The full interview is posted at The Graphic Novel Reporter website.

Excerpt:

Tell me about Wolverine—about your personal contributions to the character.

I suppose my greatest contribution is that the character is still around—although that should probably take the form of a mea culpa! When I came to the book, Chris told me he and Dave had planned to write Wolverine out of the series. Neither of them liked the character much, and Dave was more interested in doing stuff with Nightcrawler.

I wrapped myself in the flag and said, “No way are you getting rid of the only Canadian character!” I set about doing everything I could to make Wolverine more interesting, to Chris and the audience.

I’ll confess, just as Dave had tended to make the book Nightcrawler—Costarring the X-Men,I sort of took it over toward Wolverine—Costarring the X-Men. Given all the money they’ve made off the character, I don’t guess there would be anyone up at Marvel who would consider that a bad thing!

Alpha Flight first appeared in Uncanny X-Men #120. How did Alpha Flight initially come about?

Alpha Flight started from two places. First, Dave Cockrum had an idea that the Canadian government would probably not be too thrilled that yet another of their “natural resources”—Wolverine—had been siphoned off into the States, so they would most likely try to get him back. Chris and Dave didn’t get around to this story, but when Chris mentioned it to me, I wanted to do it right away. So I pulled out of mothballs a “Canadian Captain America” I’d come up with in my fan days. Unfortunately, he was called Guardian, and Chris said we could not use that name, because of the similar character in Iron Man.So we called him Weapon Alpha, a name I never cared for. Chris, as is his wont, sowed the seeds for a return engagement and came up with the name Alpha Flight based on the name he had given my Guardian. Later, this became Vindicator, which I also didn’t like. It might have been the name of a cool airplane—which is where Chris took it from—but it carried baggage when used as a superhero name. What did Canada need to vindicate? Later, I answered that question, at least from the character’s perspective.

The characters proved popular, and I began being pressured to produce an Alpha Flight title. I didn’t really want to, as I felt the characters were kind of two-dimensional, but eventually I relented and then set about searching for ways to give them that vital third dimension. This is how, as I have often stated it, Northstar became “Gay from Day Two.” The character was not homosexual when I first conceived him, but when I was looking for ways to flesh out the members of the group, that’s the direction I chose to go with the character.