AUSTIN, Texas — Evan Narcisse, an Austin-based, New York-raised comic book writer and former journalist, is bringing his cultural background and love for superheroes to his current work.
Narcisse has been in Austin since 2016 and has been writing comic books since 2018. He has previously worked for Marvel Comics, writing for characters such as Black Panther and Captain America, and now writes for DC Comics, where he is writing a crossover miniseries between Batman Beyond and Static.
Narcisse, who formerly worked as a journalist for a variety of publications, got into comics when a friend, Ta-Nehisi Coates, reached out to him for his extensive knowledge of Black Panther. Coates was the head writer of Black Panther at the time.
“His editor at Marvel, Wil Moss, said to Ta-Nehisi, ‘Hey, Evan really seems to know his Black Panther stuff, and he’s knowledgeable about the character and various runs.’ Ta-Nehisi thought I would be interested in taking on the project. I said, yes, and that wound up becoming ‘Rise of the Black Panther,’ which was a mini-series kind of reimagining the child’s first year as king in the Marvel Comics universe, which has different continuity in the movies,” Narcisse said.
Since childhood, Narcisse has been a fan of superheroes. He credits comics and the first Superman film for cementing that love.
“I grew up reading comics. Comics would help me learn how to read. My earliest memories with comics is when I was like five or six, and I saw the first Christopher Reeve “Superman” movie in the theaters. I was probably reading comics before then, but that really made me a lifer in terms of the superhero genre,” he said.
In the 1990s, DC partnered with a variety of Black creators to create the Milestone Media Comics line. This line, which introduced characters like Static and Hardware, was released when Narcisse was in college at NYU.
“Those comics have been deeply influential to me,” Narcisse said. “My current assignment at DC is writing a crossover series between Batman Beyond and Static, and Static has roots in the Milestone Universe, and they both were stars of animated shows in the early 2000s. I’m a big fan of the Milestone Media characters.”
Dwayne McDuffie, the creator of Static in the Milestone Universe, has a particularly large influence on Narcisse.
“He was one of the founders of Milestone, like my North Star as comics writer, a literal genius,” Narcisse said. “Just a smart, kind, insanely talented man.”
The Milestone Media imprint has been brought back various times, and the story of the characters and world Milestone created is something that Narcisse believes is important for the history of comic books.
“It’s a truly multicultural superhero universe from the ground up,” Narcisse said. “These guys felt like Black culture and Black experiences were underrepresented in comics when they were working as professionals. They also had the presence of mind to think, ‘Hey, if we feel underrepresented, other marginalized groups probably feel too.’”
Narcisse cites a number of historically underrepresented ethnicities and character types that came from the Milestone imprint.
“There are multiple Southeast Asian characters, multiple Latino characters from different backgrounds, multiple queer characters and the first transgender superhero character that I can remember comes out in that in the Milestone Universe,” he said.
Narcisse’s personal cultural upbringing, including parents who immigrated to New York from Haiti, has brought two different cultural perspectives to his writing.
“New York is a place that has always been like a magnet for people outside the United States to try and start their life,” Narcisse said. “That richness, that depth, definitely made me think about how there are lots of different ways to view the world. Very specific kinds of cultural expression happened in places like New York. Hip-hop culture started in New York, and I grew up around hip-hop. Stuff like that informs my way of viewing the world and the creativity I put out. New York is with me every day, for better or worse.”
Haitian culture was very important to Narcisse’s upbringing, which is something he incorporates into his writings for characters such as Marvel’s Doctor Voodoo, who is Haitian. He spoke about the Haitian Revolution being inspirational to him, along with greater science fiction.
“The history of resistance, fighting for liberty and justice against an oppressive empire, that’s the stuff that, like what Star Wars is to me,” Narcisse said. “That’s a lot of good science fiction and speculative fiction stories. It’s actually for me; it’s part of my ancestral history in the real world, so that definitely informed my writing.”
One of the reasons Narcisse’s favorite superhero is Black Panther is that he relates the character missing his homeland to the same way his mother would discuss Haiti.
“One of the reasons I became a Black Panther fan was that one of the first comments I read of him was when he was with the Avengers, and he was missing his homeland,” Narcisse said. “The stranger in a strange land is a classic trope of like storytelling, and that made me attached to him in a way that I didn’t to Luke Cage or The Falcon or other American-born superheroes operating in a society that they had grown up in. Those are the reasons I became a fan of him, but in terms of my own imagery experience and my Haitian ancestral history and whatnot, it’s a source of pride and a source of inspiration.”
His time in Austin has also influenced him, citing the rapid change of the city as a particular wellspring.
“The horizon of the city literally is changing, like month after month,” Narcisse said. “Being in a place like that makes you think about being in a place of constant change, being in a city and municipality where a lot of change happens, and how that affects people who live there. So that’s, I guess, a sub-textual influence.”
Narcisse also credits the affordability of the city as a way for him to expand his “creative bandwidth.”
“It’s more affordable here, so I have more bandwidth mentally to think about creative pursuits than I did in New York City, where I had to constantly focus on keeping my head above the water financially,” Narcisse said. “It takes bandwidth to sit down and come up with a story, and if that bandwidth is being burned up by other more pressing concerns, you’re just gonna have less wherewithal to execute your creativity.”
His current writing of the Batman and Static crossover series came about from a surprise announcement, according to Narcisse.
“‘Batman/Static Beyond’ came about because I had been part of a crew of creators that did something for Milestone’s 30th anniversary,” Narcisse said. “It was announced, and I was like, ‘Huh, I wonder who’s gonna be writing for that?’ Then they asked me to write for it. I wound up writing the lead story in that special, which was where the 1993 version of the characters meets the 2022 version of the characters. That story went over really well, and Nick [Ivy] had been wanting to do a follow-up to that where the characters went on a longer adventure. From there, we just started brainstorming, DC approved the idea, and we were off to the races.”
While superheroes are a hot commodity on-screen, the comics community feels much smaller, according to Narcisse. However, he doesn’t want people to forget where they come from and to support those comic creators.
“The medium of comics is where that stuff starts, and I still think the most robust form of superhero storytelling is in comic books,” Narcisse said. “The creators who do this work often do work for hire, where they don’t get to participate in the multi-million dollar success that the movies generate. If you’re somebody who loves comics or is just getting into comics for the first time, follow the creators, support their work, whether it’s writing something nice to them on social media or showing them appreciation. Not a lot of people get rich from writing comics, but almost all of us do it because we love the characters.”
The first issue of “Batman/Static Beyond” was released on Nov. 12, 2025, and the second issue is scheduled to be released on Dec. 24, 2025. The miniseries is expected to be released monthly until its conclusion.