Game of Thrones
-star Emilia Clarke felt uncomfortable in comic book stores during her youth. Later, she discovered her love for comics and even wrote some herself.
Emilia Clarke, globally known as Mother of Dragons
Daenerys Targaryen from the hit series Game of Thrones
, is also active in other industries. The actress born in England has established herself as a celebrated performer and has also discovered her creative side as a comic book writer.
Together with writer Marguerite Bennett (known for Batwoman
and DC Bombshells
) and illustrator Leila Leiz (known for Horde
), she created her own comic that turns the superhero world upside down.
She didn’t dare to go to comic book stores as a child
What led her to comics? For Clarke, the path to comics was not that easy. As a child, she avoided comic book stores, as she admits (via Carlsen). Emilia Clarke recalls that her brother was a big comic fan, but she wasn’t allowed to go with him to the stores because she was the little loser sister
. Whenever she did get to go into the store, she hardly saw any female characters on the comic covers. This made her feel insecure (via Entertainment Weekly).
However, through her experiences with among others Game of Thrones
and the numerous conventions she attended – that changed. Meeting fans and the atmosphere sparked her interest in comics and superheroes.
She says the following about it:
Well, as a child I didn’t dare to follow my brother into the comic book stores, so I discovered comics late, actually only through Daenerys, Sarah, and Qi’ra. When you constantly go to ComicCons, you inevitably start reading the great comics there, and that’s where I saw all my favorite movie characters (I’m a superhero fangirl), and suddenly it dawned on me: THIS IS COOL. […]
Emilia Clarke (Source: Carlsen)
Clarke’s first comic: M.OM.: Mother of Madness
Through other comic works, she came to the core theme of her first comic. While browsing the featured works, I also noticed that the ratio of women to men was slightly… unbalanced, and thus the seed of M.O.M was born
(Carlsen). M.O.M is a three-part miniseries from Image Comics.
What is the comic about? M.O.M. tells the story of Maya Kuyper, a 29-year-old single mother and chemical engineer. Maya unexpectedly develops superpowers that relate to her hormones and menstrual cycle. She struggles against evil in a dystopian vision of New York, shaped by her own tragic past and the challenges of life as a single mother.
What is behind it? The story, which Clarke describes as a combination of Deadpool
, a lot of silliness
, and ironic humor
, conveys a strong feminist message.
We always call mothers superheroes, and I wonder: What if they were? What if they rightfully were superheroes?
, Clarke says to Entertainment Weekly. “Maya had a very hard life and is at a place where she hates and is ashamed of everything that makes her unique. It is only upon discovering her powers that she finds her true acceptance of who she is.”
The idea was to turn the narrative around things that women often dislike about themselves. Emilia felt excluded during her youth when she wasn’t allowed to go to comic book stores with her brother and hardly saw any female characters there. She wanted to create a female protagonist that women could identify with.
Game of Thrones ended after eight seasons with a conclusion that disappointed many fans. The author was far from satisfied as well: The makers of the Game of Thrones series ignored the ideas of the original creator and ultimately disappointed all fans
