 WIZARD: So, Brian, how were you first approached for Young Avengers Presents: Hulkling?
BRIAN REED: I apparently have some clause in a contact somewhere that says if the character has the name “Marvel” in the title that I get to write it. [Laughs] I wasn’t aware of that, but apparently… No, I was writing the Captain Marvel miniseries, and the day I was writing issue #3—although it might have been #4, it’s all hazy—I had a scene where Captain Marvel met his son. And it was this thing that I knew as soon as I wrote it, I had just tacked it on, and it was going to be the first thing that was cut if I needed more room in the issue. And of course, I needed more room in the issue. It was only a page and a half long, didn’t have any room to breathe, and I hated it. But I so wanted that scene in the book that I kept trying to squeeze it in and kept trying to make it work until I finally just gave up. And I’m not kidding, but it was 5-10 minutes between me going, “This isn’t working” and deleting it, and the phone ringing and Molly Lazer going, “Hey, we’re doing this Young Avengers Presents thing. Do you want in?” And I say, “Huh. Oddly enough, Yeah!” [Laughs]
What exactly should we expect from of this issue?
This was fun because when I originally wrote the scene, I wrote it from Captain Marvel’s perspective because it was his book. And since this was now a Young Avengers story it was going to be told from Teddy’s point of view. So, it kind of gave me another way to look at who Captain Marvel was and to get to play with this kid who never really had parents. He had a mom who wasn’t really his mom. He never had a dad at all. And I just kind of got to get inside his head. And that’s what we get to look forward to here—exploring who this kid is as a kid and not so much as a superhero.
A lot of kids in real life go through this meeting of their father for the first time. So, this issue features a more realistic take?
Yeah. And we get to see Captain Marvel being told, “Hey, I know you just came through time and everything, and I know this is all very confusing… but I’m your son.” [Laughs] It’s getting to drop that bomb on him and giving this real world conversation in the middle of this insanity that is their lives.
I’m assuming we can expect a rather strange reaction? I mean, Captain Marvel hearing that Teddy’s mother was a Skrull…
Yeah. I didn’t outline this issue, which is what I normally do—outline and then fill in the scripts. This one, I was just writing script. And I wrote the opening of the book and it’s Teddy with Captain Marvel going, “Hey, I’m your son,” and knowing the whole time he’s saying this in completely the wrong way and he’s totally blowing this conversation and he’s so afraid of what Captain Marvel is going to say, and Captain Marvel going, “Uhhh… I got to talk to later about this,” and [he] flies away. I wrote, “He just flies away” and I thought, “Oh my god, he just flew away!” [Laughs] But it was such a natural reaction.
Teddy’s mother tells him that Captain Marvel is his dad. But it’s almost like that rock star type thing where a mom tells their child, “Yeah… your dad’s David Bowie.” Are we going to have a resolution on whether or not Mar-Vell really is his father?
Teddy knows enough information from the deal with his mom and the Super-Skrull that he’s able to say these things to Captain Marvel, and Captain Marvel understands that things he thought other people didn’t know about, they knew about. It quickly goes from, “that couldn’t be” to “okay, yes you are” because that wasn’t what the story was about.
Hulkling and Wiccan are two openly gay characters. Is this subject going to be brought up with Captain Marvel?
I didn’t, and the reason I didn’t was because it wasn’t what the story was about. To me, it’s really easy to sit down and write a really stereotypical character. And the really stereotypical scene here would be, “and by the way dad, I’m gay!” “Oh no! What?” [Laughs] It didn’t feel natural. It didn’t feel like it was part of the conversation. The conversation was, “You’re my dad. I’m your son.” Now, if they have an ongoing relationship after this issue, then certainly his relationship with Wiccan will come up. But right now, it didn’t feel like it was part of what was being told.
Did you enjoy writing this character? Is Teddy someone you would come back to later on?
Yeah. He was fun. I had read Young Avengers as it came out, and I hadn’t thought about the characters in a while since they haven’t been around anywhere, so it was getting back in there and learning what had been established about them and what hadn’t been. Most of Teddy’s past was a quick little sentence here or there. There isn’t really a whole lot of exploration of it. I got to go in and define some of that and explore who he was growing up. And that was a lot of fun.
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