Gillen, McKelvie Relaunch ‘Young Avengers’ in January

Not content with writing critically-acclaimed series about teenage characters in Journey Into Mystery and Generation Hope, Kieron Gillen is revamping Marvel's premiere teen super team as he and Phonogram partner Jamie McKelvie relaunch Young Avengers in 2013 as part of the ongoing Marvel NOW! roll-out.

The new series brings together members of the original Young Avengers team created by Allan Heinberg and Jim Cheung - Wiccan, Hulkling and Kate Bishop - with a number of other teen heroes from across the Marvel Universe, including Loki, Noh-Varr (AKA The Protector, from Bendis' Avengers run) and Miss America, from Joe Casey and Nick Dragotta's Vengeance mini-series. Describing the series as "doing modern riffs on classic Avengers stuff," Gillen promises a book that's "as personal [a Marvel series] as I've ever done," saying that the series will try to offer an honest teenage experience in between the superheroing that you'd expect from a book with "Avengers" in the title:

The book is kind of like super heroes clubbing. The big super hero battles are kind of like going to a club. Then at 5 A.M. They all gather for breakfast and talk about what went down. That's my equivalent of the Bendis breakfast bar scene. It's 5 A.M. Everyone is knackered and sweaty and they're desperately trying to get a place to feed them bacon.

We play with a lot of those sorts of scenes. When we do scenes with teenage life there will be a sense of wonder and strangeness to it. I want to use super heroes to discuss the experience of being a teenager rather than putting real teenagers in a super hero universe.

It's also a book where the visual aesthetic is an important ingredient, something that Gillen is confident that his long-time collaboration with McKelvie can accomplish:

In this case we were talking about the Marvel NOW! books and "Young Avengers" came up. I thought, "If I'm going to to do this book I want to do it with Jamie and Mike Norton." And I wanted Matt Wilson on colors. I wanted Clayton Cowles who was our letterer on "Journey Into Mystery." I wanted to make something that was completely beautiful and bespoke.

I looked at something like "Daredevil" and how aesthetically coherent it is. I don't think I've ever done anything like that for Marvel. I've done some really good books at Marvel, but I haven't done anything that's been as aesthetically coherent in the way "Phonogram" is.

Such ambition for a new series is exciting to see, but sadly we'll have to wait a few months before we get to see the results for ourselves; the new series launches in January next year.