Marvel’s Next Big Thing: Gillen & McKelvie on YOUNG AVENGERS

Cover by Jamie McKelvie

Pretty stoked for this one.

On today’s Marvel’s Next Big Thing call, we had the opportunity to speak with Kieron Gillen, Jamie McKelvie and editor Lauren Sankovitch about their upcoming collaboration on Young Avengers.

Wiccan. Hulkling. Kate “Other Hawkeye” Bishop. “Miss” America Chavez. Marvel Boy. And the born-again mischief-maker Kid Loki. They’re the new Young Avengers, and they’re assembling at a checker-tiled greasy spoon near you in 2013.

In earlier volumes, Young Avengers was a book about being 16 and a superhero at the same time. Gillen explains that he and his team have followed that line to its logical evolution, presenting a new series about what it’s like to be 18 and still a superhero. That’s an important distinction, and one that inspired a few of our own followup questions.

Each of these characters was once inspired by an established superhero, but how much of that initial hero worship remains? We asked if any of these characters might be tiring of their imitation monikers or motifs, if he could see them eventually shrugging off those mantles to embrace new, original identities. As Gillen put it, “It’s about approaching the world on your own terms.”  The possibility is there for these young men and women to do just that. “The question of who you want to be is entirely core to the book.”

Those original Avengers, the object of the teens’ initial hero worship, will make their presence known in the second issue. Gillen said that to say anymore could potentially spoil the plot. That’s a crucial set of dynamics to watch. “The relationship between parents and children is very key for the book.”

But what about these young heroes themselves? Gillen says that the romantic interaction between Billy “Wiccan” Kaplan and Teddy “Hulkling” Altman will be central to the book. McKelvie pointed to this element as his favorite to draw. “I love drawing the two of them, their interactions. The emotional stuff as well as the punching,” Gillen also teases something of a “Hank Pym/Ultron” level mistake made by Wiccan as a primary early conflict.

As for Kate, she’s about to wake up in a very strange place after a night with Marvel Boy. “She basically wonders why she’s there, what’s going on. He’s in the shower. She pulls the curtains and they’re in orbit!” As for Marvel Boy himself, Gillen describes him as an alien hipster, movie posters from past decades affixed to his “bedroom” walls. He has a deep fascination with Earth culture and Earth itself.

Loki? He’s the taskmaster. He brings everyone together again for a mysterious purpose. That includes Miss America, who’s acted as a vigilante longer than any of them. She’s also exceptionally violent.

Asked about the visual aesthetic of the series, as evident in the preview pages below, McKelvie said that the specific look was always central to the project. “This is a superhero book for the 21st century. As much as we can possibly do.” That manifests in a clean look signature to a McKelvie comic, but with an especially slick grid system, integrated typography and modern layouts. Every fight sequence will be approached differently, with that technique never duplicated in later sequences or issues.

“We wanted to actually get the magical transcendence of every super heroic moment to feel like that,” Gillen explained. “We’re not going to do any covers that do pastiche, that reference old Marvel covers. It’s the idea that the modern walks the paths. When Jamie was doing the cover, that’s what he was thinking about. How could a superhero book look now?”

Part of that process includes inviting some atypical artists, at least for Marvel, to provide variant covers. Bryan Lee O’Malley lent the first issue a Scott Pilgrim level of flair. Look for guys like Luther Strode‘s Tradd Moore on issue #3. These are artists Gillen and McKelvie specifically lobbied Sankovitch to commission. She fought for them, and they’re now part of the ongoing project.

We asked Gillen if there were any larger issues he hopes to explore in this venue as he did with the epidemic of teen suicide in the pages of Generation Hope. Gillen replied that he, of course, wants to avoid making each issue an after school special, but that there are other subjects core to the teen experience that he hopes to include. With Generation Hope, there were no easy answers as there could never be for such a concern. In Young Avengers, many of the issues aren’t life and death matters, but what Gillen describes as the “boring stuff.” These are the “life issues” as he puts it, things as simple as “having a shitty job” that remain a universal aspect of growing up.

Ring in the New Year with Young Avengers #1 on January 23rd.

Until then, a preview: