Volume six of Judd Winick’s wildly popular graphic novel series Hilo dropped on February 4th. But have no fear, Hilo fans; All the Pieces Fit is a perfect capstone to the magical space boy’s first arc, but his story is far from over. Winick was kind enough to take some time out of his book tour to talk to The Roarbots about writing for kids, being a dad, and those comics he isn’t quite ready to show his kids yet.

(If you’re interested in hearing more from Judd, check out this episode of The Great Big Beautiful Podcast, where we talk about an incredibly wide range of things. Trust us; it’s a great conversation.) 

The Roarbots: There’s a big leap between writing Red Hood [for DC Comics] and writing for middle grade kids. Why did you decide to make that transition?

Judd Winick: I’m really not doing any… we’ll call them “adult mainstream superhero comics.” I came back to do a nine-page story for this Robin anniversary, a special thing. It’s more to do with “I don’t have the time” rather than the interest. Marvel and DC routinely ask me if I want to come do something, but I’m doing Hilo.

Hilo was born when my son was 7 (he’s 14 now) and started taking a huge interest in superhero comics. He asked if he could read some of my superhero comics. He really wanted to read Batman, which I had to explain to him, “Oh, no no, you cannot read my Batman. It’s mostly for teenagers and adults, not for kids.”

I wanted to get him something that was a full-on graphic novel series, and I mentioned I know Jeff Smith, so I gave him Bone and he lost his damn mind. He became a Bone superfan and me, I got kind of jealous. I was looking at how much he loved Bone and thought, “You know what? I’m a cartoonist, I should be able to do something he loves as much as Bone. I really, really should,” and that’s where it all started. I started working on the series right then and there. It was born out of spite and jealousy.

RB: Do your kids still think it’s cool when people recognize your name? We talked to Rhett Miller when his book of kids’ poems came out and he said his kids get annoyed because they think he’s a huge dork.

JW: My daughter is 11 now, and it’s a family project basically. They always get a huge kick out of when people know who I am, who my wife is as well. They even goose people a little bit to see if they know. “Oh, yeah, my dad writes comic books.” “Oh, like what?” “You know, like Batman, Green Lantern, Green Arrow.” And if he’s talking to an adult nerd, [my son] can usually smell it. He’s like, “I will name drop my father to see what happens.”

I visit their schools to talk about cartooning and storytelling and Hilo, so that’s fun for them. And two of the talks I give are actually about me and my kids, one about my son and one about my daughter and how much they love making Hilo. I highly recommend this to anyone: work at home so you can see your children and do projects they can enjoy as well. It’s a great way to go.

RB: In the Hilo books, kindness is an important theme that resonates through the entire series. Why was that an important focus for you as a writer? Why do you think it’s important to reinforce that to kids?

JW: I’ll begin by deflecting a little bit; it’s not hard to write about kindness. It should be a through-line with most stories that kindness is rewarded, and I mean that in the least artsy-fartsy, Pollyanna way possible. It’s weird that our default setting is usually toward conflict. Conflict makes stories, people have to have problems for there to be a story, there needs to be something to resolve, people have to be jerks or reacting to jerkiness.

I found it a natural, simple progression that [Hilo] is a story about these kids who are always there for each other. They are constantly backing each other up, and I think it’s born out of the idea as Hilo as a positive protagonist, which I’m aping from Doctor Who. If there’s one influence you could draw a direct line from to Hilo, it would be Doctor Who.

Hilo is this quasi-magical person from a different place who teams up with two normal humans and they go on adventures. I love the idea of Doctor Who and the idea of a positive protagonist that, no matter what comes along, no matter how terrible it is, it’s a feeling of “Isn’t this amazing, though? Isn’t this incredible that we’re doing this? And I love doing it with you!”

I think people need each other. I love the idea that the kids will always win out because they have each other. It is pretty intentional that they win through love and kindness.

RB: I also noticed that the children are much more accepting of magic, and that’s aimed as a lesson at adults who might be reading it with them. Why did you think that was also an important dynamic to cover?

JW: I think, when you’re a kid, suspension of disbelief in anything makes life a lot more fun in general. My son is only now pushing back on the idea there’s a tooth fairy, and my daughter is not. But she knows it’s all just a game. She lost a tooth last week and we forgot to swap out the tooth and put money in the tooth container. We asked, “Where did you leave it?” and she said, “On my desk.” We said, “You can’t leave it on your desk.”

To be a kid is to really not worry about what other people think all the damn time.

This charade, this whole play we’re doing – it’s fun. Believing in something, believing in magic, believing in things that are bigger than ourselves is fun. The kids in Hilo are surrounded by the fantastical all the time, and they’re diving in feet first. And they’re ridiculously brave about all of it. I was a pretty serious kid, and I think this is a reaction to that.

It wasn’t until I was 14 and I met a loony kid… he was just the right kind of crazy. He listened to the crazy kind of music, he did stupid things and he and my best friend and I came out of our shells. To be a kid is to really not worry about what other people think all the damn time. That’s at the heart of it. To be silly and have a little bit of fun. To not give into the “Oh, stop that” or “settle down.”

RB: There’s a quote in All the Pieces Fit that really struck me: “Doing the right thing is hard. Being a hero is hard. And to stop something horrible, sometimes heroes lose everything.” How do you encourage a child to be brave and be any kind of hero if they know the results might be awful?

JW: I would like to think that kids are probably operating on lower stakes than what Hilo is operating on, but the message is the same: sometimes doing the right thing kinda stinks. It’s easier in lot of ways, a lot of times, not to be a jerk but to think, “I want to do this but if I do, I have to give this other thing up and I can’t do that.”

The kinder thing may be a little bit harder. No one ever said being kind is easy. The bigger example – I just had this conversation again with my children a couple of weeks ago because it came up again in terms of U.S. immigration policy, in terms of children in cages – my kids are deeply upset about it and I had to play the other side of the argument so they could wrap their heads around it a little bit.

No one ever said being kind is easy.

The claim is that these parents are illegally coming into the country so they’re being arrested. That’s against the law. But they’re separating their children from them and putting them in cages. That’s wrong. We shouldn’t do it. We don’t punish children for what their parents do. It may be an easier path to punish everybody, but it’s wrong. It was part of that bigger example of “Yeah, that does make more sense, that would be a harsher punishment if we did that. It could easier if we do it that way, but we don’t because it’s wrong. It’s harder, but we’re better than that.”

That’s actually my household mantra: “Don’t do that. You’re better than that.” It works with just about anybody. If you tell any adult that, even if you don’t believe they are better than that, it’s a reminder they could be better. It’s also a tough one to argue.

RB: We live in Pittsburgh and we’re Jewish. My kids had a really hard time with the synagogue shooting last year. They were afraid to go to Hebrew school, afraid to go to high holidays. And we told them, “Yeah, it is scary, but you just have to do it.”

JW: We’re a mixed family, Jewish and Christian, white and Asian so… for a number of years now, my kids have asked, “Do people hate us?” The only answer I have for them is, “No, they don’t hate you. They hate the idea of you; they don’t actually know you.” Hate is hate, but you just have to be brave. They can’t take away who we are.

RB: It’s hard to send your kids out into the world like that sometimes.

JW: I’m glad we live in San Francisco. It’s not quite a bubble, but we’re always surrounded by people of all different shapes and sizes and a lot of like-mindedness. We’re lucky that way.

RB: Speaking of parents… most kids end up going on adventures without their parents, however that happens. There’s usually a dead mother involved (but that’s a whole other conversation), but in All the Pieces Fit, DJ’s mom joins them for the boss level fight. Why was that important to include?

JW: That was really important to me. Organically, it felt… you know. I’ll go back to J.K. Rowling who talked about how much she didn’t particularly like the idea of boarding school, but it was a story element that was needed so the kids could run around at night. How can they get out and about without their parents finding out? British boarding school.

I think a lot of us doing stories that are around kids, they want the kids to have adventures on their own without parents. I do that myself. It’s a bit of fiction they get away with. I’m conscious of it. They’re doing it after school, they’re sneaking out a little bit. I don’t shine too big a light on it because I don’t encourage that. They cheat.

But, coming up to this sixth book where we were finishing this first big storyline, I really wanted DJ’s mom to be present because the way the story ended, it ended with loss. They could not comfort each other. They needed a parent. They needed a mom or a dad to tell them, “I’m sorry. This is terrible.” I’m a parent, and I empathize with the characters I’ve created. They needed her there.

I’d rather kids get inspired by something inspirational rather than trying to overcome some horror.

I didn’t want to do the dead parent thing. There are ways of doing this. We should try to do better. We feel the need that we have to put kids behind the eight ball. We need some kind of inciting incident so you empathize with them, so you’re on their side. For kids, it’s killing off the parents. For adults, there are a number of clichés: a woman is assaulted, the sap of a man finds his wife is cheating on him.

There’s always an inciting incident, but it doesn’t have to be loss. I think when they relaunched Doctor Who, one of the reasons I liked it so much was the inciting incident wasn’t loss. It was that Rose Tyler is as much a part of it as the Doctor. Her inciting incident was him. He can look at her and talk to her a little bit and know she’s extraordinary. I loved that. I was so inspired by that. I’d rather kids, storytelling, us, get inspired by something inspirational rather than trying to overcome some horror.

RB: That’s why Donna was always my favorite. They were equals and she was so much more than anyone, including him, expected her to be.

JW: Yes, the evolution of Donna Noble was just so great. It went from… she does not fancy him, they were mates, they were friends. And then quickly, they start having fun. And then he figures out how brave and brilliant she is. It was an amazing piece of storytelling. I still find it really inspiring.

RB: You said this is the end of this particular arc of Hilo but not the end of the story, correct?

JW: I just finished Book 7. Our colorist, Marta Lejo is coloring the book right now, but it is written and drawn. It is out the door. The next one has happened.

RB: Can  you tell us anything about the Red Hood story you wrote for the Robin 80th anniversary book?

JW: A little bit. It’s only nine pages so to tell anything would be to give all of it away. It’s a nine-page story, it’s a moment, a dissertation on a moment. For all the hardcore fans of Jason Todd, the Red Hood, who have enjoyed my stories, they will probably like this one quite a bit. It’s kinda sweet.

RB: I have a weakness for problematic comic book boys, so… he is in fact one of my favorites.

JW: Thank you. I just stumbled upon that. It was really interesting when I did Red Hood because it was at the same time when “fangirls” (for lack of a better term) started to assert themselves more, and we started hearing from more women and girls who were reading comics. I did the story to do the story but they had a lot of empathy for Jason.

Everything was deliberate on my part; he was supposed to be deeply, deeply troubled and deeply dangerous and everything got screwed up for him. Shit happened, things went sideways on him, and I didn’t expect everyone to get so much of it. A lot of the time, you’re doing subtext and it’s just for you and it fuels the character and they make decisions and you know who and what they are. I wrote it like that. He’s bad, but he’s deeply troubled. Sometimes he’ll do things that seem antithetical to his own good. Sometimes he’s totally hypocritical; he might say one thing and do another because he’s working through his own emotions and he’ll make dumb mistakes.

I just didn’t think people would get it. It surprised me. I guess that’s why, in part, he’s had such longevity. It makes me proud.

RB: I usually ask people what color their lightsaber would be, but given your comics writing history, if you were going to have a vigilante team with three other characters, who would you pick?

JW: I gotta answer the lightsaber one. It would be yellow. I would have to go with that. I didn’t even know it was a thing until The Rise of Skywalker.

RB: Did you not watch Rebels?

JW: It’s not so much that I didn’t; it’s that I haven’t watched it yet. I grew up on television where you had to watch this shit or else it was going to go away and it might not ever ever ever wind up on television again. Now, I’m spoiled. Part of it was waiting for my kids to be into it and want to watch it

RB: The temple guards carry yellow.

JW: Now I know! I’m excited. I would definitely go with yellow. Yellow is one of my colors. Cadmium yellow, which I found out later was school bus yellow. Which doesn’t make sense because I didn’t really like school.

Okay, so a team-up with three vigilantes.

RB: Right. Like, no Superman.

JW: This is hard. Why can’t it be Superman? Okay, I’m with you now. Superman is a hero, not a vigilante. You want to bring the best you can get together. One is Batman. You’re always going to be okay with Batman because he cheats.

Brad Meltzer and I were in college, and we plotted out the fight between Justice League and The Avengers. Captain America or Batman? Batman because he would cheat. It isn’t about winning the fight; it’s about ending the fight.

I wouldn’t bring Jason Todd. That’s a terrible idea because as much as I feel an affinity for him, a paternal aspect… he doesn’t know that and he doesn’t do well with fathers so… Batman… probably Daredevil. I’m picking the dangerous guys who don’t mind mixing it up, and… um… jeez. Not Harley Quinn. She’s not a good guy. And… it’s criminal that there are almost no characters who are women who fit the vigilante slot. It’s weird that we don’t let them be as dangerous as the dudes, I’ve never liked that. Huntress is okay. More characters like Huntress.

It’s like love and art. A lot of our characters who are women tend to be just straight-up heroes. We don’t have a lot who mix it up.

Does Hulk count as a vigilante? Hulk. I’ll take smart Hulk. Game over, what can’t we do? Batman, Daredevil, smart Hulk.

I’m upset. I don’t feel like there’s enough feminine energy here, but I haven’t set up the playing field. Part of me wants to take Grace and Thunder who I wrote in The Outsiders, but I know Grace is trouble and Thunder for me isn’t a vigilante.

RB: It’s hard because you’d want Captain Marvel to take on Superman but she’s not really a vigilante.

JW: No, she’s a flat-out superhero. It’s like love and art. A lot of our characters who are women tend to be just straight-up heroes. We don’t have a lot who mix it up. It’s pure sexism, and we’re uncomfortable with that. We have trouble with storytelling, the collective we.

That said, I’m working on a story that may never see the light of day where a full-fledged vigilante mess of a hero is a woman, just as troubled as the rest of them. On the flip side, Book 7 of Hilo is Gina: The Girl Who Broke the World. We’re changing protagonists. Gina will be the protagonist for the next three books. Now she’s at the center of the thing and the boys are backing her up. It’s still the three of them – the story is always the three of them – but to be blunt, Gina is the superhero for the next three books. She’s not a vigilante obviously.

Hilo: All the Pieces Fit – Book 6 in the series – is available now. Look out for Gina and company in The Girl Who Broke the World (no release date set). The Robin 80th Anniversary Spectacular, including Judd’s new Red Hood story, is scheduled for release on March 18.