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After 18 months on JOURNEY INTO MYSTERY, Kieron Gillen has given an extensive interview with Q Magazine’s Colin Smith on his UK based blog TOO BUSY THINKING ABOUT MY COMICS and tweeted:

The first part of my enormous interview with @Colin_TBTAMC is up. Probably my most candid interview ever.

He also added:

(This part includes my plans for the last 2 years and where they went wrong, literary patricide, and my burning hate of Elves)

Gillen specifically focuses on the writer’s experience working on comics in these ongoing interviews, and particularly on trying to establish strong storytelling on a title that proved, as time went on, that it was far from any “minor league” expectations from readers. He’s hard-hitting about his own mistakes, for instance, and as hypothetical advice to his former self, says:

When the more self-aware strand of wannabe writers are looking at the industry they pick apart people’s careers and decide which bits worked and which bits are mistakes. You try your best to use the former and avoid the latter. The problem with the “mistakes” is that i) you realise what caused a chunk of those mis-steps, and they were in fact the only sane response to an insane world and ii) you end up making a shitload of new mistakes all of your own, which the next generation will try to learn from. I’m aware that I’m well on the way to being a cautionary tale now. C’est La Vie.

He answers big questions, like “why Loki” and considers whether his master-plans really panned out:

I sort of had a master-plan for my last two years of work, which like all plans didn’t survive first contact with the enemy (i.e. Reality).

In terms of my career, I was aware that I hadn’t had to do even a medium-length run on a book that showed what I was capable of. Finding a place slightly out of the way in the modern mainstream, and cultivating it in my own image. Basically, I wanted to do something that fit into my creative history the way that Animal Man or Secret Warriors fitted into Morrison’s and Hickman’s.  Knowing the marketplace, I was thinking conservatively in terms of length. If it took off, 20-30 issues would be feasible. Having the experience of dancing around the current Marvel comics universe, I was always thinking about making it being able to robustly survive and even subvert whatever crossover it found itself in contact with. Which, when 75% of the story ended up being crossovers, was thinking time well spent.

Probably the most entertaining aspect of the first part of the interview is Gillen geeking-out on whether he sees himself as a “fantasy writer” and how fantasy literature has played a role in his personal history:

(Don’t start me on Elves. My perennial bugbear. Elves are basically “What If Aryans were right about there being a master race”. Fucking Elves.)

In short: I resisted defining myself as a fantasy writer because fantasy tends to be iffy. I became fine with it when I realised how core it was to how I processed and commented upon the world. And, of course, the tradition of anti-trad-Fantasy Fantasy writers is always looking for recruits. Hell, the problematic nature of the genre makes it almost too easy. In any other genre would I got away with THE MANCHESTER GODS ARE ACTUALLY THE GOOD GUYS as a reveal? But in a genre that demonises technological progress and hails the status quo of inherited power, you just put someone in a black hat and a bit of soot and everyone presumes they’re another working-class/foreigner-surrogate to be stomped on by the pretty blonde people.

I find myself laughing at how much bile I end up spewing when you get me on this topic. Magic Swords +3 Against Scarabs Are Serious Business.

This is heady stuff, and only a first installment of this rambling deconstruction of comics taking readers on a Gillen-guided tour. Coming up soon is Gillen’s discussion of the Kid Loki character on JOURNEY INTO MYSTERY. The fact that Gillen has taken the time to really reveal his mindset and the issues he’s recently grappled with in such a conversational way is a gold-mine for fans, with more to come.

Hannah Means-Shannon writes and blogs about comics for TRIP CITY and Sequart.org and is currently working on books about Neil Gaiman and Alan Moore for Sequart. She is @hannahmenzies on Twitter and hannahmenziesblog on WordPress.

By Steve Morris

Excellent news has come in from Marvel today! I refuse to be objective, because today comes that announcement that Journey Into Mystery WILL continue, as I previously reported, with the new creative team of Kathryn Immonen and Valerio Schiti coming onboard as of issue #646. Alongside the new creative team comes a new focus, as the series switches from following Kid Loki on his magical exploits, and instead turns to the swashbuckling swordplay of Sif.

Which means Marvel now have comics spotlighting Captain Marvel, Dazzler, Red She-Hulk, and now Sif. There’s some momentum gathering there, isn’t there? Here’s the cover, which I think is by Stephanie Hans.

Immonen previously wrote a Hellcat miniseries for Marvel, as well as the modern classic Pixie Strikes Back, which is one of the best stories ever told by Marvel. Her focus on Sif means that Kieron Gillen’s grip on Kid Loki may well continue, but it also gives Immonen the chance to flesh the character out. Perhaps most strongly characterised by the Thor movie from a few years ago, Immonen notes that

One of the really interesting things about Sif to me is that she’s defined by absence, with her lover, Thor, and brother, Heimdall, always away from her

The series will see Sif embark on a new mission to define herself as a warrior, which brings her into conflict with a lot of old Asgardian lore, and allows Immonen to play around with monsters and swordplay. In the liveblog, she talks about how daunting it is to follow such a fan-favourite run, but has some interesting ideas about how her run with the series is going to play out. Particularly interesting is her suggestion about the predestination inherent in the Asgardian characters. There’s always going to be an endpoint at ‘Ragnarok’, so how much of their lives is basically spent treading water before that happens?

I see a similarity between Sif and Loki because neither of them can ever be Thor. I think that has more effect on her then she’ll admit. She’s been told she’s capable of anything, but at the end of the day, she will never be Thor. It’s a matter of finding out how to be enough anyway.

The first issue with Sif in the lead, issue #646, will be released in November. And hey – it’s $2.99

By Steve Morris

If you choose to believe the words of everybody’s favourite paper-munching Marvel editor, then it looks as though Kieron Gillen’s Journey Into Mystery isn’t going to be cancelled as a consequence of Marvel NOW!!

Tom Brevoort’s Formspring account is something worth keeping an eye on, not least because it suggests that Jean Grey and Black Panther are the two most popular characters to ever exist in the medium. But also because he also mixes repeating the company line on certain stories with the occasional step into secret announcements. And in this case, a plucky fan appears to have asked the simple question “will JiM be cancelled?” and receive the simple answer “nope”. In essence, this fan seems to have basically won a confirmation that the series will not be cancelled once writer Kieron Gillen leaves.

Gillen’s series has been one of the rare titles which gets by on the literary style of the writer, rather then the central character or ‘importance’ of the storyline. There are few other books on the market, as far as the Big Two are concerned, where the voice of the writer is one of the core appeals of the book. Which, that means it’s going to be very hard for whoever comes on to the series next. The book has rather low sales, but the teaser images released a few weeks ago seemed to suggest that Kid Loki, protagonist of the title and inspirer of Tumblrs worldwide, may be joining a team of some kind.

Whether this would be the new direction for Journey Into Mystery – which would, really, not benefit from the next writer attempting to imitate Gillen – or a suggestion of a new book designed to boost Loki’s profile… who knows.