Matt Adler: Amadeus Cho seems to be a rare character, in that very few new characters have caught on and taken hold in readers' minds the way he has. Why do you think that is?
Fred Van Lente: I think partly it's because his creator, Greg Pak, never gave up on him, and found opportunities use him in big events like World War Hulk, where he could get maximum exposure -- and WWH led directly to Incredible Hercules, of course.
Greg Pak: Editors Mark Paniccia and Nate Cosby deserve huge credit here. They loved the character from the start and were as eager as I was to engineer his next appearance. And Marvel's David Gabriel gets a gold star for suggesting the Hercules/Amadeus team up book in the first place.
In terms of the character himself, you can never predict just what readers will pick up on. But Amadeus seemed to fill a certain niche in the Marvel Universe at the time, and by providing such a contrast, he made a great foil for established Marvel characters like Hulk and Herc. We were also incredibly lucky to have the amazing Takeshi Miyazawa do the original character design and have fantastic artists like Gary Frank, Carlo Pagulayan, Leonard Kirk, and all of the Incredible Hercules artists put their spin on him. Reilly's new design for Amadeus in Prince Of Power is the icing on the cake, growing the kid up a bit while maintaining that irreverence that makes him so fun.
