This is not a story where you need to have any sort of familiarity with these characters. If you've read that stuff before and you're curious about it, this works well. Essentially, it's a tale about vampires battling the monsters of the Marvel Universe.

Finally, if people express interest in the Forgiven's adventures, do you see yourself doing more? Do you know where you'd take these characters next?

I would love to do more with them! We wanted to make this an event that touched a lot of different things and has relevance. I didn't want to make them part of a throwaway story where it's, "Here are these characters on the side doing a different thing that isn't part of the larger Marvel Universe." So, because of the way we set this up, there's so much possibility with where we could take the characters after this. The sort of central tenant is, "Here's this faith/religion. Do other characters in the Marvel Universe need this? Or is this something that could be used in a negative way?" There's lots of stuff we can unpack. Plus, we have all the characters' connections to history. You could do a number of Hellboy-style miniseries where we examine our cast's pasts and present. It's very open.

Spider-Man: Unforgiven #1 is due out in 2023.