An all-new Young Avengers #1 arrives this week. Kid Loki assembles the teens for a nefarious purpose. Kieron Gillen and Jamie McKelvie shared their plans for the powerhouse kids on Marvel.com.
Allan Heinberg and Jim Cheung’s Young Avengers is highly acclaimed and loved (especially by yours truly.) Gillen revealed how this new team and title are different.
“Any time I try to describe Young Avengers I sound like I’m having a full neurotic breakdown. I loved Allan Heinberg’s Young Avengers and would never try to duplicate it. That was a book about being 16, looking up to the Avengers like parents. This is a book about being 18 and entering the world on your own terms.”
The Heinberg/Cheung team broke up after Avengers: The Children’s Crusade. The new kids are brought together by Loki (like the original Earth’s Mightiest Heroes) but with a wicked twist.
“The other Avengers books are about big organizations. Young Avengers is about the ideal of Earth’s mightiest coming together.”
“At the end of Children’s Crusade, the traditional Young Avengers agreed they shouldn’t be doing this anymore. The prime mover in getting everybody back together is Kid Loki. He’s recruiting Miss America and people to essentially kill Wiccan.”
One of the new faces is Miss America from Joe Casey’s Vengeance series.
“Miss America is very…violent. She’s been a super hero longer than anybody knows, and she’s not doing it to be famous. The question of what she knows about Wiccan is the big mystery of the book.”
The earlier volumes were recognized by GLAAD for their portrayal of young gay heroes Wiccan and Hulking. The troubled teens in love will be part of the new team.
“Wiccan and Hulkling are the core romantic couple of Young Avengers. Wiccan is phenomenally powerful in ways people don’t understand. He makes a mistake early on and that drives the book. It’s almost a Hank Pym plot in how he creates all his own problems.”
“Hulkling is creeping out at night to do super hero stuff. He figures he has a talent and should be using it.”
“I love drawing Wiccan and Hulkling, their emotional interactions as well as the punching,” added Jamie McKelvie.
Kate Bishop was attracted to Patriot but Gillen has recruited the fiery former Marvel Boy to be on the team and her potential love interest.
“Kate Bishop starts the book off to one side with Noh Varr. They’re a B-plot to the first part. Noh Varr has been kicked out of both the Kree and the Avengers, but he’s back on Earth, because nobody ever told James Dean what to do. He’s a hipster alien.”
Gillen stresses this book is not just about teen romance.
“I’m trying to create a book that covers anything connected to youth in the Marvel Universe. I have ideas of a larger infrastructure down the line. I don’t want to over promise though. It’s a book with a focus that can move. You’ll see with issue #6.”
“I knew how the book felt before I knew what the story was. I saw Marvel Boy and Hawkeye waking up. The first night with a strange new boy. She pulls the curtain and they’re in orbit. It’s a perfect metaphor. You take teenage emotions and transform them into the hyper real.”
Gillen wrote about Kid Loki’s search for identity in Journey Into Mystery and will continue exploring that them in this book.
“The question of ‘who can I become?’ remains key to Loki and to the book. Not quite in the same way it was in Journey Into Mystery, but still there.”
Wiccan is on the team but what about his brother: Speed?
“Hopefully. There’s a reason he’s not there to begin. I didn’t want to overload the cast and not just have somebody there to have them there. I like them Speed. I plan to come back to him around issue #6. Where he is gets covered briefly in the first issue.”
Like most teens the young heroes will have a hangout – a diner.
“Super powers is the most important thing in Young Avengers. The second most important thing is breakfast.”
The Young Avengers often clashed with their elders in the previous volumes. Will the kids meet the adults in the new series?
“The Avengers are in issue #2 briefly. It’s hard to explain without giving away the plot…where the Young Avengers are going, they can’t be helped. I don’t want to say much more than that. Parents and growing up are key to the book.”
For the entire liveblog here’s the Marvel.com link.
Young Avengers #1 arrives this week.
By Editor