Why Marvel Studios Should Hire Allan Heinberg To Write ‘Young Avengers’

Savas Abadsidis December 22, 2022

A big fan of Young Avengers and creator Allan Heinberg makes a powerful and persuasive case in an essay over at Medium about why Marvel Studios head Kevin Fiege should hire him for the eventual cinematic outing of Marvel Comics’ premiere teen team.

Medium:

Why? To start, let’s go back in time to 1989. Allan Heinberg started his career acting in and writing off-Broadway plays in New York City shortly after he graduated from Yale. In 1994, he even wrote a play called The Amazon’s Voice about a writer who gets the chance to adapt the story of Wonder Woman as a cartoon. Then, that play got him out to L.A. where he made the jump to television. Some of the shows he wrote on over the next decade included The Naked Truth, Party of Five, Sex and the City, Gilmore Girls, The O.C.. Heinberg excelled at writing character-driven stories with a strong emotional undercurrent. Then, he worked for the well-known TV production company Shondaland and wrote and produced several more popular TV shows like Grey’s Anatomy, Scandal, and The Catch.

Does anyone else ever think about how Allan Heinberg was a co-executive producer / writer of The OC before he created Young Avengers? And how, once you know that, it’s incredibly obvious that Wiccan & Hulkling are basically his Seth Cohen / Ryan Atwood superhero AU slashfic? pic.twitter.com/HJZzqUy0YC
— Alexander (@purplechrain) November 6, 2020

In 2016, Allan Heinberg took another leap, one that not many TV writers do — to the big screen. He was brought on to write the screenplay for the acclaimed Wonder Woman (2017) due to his deep knowledge of Wonder Woman and passion for her character. Remember, he had written The Amazon’s Voice about her back in 1994! Talk about a full circle moment.

Today, Heinberg is working as a showrunner and executive producer on The Sandman television series, an adaptation of the Neil Gaiman comic of the same name. The first season of The Sandman was such a huge success for Netflix that Heinberg is already working on Season 2.

It is also worth noting that throughout his career, Heinberg wrote for two Marvel IP projects that ultimately never saw the light of day due to the shifting tides of Marvel Studios. The first was an unannounced show for ABC (just before the end of Marvel Television and the start of Marvel Studios’ Disney+ era) that would feature several female Marvel superheroes. The second was a Multiple Man movie starring James Franco that never got made, especially after Disney acquired Fox and their Marvel superhero movies ceased production.

But why is this accomplished TV and movie writer relevant to those characters we discussed at the beginning being introduced in the MCU, the Young Avengers? Well, to put it simply: he created them!

Heinberg, along with legendary Marvel comic artist Jim Cheung, co-created the 2005 Young Avengers comic book all those years ago. Yes, that incredibly successful TV/Movie writer is also a lifelong comic fan and excellent comic book author.

Back in 2004, the folks at Marvel noticed several comic references in the show The O.C., so they called The O.C. creator Josh Shwartz to see if he’d be interested in writing a comic book for them. However, Josh quickly pointed Marvel towards Allan Heinberg instead, who was the one behind those comic book references. Heinberg then teamed up with artist Jim Cheung and legendary Marvel editor Tom Brevoort to create the Young Avengers and the rest is history! In between and during his television career, Heinberg created and wrote Young Avengers (2005) for Marvel comics, and he wrote on JLA and Who is Wonder Woman? for DC comics. Heinberg then went on to write a follow up comic to the Young Avengers a few years later with Avengers: The Children’s Crusade. Even though his comic book repertoire is relatively small, Heinberg’s work is widely beloved and continues to attract new fans to this day.

Another important thing about Allan Heinberg is that two of the characters he created as original members of the Young Avengers are Billy Kaplan and Teddy Altman, also known as Wiccan and Hulkling. These two were depicted in a gay relationship in a leading Marvel Avengers comic back in 2005! Heinberg writing two gay leads in a leading Marvel comic at that time was extremely important for queer representation in comics as well as media as a whole. Lately, Marvel Studios has come under fire for a lack of leading LGBTQ+ representation in their cinematic universe, almost two decades after Wiccan and Hulkling debuted in the comics. Allan Heinberg, a gay man himself, would be the perfect person to write these characters on the Marvel screen and push forward queer representation in superhero media once more. Another important aspect of Billy Kaplan is that he is Jewish, and Heinberg, who has referred to Kaplan as a “very auto-biographical character”, is also Jewish. Fans have been upset with how superhero media has handled Jewish representation, and Heinberg would certainly be able to bring his authentic perspective and deep understanding of Billy Kaplan to any property he writes him in and accurately portray all aspects of the character.

If Marvel Studios or Kevin Feige are indeed looking to make a Young Avengers project a reality, myself and many other fans would love for them to hire none other than Allan Heinberg to create and show-run it. Nothing could beat the magic of Heinberg doing what he does best with the characters he created and knows best. Please make it happen, Feige!