Kieron Gillen on the morning after scene that launched his Young Avengers with Jamie McKelvie:
I think you’re right, basically. I think mainstream American Superhero comics lag a little behind other expressions of teenage life in culture, and if you don’t do that, you’re risking writing comics that appeal to the parents of teenagers rather than the teenagers themselves.
In terms of blocks, I suspect a good chunk of it comes out of comics being a visual medium. Text is a great obfuscator of content. You can read a book, and your parents will never know that it contains matter they’d have trouble with, because they’re never actually going to read it. But comics, being visual, are transparent. At a glance, they can judge it — and so often judge it at a glance, without actually reading it.
So you walk a line. I started “Young Avengers” with the scene for a number of reasons, but one of them was certainly seeing if Marvel would let me do it. If I weren’t able to write that, I’d have had to bow out of the gig, because there would be no way of doing anything I thought worth doing.
Marvel didn’t even raise an eyebrow.
I think the biggest blockade to the creation of the content is creators not choosing to create the content.
That last line sticks with me, especially in light of Rick Remender’s comment about not being afraid to “bend” iconic characters in his interview on the mothership. I wonder what comics we’ve missed out on because creators self-censored or were too afraid to push ideas that they initially wanted to do, but felt would never get published…?




