Warning: the following contains minor spoilers for Nubia: Real Onewritten by L.L McKinney and illustrated by Robyn Smith, out now from DC.

Nubia: Real One tells the tale of Wonder Woman's long-lost twin sister, the eponymous Nubia, as she deals with coming into her Amazon powers and into herself as a young Black woman living in America. As a situation involving her best friend's ex escalates, Nubia will have to come to terms with the hero within to keep her community safe.

The latest entry in DC's line of Young Adult graphic novels and a new take on the classic Amazonian heroine, Nubia: Real One is written by A Blade So Black trilogy author L.L. McKinney and illustrated by The Saddest Angriest Black Girl in Town creator Robyn Smith. The creative duo recently spoke with CBR about working together on the series and writing a hero that truly understands the issues facing her community.

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CBR: How did you both get involved with this project?

L.L. McKinney: It's not up there anymore because I have a thing that runs and it deletes my tweets after a year -- just because, you know, whenever you're assigned something like this, folks want to run back and look at stuff and take it out of context. But it was a while ago that I had tweeted, "I want to write for Young Justice" and Michelle Wells [Executive Editor at DC] reached out and was like, "Let's talk." So that's how it started: I pitched Young Justice and I had this story where the team met Nubia -- Wonder Woman brought her on -- [with the] same backstory from Nubia: Real One, where she's still a teenager.

So the team is running around with her and she bonds with Bumblebee and the others, but then there's a hate crime. The team [dealing with it] gets it, but doesn't get it, [but they try to understand. So [the team goes to protests and stuff while fighting crime in the meantime. The team that I pitched that to was like, "Great, can you tell us more about Nubia? We want to focus on her." And I said, "Yes, I absolutely will tell you more about Nubia!" So that's how I got involved. And then I demanded a Black woman and they were like, "Sure, we'll give you a Black woman artist," [which] is what led me to find Robyn.

Robyn Smith: I actually had a few months before anyone reached out to me. I saw that Sarah Miller, who was the editor, had followed me on socials, and then [Michelle Wells] at DC,  and I was sweating, like "Oh God, now I have to post good things all the way," but that's what I try to do anyway. A few months later, she emailed me talking about how there's going to be a Nubia young adult book and asked me if I'd be interested in trying out. Of course, I said yes! At first, it seemed unbelievable to me because my style isn't super "DC." So I thought it was a prank, but turns out it wasn't. I had a whole panic attack about it for a week.

I was like, "What if I'm just giving away all this free work for no reason?" Obviously, that wasn't the case, but that's how I ended up getting involved. I sent in my samples and then I sent in sample pages and, honestly, I've never worked harder on anything in my entire life. Those sample pages, I stayed up for like two days working on them because I felt like they had to be perfect. Then I got the job and I was like, "Ah, yes, it's paid off!" Those pages were perfect. So perfect.

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CBR: Going back a bit, that Young Justice pitch, honestly, sounds great. I would read that in a heartbeat.

L.L. McKinney: I thought I was being sneaky! I was like, "I'm going to sneak Nubia in here, 'cause y'all are gonna print her one way or the other. Even as a side character." I had mentioned in other interviews that people often go, "Why tell this story? Why now?" And [my answer] is: kids. Kids who had asked or wondered why heroes never seem to care about stuff that impacts Black folks. You know, it never comes up. It never comes up. And I was like, "Dude, you're right. Holy cow. You're right." And I decided that I'm going to have that be a thing. And it was a thing in the original pitch, so it carried over. But I'm hoping that this story and seeing a hero not only be impacted and understand but also pushing to do something about it [will make a difference].

CBR: What was it like working together on the project? Because, even from the book alone, it seems like the both of you have very similar visions.

Robyn Smith: For sure! I feel like I could tell just from the two sample pages that I did to try out for the job that Elle and I would work really well together. I was like, "Oh, this is so cute. Look at all these Black friends hanging out, that's me and my friends hanging out." And that's my favorite thing to draw, me and my friends hanging out. So from there, I knew that clearly we vibed on what we wanted the book to be like. [We wanted] people opening it up and seeing the colors and the shapes and how these characters interact with each other and the intimacy of their friendships and Nubia's relationship with her moms... all of that came through so clearly to me in Elle's writing, and I wanted to make it just as clear to the reader with a combination of her writing and my illustration. So working together was really easy, especially because, as I had mentioned before, my style isn't super "DC," so I had a lot of doubts about whether or not I really deserved the job. But Elle always made sure I knew that I deserved the job.

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L.L. McKinney: Because you did! Working with Robyn was incredible. When you work on a prose novel, it's you and your editor, most of the time, maybe your agent, right? And we had an editor here as well, but it's you, and you're doing the story and you know the story and it's your job to try and convey the story -- as you have it in your head -- to the world. You know what you're seeing and you want them to see the same thing, but that doesn't always happen with prose.

But when you have an artist who's this stinking talented, what's in your head is literally there for the rest of the world to behold and now for you to behold for the first time. It's one thing for me to imagine it, it's another entirely for me to see it on a page, be like, "that's exactly what I was thinking! How did you do that sorcery?!" What happened half the time [is that] I would get pages back and be shocked at how right Robyn got it when I didn't even know that's what I was going for.

For example, how did you hear that this is exactly what [Nubia's friend] Quisha looks like -- it's her, entirely! So, even though I knew the story, I was experiencing it like someone who didn't because it was being told to me through the art in a way that wasn't solidified in my head. And so I'm sitting here thinking, "Am I useless?" Because we had an editor who does comics. Comics are her thing. So she'll have these technical suggestions and meanwhile, I'm just over in the corner, like "Don't judge me!" Obsessing over the pages because they're so good!

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Robyn Smith: It's so funny that you say all that because I remember while working on it -- because I had to give in about five pages a week -- there were times where I didn't want to read ahead because I wanted to be surprised by it because the writing was so good. I was like, "Oh my God, what's gonna happen next?" I would obviously have to read ahead so I knew what to draw, but it was so hard for me sometimes to even want to, especially when [the story] is, "Oh Nubia's going to go to the party now or whatever."

I'd be like, "Oh my gosh, that's so cool!" And then I would go online and I would shop for what she's going to wear, you know? But so much of the collaborative process was [great] because I was just so excited to read what was going to happen next. And then actually finally getting the book and reading it all together was like reading it for the first time. Even though I knew what I drew, I was like, "Oh wow, this is what he says here. Cool. I didn't remember that." It was great.

CBR: And that kind of synergy really comes through in the book in that everything feels so natural, especially the characters, where what they say really matches how they look and how they feel. What was the inspiration for, excuse me, the realness of Nubia: Real One?

L.L. McKinney: I take pieces of people that I know and I put them into the characters. [With that] you run the risk of almost getting in trouble, right? Like, in one of my other books, the dad dies. My father read this book and he's like, "Do we need to talk? 'Cause you killed off this girl's father." And I was like, "No, dad, we're fine. He had to die for plot purposes, I'm not trying to say anything!" I use pieces of people [in characters] like Quisha -- LaQuisha is my older sister's name. I try to put the name of someone in my family in each one of my works, and it was her turn. But Nubia's moms are my aunts and my grandmas and my mom. Especially with the slamming doors in the house thing, that's not a thing you do. So that's how I did it, I put pieces of the people I love and the people closest to me and things that they have said and things that my readers have said and just listening to kids -- all my sisters have kids and they're Nubia's age. Just listening and making sure that this includes them, at least in part, and together it makes the whole.

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Robyn Smith: I did the same thing, just with pictures. A lot of the character design came straight from who my friends are, who my family is. Especially Nubia. She's a mixture of a younger me, but also my cousin, who is her age. We're best friends, I see her almost every day and I really wanted to see her in this book. And, especially after reading the script and [seeing] just who Nubia is and how cute and awkward she is and the fact that she doesn't obviously go along with the trope of the "strong black woman who doesn't need anyone" -- like, no, she has anxiety, she's worried about all these things in her life and all the people that she loves. And she just reminded me so much of my little cousin and how she lives her life. And I was like, "This is like the point of the book, this is who we want to see reflected in this book." Even coming down to Quisha's design and [Nubia's friend] Jason -- Jason is my brother. I mean, he's so goofy. He's almost exactly my brother, just like a little lighter.

L.L. McKinney: I love it so much.

Robyn Smith: And it's so funny that you mention Quisha is the name of your older sister, because Danielle, who is one of Nubia's moms, is my cousin's name. And I was like, "Oh, well, now she has to look like my cousin. This is perfect." It's just all about including little pieces of everyone that I know, who want to see themselves in these books and see themselves in media. I just throw them all in there because that makes it way more fun for me to draw, as well. When I think about [things like] the way Jason eats things and the fact that he's always eating, I'm like, "Oh, great. Now I can just stare at my brother while he's eating as a reference," you know? All the character designs are just based on people I love, unless they're like the enemies in the book. In that case, they're just people from the internet I don't like.

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CBR: And the result of that is pretty great because the novel actually has a majority black cast, which is so rare in big titles. And, more than that, there's a lot of variety and nuance to the character designs. Following that, why did you  personally find it important to center Black characters is this way?

L.L. McKinney: I know for me it was important because no one else has to justify a story being about them, entirely surrounded by them, in the background it's them. So there was no reason why this Black girl with her Black moms and her Black friends [shouldn't fill the cast], because that's how it is [in real life], very much so. And I knew I wanted the love and the support that she would get throughout the book to come from her community. I wanted to show that, no matter what was going on, she had this level of love from her people. And that [meant a lot] to me because community is such an important thing. It is such an intrinsic part of the culture. And I was just like "All black, everything all the time!" Literally. I don't go into anything looking for a fight or pushback, but you learn to expect it because it's the norm. And not getting it? Like, no one had an issue with it? It was very pleasantly surprising that they were just like, "Okay, here's a book with all these Black people. Yeah, go for it. It was amazing. And I would do it again -- in a heartbeat.

Robyn Smith: All Black, everything is how I approach all the art that I make. And that's always how I've approached it, my entire life. Especially with [growing up] in Jamaica, almost everyone around me was Black, so that was normal. It wasn't until I moved to the States and started going to college in Massachusetts that I was like, "What is going on?" But it made me double down even more on my approach to art, because I realized how much it was missing from American media. Because it's not so much the case in Jamaica that it's so political [like it is] here versus back home, [where it's] like, "Yes, this is a picture book about like the kids that live here and they're all Black."

So taking that on politically was new for me. And of course, I ran with it. Every comic I've made so far is only about Black people. And then being approached with like, "Oh yeah, all her friends are Black and her moms are Black and she's Black." And I was like, "Great! Say no more." If I'm designing anyone, I put the most care into designing Black people, because all the people I love, the people around me, my family, my friends [are Black]. And the fact that they were all going to be in this book. I mean, I'm getting excited, even talking about it right now. Words are coming to me because I'm like, Oh yeah, everyone's Black. Love it!"

CBR: What do you hope people take away from the novel?

L.L. McKinney: I hope people take away that, [although] Nubia does have superhuman strength and she does possess the ability -- once she learns to wield it -- to deflect literal bullets, that's not a thing that Black girls have in the real world. But [what happens is that] they're seen as almost inhumanly strong, which is weird considering how the world treats Black women outside of revering this strength, which is another way of revering an ability to take punishment. Which is what that strength is seen as: it's your ability to take punishment, not necessarily that you're strong.

I wanted to show that we deserve to be loved and supported and protected and defended. Nubia's moms are willing to upend their entire lives repeatedly if it means keeping their baby safe. It's unthinkable to them to even try and put themselves first. And, as Nubia becomes her own person, she wants to take more risks and they want to protect her from that. But at the same time, it's always -- no matter who she's with, if it's her friends or her parents: "We got you, we're with you, we'll protect you."

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There's a part at the end of the party where Nubia comes in and she's clearly upset, but Jason is having a great time. She wants to go home and he immediately is like, "Cool, we're gone." At no point, does he go, "Well, I want to stay because I'm having a good time." He's just "You're upset, don't want to be here? Alright, then let's bounce." And there are no questions asked about it. That was one of my favorite parts to write because Black girls deserve that level of "I'm here for you. It doesn't matter if I'm enjoying this circumstance. The fact that you aren't is enough for us to remove ourselves and that's what we're going to do." So that's what I want people to take away from it -- that the people in this book are fictional, but the love that they show Nubia is not, and all Black girls deserve that.

Robyn Smith: When I think about the visual aspect of the book, what I want readers to take away -- especially Black readers -- is that all of their likenesses deserve to be in comics. I definitely wanted to -- at least that was my intention going into it -- think about all the multitudes of people that I know and try to put them into this comic. Because DC is huge -- when am I going to get the chance to do something like this again and have it be as public as it is? That's another reason why I gave Nubia such big hair. I was like, "This is the moment! She's gonna be on the cover, she's gonna take up all the space, at least for a while." And I wanted [Nubia] to do it, not just with who she is, but also with what she looks like. I feel like I've always been really scared to take up space in making this book and having people read it, I want them to know that they can take up that much space.

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CBR: What other Black superheroes do you guys hope to see get the Real One treatment someday?

L.L. McKinney: I want all Black superheroes to get this treatment! But, if I had to make choices, I would love to see Bumblebee and Vixen and maybe Riri Williams, but not necessarily where they have to be [adapted for] a Young Adult audience. I think they would have powerful stories for any age, but I'm partial to YA. I think [the fact] that Nubia: Real One exists is great because it tells the story that it tells and now there's room for those other stories to come in and not have to tell this story -- it's done. Now, I want Nubia: the college years!

It'd be like, you know, she's gotten past this thing and now she's able to go off and live unencumbered by this, you know, jerk face--- [and there] will always be another jerk face, but we get to tell the story differently. I think for YA [specifically], a YA Storm would be really interesting. And I always want to see more Black Panther stuff like that too, but I want all of them! Give all of them the treatment! I want to know what life was like for the new Black Batman growing up. I want all of it right now!

Robyn Smith: I think I like kind of halted on the question because I was thinking of Aqualad. I'm a really big fan, but Aqualad actually got the YA treatment [with] You Brought Me the Ocean. I love that his tenderness and his queerness were brought to the front in that book. I want even more people to pay attention to it because I really love the book and Aqualad is one of my favorites. I love anything to do with the ocean, I'm a fan of the ocean! [Laughs]  So, I feel a very special connection to Aqualad as well.

Written by L.L McKinney and illustrated by Robyn Smith, Nubia: Real One is available now digitally and in print from DC Young Adult Graphic Novels.

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