THE ULTIMATES may be gone, but long live ULTIMATES SQUARED!

Al Ewing continues to script the adventures of the high-aiming team revolving around Black Panther, Captain Marvel, Miss America, Blue Marvel, and Spectrum with the new series. With new artist Travel Foreman aboard, the group gains situation-specific Herald status thanks to their teammate Galactus, The Lifebringer. The power boost will come in handy as they face The Cosmic Jailer, the entity powerful enough to shackle Eternity in the previous volume!

We talked with Foreman about working with Ewing, Heralding the gang, and how the most recent event wreaked havoc on the group.

Marvel.com: Civil War II caused plenty of rifts in the super hero community. How is that reflected in ULTIMATES SQUARED?

Travel Foreman: Civil War II was a storm cloud that passed over the team but now things are drying off under the heat of this new unprecedented problem. Black Panther and Carol Danvers are the core of the team and were split apart by Civil War but are forced back together. I get the sense from Al’s story that maybe Black Panther regrets causing the split but he’s a king and maybe is too prideful to admit it. Carol doesn’t trust him anymore and we’ll have to see whether any dire situations spin out of that distrust.

Marvel.com: Al has said that this series ups the ante from the previous volume as far as problems and threats being tackled. Does that translate into more complex and challenging elements for you to draw on the page?

Travel Foreman: Personally, the more complex and challenging the better. I’m terrible at drawing anything set in actual reality. A dining room or an office I cannot, for the life of me, wrap my brain around how to draw it. So a book like ULTIMATES that’s rooted heavily in sci-fi where I can create and design with my own laws of physics is wonderful.

Marvel.com: The team consists of Captain Marvel, Black Panther, Blue Marvel, Ms. America, Spectrum, and Galactus with the latter granting the others Herald abilities. Did that offer you the chance to alter some of their designs?

Travel Foreman: The opportunity for redesigning characters hasn’t arisen yet. I am slightly tweaking characters a little here and there. I grew up reading the X-Men almost exclusively and one of the things I loved most was seeing characters slightly off model. It adds such flavor and life to characters, I feel, to suddenly see them a little different than you’ve been seeing them for months on end.

Monica Rambeau will probably be getting the most changes during the course of the series. I feel that she’s been looking too matronly, which would be okay if she was a matron, but I want to move her into something more stylish and unencumbered. If Marvel permits maybe even a completely new costume—or more—down the line.

Marvel.com: When it comes to Galactus, this is a rare occasion where he’s fighting the good fight as The Lifebringer. How does that change how you handle him?

Travel Foreman: With Galactus I’m doing the same thing, just tweaking tiny things. I think the big change in look is for Anti-Man who is now a full-blown Herald. He’s gotten a full-blown overhaul in design and I tried to make his new design mirror Galactus in certain ways.

Marvel.com: This first arc will deal with the Cosmic Jailer as well. What was the process like for coming up with that look?

Travel Foreman: Marvel has, historically, given abstract cosmic concepts human characteristics. Almost like ancient Greek theater where you’d have an actor in a mask portraying a god or universal force. I’m going in the opposite direction, so cosmic entities will look appropriately cosmic and abstract. Not so abstract that you can’t tell what you’re looking at but strange and awe-striking.

Marvel.com: Overall, how has it been working with Al so far?

Travel Foreman: Al and I are on the same page as far as trying to uphold the pedigree of a book that carries the name “Ultimates.” We both have reverence for the original ULTIMATES series and want to give the book the same large scale story and imagery that is synonymous with the title.

Al Ewing and Travel Foreman present the next installment of their epic saga with ULTIMATES SQUARED #2 on December 7!