In 2012, Australian cartoonist Gavin Aung Than launched his blog Zen Pencils, in which he adapted inspirational quotations from such figures as Rumi, Stephen King, Frida Kahlo, and Chuck Jones into witty comic strips, later to be published in a two-volume set. He’s put Zen Pencils on hiatus to focus on his new project, a graphic-novel series for middle graders called Super Sidekicks, in which a quartet of young sidekicks gets fed up with their adult counterparts and join together to fight crime themselves. The first three titles are already out in Australia; Book 1, No Adults Allowed (Random House, Nov. 17), has just published in the U.S., with colors by Sarah Stern. We caught up with Aung Than via Zoom from his home in Perth. The conversation has been edited for length and clarity.

Super Sidekicks is an incredible departure from Zen Pencils. What’s behind that transition?

There were a few reasons. I felt an urge to create my own stories—to write and illustrate. And there were also some financial reasons, because I just had my [first child] around that time, and Zen Pencils wasn’t really stable financially. A lot of the quotes had copyright issues, so most of my book advance was spent on license fees and getting permission and stuff like that. It was just madness to keep going like that. And another factor was just seeing how wildly popular comics were becoming in the mainstream with kids. You know, with [Dav Pilkey’s] Dog Man and [Aaron Blabey’s] The Bad Guys. It just felt like the right time to make a change.

What drew you to explore kid sidekicks?

Growing up, I loved superhero comics. So superheroes were a no-brainer, but I wanted to target kids—so why not focus on the kid sidekicks? If it was full of adult superhero characters, it would probably be a bit too serious. [Also,] people have pointed out that I’m a younger brother. I always looked up to my older brother, and I would do whatever he did and follow him around. Like a little sidekick. Maybe in my subconscious I wanted to “hero” the sidekicks so they become the stars of the show.

It really struck me that your adult characters are jerks. Is that a reflection on your older brother?

Don’t tell him that. [Laughs.] No, he’s not a jerk. I just felt [for this project] the kids [should be] the sane ones. And that it would be kind of a funny dynamic to have all the adults as the buffoons and selfish, egotistic characters.

How did you go about developing their names and their powers?

It all happened organically. The leader is Junior Justice. I wanted to give him a shorthand name, [so he’s] JJ to his friends. He is based on how I look. I wanted to be an expert martial artist [like JJ], and he’s got a cool gadget belt. I knew that he would be a Robin knockoff. And Robin doesn’t have any powers. He’s just kind of a gymnast and a fighter. So that’s JJ.

Dinomite came from an old, old Zen Pencils comic. It featured this young girl who created some animated characters, a team of dinosaurs, and she called the team the Dinomites. And one of [those] characters looks just like [the Super Sidekick] Dinomite, so I got him from there. Also, I just love to draw dinosaurs. So I thought, how could I create a character where he could satisfy my urge to draw dinosaurs, so his power is to shape-shift into any dinosaur.

Fly Girl doesn’t have the most original name, but every superteam has to have an aerial character. And I thought, there’s been the Moth and there’s been Batgirl, but there hasn’t been a Fly Girl. And Australia is known for its flies.

And Goo is the lovable goofball that every team needs. He’s the simple, quirky, funny character. I thought that just having him be a giant blob of pink slime that I could mold into any scenario would be a good fit.

Is Dinomite a kid? Because he doesn’t talk like one.

He’s just a really smart young dinosaur. He’s got a big vocabulary, but he’s one of the kids.

No Adults Allowed is unusual in that rather than going into the origin stories of the individual characters, it’s the entire group’s origin story.

I find that origins can kind of weigh a story down, and I wanted to jump right into the action. Goo’s origin is explained. But the other three I’m leaving for future books. Hopefully I can get around to really fleshing out the world and all the characters and all their backstories.

Were there a lot of changes made in bringing the book from Australia to the U.S.?

There weren’t too many, besides the whole actual format itself [from about 7.5 by 5.5 inches in Australia to 6.5 by 9.3 inches in the U.S.]. And the Australian ones are black and white. It was awesome to see the sidekicks come to life in color. But contentwise in Book 1, there was just one scene in the Australian version which my U.S. editor felt was a little bit too violent. So they just asked me to tone that down a bit. In Book 2, there are a few more changes because it has politicians from around the world. So they wanted to add another female politician.

One of the things that I noticed in Fly Girl’s dialogue is that she refers to everybody as mate.

That was something I specifically asked to keep. [The U.S. team] wanted to get rid of that, but I really wanted to keep it Australian. We don’t have an Australian superteam. So I want to make [the Sidekicks] uniquely Australian. They’re based in Sydney; Fly Girl speaks like an Aussie. I thought Australian kids would like seeing characters set in their own country. I’m glad that the U.S. editor didn’t ask me to change that part of it—I was worried that they would say they should be based somewhere in America.

I am interested in the Sidekicks’ future adventures. Book 2 is called Ocean’s Revenge, and it seems pretty socially conscious.

Yes, [it’s got] a big environmental theme. Actually, I just got awarded the 2020 Environment Award For Children’s Literature here. [But] I don’t want to cram lessons down kids’ throats because that’ll turn them away from reading. When I was a kid I didn’t want to be lectured to, so as long as I can wrap it around a really exciting, fun adventure, then I would love to be subversive and put some positive messages in.

Is there anything you’d like to say that I haven’t asked you already?

I just want to make comics for kids. Because I find that the real comics industry is making stories for adults who have grown up loving comics. But no one’s making comics for the next generation of kids. When I was a kid, it would have been right around the middle grades when I really got hooked on comics. And I want to try and do the same for the next generation.

Vicky Smith is a young readers’ editor.