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GeekGirlCon ’13: An Interview with Kelly Sue, Part 2

Interview by AJ Dent, GeekGirlCon Staff Copy Writer 

Comic book writer extraordinaire Kelly Sue DeConnick recently spoke with GeekGirlCon about her past experiences, current works, and upcoming appearance at GeekGirlCon ‘13! In the second half of our interview, we dove into even more of her exciting projects and views on identifying as a Geek.

You’ve worked with artist Emma Rios before on Osborn: Evil Incarcerated and are now collaborating again on the upcoming Pretty Deadly series. Watching two female artists create a multifaceted Western story together is incredibly inspiring. What has working with Emma on this particular project been like so far?

It’s been utterly terrifying because this book has thwarted us at every turn. It’s kind of not the book we thought we were doing? It’s a lot weirder book than we set out to write. It’s very strange and we’ve both recently just sort of accepted the fact that it is the F word: it is fantasy! Which is sort of not what we meant for it to be, but it kind of insisted, so there you go.

How else have we described it? It is a macabre western. Greg Rucka called it a dark fairy tale. Mythic western. Yeah, it is certainly supernatural. The story is told by a dead bunny and a butterfly. Death incarnate is in it, and Death’s daughter. It’s a trippy book, which is not what we thought we were doing. There was a point at which I sort of accepted that this book is going to be what it is, and no amount of wrestling on my part is going to make it not. And we had talked in the beginning about how much we both love Sergio Leone. We wanted to do a Leone western, so there was a point at which I was sort of bummed we’d gotten away from that. But then Charlie Huston got this quote for me that was a Sergio Leone where he talks about the myth is the thing—historical truth doesn’t matter; it’s all about the world and the myth. Reading that after he sent that to me, it was another one of those goosebump moments that I have had a million of with this book, where I felt like, oh, this whole time it was a Leone western, it just wasn’t what I originally saw happening.

Along the lines of being influenced by outside sources as you write, there’s been a lot of online activity surrounding the release of Pretty Deadly. Do you find that fan interaction affects your writing process or drive at all?

I don’t think that Captain Marvel would have made it more than six issues without the Carol Corps. I don’t think it would have survived without that really vocal, supportive fanbase. And I think that they were able to find each other through social media. So I think it’s been very important to my work life to have been lucky enough to be a part of that. I can’t write a story with the idea, ‘Let me give them what they want!’ I think reverse-engineering what you think the people want never results in good stories, but that said, I am also a part of that culture, so sometimes references make it in. I’m clearly influenced by the Carol Corps. I’m doing a Carol Corps issue.

Do you have a bucket list of women characters you’d like to write about someday, whether already existing or currently just a spark in the back of your mind?

I have a list of story ideas that I maintain—some of them are projects of their own, some of them will find their way into books I’m currently writing. When I did start Captain Marvel, I knew I wanted to write Monica and I knew I wanted to write Anya. I wasn’t able to bring Anya into Captain Marvel because the timing wasn’t right. In fact though, because I wasn’t able to have Anya is how I was able to have Wendy Kawasaki, and I love Wendy, so I have no regrets about how that worked out. I didn’t get to bring Anya in, so it has come around that she is available again, so I’m going to be using her in Avengers Assemble.

I grew up reading DC, not Marvel, so Wonder Woman and Lois Lane were important characters to me. I’ve gotten to write Lois Lane, so that’s checked off my list, and I’m not sure if I want to write Wonder Woman, because that’s just terrifying to me! I don’t know if I’d be a good fit for it; I’m afraid that what I would want it to do is basically Lynda Carter-esque TV show fan fiction! That is best left to my nostalgic memory or watching episodes with my daughter.

What are you most excited to do or speak about at GeekGirlCon ‘13? Do you identify as a geek, and if so, what makes you proud to be one?

I am looking forward to GeekGirlCon because I have heard really good things about it. I have been to one other women-centric convention, and it was WisCon. It’s a science fiction convention, so it’s a slightly different animal. It’s sci-fi, highly academic, super cool. My conception of GeekGirlCon is that it’s almost like a younger, hipper version of that. [Laughs] I’m not entirely sure what to expect there, but I think it’s going to be cool, we’ll have a lot of fun. I love Seattle, so I’m into it!

I guess I don’t, oddly enough, know what a “geek” is! I have read comic books on and off forever. I grew up on military bases—my father was in the service, and very often, we were in places where we did not get American TV stations. My mom encouraged it; my mom loved Wonder Woman so she would buy me the comics and then dole them out to me as rewards. We would go to swap meets on the weekends and buy comics by the handful, and the house that I would go to after school—the Edmondson family—I would go hang out over there, and their whole family collected comics, so I would read.  Read, read, read, read, read! Now I’ve put them down and come back to them various times in my life, but I’ve never been away for very long. They have always been a part of my life.

I’m not a gamer—my husband gave me the controller and tried to have me play Grand Theft Auto once, and yeah. He had a friend over and they were sitting over and I had the thing. He looked over at me and I was just sitting there and he goes, “What’re you doing?” and I go, “Well, the light is red.” [Laughs] So clearly, I don’t get the spirit of the game. So I’m not a gamer, I have just started my first role-playing game, which is the Call of Cthulhu, at 43 years old! But hey, I’m doing it right: Greg Rucka is my dungeon master so, you know, I started late, but I got started awesome.

So yeah, I don’t know, I don’t have anything particularly negative attached to the term. I like comic books. If other people want to hang out with me and talk about comic books, I am down with that! If people want to tell me that because I am a girl I have no place in comic books, we will have words.  And I will laugh and laugh at them!

Read the Part 1 of the interview here.


Thanks so much for the laughs and words of wisdom, Kelly Sue!

Come hear this real-life superheroine speak at GeekGirlCon ‘13! She’ll be sharing more comics industry insight with us just three short days before the October 23 release of Pretty Deadly.  Pick up your passes today!

AJ Dent
“Rock On!”

GeekGirlCon ’13: An Interview with Kelly Sue

Interview by AJ Dent, GeekGirlCon Staff Copy Writer 

Kelly Sue DeConnick

Kelly Sue DeConnick

If ever there were an author who’s as much a superheroine as the characters she writes about, it’s Kelly Sue DeConnick. From adapting manga into English to revamping Captain Marvel, her comic book career knows no bounds.  We are very excited to welcome her to GeekGirlCon ‘13!

Recently, I had the honor of chatting with her about women in the comic book industry, her collaboration with artist Kelly Rios, and her prolific career.

Are there any particular challenges or flak you’ve received for your reinvention of Captain Marvel?

I know there are people who aren’t into it, but for the most part, they don’t seek me out to let me know. The people who seek me out are the ones who are super into it. So from the beautiful little bubble that I live in, it is a resounding success! [Laughs] I mean, there are things about my own performance I am not happy with, because I’m on a learning curve. I have ten years in the industry, but I only have three years writing original comics. It has been a kind of whirlwind.

I have been very lucky. In 2007 was Eben and Stella, and then my son was born, and I went back to doing very little for about a year, so I had to kind of restart my career again. So it’s really only been three years I’ve been back at it. Ten-plus years as a professional writer, ten years in the comic book industry, but really only three doing this kind of thing, and only one doing a monthly superhero comics. And let me tell you, monthly superhero comics are a grind! I am not particularly gifted at that part of it.

Matt [Fraction] and Brian [Bendis] are both very fast and very good. They’re also both a lot more experienced than I am so I try to take solace in that, but I don’t know how long I get to ride that. I don’t know if I’m getting faster fast enough. I don’t know if I can keep the quality up the way that they do. When I start getting too upset about it, Matt points out that Sandman never came out monthly, and Gaiman was doing just Sandman. He’s one of my favorite comic book writers of all time, and he is not fast either. Now someone will probably hear that and suggest that I’m comparing myself to Gaiman, which is not my intention! [Laughs] This is just to say that better artists than me have had the same problem.

Back in the day you could get away with not being fast enough in a market that insists on being fast, but you cannot get away with it now. But most of my favorite comic book writers working today are crazy fast! They’re just amazing. They keep the quality up, and they put them out like clockwork. I have not figured out how to do that yet, and I say ‘yet’ because I haven’t quite given up yet. But I’m teetering on the edge of giving up! [Laughs]

Have you seen any shifts for women working in the comic book industry over the course of your career? Do any current trends particularly excite or frustrate you?

I think popular culture is reflective of culture in general, and we are having a lot of conversations right now about what happened to the women’s movement, how it sort of fizzled, and how it seems to kind of be coming back again. Unfortunately, I think—and I’ll reveal my political leanings here a bit, as though it was a secret to anyone!—women have been culturally under duress, if not attack, over the last few years, and are certainly starting to respond. And I think that female comic book characters came to the fore and made big strides in the 40s, in the 70s, and again right now—not coincidentally in times when women’s movements was coming to the fore. In the height of the second wave movement in the 70s, in the 40s when women were going into the workplace, it is not a coincidence. So you see this conversation happening a lot right now, in our industry and about our industry and in our fandom.

I think that that is very exciting to me in one respect; in another I do get frustrated because it’s a difficult balancing act. I want to talk about it, it’s something that interests me. As a young woman, I was not aware of having experienced any sexism until I was well into my adulthood, it was probably not until I was married that I was aware of it. It wasn’t until deeper into my career did I start to see, “Oh! Oh, yeah!  That’s why that happened!” And so I think that sometimes there are people who have not yet experienced it—and I say yet with unfortunate resign—who do not think that it exists, so I think it’s important to call it out when it happens, as much as you can and as delicately as you can.

At the same time, boy am I sick of this being the conversation! My husband’s gender almost never comes up in an interview.  I would say never, but I don’t know, maybe it has come up once, I’m not sure, but I kind of doubt it. When Brian Bendis was invited to write Spider-Woman: Agent of SWORD, no one asked, “Ooh, are you going to be able to write that? You’re not a spider!” [Laughs] You know? “Aren’t you afraid you’ll bring too much masculinity to that character? Are you only going to write about her hitting and punching things?”

These conversations don’t happen in reverse. Although, when you put them in reverse, you can sometimes illustrate just how asinine they are. But I get sick of it. I get sick of the notion that I am “other.” My husband is a writer, my friend Brian is a writer. I’m a “girl writer.” It fucking sucks. I don’t want to be a “girl writer.” I’m a girl, yes, I’m a woman, I’m also a mother, an outspoken feminist, and I’m proud of all these things, but the entirety of my identity doesn’t need to be present in these things. It becomes that adjunct thing—“you are other.” The joke I always make is that I don’t want to be Girl Writer any more than I want to be Lady Deadpool. It’s like, “You are the linguistic Other.” Now watch, the world’s biggest Lady Deadpool fan will write me: “There is nothing wrong with Lady Deadpool!” Missing the point. [Laughs] Missing the point.

So I have mixed emotions about the conversation happening right now, and my role in it. On the one hand, I think it is important, because as much as it may infuriate me, as much as it may at times embarrass me, you know, I think every time I have this conversation is one time my daughter doesn’t have to. Fingers crossed.

What advice would you give young geeks who are interested in working in the comic book industry?

I have so much advice, I can teach a class on it! It’s hard to boil down into a line or two, but the most important thing is to stop making excuses. Any creative pursuit is scary, and you’re not going to be as good as you want to be. You’re probably never going to be as good as you want to be, but if you never start, that guarantees it.

Start making comics. It doesn’t matter if you can’t draw, it doesn’t matter if you don’t have an artist. Do them with stick figures, make mini-comics, use cut-outs from magazines, use pictures, or just start practicing writing scripts. One thing you can try is to take your favorite comic and reverse-engineer it. Try writing the script that would have produced that comic. You don’t need anything to do that except a notebook, a pen, a comic book, and some time.

So start. I get inquiries from people who want to know how to get jobs writing comics, and they’ve not written comics. You know, I’m not going to hire a plumber to fix my sink if he’s only ever washed his hands. Using a sink does not qualify you to build a sink.

So start. Start now. I started too late, I will tell you. I am 43 years old, I have two small children, and I am utterly exhausted. The number of all-nighters I have pulled to keep up with my deadlines is stupid, so don’t do what I did. Start now. I am an idiot: do not follow my path.

Everybody wants to wait until they’re hired, or they say it’s hard to find an artist, it’s all very, very hard. It is all very, very hard. You must do it anyway.


Talk about inspirational tough love! For more life lessons and looks into the works of Kelly Sue, catch Part 2 of our interview with her next week!

Make sure you don’t miss out on seeing Kelly Sue at GeekGirlCon ‘13—buy your passes now!

AJ Dent
“Rock On!”

GeekGirlCon ‘13: Calling All Academic Comic Fans!

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Photo courtesy of Comixology

Just last spring, a massive open online course (MOOC) called Gender Through Comics, taught by Christina Blanch, exploded! With an enrollment of over 7,000 students, the course was dubbed “SuperMOOC.” For six weeks, students in the course read about gender, read comics, watched lectures, discussed issues, and participated in live interviews with creators such as Brian K. Vaughan, Gail Simone, Kelly Sue DeConnick, and Mark Waid, and watched interviews with other professionals like Greg Rucka, Jen Van Meter, and Roberta Gregory.

From left to right, photos of Christina Blanch, Jen Van Meter, Kelly Sue DeConnick, Mark Waid, and Greg Rucka

From left to right: Christina Blanch, Jen Van Meter, Kelly Sue DeConnick, Mark Waid, and Greg Rucka

GeekGirlCon ‘13 will explore Gender Through Comics! For you, Christy Blanch will unveil the adventures of exploring gender through comics, the design of the course, the interview process with the comic creators, and the results of the class. Get your own feel for the course by attending the panel with Blanch, Van Meter, DeConnick, Waid, and Rucka.

Look for more from these panelists soon on our blog! And don’t miss this Super Panel! Get your GeekGirlCon ‘13 passes NOW! Prices go up after August 25!

You can save $10 on 2-day and single-day passes if you buy now. Starting August 26 through the Con, a 2-day pass will be $45 and a single-day pass will be $30. Passes will still be available in limited supply at local comic book shops (list to be provided by Rose) or in person at our events at the discounted rate of $35 for a 2-day pass (and $20 for a one-day).

By Adrienne M. Roehrich, Manager of Editorial Services

Eric Mack
“Rock On!”

Look Who’s Coming to GeekGirlCon ‘13!

Kelly Sue DeConnick will be appearing at GeekGirlCon '13

Kelly Sue DeConnick will be appearing at GeekGirlCon ’13

GeekGirlCon proudly announces Kelly Sue DeConnick will be appearing at our third annual GeekGirlCon convention, October 19 and 20, 2013!

Kelly Sue DeConnick has worked in the comic book industry for the last decade, writing comics and adapting manga into English including the scripts for Kare First Love, Black Cat, Sexy Voice and Robo, and Blue Spring (among others!).

DeConnick’s best-known comic credit is her involvement with Marvel Comics and the evolution of Ms. Marvel, a character with beginnings in the 1970s as a feminist character named Carol Danvers, into Captain Marvel. The role of Carol Danvers has grown through many personal hardships, from identity crises to alternate reality disasters to alcoholism. DeConnick emphasizes the character’s strength in overcoming and living through these challenges, and focuses on the amazing woman who has become Captain Marvel.

“Kelly Sue DeConnick is a talented writer and a strong advocate for women in comics,” said Jennifer K. Stuller, Director of Programming and Events. “We are thrilled that she is coming to GeekGirlCon ’13!”

For more information on her fantastic catalog, check out Kelly Sue DeConnick’s author page on Amazon for information on her available titles.

GeekGirlCon ‘13 is partnering with Homewood Suites and W Hotel.
GeekGirlCon ‘13 is seeking fabulous Vendors and Exhibitors.
GeekGirlCon ‘13 is looking for your programming and events (through May 15).
GeekGirlCon ‘13 has press pass information.
GeekGirlCon presents GeekGirlConnections at the Con (apply now) and year-round.
GeekGirlCon offers fantastic events throughout the year that you don’t want to miss!

Don’t miss any exciting updates, schedules, and more for GeekGirlCon ‘13! Buy your passes now!

 

Guest Contributor
“Rock On!”

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