Thought Bubble 2023: Spotlight On Jason Aaron

One of the bigger panel’s of the Saturday at Thought Bubble was the spotlight panel on Jason Aaron. As with panels of this nature, it was more of a career overview, although he did mention his new scripting gig on Action Comics, which was revealed at NYCC recently. Here are the highlights from the hour long talk:

• Grew up as a DC Comics fan first and foremost. And now he’s finally writing for them. 
• Some of his favourite, like many eighties kids, were The New Teen Titans and Atari Force.
• 2001: Aaron won a Marvel talent search which propelled him into comics, thanks to Bill Jemas.
• On his early war comic, The Other Side (Vertigo) he said: “I went full Alan Moore” on referring to the super dense script he was writing while still working in his warehouse job. He spent a YEAR on it! Nowadays, he’ll take a week to complete a script.

• Scalped originally pitched as a rework of Scalp Hunter, an old DC Comics Western character, but evolved into some far more mature. This time in his life coincided with the birth of his first son – who he named Dash, after the main character of the comic book series – meant that he can even remember writing some of it while juggling fatherhood with a burgeoning career in comics.
• Thor: The Jane Foster storyline where she has terminal cancer was, “one of the most I feel most proud of” in ALL the comics he’s ever written. Surprisingly, he’d never been a Thor fan as a kid.
• When writing Thor he liked the idea that every day he wakes up and he is always tested whether his is worthy. He picks up his hammer, but one day… what if? An idea that led to Jane Foster adopting Mjolnir and becoming the God of Thunder herself for a while. A storyline used heavily in alst year’s Thor: Love and Thunder and a sentiment he relates to how writers, like himself, can also feel
• Recurring themes in his work, and in Thor is ‘shitty fathers,” particularly Odin. And, to some extent in his run on Wolverine and the X-Men, Wolverine was also a “shitty father” too.

• The latter title was the firs time he’d done a team book, which was a good practice run for his epic run on The Avengers. It was also the first time he was able to something a bit more silly and goofy. Something he didn’t realise at the time he was writing it. But, definitely in the vein of Justice League International. As a father figure, Wolverine was placed in a position of authority not natural to him. To the kids in his care, he was – for the first time ever – the uncool father figure. Something most fans would find hard to believe.

• Moving onto his newest writing project, a three issue run on Action Comics and he was preparing to write for Superman he felt very nervous. So, he “did what anyone would do, and phone Mark Waid!”
• The Avengers: It had been a while since he’d written a team book, so he found it tough to begin with. He wanted every arc to be a “big event” and each villain to have a lasting impact on his team. He knew this would be a swan song for him at Marvel, so he wanted it to feel like an end of an era to his career at Marvel. He used this series, and this epic run, to thread other beats from his other Marvel series to give the readers a sense of his drawing a curtain in this chapter of his career. and while he finds it hard to leave a character (he wrote Thor for seven years) but realised, “that’s the job.” you take care of the characters and then pass them on.
• As for whether he continues to read the comics he once wrote, he says, “not straight away, it’s like your friends sending you pictures of someone going out with your ex-girlfriend,” to much appreciation by the audience. And a great way to end the panel, on a joke.