KELLY SUE DECONNICK

The notion that somehow women are wildly different infuriates me.

I think women have every right to feel like they're the protagonists in their own stories.

'Pretty Deadly' is the story of these immortal and mortal characters, and the mortals' story follows Sarah's family, a black family, through the ages. I never made the choice of, 'Oh, this is gonna be the story of an African American family!'

You'll go mad trying to figure out what people want. I don't bother. I write the stories I want to read.

My son is such a lover, such a caretaker and so funny. He's seven, and he genuinely cracks me up. And my daughter is a fearless powerhouse. They fill me with wonder and admiration.

Years ago - I used to be an actor - I was in a production of Vaclav Havel's 'Temptation,' and when we started rehearsals, he was in prison. When we closed the show, he was running for president. And it felt incredibly timely and important and also this lucky thing.

I think women are vital to the future of the superhero comics and the entire industry - as creators, as editors, as consumers, as retailers.

If you have a smartphone - and you have a smartphone - then you have a comic book store in your pocket. So you don't have to get over any social anxiety you have about entering that space.

Girls have always read comics. There's nothing intrinsically masculine about telling stories with pictures.

If you want to, if you are a crazy person, you could go from idea to the stands in about four months. It does not cost hundreds of thousands of dollars to make a comic the way it does to make a television show or a movie.

One of the things I enjoyed when working in manga was when I couldn't tell where anything was going because there weren't narrative tropes and structures I was used to. After doing it for seven years, I got to the point where I did see structures. I did start to learn, but at first I didn't know where it was going. It was very exciting for me.

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.

I need to go where I'm not comfortable. I think that's the artist's job.

Going into the second arc, I'm making a conscious effort to do something I say I never do, which is to change my style because of feedback. I'm trying to make 'Pretty Deadly' more accessible by being more clear in the writing.

'Female Convict 701: Scorpion' is based on a manga as is 'Lady Snowblood.' I saw 'Lady Snowblood' in the theater between writing issue three and issue four of the first arc of 'Pretty Deadly,' and I was really surprised how much I was influenced by it.

I kind of resent the suggestion that there would be something inherent about superheroes that wouldn't be of interest to women. That makes me nuts. I'm a 5-foot tall woman with a quick temper who always looks like a child, so power fantasies are not strange to me.

Gray space is fertile ground for fiction. When I can see both sides of an argument and feel strongly in both directions, then there's a story there, then I can write real characters that I care about and believe in and champion on both sides.

The first gift my husband ever gave me was a pack of index cards. I'm pretty sure the second was a 'Powers' scriptbook. This was well before either of us worked for Marvel.

Anybody who's read 'Pretty Deadly' knows that I tend to savor an immersive, 'You'll figure it out as you go!' style. 'Pretty Deadly' really does not hold your hand.

With Marvel, I obviously don't own the characters, so there are levels of approval to go through. But I'm very seldom told no, and never without reason. Maybe I've just been lucky; I don't know, but I don't think it's as frustrating as people generally imagine. I act as though I own it all while I'm writing, I think. I hope, anyway.

I think I'm very strong at dialogue, I think I'm very strong in characterization. I think sometimes I use dialogue and character work to cover weaknesses in my plotting.

I think 'The Avengers' is a Black Widow movie. She saves the day. And if you take her out, the plot does not function.

I like my heroes to be imperfect; I like them to be striving. I identify with that kind of aspiration to do better.

I hate when I get asked, 'What's it like to be a woman in comics?'

There's nothing less funny than trying to force funny.