And then a couple of days later I thought "Why shouldn't I be that idiot?" So I pitched the idea to the Powers that Were at Marvel, got the green light, and invited Roger Stern (whose knowledge of Marvel history is far more complete than mine) to join in.

We decided to tell the story backward as a kind of challenge to ourselves. Could we set it up in such a way that, when the time came, Marvel could put out two trade paperbacks -- one forward, one backward -- and have both read as if that was the way they were intended to be read? A rare example of Rog and I, in our own perverse way, "writing for the trade".