IGN is proud to present an exclusive first-look at Archie Comics' newest superhero: The Equalizer.

The publisher has a long tradition of giving their cast of characters superhero identities, and now breakout character Kevin Keller will suit up as The Equalizer to take on everything from muggers to bullies. The Equalizer will debut in Kevin Keller #14, out May 5.Since his inception as Archie's first gay character, Kevin has been followed by a storm of controversy about his sexuality, which makes the positive message of a young teen coming out to his friends and being supported by his parents more pertinent than ever. Now he joins the likes of Batwoman and Northstar on comics' ever-growing list of gay superheroes.We sat down with Kevin Keller creator, writer, and artist Dan Parent to hear how Kevin becomes a superhero, the design choices that helped create his costume, and the message he wants to send with this superhero story.

Yes, yes. The other Archie characters have had their superhero personas, now Kevin is going to have one -- with the help of Veronica, of course.Yeah, we're doing it for a couple of issues. We're trying to do something a little different. It will probably be one of those things where we'll do it when we want to do it. We'll see what the response is. With Archie, there were super team stories with Archie and the gang that we'd do every once in awhile. So it'll be sort of like that. We'll do them when we want to. But it's a lot of fun, because it's just him and Veronica. Of course, she always sort of screws things up, because at the same time he's trying to solve a crime and fix Veronica's mistakes too. It's kind of silly, in a way. It's kind of nice.Pretty much. She kind of builds their own version of a Batcave, but it's Veronica-style, so it's kind of like a cross between a Batcave and a mall.Well, we haven't given it a name yet. She even says in the story that it's her version of the Batcave, but we haven't given it an official name. Maybe we'll have to do that.Part of it does. We've acknowledged in other stories that he likes comic books. In a way, it kind of worked out, because he is still nerdy too, but he's kind of physically fit and can do most of the physical stuff. He kind of trips up and goofs up sometimes, but he's still a teenager. So yeah, all of that sort of plays into it.Well, first of all, we had to pick out a name for him, and since he is gay and stands for equality, he wants to help everybody. We're not just talking about cases of homophobia; we're talking about when some downtrodden person gets hurt. So Equalizer is just sort of a good term. It's not a term that we made up, obviously -- it's been used for batteries and TV shows -- the word's been used before. But it just symbolized him, because he stands for equality, and that's what he's trying to do. When he becomes a superhero, first he helps an old lady who's getting attacked, then he saves this kid from getting made fun of, which, you know, he's been in that place before. Then also, if a real crime is being committed, he'll help stop that too. He's an equal opportunity provider.We're actually trying to keep it a little more reality based. Mostly it's just based on his physical strength. Whereas the Archie characters, you know, Archie got powers and could actually fly, and they can all do other things. But with this character, we're keeping it more in the realm of, like, a Batman, where he actually depends on his physical prowess -- and then lots of gadgets. In his cave, the guy who kind of monitors what's going on with the crime and kind of invents things for Kevin -- and at the same time, Kevin has the hots for this guy, so it's kind of like a love interest for Kevin too.Yeah, the guy's all oblivious to it. We haven't even really said if he's gay or not, but Kevin's totally enamored with him. We'll see where that goes. So in addition to pinpointing where crimes are, he's busy coming up with gadgets and things like that for crime-fighting.Right!Well, the message I think is just really the continuation of what Kevin's already been. We know he always helps out people, because he's that kind of a guy and he's been there before. When we saw Kevin's origins in the early stories, we saw that he didn't grow up this real debonaire, suave kinda guy. He had a lot of growing pains like a lot of kids, especially with being gay on top of it, it was more of a challenge. In one story I'm working on now, he just happens to see this kid getting made fun of, so Kevin springs into action, and Veronica, of course, keeps trying to help out, and she just screws things up.Then, the other angle we have of the story is Kevin's father eventually finds out what he's doing. You know, they try to keep it a secret, and the running joke is that people keep finding out he's the Equalizer, because it's so hard in this day and age to keep a superhero alias a secret. Basically, people keep finding out. I think 10 issues down the line, if he's doing this, everyone's gonna know -- because his father does find out early on and wants to help him keep it secret, but he also has helped train Kevin, because he was in the military. So he helps Kevin because he doesn't want Kevin to get hurt. He knows Kevin's going to do it no matter what. So we sort of have the father/son bond in there too.Yeah, and that is what we're trying to do, because we're aware that Kevin's story is similar to a lot of teens growing up. It's sort of, like, Archie is that place you go to. I grew up watching, like, The Brady Bunch and shows like that, where very few lives are like that, but it's like the idyllic version of the way life is, and that's sort of what we're doing with Archie. We're trying to integrate some real issues, but it's really the way you want things to be.Yes.Really, the design choices were to keep it simple. You can never go wrong with a sort of simple, black outfit. The equal sign was an afterthought. But when the Human Rights Campaign had the big equal symbol -- they were all over the place -- so there was a borrowing from that. I did a couple of sketches in the office, and then we had a little running joke in the story, because Veronica is really pushing for him to do this -- of course, she designed all these costumes for him, so we have a little montage of really terrible superhero outfits, including a couple really bad, cliche superhero outfits that are over-the-top and Kevin wants no part of. So we kind of run through that, but, no, when I was sketching it, I just sketched a few ideas, and the guys at Archie liked the simplest one. So that was the easiest part. [Laughs]Then in doing the storyline, the best superhero stories are always coming up with the best villains. So in addition to him helping out people in town, I kind wanted to get a stable of villains. The first villain is actually a clone -- it's him fighting his evil self. This mastermind gets some of his DNA and creates an evil Kevin.[Laughs] You know, that didn't even come up. He does have super strength -- he's got more powers than Kevin, so his DNA is sort of modified. Kevin has to figure out how to beat him. But that didn't even come up, so I don't know. [Laughs]Yeah, it's "Kevin" backwards -- Nivek?Yes, evil Nivek!Just that we're still having a great time with Kevin, and the fans are still enjoying it. We look forward to presenting these stories, and we're happy to have Kevin enter the Archie superhero realm.

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