This week is a very special installment of Living Wednesday to Wednesday/the post-Baltimore interviews as we chat with Teen/Terror Titans writer and soon-to-be Acme guest Sean McKeever! Sean will be appearing with Birds of Prey writer Tony Bedard, Birds inker John Floyd, and Teen Titans #50 artist Randy Green on October 25th. More details are available here.
When I got to college, I decided that I wanted to write the quintessential book on teenage life, based solely on my own experiences in heartbreak, best friends, late nights, punk rock, and skateboarding. I put my nose to the grindstone for a few weeks and threw together a handful of humorous essays. I continue to fool myself into believing that someday I will actually finish it.
Then I crack open Sean's books and I realize that he's beat me to it. He already brought those feelings and situations together a dozen times over, the painful and jubilant adolescent life, he just juxtaposed it against superpowers, giant robots, and murderous legacies.
On Sunday, September 28th, Sean stepped away from a monstrous line at Baltimore Comic Con to chat with us about Teen Titans, TV, and his upcoming signing at Acme.
Jermaine Exum: How much free reign do you have on Teen Titans when it comes to using characters from other titles like Blue Beetle, or from other editorial stables like Robin? Can you revamp or kill off characters as you see fit or do you have to go through proper channels?
Sean McKeever: Well, first of all, if you've read Teen Titans you know I can kill off characters. [laughs] And if you read Terror Titans you'll know I can kill of characters. I get a lot of free reign with the characters who are in that book. With Robin and Blue Beetle, if I'm going to do anything with any significance, I like to have my editor run it past the editors of those books. Recently, in the case of Robin, because of what's been going on in Batman RIP, they hint me to what is going on so that I can include it in what I've got going on. At least there are enough characters that I can develop and revamp or do whatever I want with. Well, not whatever I want, but within reason. So I don't have to worry about not getting to sink my teeth into Robin. I get to tell the Robin that they've got out there now, and that's fine with me because I like that character and I think he's interesting without having to do any major changes with him.
JE: Still on Teen Titans, I've got a lot of customers expressing interest in Teen Titans now that they've heard that Static from the Milestone Universe will be appearing soon. Did you ask for him specifically or was he made available to you?
SM: Yes and yes. Originally when they asked me to take over the book they had a team set up, which is the team you see in issue 50. I was fine with that team and I was like, "This is really cool because they're all actually teens in the book that's called 'Teen Titans.'" They asked me if I wanted to make any changes, and I was allowed to if I wanted, and I said really the only thing I'd like is if we could add Static. Would that be possible? And they said absolutely not, cause it's a legal ownership issue and we'd have to work something out. At the time they were already in discussions with Dwayne McDuffie about the Milestone characters and eventually everything worked out, so now we get him. I'm really excited about that cause I think he'll make a really great addition to the team.
JE: Spider-man Loves Mary Jane.
SM: I've heard of it.
JE: It's a very different tone of book than what we see on Teen Titans. Where does that side of you come from?
SM: It's kind of the fact that I love writing all aspects of teen life. I think that when you're a teenager, this is kind of a corny phrase, but it's like a petri dish of 
humanity, and you have all of the possibilities ahead of you, all of your emotions are on overdrive, and there's so much still to learn about the world. I think that's why I enjoy writing those characters. Adult characters are smarter than me, so they're hard to write. [laughs] Really with Spider-man Loves Mary Jane vs. Teen Titans, that's different tones based on the demands of the book, like any type of story, from a warm and fuzzy feel-good story to bitter-sweet to out-and-out horror. Usually I like the bitter-sweet.
JE: You're going to be appearing at Acme Comics in a few weeks. Have you been to North Carolina before? Are you excited?
SM: I'm what? Where? No. I don't think...
JE: Come on, look at the shirt.
SM: You should have asked me first.
JE: [groans]
SM: Actually I don't believe I ever have been to North Carolina. I'm really looking forward to it. I'm looking forward to meeting all the customers at Acme Comics and people who're reading Teen Titans and hopefully Terror Titans and hopefully the stuff from way back when. It's always fun to see comics I haven't seen in a while come up in front of me.
JE: Speaking of way back when, last question, licensed properties. If there was any sort of old 80s toy line, a movie, a book, that you could work on, any one at all, what would it been?
SM: The last thing that I really thought it would be cool to do wasn't 80s, so I won't use that. It would probably end up being something really lame like Wiseguy or the Equalizer. Not even cartoon properties.
JE: The Equalizer. I know what that is. That show was serious business.
SM: Yeah, cause when I first started writing comics, a lot of my influences in the mid-90s came from television, came from Homicide: Life of the Street, came from ER. Comics and TV have a lot in common in terms of the serialized fashion. I always try to bring that sensibility into comics. The best TV shows are really like crack and you just have to get the next one and that's whay I try to bring into comics. That's why I'd like to do something that used to be a TV show. In the 90s I'd like to do something like Homicide or Prophet if you remember that show, it only lasted seven episodes. Or more recently, The Wire. I thought that would be a really cool comic, to continue the lives of those characters and all those things going on. I'm probably just going to steal the themes from those and use them in other super hero comics. [laughs]
JE: You heard it here first: the Equalizer. Thank you, Sean.
SM: Thank you, Jermaine.
Sean McKeever first received praise for his independent, creator-owned series The Waiting Place, which opened the door for him at Marvel, where he wrote, among other things, Incredible Hulk, The Inhumans Tsunami maxi series, and Spider-man Loves Mary Jane. He also created Gravity & Sentinel and contributed to the Marvel Adventures line with Spider-man and Fantastic Four. In 2005, he won the Eisner award for Talent Deserving of Wider Recognition and in 2007 he signed an exclusive deal with DC Comics. He's since worked on Birds of Prey after Gail Simone's departure and became caretaker to the Teen Titans following Geoff Johns' departure. Next up, in addition to Teen Titans, he will be blazing a trail for the evil Clock King's strike team in the Terror Titans mini series in stores now! Check him out at Sean McKeever.com.
