I feel like I have a kind of mirror blindness where it's hard for me to characterize or analyze my own work. I suspect I'm not unique in this regard.
— Kelly Sue DeConnick
I used to write reviews for 'Artbomb.' Our policy was to only cover books we loved and recommended.
With 'Pretty Deadly,' I think you'd be hard-pressed to find a three-act structure in it. I don't know - someone probably can.
I kind of resent the suggestion that there would be something inherent about superheroes that wouldn't be of interest to women. That makes me nuts. I'm a 5-foot tall woman with a quick temper who always looks like a child, so power fantasies are not strange to me.
Comics are not theatre - there's a very important difference in that the reader controls the page. You can linger on a page of comics as long as you want. You can read and go forward and then move back; you can reread, in one sitting or at your leisure. You can take as much time as you want to take in that story.
You'll go mad trying to figure out what people want. I don't bother. I write the stories I want to read.
If you can remove a female character from your plot and replace her with a sexy lamp and your story still works, you're a hack.
In popular culture, when women compete, it's usually over a man, and it's usually very nasty. And that is just frankly not my experience. That's just some kind of popular mythology, it feels like. I find it insulting.
Everything that feminism stands for is everything American, white, red and blue democratic. It is all the same stuff. So, I am boggled that I should have to give up this term that encapsulates what I want for my children, for my world, culture, brothers and sister because someone else thinks it means I don't shave my armpits.
I want young women to see my name on 'Avengers Assembled' and to know that there are women who write mainstream superhero comics, and if it is something that interests them, it can be done.
One of the things about comics is people can linger on images and words as long as they want.
Going into the second arc, I'm making a conscious effort to do something I say I never do, which is to change my style because of feedback. I'm trying to make 'Pretty Deadly' more accessible by being more clear in the writing.
Complicated feelings are fertile soil for creative ideas.
'Pretty Deadly' is the story of these immortal and mortal characters, and the mortals' story follows Sarah's family, a black family, through the ages. I never made the choice of, 'Oh, this is gonna be the story of an African American family!'
There's nothing less funny than trying to force funny.
I think women have every right to feel like they're the protagonists in their own stories.
Being a woman in a male-dominated industry sort of sucks, but it doesn't suck any more than being a woman in the world. My advice? Be terrifying.
Marvel is run by some very smart people, and they seem to pride themselves on the fact that they don't just find talent, they groom talent.
'Female Convict 701: Scorpion' is based on a manga as is 'Lady Snowblood.' I saw 'Lady Snowblood' in the theater between writing issue three and issue four of the first arc of 'Pretty Deadly,' and I was really surprised how much I was influenced by it.
Part of a writer's job is just spacing out, looking into the air and imagining things.
In a weird way, I think I'm much better at oneshots than longform. So I try to focus on five or six-issue arcs. I have a real fondness for the one-shots because that's where I do my best storytelling.
I used to be good at clothes shopping and whatnot - at least ,I think I was! - but at some point after two kids and a career that worked out better than I ever could have imagined, I looked up from my desk and realized that I wore the same three t-shirts and 15-year-old jeans every day.
Because of the nature of monthly comics and deadline, I pretty much have to work on whatever's on fire, I'm afraid.
Gray space is fertile ground for fiction. When I can see both sides of an argument and feel strongly in both directions, then there's a story there, then I can write real characters that I care about and believe in and champion on both sides.
I do make some conscious efforts to write female friendships, intergenerational female friendships. I make a conscious effort to include things that I see as important real parts of my life that are not reflected as much as I think they should be in popular culture. We very seldom have the opportunity to see women compete and remain friends.
Romantic relationships are the least interesting thing for me to write about. I'm 45, and that's not the most interesting thing in my life anymore.
Yes, the Bechdel Test. It's named for Allison Bechdel, who is a comic book creator. The test is, are there two named women in the film? Do they talk to each other? And is it about something other than a man? I actually think the Bechdel Test is a little advanced for us sometimes.
I think I'm very strong at dialogue, I think I'm very strong in characterization. I think sometimes I use dialogue and character work to cover weaknesses in my plotting.
My son is such a lover, such a caretaker and so funny. He's seven, and he genuinely cracks me up. And my daughter is a fearless powerhouse. They fill me with wonder and admiration.
I need to go where I'm not comfortable. I think that's the artist's job.
Anybody who's read 'Pretty Deadly' knows that I tend to savor an immersive, 'You'll figure it out as you go!' style. 'Pretty Deadly' really does not hold your hand.
Girls have always read comics. There's nothing intrinsically masculine about telling stories with pictures.
I am a nerd among nerds.
The notion that somehow women are wildly different infuriates me.
The first gift my husband ever gave me was a pack of index cards. I'm pretty sure the second was a 'Powers' scriptbook. This was well before either of us worked for Marvel.
One of the things I enjoyed when working in manga was when I couldn't tell where anything was going because there weren't narrative tropes and structures I was used to. After doing it for seven years, I got to the point where I did see structures. I did start to learn, but at first I didn't know where it was going. It was very exciting for me.
I don't think working in superheroes is slumming it. I'm proud of this form. I like this. There's nothing inherently masculine about power fantasies. There's nothing inherently masculine about superhero comics. There's nothing inherently masculine about mythology. About science fiction.
You don't usually have to wait a month for a new episode of a TV show. We ask comic readers to wait a month for a new issue, and honestly, given the time that it takes to put them together, a month is really too fast.
I think 'The Avengers' is a Black Widow movie. She saves the day. And if you take her out, the plot does not function.
With Marvel, I obviously don't own the characters, so there are levels of approval to go through. But I'm very seldom told no, and never without reason. Maybe I've just been lucky; I don't know, but I don't think it's as frustrating as people generally imagine. I act as though I own it all while I'm writing, I think. I hope, anyway.
I'm really just trying... to write what feels true to me. I don't think about a lofty responsibility. I think I'd be paralyzed by that. Like any of my male colleagues, I'm writing the stories that interest me in a way that feels true to me.
Years ago - I used to be an actor - I was in a production of Vaclav Havel's 'Temptation,' and when we started rehearsals, he was in prison. When we closed the show, he was running for president. And it felt incredibly timely and important and also this lucky thing.
If you want to, if you are a crazy person, you could go from idea to the stands in about four months. It does not cost hundreds of thousands of dollars to make a comic the way it does to make a television show or a movie.
I think women are vital to the future of the superhero comics and the entire industry - as creators, as editors, as consumers, as retailers.
I tend to choose collaborators who are more courageous than I am. I think it's good for me.
For hard resets, conventions and conferences can be inspiring.
If there was any creature in American culture more derided than the young girl... I know people will argue with me about that, but everything girls are into gets ridiculed. I have a lot of compassion in my heart for girls in their teens and twenties who are going through this particular passage, because I get it. It makes sense!
I'm not particularly good at page layouts. I make an effort to stay out of the way of the artist. What I'll try to express instead is, 'What we're going for here on this page is the idea of the containment of these women's bodies. So I want them framed as though they're bursting out of the panel borders.'
I like my heroes to be imperfect; I like them to be striving. I identify with that kind of aspiration to do better.
If you have a smartphone - and you have a smartphone - then you have a comic book store in your pocket. So you don't have to get over any social anxiety you have about entering that space.
