Spider-Girl Fights Evil on Twitter With the Help of Paul Tobin [Interview]
On sale next week is the first issue of Spider-Girl, Marvel's new ongoing series spun out (ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha) from the pages of Amazing Spider-Man. Written by Paul Tobin with art by Clayton Henry, the book depicts the adventures of Anya Corazon, the newly installed Spider-Girl of New York City. Already known for his endearing character work on a number of Marvel Adventures titles, Tobin is adding a cool and unusual dimension to Spider-Girl by personally writing a Twitter feed for Anya, which the writer confirmed is set firmly in mainstream Marvel Comics continuity, and even offers an advance look into the events of the next Spider-Girl issue.
After the jump, Paul Tobin tells us about superhero Tweeting, what has become of wayward Marvel editor Nate Cosby, and how to get Spider-Girl to follow you on Twitter. We've also got an advance look at next month's Spider-Girl #2.
CA: Paul, you've writing as masked superhero Spider-Girl on Twitter. What's up with that?
Paul Tobin: It was something I'd been thinking about for some time. Twitter just seems like a part of the real world to me, a means for people to communicate quickly with friends, etc, and that led me to thinking that characters should do that in comics as well. I like to think of myself as a character writer, so the more human I can make the characters, the better. Beyond that... each comic (normally) has 22 pages, and believe me, a LOT of what we writers would LIKE to put into a comic falls to the mental cutting room floor. This was a way to work in more characterization and become more immersed in who Spider-Girl is.
CA: What was the response from your editors?
Paul Tobin: I began this project with editor Nate Cosby, who has recently quit Marvel to become (I believe) a full-time bulldog fancier. He was really supportive of the Twitter idea, and current editors Tom Brennan and Steve Wacker have been likewise supportive. It's not hard to convince an editor to find ways to make a book more engaging.
CA: How do you intend to integrate Spider-Girl's Twitter content into the comic book, and vice-versa?
Paul Tobin: One of the "problems" of writing a comic is how the protagonists convey information. There's only so many times that Spider-Girl can say something out loud, or mention her plans to passing pigeons. So I'm using "Twitter" captions to help out that process. Each Twitter caption in the book will appear here in the real world on Spider-Girl's Twitter account. Her name is @The_Spider_Girl.
In addition to that, though, I'm also doing extra tweets. Tweets that give some behind-the-scenes looks at what's going on in Spider-Girl's adventures, and Anya's personal life. These tweets aren't necessary to reading the comic by any means, though. I'm considering them as "DVD extras." Incidentally, some of the tweets that have already gone up are a "preview" of her backup story in Amazing Spider-Man # 648, out this week. You can scan through her tweets and get somewhat of a feel for the upcoming story.
CA: How can I get Spider-Girl to follow me on Twitter?
Paul Tobin: Just add @The_Spider_Girl and she'll almost for sure follow you back, unless you're a spammer, someone with a protected account, or various members of the Kravinoff or Osborne families.
CA: What's Spider-Girl's policy on replying to her followers?
Paul Tobin: She'll answer some questions, sure. She's a busy girl, of course, and also I've already had some questions (we officially started on Sunday) that are too "real world" to answer. She can't exactly talk about her relationship with Peter Parker, for instance, because she can't say, "Oh, you mean Spider-Man?" Her tweets have to "live" in the Marvel 616 world.
CA: Who are some people Spider-Girl might suggest for #followfriday?
Paul Tobin: Oh. That's a good one. I hadn't thought about that too much, yet. Let's see... @Ken_Hale for sure. Who doesn't like the Gorilla Man?
CA: Most importantly, what's Spider-Girl's attitude about all the FourSquare auto tweets?
Paul Tobin: HATES them. Also, she makes sure to turn off the location notifier for her own tweets. Can't have that!
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The Strange World of Superhero Twitter Action Role Playing
For just about any superhero from Marvel or DC Comics, you'll find a whole mess of Twitter accounts owned by people inhabiting their personalities and interacting with each other in character. For lack of a better description, the whole thing appears to be a giant text-based RPG without rules, goals, or any sort of conclusion. STARPing provides an opportunity to create a sort of living fan fiction with a social component, enabling participants to imagine interactions between characters that will never be seen in comics. Quite simply, this is what happened to Mark Waid's Hypertime. It's a place where anything can happen.
I decided to plunge myself into the STARP universe in the attempt to understand just a little bit more about this very unique aspect of comic fandom on twitter. What I found was equal parts enlightening, strange, and just a little bit...sexy?
A lot of fans were pretty upset by the events of Cry for Justice, when superdad Roy Harper's daughter Lian was killed by Prometheus. The loving relationship between Roy and Lian was well-established in DC continuity, and it's pretty sad to think that we'll probably never get to see them together again in the comics. Twitter, however, is a completely different story, thanks to @roywharper and @lian_harper_:
What you're seeing here is the start of an adorable little bedtime ritual between father and daughter, and if you want to do some searching (which I'm unashamed to say that I did), you'll discover that these two accounts go back and forth with each other pretty regularly, acting out what can best be described as a fairly loving meta-fictional relationship. There's talk of snacks, Lian gets put on time-out, and at some point they discuss the possibility of Roy getting the phone number of television personality Kat Von D. Having become aware of that last one, I think it should be clear to everyone that The Rise of Arsenal would have been significantly more awesome if Miss Von D had made a cameo at some point.
STARPing is just about conversations, though. Sometimes it's about action. Here's an snippet of an intense little sequence between Wolverine's son @_Daken and @LauraKinney, also known as X-23:
If you're curious about the outcome of that particular battle, it ended with X-23 stabbing Daken in the kidneys and then teleporting away. I'm pretty sure that young Laura has never had a teleporter in her belt in any of the comics, but that's the beauty of STARPing. Make it up as you go along! Throw in whatever might be convenient to your own personal story; that's something that we'd never get upset about if actual comics writers did it, right?
There's something else that we probably shouldn't expect again from comics anytime soon but is easily found among the STARPers: the Marvel/DC crossover. There's nothing to keep characters from different universes from interacting with each other, so it happens pretty frequently. And like I said before, sometimes these folks get a little bit saucy...
Is it possible that this happened off-panel during that DC/Marvel: All Access crossover back in the 90's?
Okay, so it looks like Tony doesn't remember it either. But I think I might know where he's going with this.
I honestly had no idea that Zatanna celebrated Easter. Then again, I didn't know that she hung out with Wolverine.
If you had any concerns about people staying in character, I'm pretty sure they've been addressed at this point.
Am I the only one who really enjoys the idea of Tony Stark hanging out with Zatanna on a beach while dressed in full armor?
At the very least, we know that Tony doesn't like that image so much. He wants the armor off.
What you need to understand here is that the instances provided above were pulled from thousands and thousands of STARPING tweets. When I started writing this, my goal was to get to the bottom of this comics subculture on twitter, only to discover that there is no bottom. It is an endless world of superhero role-play and it's not stopping any time soon. What's worse is that I've discovered there are STARPers acting out more successful romantic relationships than I'm capable of maintaining in real life. A prime example of this would be @_PepperPotts and @AnthonyEStark. Actually, if you scroll down Pepper's feed just a bit, you'll find that she recently threw a birthday party for Tony where she hosted Clark Kent, Cassandra Cain, and Deadpool, among others. And it just so happens that Clark brought two cows and a goat as a gift. Seriously.
There's an infinite universe of possibilities in STARPing, and there are no editorial guidelines or continuity problems to get in the way. The worlds and the characters are controlled by the fans, and there's something pretty powerful about that. There's no doubt that the results are pretty unexpected and fascinating (and yeah, sometimes kind of weird), and they're all right there for you to explore on your own if you have Twitter account. Take it from someone who knows, through; once you step through the portal into the STARP universe, there's no turning back, and no telling what you may find.
