Super heroes are always fighting crime....but they can also solve crimes. That’s the idea behind Hyperion Avenue’s new Marvel Crime line, which teams bestselling crime and mystery writers with some of Marvel’s grittiest characters. First up this July is Breaking the Dark: A Jessica Jones Marvel Crime Novel by Lisa Jewell, author of 19 novels including Then She Was Gone and None of This is True. The tale stars Jessica Jones, who runs a detective agency while dealing with severe PTSD after being mind-controlled by one of Marvel’s villains.
Two more books in the series are due in 2025 and 2026, respectively: a Daredevil novel by Alex Segura, author of the award-winning Secret Identity and the Pete Fernandez Miami Mystery series, and one featuring Luke Cage by S.A. Cosby, author of Razorblade Tears and All the Sinners Bleed.
All three were acquired by Hyperion Avenue executive editor Adam Wilson, who answered some questions about how these three characters from the darker side of Marvel made the leap from words and pictures to just words.
How did the idea of mystery novels by prominent thriller writers featuring Marvel characters come about? It’s an idea with endless potential but not one that everyone might have seen coming.
I wish I could take credit for the initial concept, but as I was coming onboard with Hyperion Avenue, Marvel had begun talking with our editorial director about a line like Marvel Crime, and it was one of the projects that made the role most interesting to me. As a longtime reader of Marvel Comics, I have always appreciated their willingness to have creators, be they artists or writers, develop stories in the styles those creators are known for, and so this route of all-new genre-based tales + top authors + favorite characters just made a ton of sense. And I would agree there is endless potential for all sorts of stories when you’re thinking in this direction.
You’ve had a long career in both prose publishing and graphic novels. Marvel’s superheroes are obviously highly visual characters in both comics and movies. Are there any special considerations in adapting them to prose?
It’s flattering of you to mention it, as the graphic novels I have been involved in are very important to me. As someone who has always explored the interplay between art and word, I find that in some ways because the Marvel characters are already so established visually, there is even more room to explore them in prose. I’m biased, but I’ve always felt that novels are the prime format for exploring character—which is not to discount the writing that goes into each comic, whether that be dialogue, sadly nearly extinct thought balloons, or a writer’s collaboration on visuals. Part of that may be that reading is just slower, so you’re living in the characters’ worlds longer. Part of it may be the infinite flexibility of language in a way that’s different from the visual arts.
You have three top-notch authors lined up to write the books—obviously Alex Segura, who has a long history in the comics industry, is a no-brainer, but Lisa Jewell and S.A. Cosby come from backgrounds a bit farther from the comics. What made you think of them to take on this genre crossover?
I like to think that what makes Hyperion Avenue’s Marvel novels exciting is our intention to produce pairings—be they between author and character or between character and genre—that make people take notice. Alex is definitely someone we were eyeing, and everyone in the industry has such great things to say about him. I’d always been a fan of Lisa’s and Shawn’s work, and it was important to us that they brought what made their writing so powerful to the characters. The fact that they might be a little unexpected in this space was definitely part of the appeal and an effort to really infuse the thriller genre into these stories. Each author’s voice is very different, which I feel builds an amazing tapestry when put together across the line.
Was it hard to get them to say yes to writing about Jessica Jones and Luke Cage? Was there any discussion of different characters?
For Marvel Crime, we had Jessica and Luke in mind. I always knew Jessica Jones should be first, given how we wanted to reach new thriller readers where they were at. Plus, she’s so darn cool. And given Jessica, Luke Cage is a perfect pairing and just too rich in history and material to pass up. That we had Alex interested—a veritable Daredevil scholar—made his project just so easy to envision.
Lisa’s books are often about families dealing with generational trauma and secrets, and Jessica Jones has been living through her own trauma response for years. How did Lisa approach getting into the character? Was it a natural fit for her?
Lisa herself has told me that the voice of Jessica came naturally to her. She started writing the moody, opening passages of Breaking the Dark, and the character’s mindset and world just seem to have slipped into her unconscious as she progressed. Because I view these as a collaboration, while I knew Lisa could write Jessica, we didn’t mandate the themes of motherhood and pregnancy that emerged as she wrote. Rather, Lisa came to those herself, and the more I read of what she was doing, the more I realized that it fit really well with what’s up with Jessica Jones in the comics at a certain point in her life. We also knew that Lisa’s fans would really love her masterful take on this period in the character’s life and enjoy seeing Lisa write a private detective character for the first time.
The plot of Breaking the Dark definitely sounds like a Lisa Jewell book, with a mystery involving siblings who return from vacation with something off. What made that a good Jessica Jones story to tell?
As someone who’s greatly interested how character affects themes and plot, what I felt would work is how Jessica’s plight intersected with the mother who hires her to investigate her twins and then also what is ultimately going on with the villains. In a lot of meetings talking about this book, I’m often like, this is The Girl who/with/in the _______ but featuring a fan-favorite Marvel heroine. That’s me being a little cheeky, of course, but my point was that getting inside the character’s mind is a focus as much as any plot elements and was our best attempt to reach people who might not automatically pick up a book with Marvel on it the way they would pick up a book by Lisa Jewell. As we all know, Lisa writes dramatic, family suspense like no other, and to my mind the best story that can be told is guided by where an author’s interest lies.
Lisa actually read the Bendis/Gaydos books and found a situation that has a big impact on Jessica’s life. Did you have any input into that? Will the other books also be inspired by specific comic runs or storylines?
Lisa came to focus on this pregnancy period in Jessica Jones’s life on her own after reading the Bendis/Gaydos series Alias. Since it’s important for creators to be creators, everyone agreed that if this is what spoke to her, it was perfect for what we were trying to do with Jessica. As Lisa wrote, I helped point out how the same motherhood themes might work on the side of the villains' machinations, and we refined some things together, but I was honestly just thrilled that pregnancy and motherhood were what interested Lisa the most. I do think it’s important to point out that while readers will find their experience enriched by reading all of the Marvel Crime books together, each is designed to be totally satisfying on its own and not require extensive knowledge of the Marvel Universe to get into.
Conversely, the idea of some of our favorite Marvel characters investigating crimes is irresistible. You have three great characters to start off, but who else in the Marvel Universe would make a great protagonist in a thriller?
If you’re asking Adam the Fanboy and are giving him unlimited rein, I would probably write Gambit and Rogue into everything, and then somehow involve Damage Control to an extent you would check in to see if I was okay. If you’re asking Adam the Person Who Should Probably Focus on the Task at Hand, I really like Echo, Bullseye, or even the Kingpin for Marvel Crime. The whole world of Madripoor feels pretty rich too. Who didn’t love Wolverine wearing an eyepatch as his undercover disguise?! We're always thinking about this, so stay tuned. Working with the House of Ideas really gives one some ideas...
Who would be your dream author to work with on this series, besides the three dream authors already onboard?
Again, Adam the Fanboy from the Nineties Who Loves a Challenge would probably have said David Foster Wallace, because wouldn’t that have been unimaginably wild? But in all honestly, writers like Jo Nesbo, Holly Jackson, Dennis Lehane, Tana French, Daniel Woodrell, and about a thousand others would be great, but I should probably stop and make this list able to fit on one webpage. We’re always looking for collaborators who want to try something fun!
