The Adventures of Fanboy

PART I: ORIGIN STORY

Our story begins in New York City, sometime in 1991. Young Allan Heinberg, a working playwright and actor in need of some extra cash, has recently taken a permanent “temp” job as a word processor and presentation designer at Banker’s Trust in Manhattan. Before long he notices something odd about the backpack of co-worker John A.C. Kennedy, an aspiring screenwriter. Our hero is intrigued.

“What’s going on on your backpack there?” he asks.

“It’s the Bat symbol,” says Kennedy, nonchalantly.

Heinberg is confused. “But you’re technically an adult.”

“Well, comic books aren’t just for kids anymore,” Kennedy responds.

Then Kennedy tells him about certain events in the Batman story line that have taken place in the 10 years since Heinberg stopped reading comic books--that Dick Grayson isn’t Robin anymore and that Batgirl was paralyzed from the waist down when the Joker shot her in the spine. Heinberg is “really upset.” Desperate to find out about his other childhood idols, he goes to a comic book store the next day.

A little more than a decade later, at the age of 38, this budding fanboy will become a rising star in the comic book world as co-creator and writer of a series for Marvel called “Young Avengers.” His writing will be discussed and celebrated in blogs and chat groups. He will speak at conferences and teach a class on comic book writing. Self-assured, physically fit and socially competent, he will help put an end to the stereotype of comic book fans as sarcastic, overweight losers who still live with their parents. But of course, every hero needs a great origin story, and Allan Heinberg’s circuitous route to comic book stardom is in some ways just as thrilling and triumphant as any of those recounted in the pages of his favorite medium.

The first months of Heinberg’s return to comic books were a frenzy of buying and reading. He scoured stores in Brooklyn and Manhattan for old issues of “Superman,” “Batman” and “Wonder Woman” to catch up on the years of character development and plot lines he had missed. He also discovered new books--Alan Moore’s “Swamp Thing” and Neil Gaiman’s “The Sandman”--and read them voraciously on the subway. “The writing was as artful and as sophisticated as anything in contemporary American fiction,” he says. “The best ones were ‘The Dark Knight Returns,’ ‘Watchmen,’ ‘Animal Man.’ . . . These were books that redefined the superhero genre and basically raised the bar in terms of what is possible in narrative storytelling in comic books. It was riveting. And there was nothing like it going on in any other art form.”

He also began obsessively collecting--not just the books (alphabetized and numbered, filed in reverse chronological order, bagged and boarded), but also toys and art and lunch boxes and models--to the dismay of the young poet whom Heinberg called his husband. In addition to that $40- to $50-a-week habit, he began making regular visits to Four Color Images, a comic art gallery in SoHo, to purchase original art from the ‘70s and ‘80s and Alex Ross’ photo-realist lithographs of the Legion of Super-Heroes and the Justice League of America. By 1997, when Heinberg moved to Los Angeles, he was a bona fide fanboy, attending conferences such as Wizard World and Comicon and commissioning custom action figures of Batgirl and Cosmic Boy.

Heinberg had given up the theater and transitioned into television writing, where he found immediate success. He got his start on the Tea Leoni vehicle “The Naked Truth” and then moved on to writing and producing for “Party of Five,” “Sex and the City” and “Gilmore Girls.” His television world and his comic book world largely remained separate, although his passion for comics occasionally leaked into his script writing--in one of Heinberg’s episodes of “Sex and the City,” Carrie Bradshaw dated a comic store clerk, and he gave a “Party of Five” character an action figure collection. But essentially Heinberg was writer by day, fanboy by night.

In comics, most characters bound for greatness must first suffer a great catastrophe. Bruce Wayne used his immense wealth to become Batman after his parents were murdered; Peter Parker decided to use his spider powers for good after his uncle was killed; the same freak accident that gave Daredevil the gift of supersonic hearing also caused him to lose his eyesight. For Heinberg, it wasn’t until the traumatic end of his 10-year relationship with the poet that he was able to make the dramatic leap from comic book lover to comic book writer.

Of course, it didn’t happen immediately. First there was the mourning period (one can almost see the monochrome panels--his gaunt face and sunken eyes obscured in shadows, rendered in washes of gray). And there was a friend, Mark Knowles, an interior designer who encouraged Heinberg to move his collection out of the closets and boxes in his home office, where it had been relegated by his husband, and let it take over the house. With Knowles’ help, Heinberg filled the spacious living room of his Hancock Park home with original art from “The Sandman” and “The Justice Society of America.” They placed his models of Ming the Merciless and Catwoman in the hallway. In his office they scattered the lunch boxes and action figures (many still in their original packaging) on a high shelf that runs around the room. They put a 5-foot-long cutout of Mon-El--long thought to be the cousin of Superboy--above the tub in the bathroom. They tried to spare the bedroom (although it was done in Superman red and blue), but Heinberg couldn’t resist placing a few models--including one of several members of the Justice League battling a giant starfish--on a small bookcase in the corner. “When I meet someone I’ll rein it in,” Heinberg says. “But if you are a comic book lover, the house really has an effect.”

Once the collection was liberated, Heinberg’s life began to change. He pitched and wrote a pilot for Fox that he describes as “ ‘Thirtysomething’ with powers.” The network decided to pass but asked him to meet on a new show it had just picked up called “The OC.” The creator, Josh Schwartz, allowed Heinberg to give one of the main characters--a quirky, quick-witted teenager named Seth Cohen--his love of comics. The references to Cohen’s comic book obsession were small at first--flipping through an issue of Batman or discussing the Legion of Super-Heroes with another character--but over time they grew. A history teacher was named Mr. Bendis, a homage to Heinberg’s favorite comic book writer, Brian Bendis. Then Cohen started a comic book club at his school. And during the second season, Heinberg’s personal obsession became a major subplot when Cohen wound up writing his own comic book and pitching it to a publisher.

Cohen, who was cute and charming and smart and funny, quickly became a fan favorite, and comic book fanboys, delighted to be portrayed positively, wanted to know more about the writer behind him. Wizard Magazine (the trade publication Heinberg describes as the comic reader’s bible) tracked Heinberg down and interviewed him about his love of comics, his favorite writers and his favorite characters. A few weeks later, Joe Quesada, the editor in chief at Marvel Comics, called from New York and asked Heinberg to come in for a meeting. “Whenever we hear of a great writer who has an affinity for what we do we go all out to bring them in,” says Quesada, who also has used the talents of director Kevin Smith and novelist Jonathan Lethem. “Allan was exceptional in that he was so reverent of the world of comic books and so passionate.”

Soon after, Quesada (with Brian Bendis on a speakerphone, much to Heinberg’s delight) pitched Heinberg a book he might write--a brand-new series that Marvel was planning about a group of teenage superheroes called the Young Avengers.

At last our hero’s powers were recognized . . . but this first challenge was a daunting one.

PART II: THE ADVENTURE BEGINS

“To be able to create a team of superheroes for Marvel is a lifelong dream come true, and to have it exist in the Avengers canon is profoundly flattering,” says Heinberg. “But the Avengers have been together since the early ‘60s--Captain America, Ironman, Thor, briefly the Hulk, Giant Man, the Wasp--and they have a very rich history. As a writer you need fresh ideas and a fresh point of view, but you also have to be very observant and respectful of the 40 years that came before.”

In other words, Heinberg knew that fanboys like himself would be frustrated if six characters that no one had ever heard of emerged from out of nowhere and called themselves the Young Avengers. “As a fan, I would never in a million years pick up a book called ‘Young Avengers.’ It just seems too--I don’t know, I just wouldn’t,” he says. “It seems to violate everything the Avengers stand for, and it seems like a rip-off of [D.C. Comics’] Teen Titans, and it seems like a commercial move rather than one motivated by any sort of artistic storytelling necessity.”

Heinberg returned to Los Angeles and agonized over the book. He tried to quit three times. He struggled with adapting his writing to the comic book form. He tortured himself by reading the online comments of suspicious and contentious fanboys around the country who complained that Marvel had sold out by giving this clearly commercial book to a successful television writer. And then he started having ideas. He decided to put four sidekicks who had never existed on the cover. “I thought if I put these four sidekicks on the cover I’ll make people angry, because it will feel like I’m violating 40 years of continuity,” he says. “I at least wanted to make people pick up the book, and I thought if they see these four characters on the cover, they will at least be curious enough to see how bad it is.”

Then he thought: Make the book’s problem--who are the Young Avengers and where do they come from?--the characters’ problem. And so just as a reader who has picked up the book is thinking, “Who the . . . are the Young Avengers?,” the book opens with a splash page of a familiar Marvel character, J. Jonah Jameson, the silver-haired, mustachioed editor in chief of the Daily Bugle, screaming at the top of his lungs, “Who the . . . are the Young Avengers?”

Heinberg kept up this knowing glance at the audience. On the next page, Jameson says, “The point is, nobody knows where they came from, or why they’re here.” In this way Heinberg hoped to earn his readers’ trust.

And it worked. Fans liked the book almost in spite of themselves. “[T]he more i read the more i like. damn!” wrote Rodolfo Leon in a message board discussion on a comics website (www.newsarama.com). “Me too,” wrote Ghost of Scooter Doom. “This book has surprised me. I intended not to like it but it’s pretty good.”

The first issue of “Young Avengers” hit stands in February and sold out its run of 100,000 copies. Since then, the monthly series has been selling steadily in the 77,000 range. The book’s success isn’t simply due to Heinberg’s clever circumvention of the central problem, though. The writing is taut and funny. The art, by co-creator Jim Cheung, is impressive. And maybe most importantly, Heinberg’s sidekicks are fanboys just like him and his most devoted readers. His Young Avengers--Hulkling, Asguardian, Patriot and Ironlad--are enamored with the lives of their adult counterparts (the Hulk, Thor, Captain America and Ironman). They get giddy when a little-known former superhero hands them her card. “Jessica Jones wants us to call her?!” says Hulkling. “Jessica Jones as in Jewel?” says Asguardian.

And there’s a lot of action and cliffhangers and intrigue--two of the characters are even gay!

“Right now Allan is the No. 1 rising star in comics,” says Quesada.

Our hero triumphs at last.