Eisner Award winning writer and artist Gene Luen Yang spoke with Hypable about his work on the Avatar: The Last Airbender comics series, and teased what’s to come in future installments.

Interview with Gene Luen Yang

You’re obviously a big fan of Avatar: The Last Airbender. What are your thoughts on The Legend of Korra, now that it’s all complete?

I’m only a fan, I’m not connected [professionally] at all. [But] Korra did give me something to write to — a goal to write to as I’m working on the Airbender comics. I think they did an amazing job. I think it’s awesome.

My favorite of all the seasons is definitely season 3 — I think the antagonists that they came up with were just incredibly compelling.

Was there an element of The Legend of Korra that you particularly enjoyed?

The thing that I actually find most interesting about Korra in general is its relationship to the old world. [Korra] showed how a small group of people in the world — the airbenders — can actually have these massive changes.

Related: The Legend of Korra comic series announced at San Diego Comic-Con panel

One of the things that I thought was the most awesome when I first entered into the world of Korra, was that there were all these crazy statues [of Avatar characters] all over, and how small concepts like chi-blocking — those very small, character-specific things in the original show — became these huge things in the new show. It kind of points to a truth; I think that happens in the real world too. These small groups of people create these massive changes.

Your Avatar comics also deal heavily with the relationship between the past and the future. Was that theme something you specifically wanted to explore?

I think it’s something that is evident in both series, especially in Korra, this tension between the past and the future. It’s also something that I just feel in my own life. I often feel — and maybe it’s just from being a nerd! But I often feel torn between the future and nostalgia. Superhero fans, so much of superheroes looks to the future, but so much of the passion for superheroes comes from the past, so there’s always that tension there.

What has it been like to explore family relationships — like Zuko and his mother, and Toph and her father — that fans didn’t get to see on Avatar: The Last Airbender?

When you’re working in a licensed property, in a pre-existing world set up by someone else, [you really have to juggle that] with your own writer’s voice. So for me, family definitely fits into that. Family fascinates me — it’s something that I have dealt with in my own writing, and it’s also a really important part of the Avatar world.

I think Mike and Bryan very intentionally set it up so that each of the principal characters has a very different kind of family. Aang has lost his family. Zuko comes from a completely dysfunctional family. Sokka and Katara come from this really loving family that had to deal with tragedy, and then Toph comes from a family where everything is kind of stilted and cold. So just in that, you kind of get a gamut of what it means for us to be family, and that’s something we wanted to explore.

As a writer, how do you view those unexplored areas of the story?

I think one of the things that the show does really well is show how often things just don’t get resolved completely. And I think that was some of the point of leaving the dangling threads [at the end of Avatar] — they treat this like life, and that’s something I had in mind as I was writing Toph.

Page 2: Aang’s future, Azula’s role, and ‘Smoke and Shadow’

Speaking of Toph, do you have any thoughts on her potential romantic relationships? Because it seems like every time there’s a man in Toph’s life–

People freak out? [laughs]

I’ll say this — this is something I learned really on after getting involved in this world, is that shipping is a good way to just destroy your soul! [laughs] So I really try to dodge [those questions]!

It’s true, one of the only ‘safe’ relationships to really get into is Aang and Katara, who have been noticeably developing through the comics. How do you see their relationship unfolding in the future?

There definitely is an end. It’s been written in, we saw glimpses of it in The Legend of Korra, so that’s always in the future. The question is how they get there. We’re hoping that as the comics progress, we’ll be able to pull some drama out of that — how they get to that point.

Related: Avatar: The Last Airbender comics to continue with Smoke and Shadow

Another character who gets caught up in both relationship drama is Mai. You wrote a small comic about Mai for Free Comic Book Day a few years ago — what was it like to return to the character in Smoke and Shadow?

Smoke and Shadow comes out of that Free Comic Book Day book. [Writing Mai] has been fun — I feel like all of us know somebody like her, but for some reason we almost never see someone like her in media. So it was satisfying to get to explore her character for longer. She’s one of the main characters in Smoke and Shadow.

Does Mai get to interact with Zuko a little more?

She gets to interact with Zuko. We explore the future of their relationship — or if there is a future of their relationship.

And can we expect to see Azula in the new series?

Well… Smoke and Shadow is all about the Fire Nation, it’s all about [their] dysfunction. The main problem that we deal with is, Zuko brings his mom and his half-sister back to the Fire Nation – we deal with the fallout of that. So you would think that a book focused is on the Fire Nation royal family, that Azula might be a part of that! That’s all I’m going to say!

Can you tease anything else about Smoke and Shadow?

There was a concept that Mike and Bryan were playing with for the show, kind of like a Fire Nation version of the Kyoshi warriors, that never actually made it into the show. So that’s a concept that we have incorporated into Smoke and Shadow. It was designed by Gurihiru, who are amazing… they’re just astounding artists.

You’ve been working on the Avatar comics for several years now. What have you learned from writing these new stories?

I feel like I’ve learned a lot about writing story, and that just comes from getting to see how Mike and Bryan approach story. Avatar was the very first time I had to write to a specific page count — kind of like how when you’re writing for television, you have to write a specific number of minutes. In my own graphic novels, I’ve always been able to make it as short or as long as I wanted to, so I’ve learned a lot about that. I think in a way it forces you to pace in a certain way. It forces you to get into a rhythm really quick, and tell your story at that rhythm.

Other than that, I’ve learned something about character construction. These characters are constructed SO well, that in a lot of ways as I’m writing them, they kind of write themselves – especially Toph. I can just hear her! I think all of us can. And I think what that taught me was when you are building the seed of the character, if you do a good job, you make the rest of your job as a writer so much easier.

For more information…

Learn more about Gene and his work on the Avatar: The Last Airbender comics — as well as his award-winning original graphic novels — at his website, and follow him on Twitter at @geneluenyang for all the latest news.

Avatar: The Last Airbender – Smoke and Shadow will be released on Sept. 15, 2015.