The writer who turned our sport into a story
Ethan Sacks has written comics for baseball teams, hockey franchises, and now Atlassian Williams F1 Team – he explains why this one was different…
Published
10 JUL 2026
Est. reading time
3 min
Sport and comics, at their core, are about the same things: drama, characters under pressure, moments that matter. For Ethan Sacks, the writer of our comic, moving between the two always felt natural.
The Atlassian Williams F1 Team x Marvel comic is the most ambitious version of that project he's attempted. And he'll be the first to tell you it required him to work harder than anything he's done before.
Sacks has form in this space as he's written sports comics for minor league baseball teams, as well as for the Washington Capitals, an NHL franchise. Each time, the challenge remains roughly the same, that being to take a world that means everything to its fans, and make something that honours that without alienating everyone else.
"Those tend to skew younger," he says of his previous sports work. "They're often given away at games and the main audience is the kids of the people who show up. So you write for that. You simplify. You make it accessible."
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For Williams, he made a deliberate decision to do the opposite. "I did not want to write it young. I wanted to write it for a smart 15-year-old. Someone once told me, if you do that, you get the parents too, and the younger siblings will mostly follow along. You're not going to get the very youngest, but you'll get almost everyone else who'll appreciate it."
The difference, he explains, is respect. "The goal is not to talk down to the audience. Williams fans have earned their passion. Marvel fans have earned theirs. You don't honour that by simplifying everything into a goofy adventure."
Writing for two fanbases
The Williams x Marvel project presented a specific challenge that his previous sports comics hadn't. That being two passionate, knowledgeable and very different audiences reading the same pages.
Get too deep into F1 and you lose the Marvel reader. Lean too hard into comic book lore and the F1 fan could end up feeling lost in their own story. Sacks had to find a balance that worked for both, and hold it for the entire book.
"I wanted the fan in a comic store who has never seen an F1 race to pick this up and think that looks cool, not feel completely intimidated," he says. "And equally, I wanted the F1 fan who has never read a Marvel comic to not feel like they've missed their homework."
Carlos and Alex check out the early designs for the pages at Silverstone
His approach was to think of the book like an ensemble, with every major element getting its moment without any one of them dominating the space.
"I think of it like a jazz band," he says. "Everyone gets their solo. The main players get their solos. But it's still one song."
The benchmark he set himself for the finished product wasn't another sports comic, or even another Marvel book, it was a Bond film.
"There's spectacle, action, wit, but there's also a legitimacy to it. You feel like you were taken seriously as an audience. That's what I was aiming for. I want you to get lost in those pages."
Why fandom matters
Sacks is a lifelong sports fan, proudly following his New York teams across multiple leagues through thick and thin. That experience of being a fan, genuinely caring about the outcome, is something he thinks directly informs his writing.
"There's a reason people are rabid fans," he says. "Williams has an incredible legacy. It's earned the fandom, the fans have reason to feel as passionately as they do. And it's the same for comics. These are people who devote their time, their money, their passion to something they love. You have to honour that."
It's why, he says, the worst thing he could have done was treat either fanbase as more important than the other.
"I think it would be great if this brings a few more people into F1, and a few more into comics," he says. "Because they're both wonderful. And I think they work better together than you'd expect."
Get your copies now:
Limited Edition
AWF1 Team x Marvel - Iron Man: Racing Towards Doom Miami Special Edition Cover
···
Limited Edition
AWF1 Team x Marvel - Iron Man: Racing Towards Doom Monaco Special Edition Cover
···
Limited Edition
AWF1 Team x Marvel - Iron Man: Racing Towards Doom Silverstone Special Edition Cover
···
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Williams Grand Prix Engineering Services LLP, a limited liability partnership registered in England and Wales with company registration number OC456938 and whose registered address is at Station Road, Grove, Wantage, Oxfordshire, OX12 0DQ.
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