Anthony Oliveira Interview - Marvel United: A Pride Special

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[00:01:29] Head to 2000AD.com and click on subscribe now or download the 2000AD app and why wait? Start reading today. I'll put links in the show notes for you. Hello everybody and welcome to today's episode of the Cryptid Creator Corner. I'm Byron O'Neill, your host for our Comics Creator Chat. As I continue my Pride Month feature on the show, it is my pleasure to introduce today's guest who is quickly amassing one of the largest bodies, a queer superhero character continuum in the Marvel Comics universe.

[00:01:56] He's a two-time GLAAD award-winning author, a three-time National Magazine Award winner, and a winner of the 2024 Dane Ogilvie Prize for the LGBTQ2S Plus Emerging Writers. He's got a PhD in 17th century literature, is a journalist, the founder of Dumpster Raccoon Cinema, curating trashy cult movies, all of which tells me this is going to be a fun conversation full of inevitable pop culture comparisons.

[00:02:23] So, Anthony Oliveira, welcome to the show. It's nice to meet you. Thank you. Thank you for having me. This is, try and stop me when it comes to pop culture comparisons. My supervisor couldn't get me to do it, and neither will you. It's a great pleasure to be here. Well, we're glad to have you. Before we jump into the writing stuff, I want to know more about Dumpster Raccoon. I was an assistant technical director of a small historic theater myself many moons ago. I absolutely love them.

[00:02:50] So give me a little history lesson on the review cinema and how this thing all got started. Oh, yeah, sure. Well, the reviews here in Toronto, the review in Roncesvalles, it is a very old theater. It was built in, I think, 1904 or 1907. It pre-existed down to being movies. And it started off as like a Polish cinema, and now it's sort of a great little repertory house in Toronto.

[00:03:16] And I programmed Dumpster Raccoon Cinema for them, which is our... I like to think of it as like we dig through the trash of popular culture and like see what got thrown out, and we think about whether there's something edible in there. And we... I like old camp classics or forgotten movies or just weird queer stuff. We've been doing it for seven years. We're going back to the beginning this summer. We're doing our first three movies again.

[00:03:42] So like Flash Gordon and Barbarella and Phantom of the Paradise are keeping us busy all summer. Yeah, it's a lot of fun. We do performances beforehand, drag or burlesque or something. We do like a costume competition every week, every month. So it's a very stupid way to spend a Saturday here in Toronto. So if you're around, come join us. I mean, I really love that idea of essentially mixing what sounds like a Rocky Horror type thing, you know, and with the live film.

[00:04:12] Is it formally scripted or is it just impromptu? No, we... The performances are usually... There's always one before the show. And then every so often we do a sing-along open stage. So, for example, when Cats finished bombing, I had seen it in theaters and I was like, the problem isn't the movie, the problem is the audience. So like, what if we build the house and like we did performances during the show and like people sign up and they do puppetry and burlesque and drag

[00:04:41] and all kinds of weird... They live sing. Sometimes we do a prize, but sometimes we don't. We just did Wicked after that finished its run and we'll do it again for the second one, I think. Yeah, it's definitely not as like choreographed as a Rocky Horror screening. I find those quite locked up as events, but we just kind of like give our generosity and love

[00:05:11] to these underappreciated things or sometimes overappreciated things. Wicked did not need our help, but... Yeah. But it was a lot of fun. I can't do Wicked because I did a run of Wicked and the amount of movement with all of the scrim, the pipes, like that show was like none other in terms of... Yeah, it's on a rail, that one for sure. Yeah, it was off the chain. So that and Cabaret, I just have nightmares when I think about either of them. It's what our next movie is.

[00:05:42] We're doing Cabaret for Pride. Yeah, that'll be a lot of fun. It felt like the time, you know, 2025. Everyone's broke and fascism's on the rise. So let's look at Cabaret again is how I feel about it. That's a good one for it. But I'm going to humbly submit now the Crypto Corner's perennial trash movie selection. Oh, please. Hell Comes to Frogtown. I had never even heard of this. What is Hell Comes to Frogtown? Oh my God. Yeah.

[00:06:09] So a nuclear war, dystopian future wipes out most of the people, the vast majority of men. Most of the others that are still alive are sterilized. So you have our highly virile hero, Rowdy Roderpiper, who is sent in to rescue a bunch of fertile women who are kidnapped by frog people. Is this before or after they live? Is this like when? I think it's before. Oh, wow. Okay. Yeah. I'm going to rent this later today.

[00:06:39] Like, sounds amazing. Wow. Okay. Yes. Wow. Hell Comes to Frogtown. Yeah. I'll check that out. Absolutely. Very cool. Like, well, if it gets in, you've got to email me. I will. Because that would make me so over the moon happy. It sounds right up our alley. So that's perfect. I figured it might be. Well, let's get into how you take that dumpster raccoon ethos and apply it to your writing. Because looking at the body of your Marvel work, the choice word in the industry is retcon.

[00:07:07] But it would, in your case, I would call it more reconciliation, right? You're taking Marvel characters and you're reimagining them. So does it feel like an accurate description of your process? Yeah, it's very funny that you say that because the comic that is coming out tonight at midnight is called retcon. Yeah, I'm on a roll. I'm really interested in, I mean, as you mentioned, I did my work in 17th century literature.

[00:07:36] I'm interested in the way that popular culture kind of takes over after the church in being the way that we negotiate a kind of common lingua franca culturally between each other. That, like, when we are no longer all worshipping the same way, we can't go to church together, but we might go to see, for example, Hamlet together. Okay. So I'm interested in the way pop culture does that.

[00:08:04] And with comic books, and especially Marvel comic books, I'm really interested in something that is kind of basically not unique but unusual in human history, which is, like, these kinds of stories where the canon of the text has gotten so large that it can feel completely unwieldy, that it has outlived many of its creators and is continuing to go.

[00:08:32] So there's very few things that are that rich to draw from. And I think if you're going to be working at Marvel or DC, like, if you're not doing that, I feel like you're leaving something so important off the table that you could be accessing. So also just I love archival work. I love a deep dive. So, like, a lot of my work, as you say, is not a retcon, but is actually, like, well, have you thought about this weird part of Marvel history?

[00:08:58] Have you thought about, for example, the fact that we never found out who the founder of Hydra was? Like, that was a big sort of mystery that was not even a story that was published. Like, you can't get the Leatherback Raiders now. Like, but it wasn't Baron Strucker. There was another guy there. So, like, I wanted to bring that back. Or, like, Arnie Roth was one where I was like, I just feel like audiences need to remember Arnie Roth was a character.

[00:09:26] So I like to do, as you say, something reconciliative, something that sort of renovates a bit of lost lore, a bit of forgotten history, or, like, fixes something that needs fixing. Like, sometimes something has happened to a character that feels unfair or feels unfinished.

[00:09:50] Like, bringing back metal was something I wanted to do very early on in the process of writing Avengers Academy. That was a character who got a very raw deal and stayed dead in a universe where people seldom stay dead. It was effective for the moment it was telling its story, but it also felt like it had been long enough. And that poor boy deserved something resembling a happy ending. Yeah, that's kind of where my... That's the interest of my work. Figuring out...

[00:10:19] In the same way that I'm interested in, like, fixing a movie... Presenting a movie to an audience in a way they can see something to love in it. I love taking a character or a concept that feels like it didn't work. That feels like it has been forgotten. And being like, no, look, like, there's something about this... There's something about this character that works. That can be made lovable. So that's important to me. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I guess the example that comes to mind for me was Kane Marco versus Justin Jin. Right? Sure, yeah.

[00:10:48] Forever curious. You know, how can we pull in the younger readers and how they connect with legacy characters? So both of our personal comics journeys started with Spider-Man and we're both Claremont kids. So do you feel like we need these reinventions, like with the Juggernaut, that feel contemporary for that younger audience so they can connect with them in the same way we did or our generation did with those characters so that they can more easily see themselves? Yeah. I am... Kid Juggernaut's a great example, actually.

[00:11:18] Like, I grew up loving the Juggernaut and he's one of the best. He is one of the best X-Men and Marvel villains there is. Great design, great character concept. But also, like, you think about, like, the 1960s politics which created that character and it's like coming out of the Korean War. It is sort of rippled through with this kind of Orientalist colonialism.

[00:11:46] Like, it's this white soldier who accesses these mystic powers from far, far away, you know? And so there is something about that story that felt like it needed redressing. And it is always hard to create a new Marvel character. Like, many have been discarded along the way and editorial is quite nervous. There's always, quite justly, they're always like, why create a new character when there's so many who could be used instead?

[00:12:13] But in this case, I really felt like Justin let us think both about Kane's crisis of masculinity, which is what that character is about, right? I think quite legibly, especially since the Austin years. But really, since the beginning. Like, this is the emasculated... I have always thought about the way Austin characterizes his relationship to Charles as

[00:12:38] sort of like, you went through my mind, like, you would go through a little sister's diary. Like, he was sort of not allowed to have anything of his own, not even beloved by his own father. And the result is this sort of like, hyper-masculine, armored being. Like, no one will be allowed into my mind. No one will ever tell me what I do again. I am unstoppable. And I wanted to think about a character who was sort of a foil for that.

[00:13:04] A character who was quite gentle and quite open and like, very willing to share his feelings out already when we meet him. Um, and conversely, I wanted to think about the sort of Korean legacy of this character. That like, there is a narrative inherent to the Juggernaut story of this long line of, um, avatars of Sidorak that Kane is the latest of.

[00:13:31] Um, that I wanted to sort of return to its roots and let, um, let's literally just let something that should be Asian be Asian again. Like, it felt just quite natural to me. Yeah, I can't remember where I read it, but somewhere it was so eloquently put and so succinctly, it was the changing the white default switch, which you've, you've said before. So how does Justin do that? I mean.

[00:13:56] Yeah, like, um, at a story level, Justin is the grandson of Jin Taiko, who is the character was established to be, um, the, the Juggernaut before Kane Marco. And we later found out in the mid 2000s that Kane actually killed Jin Taiko in sort of this like, um, Sidorak induced rage that the, the Juggernaut always kills his predecessor, which is a story beat that was coming down the pipe for Avengers Academy too. Um, necessarily.

[00:14:24] Uh, so, um, making this legacy of trauma, um, and, and after we created Justin, we brought on Emily Kim to sort of think about and expand, uh, his origin story in that, uh, mini series that Emily did after Marvel Voices 100. Um, and to think about like, uh, Korea in World War II and in the Korean War is in a very vexed

[00:14:52] state of like colonial and, and re-colonial, um, force. Like it was under Japan for so long. And then afterward became sort of this jewel prized by the American forces. So taking Jin and making him into a victim of Japanese colonialism in World War II, um, only to then have Kane sort of represent American colonialism during the Korean War and Charles. Charles was also in the Korean War.

[00:15:21] Although I don't know if we, we still keep that in continuity given the amount of time that means he must, how old they must both be. But, um, yeah, Justin was meant to sort of redress that and to think about that and to think about, um, the ways that, uh, these characters interact with power. I mean, one of the major themes of Avengers Academy is what is power?

[00:15:44] Um, what, what is it for and what can it do to us is a theme that has emerged throughout the text. That and what does it mean to be a hero? Those are really the two questions that this book is designed to ask. So, in your mind, how much of a problem then is continuity? As we try to take a legacy character like the Juggernaut, could you do the same thing?

[00:16:12] Could you, could you make the same point using the legacy character Kane as you could with Justin? Um, I don't, well, could I use Kane to make the same point as Justin? No, I don't think so. I mean, one thing is that Kane is, to me, um, the tragedy of Kane Marco is that he is kind of trapped in himself. That, like, he's a character who is not letting himself think about quite a few things.

[00:16:40] Um, and who's also an older character. Like, he is, despite the way his age has been arrested, which is also kind of thematically important, right? Like, Kane is stuck in a lot of ways. Um, he's an older character. He is a peer, if not older, than Charles Xavier and Magneto, which is crazy to think about. Um, who has let himself sort of wander from project to project and ethos to ethos and partner to partner.

[00:17:09] Um, because he just, I think, ultimately is stuck in a very deep hedgehog's dilemma. He just wants to be loved. Um, and is terrified of it. Uh, and I think, in fact, in some ways, even though Kane has not yet appeared in Avengers Academy, although he will very soon, um, Justin is the foil to that.

[00:17:33] Like, when you put Kane next to Justin, you see Kane's flaws all the more obviously. Um, because, just because you have this power does not mean this has to be your personality. It does not mean this has to be your struggle, right? Um, so I think when Kane meets Justin, uh, a lot of, like, it will be a real, like, trapdoor, like, oh shit, like, I kind of missed some boats, um, that I might have, uh, that I might have caught.

[00:18:01] And, similarly, uh, Kane is a cautionary tale to Justin. Like, this is what, this is what this power, this is what this kind of way of moving through the world can do to you. Um, yeah, so I, I think they're actually designed to do opposite things to each other. But they make each other more interesting by comparison, I think. Okay, yeah, I'm, to be clear, I'm not advocating that we don't create new characters. I'm actually one of those people who thinks continuity constantly gets in the way.

[00:18:32] And I think that's why all of the, the new stuff like the Absolute Universe or Ultimate, you know, is so successful. As we get to take these small germs of the nucleus of these characters and actually interpret them in a different way without all of this canon tripping everything up all the time. Yeah, well, I mean, it would be very weird if I, it'd be very weird if I was doing a book about teen heroes and also juggernaut.

[00:18:58] So, in some ways, I mean, he'd be a great gym teacher, as he was at the Xavier School. But, like, in some ways, um, yeah, I, the rest of the cast is all pre-existing. That was pretty important to me. I wanted, I wanted, again, to sort of renovate a bunch of existing characters who, it felt like were, had fallen or were about to fall to the wayside. And I was like, no, I want, I want, give me the losers. I want the ones who feel like they're slipping away.

[00:19:26] Um, but I also think it's important to also have someone who's new in a cast. I think that, I think five to one is a good ratio, actually, for building a team. Like, five characters we know and one we don't is a good way to think about it. Um, because you want to make sure everybody has room to breathe, too. Um, but also, like, something of that it factor, I think, is important. And with Justin, thankfully, we definitely caught some, we caught a bit of lightning in a bottle, I think, with him. Yeah. How does it feel?

[00:19:56] And it just kind of popped into my head. So how does it feel that you could be some kid's Claremont? Because, and I'm not saying that in jest, because it's a rare gift right now that you have working on Avengers Academy on Marvel Unlimited in terms of a run. You just don't, you don't see it. I mean, I will never be that. Like, this book will not run for 17 years.

[00:20:19] Um, but, uh, because we're weekly rather than monthly, it does mean we have stacked up quite a few issues rather quickly. Um, and even though they are technically six pages long, they are certainly not that in text and in presentation. Um, so I think that one of the joys of the book has been, and I knew it would be, the way you would get to live with these characters for a while, however long we run.

[00:20:43] Um, that, I mean, I grew up, Claremont was important to me, but like, I grew up watching, for example, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, which was on for seven years when I was a kid. And like, in a very lonely, closeted moment in my life, that show was the thing I looked forward to. Like, cool was hell.

[00:21:02] Um, but I had these sort of make-believe friends who were nice to each other and, um, fought these adventures together and had these stories and, um, difficulties and triumphs. And, um, thinking that I might be giving that as a gift to someone, especially someone who might be as lonely and queer as I was, is important to me.

[00:21:26] I think that, um, I work in, I mean, my, my, my fiction, my book is, um, you know, literary fiction is this way it gets categorized and it is sort of pitched at an adult audience. But with my comic work and especially my Marvel work, it does feel like I'm paying back both the stories that I had when I was a kid and the stories I didn't have when I was a kid, the representation I didn't see. Sure.

[00:21:52] Sure. So like pushing this book to be about like having an HIV positive character and having characters have frank conversations about taking prep and having a trans character, having multiple trans characters. Um, all of that was important to me. This book is only worth doing if it is, um, pushing every envelope it can push. Um, and, and thinking that that's helping someone out there is really valuable and important to me.

[00:22:19] Yeah. I love that. I love how you're incorporating history into it and, and re-solidifying it kind of for the next generation at a time while at least here in the States, you know, our, this current administration is trying to erase a lot of history. You know, I'm, I'm new to Marvel unlimited. I've only been there a couple of months, but I'm just pouring through stuff and you have this knack for pulling all sorts of things, pop culture references and otherwise, and using that to, to narrate your characters and develop them.

[00:22:49] And there's a specific moment here where Sheila is talking to Loki about a fairy tale in Avengers Academy. And the line was, and in the second book, there was this princess only see, she didn't know she was a princess. This evil witch had trapped her and made her live as a boy, even though she wasn't one. And few people have ever gotten to the Wizard of Oz book three, Frank Baum's Osma of Oz, but that was a trans character written in 1904. Yeah.

[00:23:15] So it simultaneously informs Sheila Sexton and shines a light on queer history. Yeah. It's brilliant. I love it. Thank you. Yeah. That's, I mean, that's important to me. I think that, um, uh, my work was in 17th century literature, but it, uh, hopped along the way in, in, um, 20th century thinking. Um, cause I was interested in the Baroque and a lot of German thinkers were thinking about the Baroque in the 20th century.

[00:23:39] So I, I, I worked a lot on Walter Benjamin, um, a German Jew fleeing the Nazis, um, unsuccessfully.

[00:23:47] And, uh, Benjamin believed that one of the greatest things you can do in the face of rising fascism is the archive, is to keep the history, is to, um, make sure people know what happened and make sure, um, what we did and what we wrote and what we thought endures. Um, he died with, with his suitcase.

[00:24:12] Um, so, yeah, that work is important to me that saying that queer people have always been here. Queer people are part even of the cultural fabric that in 19, yeah, in 1904, um, L. Frank Baum was writing a series of very queer books. Like the idea that Friends of Dorothy has become code for queerness predates Judy Garland.

[00:24:35] Like those books are, um, full of, um, same-sex, particularly sapphic, uh, desire and romance and, um, expressed through children's literature. But still, and like, Asma is canonically a character who is, as you said, as I said, I guess, as you're quoting, um, made to live as a boy and isn't one. Um, and that's, that's an important touchstone along the way. And I felt, that felt authentic to me as a text Sheila would have had to hand.

[00:25:05] Um, and going backwards, speaking to Loki, who is one of, um, Western literature's foundational queer characters in a lot of ways. Like, Loki's queerness is as old as the, the Etta itself. Like, where Odin rails against, um, his, uh, gender-fluid behavior.

[00:25:25] Like, that's, that's part of our inheritance and making, I do this in my own, uh, writing too, of, like, my book, Dayspring, um, is even if you're reading my work, I want the text to also always be an anthology that unlocks for you where to go next, where, where are the other sources, the other texts.

[00:25:49] Um, one of the joys of Avengers Academy is, the one thing I know about every reader of Avengers Academy is they have Marvel Unlimited, which means that they have all these texts at hand. So I know that if I pull a really deep cut, they're always three clicks away from finding that deep cut. Um, so I feel allowed to do it in, in a lot of ways that I think might be riskier in print format. All righty, everybody, we're going to take a quick break. We'll be right back. Let's face it. The comics landscape is a mess right now.

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[00:29:07] I think I'm going to make Jimmy play a goblin warlock just to get even. Welcome back. So I've been thinking about this. How could you get away with what you're doing in a monthly floppy? How is Marvel Unlimited changing how we tell queer stories at the big two by allowing you this opportunity to just do it and run? Yeah. I think part of it is the queer element. Part of it is that we don't have to service sales as much. Okay.

[00:29:37] And by which I mean we don't have to be paranoid about sales as much. Yeah. They keep track very religiously about cliques, and they know Avengers Academy is very popular, and they know people are reading it. Otherwise, they would have handed it a while ago. But moving units is less of a concern. But more importantly, I knew the budget line at the beginning.

[00:29:59] I knew at minimum we were going to go to 66 issues, which meant that I didn't have to do the thing that all of us now have to do in comics, which is like you get four issues. It has to be the biggest story those characters have ever had. It has to have the stakes of a big budget $250 million movie, and it's never going to breathe. And the characters will do some punching and kicking, and that'll be that.

[00:30:27] I knew that I could do weird stories, that the stakes would be lower. I could just do a day where Justin writes home to his mother and tells her about his day. Or I could do the weird, super weird thing we're going to do for issue 50. Or I could do, as you mentioned, sort of these weird flashbacks to ancient Asgard, or jumps forward to the days of future past,

[00:30:54] or fiddle around with World War II Marvel Universe stuff. I knew that I could do the thing that TV has also stopped doing, which is like, we used to have these huge 22-episode runs of TV seasons where Star Trek could be like, this one's a silly one, or this one we're just going to think about this idea for a minute, and then come back to it. And we'll still do the big Borg two-parters, but along the way you're going to get to know the characters. There's going to be these character study pieces.

[00:31:21] It's what made Claremont's run in X-Men so good, is like, sometimes they were just at the beach thinking about what happened, or sometimes they would do a makeover in the mall. Like, Dazzler and Rogue and Storm would go to the mall, and that's where they meet Jubilee. Like, it's only in these quiet moments you can really find character, I think. And it is the quiet moments that earn the big moments.

[00:31:48] Like, they've tried so many times to adapt the Dark Phoenix saga into a movie, and it never works because they haven't earned the Jean Grey. We have to care so much about Jean before we can endure the Dark Phoenix. And you can't, that's very hard to do at a script level with eight, nine characters in a 90 to two-hour movie. So Avengers Academy gets to do that. It gets to, you get to know Aaron, and you get to know Normie,

[00:32:16] and you get to know Sheila, and you get to know Brielle, and Justin, and like, we can add, we can bring in Blackheart, and Immortus, and all these characters, and give them space to breathe and give them space to find their footing so that when next they're fighting Ultron or the Red Skull, we understand what the stakes are for them. Yeah, so I'm a parent, and I know Kiddo read Kiladelphia and Fables way too young. We're living in different times, though, right?

[00:32:45] My generations and Rice, hell, I don't know how many tons of YA stuff I've read recently that pushes the boundaries farther than that did. So how do you approach writing for the audience, or do you even, with respect to where it finds them developmentally? Um, I, it is a question, it's funny, because in the early days people struggled, I found, with the tone of Avengers Academy. They didn't understand what it was supposed to be. Yeah.

[00:33:14] And part of it is because they think because if there's children in a text, the text must be for children, and I don't think that's true. Um, I grew up, uh, I went to an all-boys Catholic school, um, where there were students in grade six, and there were students in, in Canada at the time we had a grade 13. Like, uh, there was this huge amount of age range at my school, um, and older students were teachers to the younger students. Like, that was how it worked.

[00:33:43] Um, I think it's a model that sometimes Americans don't quite understand, although it exists in the States, especially in dormer schools, like the Avengers Academy is. Um, but I wanted it to be a book for that kind of age range. Um, but also that didn't talk down to that age range. I know there's tween readers. I know there's, um, younger readers. And, like, um, while the book is rated for teens, it's, I again thought of, like, Buffy the Vampire Slayer as kind of my touchstone for this kind of thing,

[00:34:13] where shows like Supernatural or things like that, like, um, Gilmore Girls even, if we're thinking outside of genre. Like, uh, if a plot felt like it could be in one of those shows, it felt like it was allowed in my book. Sometimes standards and practices disagrees, but, um, uh, and language is something we're constantly tweaking. Um, but, uh, I, I think that we, when young people read and watch stories,

[00:34:42] they're also learning, like, what does it mean to be an adult? What does it mean to, um, what does it mean to grow up? Like, what are the, because that's what they're figuring out. Um, as much as we depict younger people in these texts, the journey, as I said, in Avengers Academy is like, they're choosing for themselves what kind of hero they want to be, which is a way to think about what kind of adult do I want to be. And it was important to me that that be a serious question,

[00:35:09] that that be a question that is, um, open and, uh, not foreclosed. Like, or very early on, um, Aaron encounters, uh, Mysterio's nephew, Mysteriant, who is, uh, stealing drugs from a pharmaceutical company. Um, and Aaron realizes that actually he thinks he agrees with Mysterio about why those drugs should be stolen and redistributed. And he helps him. He just, like, joins him in looting, um, that warehouse.

[00:35:37] And when he gets home, Captain Marvel is really mad at him about it. And he said, you said, we're deciding what it means to be a hero. It's not always going to look like what it looks like to you. Um, so, and that was important to me. And similarly, in a very recent story, like, as we were dealing with Hydra, um, I really wanted to push at what Escapade felt capable of doing as a character. Um, and she dropped, she drops her off that train. Um, I, I want, I want to take the reader seriously.

[00:36:06] And I want the stakes of this story to have the stakes of real life. Like, um, that Hydra story we just did, for example, uh, it is in as much as maybe I'm not supposed to even talk about it. Um, it is very close to contemporary politics. It is a depiction of sort of this, um, these mass deportations, um, furthered by this sort of neo-Nazi agenda.

[00:36:33] And while our heroes can't beat up Dr. Doom, can't beat up the powers that have facilitated the situation, um, they do have to decide what they're going to do and what heroism is going to look like to them in this moment. And that means doing everything you can to save, um, these refugees. So, um, I wanted the book. Those are my guiding lights about what the tone of the book is, what it's allowed to be about.

[00:36:58] Um, I do find that, like, there is a real kind of scoldy way that a lot of, uh, young adult fiction is approached with that is, um, that wants these things to be safer, that wants these things to be sort of sexless. And, like, that is not, that is not useful to me. That is not, um, that is not what I needed as a kid. I feel like there is a kind of creepy, um,

[00:37:26] everything has to be for the family kind of thing, uh, that is emergent in our culture. That is, for example, quite in parallel with laws being passed in Russia now, where queer people, just by their very nature, are not family-friendly and have to be sort of excised from text. So I want to make sure this book is always pushing against those kinds of impulses. But that's its strength, is its authenticity. Because placement is not presence. I think we've moved well beyond just having queer characters

[00:37:56] in mainstream superhero comics. They're there. And they need to have stories that are tied to them in their lives that starts to constitute legacy, that people are invested in, that they care about, you know, that have stakes, that have real-world stakes that are applicable and have these things that people can latch onto and say, yeah, my parents are going through that. I'm going through that. This feels tangible to me. Yeah, I think that, um, there's a bad habit

[00:38:22] in, um, queer stories told by straight people, which, uh, is to coddle the queer character and to rush them to a happy ending. Um, I think that happens a lot with queer characters. I think we have seen it happen with a lot of queer comic book characters where they are raced to the end and sort of taken off the board. They no longer get to have adventures because it feels like their stories are done. Um, and so in this, I knew, one of the things I knew

[00:38:52] was, like, I had a lot of runway to tell stories about these characters, which meant they had to go through it. Like, that, that is important, um, to me for these characters. But it, like, that's why we love the characters we love. Like, again, Jean Grey is a character we love because we have seen her endure so much. Um, that's true. Spider-Man is a character we love because he has been taken to the limit so often. And it was important to me to give these characters stories where they were taken to the limit.

[00:39:20] Um, Aaron loses his hearing in one ear fighting the Red Skull's daughter. Um, um, uh, uh, Escapade is kidnapped by Mplate and fed upon, um, so that he can regain his purchase on reality. Like, I, and I know that there is an element for the audience, even the queer audience, who is such a traumatized group, who are these people who have seen their characters be killed

[00:39:48] and disposed of or written off panel, where that can be kind of scary for them. Um, and they don't, they don't want to see their Blorbo's in danger. Um, but I think we have to pay these characters the respect of giving them real stories, of not just being like, here's the cover of the Pride issue, stand in front of this flag, see you next year. Right. You know? Um, yeah. So putting them through it and giving them difficulties as much as giving them triumph is important. I think that we earn,

[00:40:19] deepening especially characters like Escapade was important to me, and that meant she had to go through it, and that meant she had to kick ass, and both those things are important. Um, and, uh, you want the character to feel enriched by the time you're done with them. You want them to feel like they've had a depth that they haven't previously been allowed to have, partly because they haven't been allowed to appear as often as they should. Yeah. Well, you just said when, when you're done with them. So that would be, in my mind, the next difficult trick, magic trick you have to,

[00:40:48] to do because you have to let them go. This isn't creator-owned. This is Marvel. It is odd. So, Justin is my first, I've created several characters within these comics, but Justin is the first character I've ever written where other people have written him. Like, I created that character with Minkyu, the designer, the artist on that book, and pretty immediately, we lent him to Emily Kim, um, but he's now appeared in The Champions. He's been on the cover of a bunch of, like,

[00:41:17] the thing you want most of all when you write a character is to write a hit, and he's a hit, but it's also funny being like, the first time in my life a character I wrote is saying words I didn't write, and it's like, oh, like, yeah. But conversely, like, with Escapade, like, before I wrote Escapade, only Charlie Jane had written Escapade, so I know the stress of inheriting something, especially something that only one person has worked on and being like, I gotta nail this, because if the creator hates it, you're the person

[00:41:46] who kind of broke their toy, right? Yeah. So, the support of creators like Charlie Jane for Escapade, and, like, Josh Trujillo for, um, Aaron Fisher, uh, Danny Lore, like, all of these, seeing these creators, um, uh, support the new direction these characters are going has always been really valuable. Yeah, I mean, well, you're in good hands. Emily and Steve, I'm, you know, that, you're good. You're good.

[00:42:16] I hope so. Yeah, I love seeing the characters sort of come to life, um, without me. Like, that's what you dream of, right? That, like, um, a character can stand on their own two feet and, and grow up. Yeah, so it's, it's, it means a lot to me. Well, you seem to be channeling the, the raccoon, which is, is apparently your animal spirit digging for more character gems here. So, recently, one of those is Arnie Roth, who first appeared in the pages of Captain America

[00:42:45] in 1982. Yeah. Who you reintroduced in Avengers Academy and will show up alongside Cap doing what else? Fighting Nazis in World War II, it looks like, in the Pride special, and he's regarded as the, the first openly gay character to appear in a mainstream superhero comic. I'm sure they're, that's up for debate. Sure, there's always an asterisk. One of the first, if not the first. So, what do you love about him as a character that made you want to include him? I think that, um, what I love about Arnie,

[00:43:15] uh, for which I am so thankful to, uh, J.M. DeMatteis who created him, is like, Arnie, as much as you can critique sort of the depiction and the, the way he sort of moves through the world as a character, Arnie was a real statement, um, because he's not just sort of the, the first asterisk, the, he's not just one of the first out gay male characters in comics, but he emerges, A, um, at the height

[00:43:45] of the AIDS crisis. Like, he is, he is a real, like, it is a statement to say Captain America's best friend is a gay man at a moment when the world was saying that gay men were literally things not to eat and touch to be feared. Um, and the rhetoric of hate against that group is put in the mouth of the Red Skull. Like, that is, that is Demetrius doing a lot of heavy lifting and I'm sure it was not easy at the time. Um, no. But B, he is placed so centrally

[00:44:14] into the structure of the Captain America mythos. Um, he is, when, when Steve Rogers is deciding what heroism looks like to him, Arnie Roth is there, right? Arnie Roth is the model that, that Steve looks up to before he ever gets the serum. He knows what heroism looks like because Arnie Roth was there, which means that, like, Arnie Roth is in many ways at the heart, if not is the heart of the Marvel Universe as, as a, as an ethic.

[00:44:44] Um, and that means a lot to me. I, and I think it, I think people recognize the importance of that role because he basically became the Bucky character in the films, right? Like, they kind of took out, well, they didn't successfully take out, but they tried to take out the queerness, um, but kept that character, right? That, that person who shows Steve how to be a hero. Um, uh, very different than what Bucky looks like in the comics because he's just Arnie Roth with the serial numbers

[00:45:14] filed off. Um, and he's a better kind of, um, that's a better version of Bucky to my mind than the sort of Robin sidekick, um, which is why he's become since such an enduring character, but, uh, the flip side of that is because Bucky kind of stole all of Arnie's thunder, Arnie has not been mentioned in a very long time. He died pretty quickly, um, as most, as most AIDS allegories did, he died of cancer pretty quickly.

[00:45:44] He was always presented as an old man. We don't really, we see the flashbacks to him as Steve's friend and then we lose him. He goes off to war. We're told he meets Steve once during that period, um, and we never heard anything else. We, we see him as an old, chubby, bald guy, which is like part of what makes him kind of fascinating as a character is that he is allowed to be an older man. He's allowed to be just a normal person in a world of superheroes,

[00:46:13] but also felt like he was always designed to be, um, a supporting character, right? Um, so one thing I've wanted to do when I'm sort of reintroducing Arnie is, um, let him be the hero of his stories rather than a supporting lead. Um, uh, so he is the central, that, that Avengers Academy issue is all focalized through him. It picks up the idea that he lived in San Francisco after the war like so many gay men did,

[00:46:43] that he was blue ticketed like so many gay men were, um, and gave him a life that was, um, outside of Steve's and whose contours we had a better sense of. The project for the, um, Pride comic is one that I also began in Avengers Academy which is like giving him his own adventures. Like, uh, Arnie Roth was in the Pacific Theater during World War II in the Marvel Universe which was a busy, weird play. Yeah, in the Navy I think. Um, so I wanted to give him

[00:47:13] his own cast of characters, his own villain, uh, and, um, his own adventures and we're gonna see another one in the Pride comic that comes out, uh, this month. That, that's amazing. I'm so excited about this because, okay, so you have a gay Canadian man whose family has a history of dealing with fascism who's writing a story featuring Captain America and please Marvel make a four issue series out of this

[00:47:42] because I think, I think it's, it's gonna be fantastic. So, your, your previous Pride special where you had a story about the importance of elders with Magneto consoling a lovestruck Bobby Drake. So, without giving a ton of stuff away, what can you tell us about Tonley kind of where you're gonna go with that relationship of Kath and Arnie? Um, it's a similar, again, you've sort of mentioned my fondness for renovation and it is a similar, I love dancing through raindrops.

[00:48:11] I love finding where, where canon is and where a story might be that we've never heard. So, um, the, the Iceman story you mentioned is literally set between two panels in the original, uh, Lee Kirby X-Men. I think it's issue 11 or something where the first three panels of that Pride comic were Lee and Kirby where Bobby is helping Warren strap down his wings and he asks him, would it be so bad

[00:48:41] if people knew about us? And Warren is like, yes, we can never tell. And like, it always struck me that like, what would it be like for a 16 year old gay kid to hear the rhetoric of Charles Xavier's school, which is like, we have to hide. We can't tell people what we are and how that fucked up Bobby Drake so badly. Like, that to me is the seed of why it takes Bobby so long to come out. Um, so, but that's a moment that, that Stan Lee wrote and Jack Kirby drew. Um,

[00:49:11] and I just, my camera goes left when Kirby's goes right. So similarly, that's what this project is. I wanted, I wanted Arnie to get on a boat and say goodbye to Steve and the camera goes with Arnie rather than the camera sticking with Steve. We know what happens to Steve. He gets exposed to the formula and becomes Captain America. But like, what if we went to the Pacific with Arnie? Um, so this story is the,

[00:49:40] one of the moments in the, the, the story of Arnie Roth. I kind of want, I've given to Arnie what we see with, um, Nick Fury and the Howling Commandos and the book no one has really read which is Leatherback Raiders which is the other sort of Marvel made a lot of money in the, in the 60s doing these kind of World War II stories of which Nick Fury is maybe the most enduring, um, uh, element, a relic

[00:50:10] maybe. Um, and Arnie is now one of them. He has these kinds of adventures fighting the usual Marvel monsters and villains in the Pacific. So this is that, this is that story. Um, or one of them anyway. That's awesome. Yeah, one of the things I think you've done that's very, very clever, you've done a number of things to, to create queer canon in the Marvel Universe but one of the more striking ones was creating the Arnie Roth Community Center. You talked about his journey, the height of the age crisis and everything because this,

[00:50:40] not only, you can always kill off a character but killing off an institution and erasing that is much more challenging. Yeah, um, and I knew there were, there have been other queer community centers in the Marvel Universe and when I pitched it, um, my editor, Sarah at the time, Sarah Brunstadt was like, there's actually other community centers, we've seen Aaron working at one of them, do you want to use that one instead? And I said, no, because I knew I was going to burn it down.

[00:51:10] Um, I knew when Aaron started working there in issue five, um, that by the time we got to issue 24, or it would be in ruin. Um, because I knew that that's what the culture is targeting right now. Like, um, it is, as much as Arnie has become erased, the attempt to erase facilities and institutions and archives like this is what our culture is trying to erase. So, I knew Cherry Crane, aka Sin, aka the Daughter

[00:51:40] of the Red Skull would target that directly. Um, so I wanted the Arnie Roth Center to be a place that was specific partly because I want, I knew I had to destroy it and it felt wrong to me to destroy someone else's creation. Like, I didn't want to destroy Josh Trujillo's community center. I think it's the Matt Baker, um, which is honoring another queer Marvel character. But, um, I do think, like, breaking other

[00:52:09] people's toys is not a nice thing to do. So, uh, you want to fix other people's stuff and break your own. So, that's why, that's why it's the Arnie Roth Center in the book. Do unto others, right? Yeah, right. It's all that. Well, I know there are plenty of other folks, but do you, do you ever feel like you're getting cast as the, the queer, quote, writer at Marvel? Um, it is, it is, yeah, I mean, I don't think it's, it's probably not their fault. Like, uh,

[00:52:39] the book goes as queer because I make it. Like, they're not, it is definitely not the impulse of editorial. Um, so, it's, it's a fair, like, again, like, what are my, what are my relationships to capitalism ultimately is the question. I'm an old Marxist and that's always, like, yeah, I could do, I could do straight books, um, and it might be interesting to do them, but, like,

[00:53:09] even if I did, my perspective is always going to be queer. I think that that's just generally, um, a good artist's worldview is always apparent in their, in their material. Um, sure. So, uh, like, a lot of, like, Pasolini, like, Gospel of Matthew is a very religious movie. My mother loves to watch it. Um, but the eye of that book is, the eye of that movie is queer. Um, so,

[00:53:39] similarly, I think that, like, what would be valuable is to have more queer people driving flagships, um, is to have more, more perspectives that aren't the straight, white, middle-aged man's take on what these heroes should look like. Because even when they are writing characters who aren't straight, white, middle-aged men, the, the point of view remains the same. So, enriching the point of view is, I think that's what was so

[00:54:08] beautiful about, for example, the Krakoan era for the X-Men was sort of seeing the way different minority creators, whether it was artists or writers, um, had things to say about Xavier's dream and had things to critique about the way we've been telling these stories and that the Krakoan engine was a way to do that. It was a way to sort of bring to bear all these sort of creaky ideologies. To me, Krakoa was so much the sequel to the end of the

[00:54:37] Grant Morrison run where Xavier says, like, look, we've had our turn, he says to Magneto, we've had our turn, maybe it's time to listen to the kids for once. And, um, Krakoa was that to me. So, I want to see more Krakoan blossoms flower, uh, in different parts of the, um, these universes, both DC and Marvel and beyond, like, what happened, and beyond the books too, like, what happens when these films are allowed to be something that aren't just

[00:55:06] four-quadrant family films, you know? Oh, absolutely. I will say on the Krakoan era and Professor X, as a member of the disabled community, stop taking him out of the goddamn wheelchair because it's important. It's interesting, that's so interesting to me because I, um, I think what's built into Xavier is his own, he has a very complicated and frankly ugly relationship to

[00:55:36] his own disability, I think, um, as a character from very early on, right? Like, um, uh, his sort of horrible in multiple ways speech about his crush on Jean Grey where he's like, if only I wasn't there. Um, I think what we need is to have his relationship to it examined, uh, on page. Like, I thought that, um, one of the things that Krakoa did well actually was to have sort of these other characters who are disabled, uh, like Karma, for example, be like, I'm not going

[00:56:05] to go through the crucible and be quote-unquote whole, you know? Like, my disability is important to me and is part of who I am. Um, uh, we're going to be doing a little disability pride run in Avengers Academy that I shouldn't spoil too much of, but, uh, with some creators who are extremely exciting and whose viewpoints I can't wait to see on the page about some characters. Um, and again, it's part of this same, like, the stories are just better if the people telling

[00:56:35] them know more about the way the world works. Yeah, I was going to ask you, what's your next project? What is your ideal working, you know, beyond Avengers Academy? But we found it. You need to write the Professor X miniseries. I don't know. I mean, I have a lot of, I, I love Xavier as a character and hate him as a man. And I think that's the reason I hate him as a man is why I love him as a character. I think that he is, um, such a complicated

[00:57:05] and, um, uh, imperfect, uh, visionary of the world. And, but then he becomes, therefore, such a useful way to critique the way that so many ideological movements have, uh, voiced themselves. Like, um, there is something of the Mattachine about him where there is something of the, the, uh, respectability politic that he manifests. I mean, you've seen, I've really only written six pages

[00:57:34] of X-Men and they are those Bobby Drake stories and Xavier does not, Xavier does not appear in that comic, but he is sort of the third character in that comic, which is like, um, when Magneto hears what Bobby is struggling with, he just says, oh, Charles. And, um, I think that, uh, in that, in those two, that, that brief lament is just a world of critique of what this man's vision has done to a generation. Yeah. There's just so much understanding in that moment

[00:58:04] between them and it's so special and I love the way it's handled because he's hanging in the air with a whole bunch of missiles ready to do his thing and it's like, shit. Yeah. Okay, let me put the arm around you. I know he's a bastard. That, to me, is the quintessential queer experience that the X-Men represents, which is like nothing, you don't do anything more than fight with each other in like radical leftist spaces, but ideally when, push comes to shove and when the sentinels are at the door,

[00:58:34] you fight back together and that to me is like, yeah, showing up with missiles and being like, ah, fuck, I gotta hug them is actually to me a very queer experience. That's awesome. Well, I don't want to keep you all day. You've got the Pride special, which will be on shelves when this episode airs. Avengers Academy is ongoing. The first six issues are collected. Exactly. Yeah, in print. That comes out June 11th. Is that Wednesday? Yeah, Wednesday, June 11th. If you're

[00:59:04] in Toronto, I'll be at Silver Snail signing copies, although this might be out after all that. Well, what else you got cooking? I am doing this summer. I am doing the Loki issue of Bring on the bad guys. With Guggenheim? Mark Guggenheim is sort of running the event. Yeah, I don't think I've announced who my artist is, but I'm handling the Loki corner of that event. It is a classic

[00:59:33] Loki being a real piece of work. We're sort of celebrating these characters as a sort of villainous icon. they came into the world as. It was nice after doing some, like as you mentioned, the escapade Loki story, which is a much softer how does Loki tick kind of story. This is a how does Loki tick, tick, boom kind of story. What lets him be

[01:00:03] the character that we've come to know and love and hate. While still respecting all the work that has happened since and the perspective that has happened since. But that's in July. The art that I've seen is so gorgeous. I can't wait for people to take a look at that. That's amazing. Where can people find you online? Well, I mean, it feels like verticals are struggling to exist. If you type meakopa, M-E-A-K-O-O-P-A, bad Latin Super Mario

[01:00:33] pun, you can find me on Blue Sky, the ruins of Twitter, and Instagram. I also have a Patreon at patreon.com slash meakopa where I post my stuff and also sort of do my podcast about Christian queer literature. We're in the middle of the Gospel of Luke right now. Yeah, so follow me on any of those to find out what I'm up to next. Fantastic. I'll put links in the show notes. I've got to catch up on the podcast. I didn't even know you were doing that, so it's on my list of listens. It really

[01:01:02] informed my book and it's been fun. The Gospel of Luke is such a weird socialist wonderland, so it's been fun working on that. That's awesome. Well, I always wrap up with a shout out. This can be an expression of gratitude for someone in your life or something that just inspired you recently, and I'll go first to give you a second to think about it. For myself, I recently discovered the band Alice, and I'm absolutely obsessed with them. Their video, Bloom Baby Bloom, is this weird nod to the early 80s from a fashion standpoint.

[01:01:32] It's got these Olivia Newton-John notes in it as far as the visuals, physical era stuff, and the music itself has some Kate Bush in her voice, but it's more raw, and it feels like this sine wave of kind of crescendoing tension and release. Absolutely fantastic and ferocious, so it just feels good. It's driven by Bill Collins' piano lines and clapping. It's really, really good. I highly recommend it. Wolf Alice.

[01:02:02] We'll check that out. Bloom Baby Bloom. Definitely worth checking out the video. Oh, awesome. Okay, yeah, I'll do that. Is it me now? It's you. I was recently at a conference about ecstatic writing, and beforehand I went to a concert in Toronto by an artist who was then at the conference with me. His name is Jerome Ellis. Jerome is spelled the way you think it is, except it has, I think, five J's before it.

[01:02:32] Jerome is a musician and poet who, among other things, his work is interested in the aesthetics and the function of the stutter. Jerome is a stutterer in his performance, in his music, and he's interested in the liberationist potential of the stutter. He's interested in the sonic effects and relief that a stutter can produce, the anxiety of the

[01:03:02] stutter. His poetry is amazing. He's interested in black recuperations of narratives in, for example, part of his project sort of remixes the ads placed by people who had enslaved people in the way that sometimes these are the only texts we have about these people in history and the way that these texts can be remixed into some kind of recuperative project. Jerome Ellis,

[01:03:31] four or five J's, I think it's four, Aster of Ceremonies is the poetry collection. Listen to his music if you get a chance to. Really great. That sounds so cool. I'll have to check that out. Yeah, amazing. Nice. Well, Anthony, thanks for hanging out with me on the show today. It's been a lot of fun. Thanks for having me. This was a lot of fun. Yeah. Thank you so much. Happy Pride, everybody. Yes, yes. You stole my intro or my outro. All right. Well, this is Byron O'Neill and for all of us at Comic Book Yeti,

[01:04:01] thanks for tuning in and we'll see you next time. Happy Pride, everybody. Bye. Take care, everyone. See ya. This is Byron O'Neill, one of your hosts of the Cryptid Creator Corner, brought to you by Comic Book Yeti. We hope you've enjoyed this episode of our podcast. Please rate, review, subscribe, all that good stuff. It lets us know how we're doing and more importantly, how we can improve. Thanks for listening.