George R.R. Martin is a big comic fan, and has referenced early Avengers runs as being among his favorites. Now, in an interview with MTV Geek, the author reveals that despite the plots of his Song Of Ice And Fire saga being quite different to the super-heroics of those comic books, one staple of his writing - the killing off of major and much loved characters - took influence from a particular character's demise in Avengers #9..
"In that issue Wonder Man is a villain who pretends to be a hero, and joins the Avengers as a hero in order to betray them from within--and at the end he can't go through with it and dies as result...and boy you look at that! I loved this issue, in fact it blew my mind...
I loved the fact that they killed him and I loved the fact that he was a villain pretending to be a hero--became a real hero--at the end. That kind of reversal, dealing with themes of betrayal and redemption...and you look at my work and you see the fingerprints of something like this all over it".
Interesting. Perhaps if Wonder Man had survived we would have been spared the trauma of some of Martin's more ruthless character cuts.
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Mark Cassidy is a writer, photographer, amateur filmmaker, and Rotten Tomatoes-approved critic from Dublin, Ireland.