When David F. Walker, Brian Michael Bendis, and Jamal Campbell’s Naomi hit DC’s Wonder Comics imprint in 2019, the six-issue series left a massive impression. After a few years, an Eisner nomination, and The CW series debut, DC’s breakout superheroine is back for Naomi Season Two, set to begin this March. The sequel takes place a short while after the “between years,” during which Naomi joined the Justice League, among other adventures. Naomi Season Two will focus on Naomi McDuffie’s new normal — and whether “normal” can even exist anymore for a superpowered teenager who’s discovered that she’s from across the multiverse.
CBR recently sat down with Naomi creators David F. Walker and Brian Michael Bendis to chat about where Naomi Season Two will take the rising star heroine. The creators spoke about what the changes in Naomi’s life will mean for her and the people she loves going forward. Walker and Bendis also discussed why they think Naomi resonated so well with so many readers and how origin stories are key to creating a superhero with a new perspective.
CBR: This year’s kind of a big one for Naomi — not only is Season Two on the way, but the series recently started on The CW. Have any of you watched the new series yet?
Brian Michael Bendis: Oh yeah. We all saw the pilot before it came out and we’ve been all-in on it. We’re pretty excited about it.
David Walker: TV is difficult for us comic writers. We’re stuck writing all day long! [laughs]
Bendis: We invented binging. [laughs] The development of Naomi into a TV show has been so delightful, but so quick — like so fast. I’ve been blessed with this opportunity before, in the past, with Miles [Morales] and Jessica Jones and other things, but this one happened while we’re still very much in [the middle of] creating her. So it’s been the most unique experience for us, creatively. We’re building something while they’re building something. It’s delightful and I’ve never experienced anything like it before. We’re just riding the ride, seeing what happens.
It sounds a bit like how quickly people took to Naomi took you by surprise.
Walker: I wasn’t surprised at all. I knew that we had [a hit]. In a lot of ways, yeah, you get surprised by any sort of success, but the moment Jamal’s character designs started coming through and then the first pages… my feeling wasn’t like, “This is gonna be a big hit.” It was more like, “Well, if this comic fails, there’s no hope for the comic industry.” So that was kinda how I went into it.
It would’ve been a shame if that had happened because Naomi is so different. A big part of why people took to it so much was not just Naomi, but also the world that she comes from and the people around her. How much wider can we expect Naomi’s world to get in Season Two?
Bendis: There is so much more to unpack with her. We basically did the basics of her origin, but as someone who’s followed the mythos of any superhero, you know that we have layers and layers yet to reveal and explore. Questions [Naomi] hasn’t even asked yet are gonna be thrown into her face. In the first issue, one of the themes of the whole piece is the reveal that, whether she likes it or not, all her relationships have changed and they’re not going back. There’s no normal. This is her now. Navigating that as a young woman, trying to figure out her next chapter, that alone is very exciting to write about.
Going off of that, one thing that really stood out about Naomi, especially as a superhero, was how solid her support system was. Can you tell us a bit more about what the people closest to Naomi will be going through as the season progresses?
Walker: Part of what we’re exploring is just what happens when someone starts to grow up. In a lot of ways, this is a metaphor for when your kids go off to college or something like that, and what it means as a parent and as an adult to watch your child change. [It’s also about] when your friends start to change because high school’s sort of that age where friendships can grow apart. New friendships form and all sorts of factors start to come on board. So we’re exploring this where it’s like, Naomi’s still Naomi. She’s like, “Oh yeah, I’ve got superpowers, but I’m still me!” and everybody else around her is like, “No, you’re not, you’re a superhero.”
We see that affecting just about every relationship she has, but most notably her parents. In my mind, that’s somewhat a reflection of what a lot of older adults go through as they’re watching teenagers go through whatever changes life throws at them. We hinted at some of that in Season One, and we’re gonna be digging deeper into [it in] Season Two. I think that’s part of why especially younger readers relate to [Naomi] — and maybe even some older readers, too. A lot of us remember that time when our best friend got their first serious romance and suddenly stopped talking to you or whatever. It’s interesting because Brian and I will talk about how people react to her and, in my mind, that’s just as important as how Naomi herself reacts.
Bendis: Years ago, when I was at Marvel… Sometimes they offer you assignments, and one of them was this Generations special where basically all the new legacy Marvel characters met the classic characters at some point in their timeline. I had Miles Morales go back to the Ditko issues of [Spider-Man] and meet teenage Peter Parker. He’d only met the adult Peter Parker, who’s kind of got half of his life together. This assignment allowed me to have Miles, the teenager, meet his peer, Peter Parker who, at the time with the way he was written by Stan Lee and Steve Ditko, was a very depressed child. He was very alone and he had no friends and he was bullied at school. He had his one doting aunt and that was it.
Then Miles was confronted with how different his life is, how strong his support system was. He was like, “Oh my God, I have a best friend. I have friends, I have a family that loves me, and I have a completely different life than he had.” That was one of the last things I wrote at Marvel. I put a lot of thought towards the formative years of a lot of the classic superheroes and how dark some of it was and how a lot of it was wrapped around the conceit of being an orphan or being abandoned as a child. There are a lot of superheroes that have that, particularly at Marvel. There’s a lot of either your parents abandoned you, they’re dead, or they’re a villain. There’s nothing else. [laughs]
So leaning into this, I said to David, “You know, we’re doing this story about adoption and most of the people in my life [dealing with adoption], well, there’s a lot of love. It’s just an intense amount of love. No one takes anything for granted, and I would like to reflect that in Naomi’s world.” So that’s what she grew up with, and that’s different from Batman and it’s different from Spider-Man. She enters the DC universe with a support system that just feels different. She’s gonna come to every one of these scenarios, whether they’re classic DC scenarios or stuff that’s just come around, with a completely different perspective. That, I’ve learned over the years, is something people really appreciate. If you have a new character coming into this shared universe, they’re coming in with a new perspective that you can share with them.
We have a lot of people who read Naomi and it was their first DC comic in a while. What you want is [for them to go], “Oh, it was an invitation. It was delightful. I wasn’t lost, I knew exactly where everything went, at least to a point where I wanna continue reading.” David and I, in the past, have had that experience. I know that Far Sector was like that for Jamal, too. People bought that book — that was the only book they bought that year and it was a good experience. [That experience] made them want to have more. That’s part of what we did with Naomi in having her support system be something different because we thought it would definitely make a more intriguing entrance.
That’s so different for a superhero. It all kind of comes together, especially because the emotions come through so clearly. Jamal has given the series such a distinct realism.
Bendis: It’s a pleasure to write for, honestly, when the emotion is there and the subtext is [as well]. Often David and I will throw what [the characters are] really thinking [into the script], and it’s not in the narrative but it’s on their face. If you choose to look at it, it’s there and it’s delightful.
Walker: Jamal has this thing where [his] art shows up and I don’t even look at the main stuff because I’m just amazed at the tiny details, like the background or the wallpaper pattern or what somebody’s hair looks like. I just love it. He just brings so much life to the characters, all of them, this emotional life that does draw you in. It’s such a great feeling to be working with a collaborator that does that. When we start seeing the pencils come in and even just the layouts, it’s like, “Oh boy, now we’ve gotta make this script worthy of the visuals that are going with it.”
Bendis: One of the great blessings of my life is a continued collaboration that allows you to further explore things. When things start well, as they did with Naomi Season One, by the end of the series, we’ve now discovered things about the collaboration that I can’t wait to see what we do with it next. In the meantime, we were watching Jamal do Far Sector, which was a completely different experience. Watching the results of that be equally as fascinating and artistic [meant that] when we came back together, we got to take everything further. Everything that we learned in the first season gets to be explored in a deeper way. I think readers kind of know that’s what’s exciting about a second series like this. If the first one worked and we were just getting going, we’re just gonna go into an even deeper place for the next one.
Fans can catch up with Naomi McDuffie when Naomi Season Two #1 arrives on March 8 from DC Comics.
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