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When Sean McKeever started to write for the comic book "Teen Titans," he took the series in a different direction by presenting the adolescent protagonists with an issue that no one in the world outside of comics is likely to face.

Led by Batman's sidekick Robin, the superteam discovered their future selves have become ruthless and immoral vigilantes and totalitarians.

But in the way that all good comics work, McKeever manages to take a fantastic and unreal plot and anchor it in human pathos or, in the case of the Titans, teenage angst.

"When you're a teenager, you kind of have your whole world ahead of you; there's a lot of different avenues that you can take," McKeever said during a recent telephone interview. "Now, the Teen Titans are very much aware that every decision they make can have huge ramifications in their adult life, and I think that is something that we all come to realize maybe too late until we're adults."

McKeever has been working with teen characters for most of his professional life . He got his start with the self-published teen drama "The Waiting Place" before moving on to bigger publishers such as DC and Marvel, where he has also worked the Incredible Hulk, Spider-Man and the X-Men.

McKeever will be at Acme Comics in Greensboro this week to autograph books and speak with his fans.

With movies such as "The Dark Knight" and "Iron Man" earning big at the box office, it might seem as if comic books are bigger than ever . However , the largest group of comic book readers is a dedicated core of adult males, most of whom grew up reading comics as children.

The industry attracts few new adult readers.

Consequently, potential younger readers are staying away from comics, too, because of competition from video games and because most of the popular books are mired in decades of continuity.

"The publishers are definitely starting to realize now that you no longer have a system where kids can pick up comics and grow up reading comics like the way I did in the '70s," McKeever says. "There aren't any comic books plastering the grocery stores any more or the pharmacies. Now, you have to seek out comics."

As a writer for Marvel Comics, McKeever worked to address this problem first by working on a series of kid-friendly or "all-ages" books that featured single issue adventures of characters such as the Fantastic Four and Spider-Man outside of their cumbersome backstories.

He made his biggest splash creating the four-issue miniseries "Mary Jane." The comic plucked Mary Jane Watson from the shadow of Spider-Man's adventures, and transformed her into the star. The book was a hit, especially among teenage girls, and spawned a second mini series and even the ongoing spin off "Spider-Man Loves Mary Jane."

McKeever's Mary Jane is in high school and seldom gets tangled in Spider-Man's battles with masked foes. Instead, she carries a crush for the hero while struggling with boyfriends, jobs and living in a low-income household. The writer says after working with the character for 28 issues, he realized she wasn't too different from her superpowered beau.

"When I came into this book, I wanted there to be two sides to Mary Jane -- that she's this popular girl in school, but at the same time, she has a lot of the same doubts and fears inside that everyone else does," McKeever says. "She just doesn't really show them. That was the main vision of Mary Jane that I had for the series."

He later adds: "She likes Spider-Man because she wants somebody who understands her."

After "Spider-Man Loves Mary Jane" ended last year, McKeever signed an exclusive deal to write books for DC Comics, where he currently works on "Teen Titans" and "Terror Titans," a book he created about a team of supervillains. He says he has a few original characters to introduce through the company, too.

"I would like to go back to my roots, which was doing small press and creator-owned stuff," McKeever says. "I've got a drawer full of ideas and concepts I would like to explore, but right now, DC wants to keep me working, and I'll take it while I can get it."

Joe Scott is a freelance contributor. Contact him at movieshowjoe@gmail.com