Beast Boy Loves Raven: Kami Garcia & Gabriel Picolo Interview

Kami Garcia and Gabriel Picolo’s latest original graphic novel in their young adult Teen Titans universe is out, as Teen TitansBeast Boy Loves Raven arrived at comic shops and book stores this week. The newest chapter features the much-anticipated meeting of the classic Titans’ character in a DC Universe reimagined by the superstar team of Kami Garcia and Gabriel Picolo.

Garcia and Picolo have done an incredible job at building a familiar yet fresh DC Comics world for their stories to take place in. The first graphic novel, Teen Titans: Raven, followed Raven dealing with the trauma of losing her foster mother and discovering her powers and connection to her evil father, Trigon. Meanwhile, Teen Titans: Beast Boy took a closer look at Garfield Logan’s life and the changes he underwent while learning more about his animal shapeshifting powers. Teen Titans: Beast Boy Loves Raven introduces the two characters, as they are both offered help by Slade Wilson.

SCREENRANT VIDEO OF THE DAY

We spoke to Kami Garcia and Gabriel Picolo about Teen Titans: Beast Boy Loves Raven and how exciting it was to connect the two character’s worlds while expanding their universe even further.

What was it like to revisit this world again?

Kami Garcia: This was one we were waiting for and hoping we were going to get to write, because we both love Beast Boy and Raven. And we really were hoping this book would happen, because we wanted to show them together. So, it was really fun to write – and it was even more fun to get the pages back with Gabriel’s art.

Gabriel Picolo: I remember when I was drawing Teen Titans: Raven. I was really not sure that I was going to get a second book to work on, because that was my first published book ever by DC. I didn’t know if it was going to do well. But then they greenlit Teen Titans: Beast Boy, and then I was like, “Yeah, the third book is gonna happen.”

The third book was always what Kami and I wanted, so when I finished Beast Boy, I was like, “I can’t wait to start Beast Boy Loves Raven.”

How exciting is it to see both stories build towards this one?

Kami Garcia: It’s really cool. And it turned out cooler than I thought – because obviously I wrote the script, and I’m like, “Oh, this is gonna be so fun.” But Gabriel and I talked about things we wanted to see happen on the page before I started fleshing all of it out, but went the art came back it looked even better. The dialogue went with it perfectly, and it just looks even better than I imagined.

Gabriel Picolo: I liked how we used some characters from other books, so we get to see Max again in this one. And we see a lot of visual elements that we used on the other books, so we get to see the emotion streams of Raven’s powers; we get to see Beast Boy when he’s not exactly turning into animals but emulating that specific animal’s powers. I love that we got to repeat that on this book, so there’s really this sense of continuity.

What was it like to go from being a fan of these characters to building this world alongside Kami?

Gabriel Picolo: It’s a lot of fun. I love that we’ve been on this for three years already, so we understand each other’s creative voices a lot. It’s very easy to, if I have any suggestions to make on the script or drawings or a specific panel, she’s always there to hear me. It’s very fun and very easy to do.

And we love these characters so much. Kami is a big fan of Raven, and I’m big fan of Beast Boy. It’s very natural for us to work on these characters.

Kami, it must feel pretty cool to be working alongside Gabriel for these projects. It’s such a well-designed world, and the details are amazing.

Kami Garcia: Yeah, it was really cool for me because when I pitched the series, I had them wearing regular clothes, and they would not look like superheroes. And when DC was showing me art and stuff, I liked it all, but none of it clicked in a way that I was like, “That is it.”

And then I was on Pinterest, and I saw Gabriel’s “casual Teen Titans,” and I was like, “This is exactly what I was going for. He’s already doing the thing that I want to do.” And it was so cool, because when I showed it to DC, they already were aware of him. They were like, “Okay, we can ask him if he wants to do a comic.”

I’m obviously way older than Gabriel, and it was just cool to see somebody in their 20s, who was self taught and worked really hard to draw these things that they love to share with other people. To watch it come full circle and him to be able to get suddenly do it and get paid was great.

How did the response to the first two books feel?

Kami Garcia: It was incredible for me, because I felt like as much as he was already doing casual Teen Titans, the work he did on these books is so different because he really took ownership in a different way. And also the characters we created, like Max, we created from scratch. It was so cool to see a fully populated world.

And Gabriel is such a pro; I describe a feeling or an emotion or the tone I want a character to have, and he sent me all these amazing designs. As someone who collaborates with a lot of people, it’s really rare to find someone that you have a natural shorthand with; that you just really want to tell the same kind of story. I felt very lucky, because he also wanted to draw relatable characters and do the same thing with the story I wanted to do.

Gabriel Picolo: I remember when we announced the series back in 2018. It was huge on social media and people really loved it, but I think the best part was seeing all those people showing up at book signings and events like Comic Con. I remember in 2019, when Teen Titans: Raven came out, and we were doing a book tour, we got to see a lot of cosplays whenever we went to comic stores or bookstores. That was incredible.

Especially seeing not only Raven and Beast Boy but seeing characters that we came up with in a book – like Max, like Kami was saying. Seeing those characters being cosplayed really showed that people were into what we were doing.

What was it like to bring Beast Boy and Raven’s romance back to the forefront? It’s been a while, though they’ve hinted recently in the current Teen Titans Academy run that they’re together. But since the Teen Titans animated series, it’s something that fans have craved for a very long time.

Kami Garcia: Yeah, especially because we’re both fans of the animated series. Also, we both feel like they’re kind of a natural couple. Even though they’re very different, they work well together. So, it was fun to see that on the page.

Gabriel Picolo: As a fan, that’s the kind of content I know that I would be craving. I would be crazy about this kind of content. And then I’m getting to do it to actually make this book, which was surreal. I’m just in love with this book, and I hope people like it as much as I do.

When re-introducing these characters to each other in the book, what was the idea behind connecting them through Deathstroke?

Kami Garcia: When I originally pitched the series, I turned in an origin story for each character, a group book, and then what I called Teen Titans: Beast Boy and Raven – which was the least developed of them. It was just kind of like, “I’d like to see them together.” And then Gabriel and I really figured out how that would look.

But Deathstroke was my through line. Because as someone who comments from prose, when you write a series, it’s important that each book has its own arc, and that the series has its own arc. And the other thing I needed was a way to bring these characters together that didn’t feel really forced or silly. I didn’t want to be that they all live in the same town and run into each other at school. So, I needed something to bring them together when I did the series and the group books.

And it was fun, because when I said to Gabriel that it was going to be Deathstroke, he was like, “I love Deathstroke. I can totally draw that.” Once we started, then we talked about it more and think about how we can incorporate more. But HIVE and Deathstroke were always part of the plan, just because in a series you have to have some sort of connective tissue.

What I really liked too, which caught me by surprise in a good way, was Max playing a pretty sizable role in the story.

Kami Garcia: Yeah, I just fell in love with the way Gabriel drew her and the way his art brought her to life, and the dialogue I was writing. We both were just like, “We’re gonna miss her.” I knew Gabriel especially was like, “I’m gonna miss drawing her,” so my secret hope was to leave a little bit of an open door at the end of Raven in case we could bring her back.

Gabriel Picolo: I think she was too good of a character to just leave it there as a loose thread. Because she has a power, and she can have a role in this story. Not like Beast Boy’s friends – they’re really nice, but it would be much harder to include them in whatever is happening right now.

What was behind the decision to include Damian Wayne in the story?

Kami Garcia: Damian was in my original pitch. I love Damian; I’m a super fan. But the one reason why get Damian felt very natural to this was that they’re all a little lost; they don’t really know how to use their powers, and they don’t fit in necessarily. They have this weird person coming on the scene being like, “I have information that can help you.”

And Damian felt like he would naturally buy into that. He does have a lot of trouble controlling his temper, dealing with his anger, and being violent. It felt like he was the kind of person who needed a growth arc.

Gabriel Picolo: One thing I like about him is that, because of him in this book, we start to get a bigger picture. Because Raven and Beast Boy meet, but they’re still very much lost. They don’t know who’s against them, and Damian has that figured out. He can be helpful, and we can see a group forming at the end of the book.

How did you make these powers such an important part of their relationship?

Kami Garcia: One thing that was really important to me in doing this was that the romance is secondary to their friendship and the way they bond. They bond first as friends, even though Beast Boy obviously has a crush on her. They come together as friends, and they respect each other and want to support each other. And from that, we get a relationship.

I didn’t want a physical connection to be the way that the people reading this book would define the relationship. I wanted to show that they care about each other, and they have intimate moments and open up to each other in a way that has nothing to do with making out or kissing or physical contact.

To me, when your power is something that you either perceive is weird – or if you’re Raven, and you’re half-demon and really do not want to tell people that – the idea that you would have to share that with someone and hope they accept it and accept you makes you really vulnerable. I knew Gabriel could nail that, because he does such an amazing job with making the characters emote and showing their expressions. So, I wanted to try to create moments where I would be setting that up with the dialogue in the scene, and then he would bring that to life on the page – to show that quote- unquote sexual, physical and romantic contact isn’t necessarily the only way that you can connect with someone – and also not necessarily the core of love and romance.

Trigon plays a big part in this book. What was it like to illustrate and show how Rachel is still struggling with Trigon’s hold?

Kami Garcia: That’s at the core of her being as a character, the struggle with, “My dad is trying to take control of me, because I’m part demon.” It felt like abandoning that would really not be servicing the true character. And the one thing Gabriel and I talked about a lot and both agreed on was that, even though we’re making characters slightly more grounded and changing some things about them, we don’t want to change the core of them.

Because we’re fans, and we don’t want to ruin things for the fans.

Gabriel Picolo: The thing I find particularly difficult about Trigon is that he is one of the most powerful beings in the whole DC Universe. So, it’s very hard to depict him. And whenever he’s shown in this comic, he’s not at his 100% power. We’ve made sure that he’s always, especially in the second part of the book when he shows up, connected to the jewel on Raven’s neck.

You’re not seeing Trigon at his 100%. Because if we saw him, he was going to destroy that illusion because of just how tall he is. We had to think ways around that.

Kami Garcia: Another problem for a writer is, “How do you limit these powers that are so big?”

Gabriel and I talked about in book one, because he’s huge, but he can obviously alter in size. Gabriel said, “What if we do a thing, like when she has a dream, we see big giant Trigon? But then other times we see him big but not building-size big?”

It was this given and take of us talking it out, which is what we do a lot. I’ll say to Gabriel, “This is what I want with Raven’s powers. I need to show visually that Raven is absorbing other people’s emotions.” And he was like, “This is very hard.” But eventually he was like, “What if there’s almost a path or a scream from her to other people, and I color it a specific color?”

I think a lot of what makes the book work is that Gabriel and I really have a true collaboration. We put our heads together; we solve problems together.

You spoke about wanting to keep it grounded but also connected to the DC lore. How difficult was it to navigate what characters you want, like which aspects of characters you want to change or keep?

Kami Garcia: In the pitch, the rule for me was that I didn’t want someone to be able to look at them at school and tell they had powers. The biggest one was that Beast Boy cannot be green all the time, because this is problematic. So it was like,” Well, what do I do?” And then I wrote in the pitch that we’ll just have this green stripe in his hair, and he will turn green sometimes.

But then once I got with Gabriel, he was like, “What if his eyes turn green when he’s channeling the power? What if he’s actually the animal, and he turns green when he’s in the animal form? But then when he’s not, he’s human colored.”

My rule was just that I don’t want you to look at someone ond be able to tell they’re a powerful superhero or whatever. And once I got with Gabriel, that’s when we got into the nitty gritty of how we make that work. What are the rules? How do we show the change?

In the beginning, Beast Boy doesn’t make a full transformation. I did not anticipate when I was writing the pitch, how hard that would be to show. And then I was like, “Okay, Gabriel, what are we going to do? What if I represent the animal somehow, and I tell you which animal it is?” He’s like, “Well, I can show which animal it is.” A lot of it is just I suggest something, he brings something more, and we put our chocolate and peanut butter together to make a Reese’s.

Gabriel Picolo: Even Damian has this sort of tech-wear kind of outfit; he has a utility belt, but it’s not super campy. We are always very cautious of the tone. It can’t be too much of a superhero costume, even though they have all that paraphernalia.

How challenging was it for you to keep things grounded?

Gabriel Picolo: I had more trouble with that on the first book, on Teen Titans: Raven, especially because Kami and I were still discussing a lot of stuff and still finding a middle ground between our ideas. But after that, especially in the third book, it’s very easy. We know each other very well, so we know how we want things to look.

Kami Garcia: I don’t even have to tell him; he knows certain things I don’t like. He’ll just be like, “I know you don’t like this. So instead, I’m going to nod to this part of the costume this way.” He just knows things where I’m gonna be like, “Ugh, do we really have to have the mask?” And he’s like, “This is what we’re going to do instead.”

I feel like that’s the cool thing when you work with someone for a long time. You know those things about them, just like I know what Gabriel likes to draw. So, in Beast Boy Loves Raven, it was like the ultimate treat because I was like, “I’m gonna let him draw the animals he hasn’t drawn that he likes. I’m gonna let him draw them holding hands and doing cute things and going to cafes, and all the things that Gabriel loves to draw.”

It is fun, because when you work with the same person, you can tailor the project to them – at least I can as a writer. I know that Gabriel is going to get the script pages and be excited to draw them, at least most of the time. He isn’t when it’s like, “Show a whole street of Nashville.” Then he’s like, “Really, Kami?” And I’m like, “It’s only one!”

Lastly, I want to talk about the future of this series. How does Damian Wayne’s arrival lead into the upcoming Robin story? And how exciting is it to expand this universe even more?

Kami Garcia: It’s incredibly cool. And the one thing that’s different is I didn’t have this incorporated in the original picture. That was really me and Gabriel and the editors being like, “If we’re going to do more of them, and it’s not going to just be a couple Titans, then we can’t leave Dick out.” He’s an important character.

But also, I didn’t want to not have Damian because he feels like he needs to be in the Titans too. How do we include both of those in a way that work and is also interesting to read, in terms of dynamics?

Gabriel Picolo: I absolutely love Dick Grayson, so I am very excited for him to be in the next one. Very, very excited.

Kami Garcia: That’s the challenging part for me as a writer. It’s never writing authentic dialogue or looking up scenes. It’s like the engineer in the back, making sure the pieces are going to work and the characters stay true. Writing the actual script is the fun part; the tricky and hard part to me is the architecture in the back.

Thank you so much to Kami Garcia and Gabriel Picolo for taking the time to talk. Teen Titans: Beast Boy Loves Raven is in comic book stores now!

 

Spider-Man’s Most Disturbing Power Is Too R-Rated for the MCU

About The Author

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *