Kelly Sue DeConnick Talks Captain Marvel, Pretty Deadly, and the Sexy Lamp Test

Kelly Sue DeConnick is one of the top writers at Marvel Comics, helming both Captain Marvel and Avengers Assemble. As she sets those titles up for a crossover, she's also working on Ghost for Dark Horse and a creator-owned project called Pretty Deadly.

She took some time at Heroes Con to give us an update on all of her projects.

IGN Comics: Every hero has their weakness, their kryptonite or whatever. With Captain Marvel, she has one of the more human weaknesses, something that could really happen to anybody, a lesion on her brain. Could you speak to how you came up with that idea and why this particular ailment was best for her story?

Kelly Sue DeConnick: I think that Carol is real. She’s not allergic to yellow or wood anything. I think she is her own worst enemy in a lot of ways. It was a thing that I noticed when I researched the book, which was that Carol always fights Carol. Like, literally and often. In the history of the book, several times she has fought herself. Someone dressed as her, someone with her name, someone who is actually her from another dimension. This is a thing that happens repeatedly, and I was super annoyed by it when I was researching the book. And I was like, I’m not going to do that. And I’ve done it, what, three times now?

When we play in the sandbox with these incredibly iconic characters, there are reasons that they resonate and transcend us that are bigger and more important than what our egos want to do with them. I think with Carol, that character is very much about identity, and some other things too; fairness is one of them. Identity is huge for her. I think that’s why that fight manifests physically often, because that’s what we do in comics, right?

I think that this was another way for -- I didn’t consciously set this up -- this is Carol fighting Carol again. This is Carol fighting someone getting in her head. Her own insecurities, her own doubts, her own willingness to be a hero. That’s her challenge this time around. And she steps up. And it costs her, because that’s what heroes do. They make sacrifices.

IGN: Because of the lesion, whenever she uses her powers it puts her in danger?

DeConnick: Yes.

IGN: Right on. I absolutely love how, among all of the superhero fare, she has a strong friendship with Spider-Woman. So often we see girls at odds with each other.

DeConnick: Isn’t that annoying?

IGN: Yeah, like one of the greatest female relationships in comics is Jean and Emma fighting over Scott. But in your book, Captain Marvel and Spider-Woman have this great thing where they can rely on each other. I know that the two characters have been friends in the past, but what made you put their relationship at the forefront of your book?

DeConnick: Brian Bendis set Spider-Woman up as her best friend. I simply thought how important my own best friend is in my life. And female friendships are something we don't see enough in culture, in our entertainment. They’re a huge part of my everyday life, my female friends. But in comics for some reason, this is not a thing we reflect. I wanted to reflect it. I also wanted to consciously reflect intergenerational friendships, so Carol is good friends with Tracy who is much older than her, Kit who is much younger than her, and with her mentor Helen who is much older than her.

Because of the time travel we got to see what it would have been like if Carol and Helen had known each other when they were the same age. Would they have been in competition with each other? Yes. Can two women be in competition and remain friends? Yes, they can.

IGN: Your book would never fail that one test where it checks if your female characters are realistic.

DeConnick: Yes, the Bechtel Test. It’s named for Allison Bechtel, 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 Bechtel Test is a little advanced for us sometimes. I have one called the Sexy Lamp Test, which is, 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.

IGN: [Laughs.] That’s funny. I’m glad I brought that up.

DeConnick: It’s true.

IGN: Let’s switch to Avengers Assemble. I really liked The Widow’s Ledger with Black Widow. Now that the story is done and you’re moving ahead to the Enemy Within crossover, where does that leave her and the rest of the team moving forward?

DeConnick: After Enemy Within, Black Widow will be around, but I’ll actually be going into, and I know people are going to find this shocking -- brace yourselves IGN! -- we’re going to be going into a Jessica Drew-centric arc. Because apparently, I like writing Jessica Drew. I did not know that when I started writing that book, but she turns out to be somebody that I’m really into.

This is very funny because somebody wrote something like, “Kelly Sue just inserts her pet characters!” First of all, I inserted Captain Marvel into Avengers Assemble because my editor suggested it. My editor on Captain Marvel was like, “Hey, you know what would be good for Captain Marvel? You should use her in your other book.” And I was like, well aren’t you clever?

IGN: [Laughs.]

DeConnick: I used Spider-Woman because they already had a cover and she was on it. It wasn’t that I had some important mandate that I had to get Spider-Woman in the book. Once I started writing her, I loved not only her friendship with Carol, but her friendship with the Hulk. Not with Bruce so much, but specifically with the Hulk, from what came out of Avengers Assemble.

IGN: Yeah, that great scene in the kitchen with them.

DeConnick: Yeah, I was really surprised by that. I found it strangely touching. I really like the two of them together. It makes a lot of sense when you think about it. Neither one of them chose to become what they are. Neither one of them had a say in that. I think they both have anger and resentment issues, and trust, too. It makes a lot of sense. I get that, and I like it.

IGN: Enemy Within just had one-shot prelude issue released. Could you talk about what you’ve set up and what people can expect from the crossover between Captain Marvel and Avengers Assemble?

DeConnick: Carol has been systematically harassed by an enemy from her past and from Mar-Vell’s past who needs something from her and she’s trying to determine what. It puts 8 million lives in peril and she will have to make a great sacrifice to end it, and she will. It will have repercussions with her friendship with Jessica, as well.

IGN: Now let’s switch to your creator-owned book, Pretty Deadly, which looks pretty awesome. I see it as the Wild Wild West meets the Grim Reaper but with the fashion sense of Tim Gunn.

DeConnick: [Laughs.]

IGN: The image of the lead woman with the Day of the Dead design on her face is incredibly eye-catching, unlike anything I've seen in a while. For those that don't know, could you give us the synopsis for the book?

DeConnick: It’s not the real West, it’s the mythic West. When our story opens, a blind beggar and a young girl come into this town in the mythic West. Are you familiar with the cantares de cego? It’s a Spanish tradition of these beggars who would sing these songs and tell these stories and they had banners behind them that had illustrations for the story. They were sequential illustrations. They were comics! That they would bring into town and unfurl and they would sing these songs telling these stories and then they would get money for them.

This blind beggar and this young girl go into this town and they unfurl their banner and they tell a story about this mason who was in love with Beauty. Beauty was a woman, and he marries Beauty. But it isn’t enough. He becomes consumed with jealousy at the idea that any other man would appreciate her, and so he builds a stone tower and locks her away.

But Beauty, separated from the sun and the sky and the wind that she loved, started to wither and die, so death came to take her. But Death also fell in love with Beauty. Death sired a child with her, but it wasn’t enough to keep her there, it wasn’t enough to tether her to the world. So Death took her and took the child, too, and raised the child as his own in the spirit world in the land between the living and the dead. Death’s daughter is Jenny, and Jenny now is a protective spirit who will come back to the world to smite those who would do harm to beautiful and free things.

IGN: You’ve worked with the artist Emma Rios before. Could you talk about the art aspect of the book? It looks pretty spectacular from the previews.

DeConnick: She is astonishing. I am so out of my comfort zone on this book. I don’t know if the book is good, I really don’t. I have no idea. I usually have a sense of these things. Sometimes I’m wrong, but I usually have a sense. I have no clue!

IGN: [Laughs.]

DeConnick: But I can tell you absolutely, my hand to my heart, it is one of the most beautiful books I have ever seen in my life. It is stunningly well composed. It is gorgeous, so you’re gonna get your money’s worth just in the art alone, I have no doubt. There’s no way the story is going to live up to that but I hope that the story earns its place. It is astonishingly beautiful.

IGN: And to finish up, your book Ghost at Dark Horse is still going on, but it’s been on hiatus. When can readers expect it to come back? And what is coming next in the story?

DeConnick: “In the Smoke and Den” was the reboot of Elisa Cameron the Ghost, and that collection is out now. That’s the reboot of Elisa Cameron who was journalist who died because her story got too close to the truth, something that she found out about the city of Chicago and who was really running it. And these two ghost hunter dudes brought her back to our world. “In the Smoke and Den” we learned who Elisa was, what happened to her, and why, and now we’re going to pick up how she continues hunting down those who are responsible, and the way that their network has infiltrated the city.

IGN: Being a reboot, is there anything you took from the previous incarnation that you used in your story?

DeConnick: Yeah, her name, she’s dressed in white, she’s a journalist.

IGN: [Laughs.]

DeConnick: There’s some stuff. It was a jacked up, freaky book, and it is still a jacked up, freaky book. It is the most twisted thing I write. Mine is only going to get more twisted.

IGN: Sounds awesome. That’s the last one. Thanks for the interview, Kelly Sue.

DeConnick: Yeah, you bet. Thank you, man.

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Source : ign[dot]com