What’s the best part of the Marvel Universe? The sprawling diversity of its characters—particularly its women.
Our Rachel Leishman sat down with Ellie Pyle and Preeti Chhibber, the co-hosts of the podcast Women of Marvel, which highlights Marvel characters like Emma Frost, Shuri, Spider-Gwen, and more.
Pyle explains that the podcast dives deep into the complicated personalities of characters they love. “We do get into kind of the complexities of these characters over history,” she says. “As often as possible, we bring in somebody who can talk to us about why specifically they love this character and this character’s history. In the cases of both Jean Gray and Emma Frost, we had some conversations about, you know, is this character a hero, or a villain? You know, this character’s done a wide variety of things over the years, some of which killed a lot of people. But characters’ lives are long and we all love a redemption arc.”
Chhibber adds that part of what makes the podcast so fun is looking at each character from different angles. “It’s not just deep dives into the history [of each character,]” she says. “We’re looking at all these various facets of how these characters both in the Marvel universe and in our real world exist. Let’s talk to a fashion expert about the covers that feature Emma Frost’s Hellfire looks, and what she can pick up about the character from the way the character dresses. It’s talking to real life scientists about telekinesis and Jean Grey. It’s not just focusing on the creative aspect [of the characters]. Of course, we do talk to creators like artists and writers and editors, which is equally fascinating, but [looking at the characters from different angles] gives the episodes more room to breathe because we are not beholden to only talking about the story.”
Check out the full interview below, and the rest of our interviews on our Youtube channel!
You can listen to Marvel’s Women of Marvel Podcast now!
(featured image: Marvel Comics)
