Podcasts about Captain Marvel

What makes a character so compelling that readers will forgive almost anything about the plot? How do you move beyond vague flaws and generic descriptions to create people who feel pulled from real life? In this solo episode, I share 15 actionable tips for writing deep characters, curated from past interviews on the podcast. In the intro, thoughts from London Book Fair [Instagram reel @jfpennauthor; Publishing Perspectives; Audible; Spotify]; Insights from a 7-figure author business [BookBub]. This show is supported by my Patrons. Join my Community and get articles, discounts, and extra audio and video tutorials on writing craft, author business, and AI tools, at Patreon.com/thecreativepenn This episode has been created from previous episodes of The Creative Penn Podcast, curated by Joanna Penn, as well as chapters from How to Write a Novel: From Idea to Book. Links to the individual episodes are included in the transcript below. In this episode: Master the ‘Believe, Care, Invest' trifecta, how to hook readers on the very first page Define the Dramatic Question: Who is your character when the chips are down? Absolute specificity. Why “she's controlling” isn't good enough Understand the Heroine's Journey, strength through connection, not solo action Use ‘Metaphor Families' to anchor dialogue and give every character a distinctive voice Find the Diagnostic Detail, the moments that prove a character is real Writing pain onto the page without writing memoir Write diverse characters as real people, not stereotypes or plot devices Give your protagonist a morally neutral ‘hero' status. Compelling beats likeable. Build vibrant side characters for series longevity and spin-off potential Use voice as a rhythmic tool Link character and plot until they're inseparable Why discovery writers can write out of order and still build deep character Find the sensory details that make characters live and breathe More help with how to write fiction here, or in my book, How to Write a Novel. Writing Characters: 15 Tips for Writing Deep Character in Your Fiction In today's episode, I'm sharing fifteen tips for writing deep characters, synthesised from some of the most insightful interviews on The Creative Penn Podcast over the past few years, combined with what I've learned across more than forty books of my own. I'll be referencing episodes with Matt Bird, Will Storr, Gail Carriger, Barbara Nickless, and Sarah Elisabeth Sawyer. I'll also draw on my own book, How to Write a Novel, which covers these fundamentals in detail. Whether you're writing your first novel or your fiftieth, whether you're a plotter or a discovery writer like me, these tips will help you create characters that readers believe in, care about, and invest in—and keep coming back for more. Let's get into it. 1. Master the ‘Believe, Care, Invest' Trifecta When I spoke with Matt Bird on episode 624, he laid out the three things you need to achieve on the very first page of your book or in the first ten minutes of a film. He calls it “Believe, Care, and Invest.” First, the reader must believe the character is a real person, somehow proving they are not a cardboard imitation of a human being, not just a generic type walking through a generic plot. Second, the reader must care about the character's circumstances. And third, the reader must invest in the character's ability to solve the story's central problem. Matt used The Hunger Games as his primary example, and it's brilliant. On the very first page, we believe Katniss's voice. Suzanne Collins writes in first person with a staccato rhythm—lots of periods, short declarative sentences—that immediately grounds us in a survivalist mentality. We care because Katniss is starving. She's protecting her little sister. And we invest because she is out there bow hunting, which Matt pointed out is one of the most badass things a character can do. She even kills a lynx two pages in and sells the pelt. We invest in her resourcefulness and grit before the plot has even begun. Matt was very clear that this has nothing to do with the character being “likable.” He said his subtitle, Writing a Hero Anyone Will Love, doesn't mean the character has to be a good person. He described “hero” as both gender-neutral and morally neutral. A hero can be totally evil or totally good. What matters is that we believe, care, and invest. He demonstrated this beautifully by breaking down the first ten minutes of WeCrashed, where the characters of Adam and Rebekah Neumann are absolutely not likable, but we are completely hooked. Adam steals his neighbour's Chinese food through a carefully orchestrated con involving an imaginary beer. It's not admirable behaviour, but the tradecraft involved, as Matt put it—using a term from spy movies—makes us invest in him. We see a character trying to solve the big problem of his life, which is that he's poor and wants to be rich, and we want to see if he can pull it off. Actionable step: Go to the first page of your current work in progress. Does it achieve all three? Does the reader believe this is a real person with a distinctive voice? Do they care about the character's circumstances? And do they invest in the character's ability to handle what's coming? If even one of those three is missing, that's your revision priority. 2. Define the Dramatic Question: Who Are They Really? Will Storr, author of The Science of Storytelling, came on episode 490 and gave one of the most powerful frameworks I've ever heard for character-driven fiction. He explained that the human brain evolved language primarily to swap social information—in other words, to gossip. We are wired to monitor other people, to ask the question: who is this person when the chips are down? That's what Will calls the Dramatic Question, and it's what he believes lies at the heart of all compelling storytelling. It's not a question about plot. It's a question about the character's soul. And every scene in your novel should force the character to answer it. His example of Lawrence of Arabia is unforgettable. The Dramatic Question for the entire film is: who are you, Lawrence? Are you ordinary or are you extraordinary? At the beginning, Lawrence is a cocky, rebellious young soldier who believes his rebelliousness makes him superior. Every iconic scene in that three-hour film tests that belief. Sometimes Lawrence acts as though he truly is extraordinary—leading the Arabs into battle, being hailed as a god—and sometimes the world strips him bare and he sees himself as ordinary. Because it's a tragedy, he never overcomes his flaw. He doubles down on his belief that he's extraordinary until he becomes monstrous, culminating in that iconic scene where he lifts a bloody dagger and sees his own reflection with horror. Will also used Jaws to demonstrate how this works in a pure action thriller. Brody's dramatic question is simple: are you going to be old Brody who is terrified of the water, or new Brody who can overcome that fear? Every scene where the shark appears is really asking that question. And the last moment of the film isn't the shark blowing up. It's Brody swimming back through the water, saying he used to be scared of the water and he can't imagine why. Actionable step: Write down the Dramatic Question for your protagonist in a single sentence. Is it “Are you ordinary or extraordinary?” or “Are you brave enough to love again?” or “Will you sacrifice your principles for survival?” If you can't answer this with specificity, your character might still be a sketch rather than a person. 3. Get rid of Vague Flaws, and use Absolute Specificity This was one of Will Storr's most important points. He said that vague thinking about characters is really the enemy. When he teaches workshops and asks writers to describe their character's flaw, most of them say something like “they're very controlling.” And Will's response is: that's not good enough. Everyone is controlling. How are they controlling? What's the specific mechanism? He gave the example of a profile he read of Theresa May during the UK's Brexit chaos. Someone who knew her said that Theresa May's problem was that she always thinks she's the only adult in every room she goes into. Will said that stopped him in his tracks because it's so precise. If you define a character with that level of specificity, you can take them and put them in any genre, any situation—a spaceship, a Victorian drawing room, a school playground—and you will know exactly how they're going to behave. The same applies to Arthur Miller's Willy Loman in Death of a Salesman, as Will described it: a man who believes absolutely in capitalistic success and the idea that when you die, you're going to be weighed on a scale, just as God weighs you for sin, but now you're weighed for success. That's not a vague flaw. That's a worldview you can drop into any story and watch it combust. Will made another counterintuitive point that I found really valuable: writers often think that piling on multiple traits will create a complex character, but the opposite is true. Starting with one highly specific flaw and running it through the demands of a relentless plot is what generates complexity. You end up with a far more nuanced, original character than if you'd started with a laundry list of vague attributes. Actionable step: Take your protagonist's flaw and pressure-test it. Is it specific enough that you could place this character in any situation and predict their behaviour? If you're stuck at “she's stubborn” or “he's insecure,” keep pushing. What kind of stubborn? What kind of insecure? Find the diagnostic sentence—the Theresa May level of precision. 4. Understand the Heroine's Journey: Strength Through Connection Gail Carriger came on episode 550 to discuss her nonfiction book, The Heroine's Journey, and it completely reframed how I think about some of my own fiction. Gail explained that the core difference between the Hero's Journey and the Heroine's Journey comes down to how strength and victory are defined. The Hero's Journey is about strength through solo action. The hero must be continually isolated to get stronger. He goes out of civilisation, faces strife alone, and achieves victory through physical prowess and self-actualisation. The Heroine's Journey is the opposite. The heroine achieves her goals by activating a network. She's a delegator, a general. She identifies where she can't do something alone, finds the people who can help, and portions out the work for mutual gain. Gail put it simply: the heroine is very good at asking for help, which our culture tends to devalue but which is actually a powerful form of strength. Crucially, Gail stressed that gender is irrelevant to which journey you're writing. Her go-to examples are striking: the recent Wonder Woman film is practically a beat-for-beat hero's journey—Gilgamesh on screen, as Gail described it. Meanwhile, Harry Potter, both the first book and the series as a whole, is a classic heroine's journey. Harry's power comes from his network—Dumbledore's Army, the Order of the Phoenix, his friendships with Ron and Hermione. He doesn't defeat Voldemort alone. He defeats Voldemort because of love and connection. This distinction has real practical consequences for writers. If you're writing a hero's journey and you hit writer's block, Gail said, the solution is usually to isolate your hero further and pile on more strife. But if you're writing a heroine's journey, the solution is probably to throw a new character into the scene—someone who has advice to offer or a skill the heroine lacks. The actual solutions to writer's block are different depending on which narrative you're writing. As I reflected on my own work, I realised that my ARKANE thriller protagonist, Morgan Sierra, follows a hero's journey—she's a solo operative, a lone wolf like Jack Reacher or James Bond. But my Mapwalker fantasy series follows a heroine's journey, with Sienna and her group of friends working together. I hadn't consciously chosen those paths; the stories led me there. But understanding the framework helps me write more intentionally now. Actionable step: Identify which journey your protagonist is on. Does your character gain strength by being alone (hero) or by building connections (heroine)? This will inform every plot decision you make, from how they face obstacles to how your story ends. 5. Use ‘Metaphor Families' to Anchor Dialogue and Voice One of the most practical techniques Matt Bird shared on episode 624 is the idea of assigning each character a “metaphor family”—a specific well of language that they draw from. This gives each character a distinctive voice that goes beyond accent or dialect. Matt explained how in The Wire, one of the most beloved TV shows of all time, every character has a different metaphor family. What struck him was that Omar, this iconic character, never utters a single curse word in the entire series. His metaphor family is pirate. He talks about parlays, uses language that feels like it belongs in Pirates of the Caribbean, and it creates this incredible ironic counterpoint against his urban setting. It tells us immediately that this is a character who sees himself in a tradition of people that doesn't match his immediate surroundings. Matt also referenced the UK version of The Office, where Gareth works at a paper company but aspires to the military. So all of his language is drawn from a military metaphor family. He doesn't talk about filing and photocopying; he talks about tactics and discipline and being on the front line. This tells us that the character has a life and dreams beyond the immediate scene—and it's the gap between aspiration and reality that makes him both funny and believable. He pointed out that a metaphor family sometimes comes from a character's background, but it's often more interesting when it comes from their aspirations. What does your character want to be? What world do they fantasise about inhabiting? That's where their language should come from. In Star Wars, Obi-Wan Kenobi is a spiritual hermit, but his metaphor family is military. He uses the language of generals and commanders, and that ironic counterpoint is part of what makes him feel so rich. Actionable step: Assign each of your main characters a metaphor family. It could be based on their job, their background, or—more interestingly—their secret aspirations. Then go through your dialogue and make sure each character is consistently drawing from that well of language. If two characters sound the same when you strip away the dialogue tags, this is the fix. 6. Find the Diagnostic Detail: The Diagonal Toast Avoid clichéd character tags—the random scar, the eye patch, the mysterious limp—unless they serve a deep narrative purpose. Matt Bird on episode 624 was very funny about this: he pointed out that Nick Fury, Odin, and eventually Thor all have eye patches in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Eye patches are done, he said. You cannot do eye patches anymore. Instead, look for what I'm calling the “diagonal toast” detail, after a scene Matt described from Captain Marvel. In the film, Captain Marvel is trying to determine whether Nick Fury is who he says he is. She asks him to prove he isn't a shapeshifting alien. Fury shares biographical details—his history, his mother—but then she pushes further and says, name one more thing you couldn't possibly have made up about yourself. And Fury says: if toast is cut diagonally, I can't eat it. Matt said that detail is gold for a writer because it feels pulled from a real life. You can pull it from your own life and gift it to your characters, and the reader can tell it's not manufactured. He gave another example from The Sopranos: Tony Soprano's mother won't answer the phone after dark. The show's creator, David Chase, confirmed on the DVD commentary that this came from his own mother, who genuinely would not answer the phone after dark and couldn't explain why. Matt's practical advice was to keep a journal. Write down the strange, specific things that people do or say. Mine your own life for those hyper-specific details. You just need one per book. In my own writing, I've used this approach. In my ARKANE thrillers, my character Morgan Sierra has always been Angelina Jolie in my mind—specifically Jolie in Lara Croft or Mr and Mrs Smith. And Blake Daniel in my crime thriller series was based on Jesse Williams from Grey's Anatomy. I paste pictures of actors into my Scrivener projects. It helps with visuals, but also with the sense of the character, their energy and physicality. But visual details only take you so far. It's the behavioural quirks—the diagonal toast moments—that make a character feel genuinely alive. That said, physical character tags can work brilliantly when they serve the story. As I discuss in How to Write a Novel, Robert Galbraith's Cormoran Strike is an amputee, and his pain and the physical challenges of his prosthesis are a key part of every story—it's not a cosmetic detail, it's woven into the action and the character's psychology. My character Blake Daniel always wears gloves to cover the scars on his hands, which provides an angle into his wounded past as well as a visual cue for the reader. And of course, Harry Potter's lightning-shaped scar isn't just a mark—it's a direct connection to his nemesis and the mythology of the entire series. The rule of thumb is: if the tag tells us something about the character's interior life or connects to the plot, it's earning its place. If it's just there to make the character visually distinctive, it's probably a crutch. Game of Thrones takes character tags further with the family houses, each with their own mottos and sigils. The Starks say “Winter is coming” and their sigil is a dire wolf. Those aren't just labels—they're worldview made visible. Actionable step: Start a “diagonal toast” notebook. Every time you notice something strange and specific about someone's behaviour—something that feels too real to be made up—write it down. Then gift it to a character who needs more texture. 7. Displace Your Own Trauma into the Work Barbara Nickless shared something deeply personal on episode 732 that fundamentally changed how I think about putting pain onto the page. While starting At First Light, the first book in her Dr. Evan Wilding series, she lost her son to epilepsy—something called SUDEP, Sudden Unexplained Death in Epilepsy. One day he was there, and the next day he was gone. Barbara said that writing helped her cope with the trauma, that doing a deep dive into Old English literature and the Viking Age for the book's research became a lifeline. But here's what's important: she didn't give Dr. Evan Wilding her exact trauma. Evan Wilding is four feet five inches, and Barbara described how he has to walk through a world that won't adjust to him. That's its own form of learning to cope when circumstances are beyond your control. She displaced her genuine grief into the character's different but parallel struggle. When I asked her about the difference between writing for therapy and writing for an audience, she drew on her experience teaching creative writing to veterans through a collaboration between the US Department of Defense and the National Endowment for the Arts. She said she's found that she can pour her heartache into her characters and process it through them, even when writing professionally, and that the genuine emotion is what touches readers. We've all been through our own losses and griefs, so seeing how a character copes can be deeply meaningful. I've always found that putting my own pain onto the page is the most direct way to connect with a reader's soul. My character Morgan Sierra's musings on religion and the supernatural are often my own. Her restlessness, her fascination with the darker edges of faith—those come from me. But her Krav Maga fighting skills and her ability to kill the bad guys are definitely her own. That gap between what's mine and what's hers is where the fiction lives. Barbara also said something on that episode that I wrote down and stuck on my wall. She said the act of producing itself is a balm to the soul. I've been thinking about that ever since. On my own wall, I have “Measure your life by what you create.” Different words, same truth. Actionable step: If you're carrying something heavy—grief, anger, fear, regret—consider how you might displace it into a character's different but emotionally parallel struggle. Don't copy your exact situation; transform it. The emotion will be genuine, and the reader will feel it. 8. Write Diverse Characters as Real People When I spoke with Sarah Elisabeth Sawyer on episode 673—Sarah is Choctaw and a historical fiction author honoured by the Smithsonian's National Museum of the American Indian—she offered a perspective that every fiction writer needs to hear. The key message was to move away from stereotypes. Don't write your American Indian character as the “Wise Guide” who exists solely to dispense mystic wisdom to the white protagonist. Don't limit diverse characters to historical settings, as though they only exist in the past. Place them in normal, contemporary roles. Your spaceship captain, your forensic scientist, your small-town baker—any of them can be American Indian, or Nigerian, or Japanese, and their heritage should be a lived-in part of their identity, not the sole reason they exist in the story. I write international thrillers and dark fantasy, and my fiction is populated with characters from all over the world. I have a multi-cultural family and I've lived in many places and travelled widely, so I've met, worked with, and had relationships with people from different cultures. I find story ideas through travel, and if I set my books in a certain place, then the story is naturally populated with the people who live there. As I discuss in my book, How to Write a Novel, the world is a diverse place, so your fiction needs to be populated with all kinds of people. If I only populated my fiction with characters like me, they would be boring novels. There are many dimensions of difference—race, nationality, sex, age, body type, ability, religion, gender, sexual orientation, socio-economic status, class, culture, education level—and even then, don't assume that similar types of people think the same way. Some authors worry they will make mistakes. We live in a time of outrage, and some authors have been criticised for writing outside their own experience. So is it too dangerous to try? Of course not. The media amplifies outliers, and most authors include diverse characters in every book without causing offence because they work hard to get it right. It's about awareness, research, and intent. Actionable step: Audit the cast of your current work in progress. Have you written a mono-cultural perspective for all of them? If so, consider who could bring a different background, perspective, or set of cultural specifics to the story. Not as a token addition, but as a real person with a real life. 9. Respect Tribal and Cultural Specificity Sarah Elisabeth Sawyer on episode 673 was emphatic about one thing: never treat diverse groups as monolithic. If you're writing a Native American character, you must research the specific nation. Choctaw is not Navajo, just as British is not French. Sarah described the distinct cultural markers of the Choctaw people—the diamond pattern you'll see on traditional shirts and dresses, which represents the diamondback rattlesnake. They have distinct dances and songs. She said that if she saw someone in traditional dress at a distance, she would know whether they were Choctaw based on what they were wearing. She encouraged writers who want to write specifically about a nation to get to know those people. Go to events, go to a powwow, learn about the individual culture. She noted that a big misconception is that American Indians exist only in the past—she stressed that they are still here, still living their cultures, and fiction should reflect that present reality. I took a similar approach when writing Destroyer of Worlds, which is set mostly in India. I read books about Hindu myth, watched documentaries about the sadhus, and had one of my Indian readers from Mumbai check my cultural references. For Risen Gods, set in New Zealand with a young Maori protagonist, I studied books about Maori mythology and fiction by Maori authors, and had a male Maori reader check for cultural issues. Research is simply an act of empathy. The practical takeaway is this: if you're going to include a character from a specific cultural background, do the work. Use specific cultural details rather than generic signifiers. Sarah talked about how even she fell into stereotypes when she was first writing, until her mother pointed them out. If someone from within a culture can fall into those traps, the rest of us certainly can. Do the research, try your best, ask for help, and apologise if you need to. Actionable step: If you're writing a character from a specific culture, identify three to five sensory or behavioural details that are particular to that culture—not the generic version, but the real, researched, lived-in version. Consider hiring a sensitivity reader from that community to check your work. 10. Give Your Protagonist a Morally Neutral ‘Hero' Status Matt Bird was clear about this on episode 624: the word “hero” simply means the protagonist, the person we follow through the story. It's a functional role, not a moral label. We don't have to like them. We don't even have to root for their goals in a moral sense. We just have to find them compelling enough to invest our attention in their problem-solving. Think of Succession, where every member of the Roy family is varying degrees of awful, and yet the show was utterly compelling. Or WeCrashed, where Adam Neumann is a narcissistic con artist, but we can't look away because he's trying to solve the enormous problem of building an empire from nothing, and the tradecraft he employs is fascinating. As I wrote in How to Write a Novel, readers must want to spend time with your characters. They don't have to be lovable or even likable—that will depend on your genre and story choices—but they have to be captivating enough that we want to spend time with them. A character who is trying to solve a massive problem will naturally draw investment from the audience, even if we wouldn't want to have tea with them. Will Storr extended this idea by pointing out that the audience will actually root for a character to solve their problem even if the audience doesn't actually want the character's goal to be achieved in the real world. We don't really want more billionaires, but we invested in Adam Neumann's rise because that was the problem the story posed, and our brains are wired to invest in problem-solving. This connects to something deeper: what does your character want, and why? As I explore in How to Write a Novel, desire operates on multiple levels. Take a character like Phil, who joins the military during wartime. On the surface, she wants to serve her country. But she also wants to escape her dead-end town and learn new skills. Deeper still, her father and grandfather served, and by joining up, she hopes to finally earn their respect. And perhaps deepest of all, her father died on a mission under mysterious circumstances, and she wants to find out what happened from the inside. That layering of motivation is what turns a flat character into a three-dimensional one. The audience doesn't need to be told all of this explicitly. It can emerge through action, dialogue, and the choices the character makes under pressure. But you, the writer, need to know it. You need to know what your character really wants deep down, because that desire—more than any external plot device—is what drives the story forward. And your antagonist needs the same depth. They also want something, often diametrically opposed to your protagonist, and they need a reason that makes sense to them. In my ARKANE thriller Tree of Life, my antagonist is the heiress of a Brazilian mining empire who wants to restore the Earth to its original state to atone for the destruction caused by her father's company. She's part of a radical ecological group who believe the only way to restore Nature is to end all human life. It's extreme, but in an era of climate change, it's a motivation readers can understand—even if they disagree with the solution. Actionable step: If you're struggling to make a morally grey character work, make sure their problem is big enough and their methods are specific and interesting enough that we invest in the how, even if we're ambivalent about the what. 11. Build Vibrant Side Characters Gail Carriger made a point on episode 550 that was equal parts craft advice and business strategy. In a Heroine's Journey model, side characters aren't just fodder to be killed off to motivate the hero. They form a network. And because you don't have to kill them—unlike in a hero's journey, where allies are often betrayed or removed so the hero can be further isolated—you can pick up those side characters and give them their own books. Gail said this creates a really voracious reader base. You write one series with vivid side characters, and then readers fall in love with those side characters and want their stories. So you write spin-offs. The romance genre does this brilliantly—think of the Bridgerton books, where each sibling gets their own novel. The side character in one book becomes the protagonist in the next. Barbara Nickless experienced this firsthand with her Dr. Evan Wilding series. She has River Wilding, Evan's adventurous brother, and Diana, the axe-throwing research assistant, and her editor has already expressed interest in a spin-off series with those characters. Barbara described creating characters she wants to spend time with, or characters who give her nightmares but also intrigue her. That's the dual test: are they interesting enough for you to write, and interesting enough for readers to demand more? As I wrote in How to Write a Novel, characters that span series can deepen the reader's relationship with them as you expand their backstory into new plots. Readers will remember the character more than the plot or the book title, and look forward to the next instalment because they want more time with those people. British crime author Angela Marsons described it as readers feeling like returning to her characters is like putting on a pair of old slippers. Actionable step: Look at your supporting cast. Is there a side character who is vivid enough to carry their own story? If not, what could you add—a specific hobby, a distinct voice, a compelling backstory—that would make readers want more of them? 12. Use Voice as a Rhythmic Tool Voice is one of the most important elements of novel writing, and Matt Bird helped me think about it in a technical, mechanical way that I found really useful. He pointed out that the ratio of periods to commas defines a character's internal reality. A staccato rhythm—lots of periods, short sentences—suggests a character who is certain, grounded, or perhaps survivalist and traumatised. Katniss in The Hunger Games has a period-heavy voice. She's in survival mode. She doesn't have time for complexity or qualification. A flowing, comma-heavy style suggests someone more academic, more nuanced, or possibly more scattered and manipulative. The character who qualifies everything, who adds sub-clauses and digressions, is a different kind of person from the character who speaks in declarations. This is something you can actually measure. Pull up a passage of your character's dialogue or internal monologue and count the periods versus the commas. If the rhythm doesn't match who the character is supposed to be, you've found a mismatch you can fix. Sentence length is the heartbeat of your character's persona. And voice extends beyond rhythm to the words themselves. As I discussed in the metaphor families tip, each character should draw from a distinctive well of language. But voice also encompasses their relationship to silence. Some characters talk around the thing they mean; others say it straight. Some are self-deprecating; others are blunt to the point of rudeness. All of these choices are character choices, not just style choices. I find it useful to read my dialogue aloud—and not just to check for naturalness, but to hear whether each character sounds distinct. If you could swap dialogue lines between two characters and nobody would notice, you have a voice problem. One practical test: cover the dialogue tags and see if you can tell who's speaking from the words alone. Actionable step: Choose a key passage from your protagonist's point of view and read it aloud. Does the rhythm match the character? A soldier under fire should not sound like a philosophy professor at a wine tasting. Adjust the ratio of periods to commas until the voice feels right. 13. Link Character and Plot Until They're Inseparable Will Storr made the case on episode 490 that the number one problem he sees in the writing he encounters—in workshops, in submissions, even in published books—is that the characters and the plots are unconnected. There's a story happening, and there are people in it, but the story isn't a product of who those people are. He said a story should be like life. In our lives, the plots are intimately connected to who we are as characters. The goals we pursue, the obstacles we face, the same problems that keep recurring—these are products of our personalities, our flaws, our specific ways of being in the world. His framework is that your plot should be designed specifically to plot against your character. You've got a character with a particular flaw; the plot exists to test that flaw over and over until the character either transforms or doubles down and explodes. Jaws is the perfect example. Brody is afraid of water. A shark shows up in the coastal town he's responsible for protecting. The entire plot is engineered to force him to confront the one thing he cannot face. Will pointed out that the whole plot of Jaws is structured around Brody's flaw. It begins with the shark arriving, the midpoint is when Brody finally gets the courage to go into the water, and the very final scene isn't the shark blowing up—it's Brody swimming back through the water. Even a film that's ninety-eight percent action is, at its core, structured around a character with a character flaw. This is the standard I aspire to in my own work, even in my action-heavy thrillers. The external plot should be a mirror of the internal struggle. When those two are aligned, the story becomes irresistible. Will also made an important point about series fiction, which is where most commercial authors live. I asked him how this works when your character can't be transformed at the end of every book because there has to be a next book. His answer was elegant: you don't cure them. Episodic TV characters like Fleabag or David Brent or Basil Fawlty never truly change—and the fact that they don't change is actually the source of the comedy. But every episode throws a new story event at them that tests and exposes their flaw. You just keep throwing story events at them again and again. That's a soap opera, a sitcom, and a book series. As I wrote in How to Write a Novel, character flaws are aspects of personality that affect the person so much that facing and overcoming them becomes central to the plot. In Jaws, the protagonist Brody is afraid of the water, but he has to overcome that flaw to destroy the killer shark and save the town. But remember, your characters should feel like real people, so never define them purely by their flaws. The character addicted to painkillers might also be a brilliant and successful female lawyer who gets up at four in the morning to work out at the gym, likes eighties music, and volunteers at the local dog shelter at weekends. Character wounds are different from flaws. They're formed from life experience and are part of your character's backstory—traumatic events that happened before the events of your novel but shape the character's reactions in the present. In my ARKANE thrillers, Morgan Sierra's husband Elian died in her arms during a military operation. This happened before the series begins, but her memories of it recur when she faces a firefight, and she struggles to find happiness again for fear of losing someone she loves once more. And then there's the perennial advice: show, don't tell. Most writers have heard this so many times that it's easy to nod and then promptly write scenes that tell rather than show. Basically, you need to reveal your character through action and dialogue, rather than explanation. In my thriller Day of the Vikings, Morgan Sierra fights a Neo-Viking in the halls of the British Museum and brings him down with Krav Maga. That fight scene isn't just about showing action. It opens up questions about her backstory, demonstrates character, and moves the plot forward. Telling would be something like: “Morgan was an expert in Krav Maga.” Showing is the reader discovering it through the scene itself. Actionable step: Look at the main plot events of your novel. For each major turning point, ask: does this scene specifically test my protagonist's flaw? If not, can you redesign the scene so that it does? The tighter the connection between character and plot, the more powerful the story. 14. The ‘Maestra' Approach: Write Out of Order If you're a discovery writer like me, you may feel like the deep character work I've been describing sounds more suited to plotters. But Barbara Nickless gave me a beautiful metaphor on episode 732 that reframes it entirely. Barbara described her evolving writing process as being like a maestra standing in front of an orchestra. Sometimes you bring in the horns—a certain theme—and sometimes you bring in the strings—a certain character—and sometimes you turn to the soloist. It's a more organic and jumping-around process than linear writing, and Barbara said she's only recently given herself permission to work this way. When I told her that I use Scrivener to write in scenes out of order and then drag and drop them into a structure later, she was genuinely intrigued. And this is how I've always worked. I'll see the story in my mind like a movie trailer—flashes of the big emotional scenes, the pivotal confrontations, the moments of revelation—and I write those first. I don't know how they hang together until quite late in the process. Then I'll move scenes around, print the whole thing out, and figure out the connective tissue. The point is that discovery writers can absolutely build deep characters. Sometimes writing the big emotional scenes first is how you discover who the character is before you fill in the rest. You don't need a twenty-page character worksheet or a 200-page outline like Jeffery Deaver. You need to be willing to follow the character into the unknown and trust that the structure will emerge. As Barbara said, she writes to know what she's thinking. That's the discovery writer's credo. And I would add: I write to know who my characters are. Actionable step: If you're stuck on your current chapter, skip it. Write the scene that's burning in your imagination, even if it's from the middle or the end. That scene might be the key to unlocking who your character really is. 15. Use Research to Help with Empathy Research shouldn't just be about factual accuracy—it's a tool for finding the sensory details that create empathy. Barbara Nickless described research as almost an excuse to explore things that fascinate her, and I feel exactly the same way. I would go so far as to say that writing is an excuse for me to explore the things that interest me. Barbara and I both travel for our stories. For her Dr. Evan Wilding books, she did deep research into Old English literature and the Viking Age. For my thriller End of Days, I transcribed hours of video from Appalachian snake-handling churches on YouTube to understand the worldview of the worshippers, because my antagonist was brought up in that tradition. I couldn't just make that up. I had to hear their language, feel their conviction, understand why they would hold venomous serpents as an act of faith. Barbara also mentioned getting to Israel and the West Bank for research, and I've been to both places too. Finding that one specific sensory detail—the smell of a particular location, the specific way an expert handles a tool, the sound of a particular kind of music—makes the character's life feel lived-in. It's the difference between a character who is described as living in a place and a character who inhabits it. As I wrote in How to Write a Novel, don't write what you know. Write what you want to learn about. I love research. It's part of why I'm an author in the first place. I take any excuse to dive into a world different from my own. Research using books, films, podcasts, and travel, and focus particularly on sources produced by people from the worldview you want to understand. Actionable step: For your next piece of character research, go beyond reading. Watch a documentary, visit a location, talk to someone who lives the experience. Find one sensory detail—a smell, a sound, a texture—that you couldn't have invented. That detail will make your character feel real. Bonus: Measure Your Life by What You Create In an age of AI and a tsunami of content, your ultimate brand protection is the quality of your human creation. Barbara Nickless said that the act of producing itself is a balm to the soul, and I believe that with every fibre of my being. Don't be afraid to take that step back, like I did with my deadlifting. Take the time to master these deeper craft skills. It might feel like you're slowing down or going backwards by not chasing the latest marketing trend, but it's the only way to step forward into a sustainable, high-quality career. Your characters are your signature. No AI can replicate the specificity of your lived experience, the emotional truth of your displaced trauma, or the sensory details you've gathered from a life of curiosity and travel. Those are yours. Pour them into your characters, and they will resonate for years to come. Actionable Takeaway: Identify the Dramatic Question for your current protagonist. Can you state it in a single sentence with the kind of specificity Will Storr described? Is it as clear as “Are you ordinary or extraordinary?” or “Are you the only adult in the room?” If you can't answer it with that kind of precision, your character might still be a sketch. Give them a diagonal toast moment today. Find the one hyper-specific detail that proves they are not an imitation of life. And then ask yourself: does your plot test your character's flaw in every major scene? If you can align those two things—a precisely defined character and a plot that exists to test them—you will have a story that readers cannot put down. References and Deep Dives The episodes I've referenced today are all available with full transcripts at TheCreativePenn.com: Episode 732 — Facing Fears, and Writing Unique Characters with Barbara Nickless Episode 673 — Writing Choctaw Characters and Diversity in Fiction with Sarah Elisabeth Sawyer Episode 624 — Writing Characters with Matt Bird Episode 550 — The Heroine's Journey with Gail Carriger Episode 490 — How Character Flaws Shape Story with Will Storr Books mentioned: The Secrets of Character: Writing a Hero Anyone Will Love by Matt Bird The Science of Storytelling by Will Storr The Heroine's Journey by Gail Carriger How to Write a Novel: From Idea to Book by Joanna Penn You can find all my books for authors at CreativePennBooks.com and my fiction and memoir at JFPennBooks.com Happy writing! How was this episode created? This episode was initiated created by NotebookLM based on YouTube videos of the episodes linked above from YouTube/TheCreativePenn, plus my text chapters on character from How to Write a Novel. NotebookLM created a blog post from the material and then I expanded it and fact checked it with Claude.ai 4.6 Opus, and then I used my voice clone at ElevenLabs to narrate it. The post Writing Characters: 15 Actionable Tips For Writing Deep Character first appeared on The Creative Penn.

We're heading back to Tromaville, but is it all a little too polished? We're watching The Toxic Avenger reboot this time on Harmless Phosphorescence!   Support the show and get early access and exclusive content at  https://www.patreon.com/harmlessentertainment   https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCEDmdtUAW_pJYCJfaZV7Unw/live   https://www.reddit.com/r/harmlessentertainment   Buy some Merch! https://www.teepublic.com/stores/attention-hellmart-shoppers   Check out Executive Producer Michael Beckwith's movie website at https://upallnightmovies.com/   Ranked: #152   RANKINGS   1 Endgame 2 Spider-Man No Way Home 3 Infinity War 4 Superman 2025 5 Logan 6 Deadpool & Wolverine 7 Captain America: Civil War 8 The Avengers 9 The Dark Knight 10 THE Suicide Squad 11 Thor Ragnarok 12 Guardians of the Galaxy vol 3 13 Black Panther 14 Iron Man 15 Captain America: The Winter Soldier 16 Guardians of the Galaxy vol 2 17 Guardians of the Galaxy 18 Batman Begins 19 Batman 89 20 Spider-Man 2 21 Spider-Man Homecoming 22 Spider-Man Far From Home 23 Black Panther: Wakanda Forever 24 Thunderbolts* 25 Thor: Love and Thunder 26 Deadpool 2 27 Deadpool 28 The Batman 29 Captain America: The First Avenger 30 Spider-Man 31 X-Men: Days of Future Past 32 Dr Strange in the Multiverse of Madness 33 Shang-Chi 34 Joker 35 Captain Marvel 36 Ant-Man 37 Blue Beetle 38 Black Widow 39 Ant-Man and the Wasp 40 Eternals 41 Avengers: The Age of Ultron 42 Birds Of Prey 43 Wonder Woman 1984 44 Wonder Woman 45 Iron Man 3 46 The Dark Knight Rises 47 Superman 1978 48 The Marvels 49 Dr Strange 50 Thor 51 Kick-Ass 52 X-Men First Class 53 Hellboy 54 X2 55 Darkman 56 Iron Man 2 57 Swamp Thing 58 Hellboy II: The Golden Army 59 Watchmen 60 X-Men 2000 61 Batman Returns 62 Blade 63 Defendor 64 Unbreakable 65 The Crow 66 Batman 66 67 The Fantastic Four: First Steps 68 Orgazmo 69 Superman II 70 Ant-Man & The Wasp: Quantumania 71 Shazam! 72 Thor: The Dark World 73 The Wolverine 74 Superman Returns 75 Blade II 76 Mystery Men 77 Super 78 Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 79 Venom: The Last Dance 80 Chronicle 81 Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance 82 Man of Steel 83 Venom: Let There Be Carnage 84 The Green Hornet 85 The Incredible Hulk 86 Sky High 87 The Mask 88 Constantine 89 The New Mutants 90 The Rocketeer 91 Superman III 92 Buffy the Vampire Slayer 93 The Return of Swamp Thing 94 The Flash 95 Shazam! Fury of the Gods 96 Superhero Movie 97 Blade Trinity 98 Batman V Superman: Dawn of justice 99 Venom 100 Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom 101 Captain America: Brave New World 102 Black Adam 103 Fantastic Four: The Rise of Silver Surfer 104 Hancock 105 Fantastic Four 106 Madame Web 107 Blankman 108 Supergirl 109 The Crow 2024 110 Hellboy 2019 111 Power Rangers 112 The Meteor Man 113 Justice League 114 X-Men Last Stand 115 Van Helsing 116 Spiderman 3 117 The Amazing Spider-Man 118 TMNT2 119 Superman and the Mole Men 120 Green Lantern 121 Ghost Rider 122 TMNT3 123 Hero At Large 124 Push 125 Jumper 126 Condorman 127 Howard The Duck 128 Aquaman 129 Punisher: War Zone 130 Toxic Avenger Part II 131 TMNT: OOTS 132 TMNT14 133 Hulk 134 Bloodshot 135 Daredevil 136 The Crow: City of Angels 137 The Punisher 04 138 The Punisher 89 139 Batman Forever 140 Kick Ass 2 141 Steel 142 Glass 143 The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen 144 The Amazing Spider-Man 2 145 X-Men: Apocalypse 146 Split 147 Suicide Squad 148 Brightburn 149 X-Men Origins: Wolverine 150 The Adventures of Sharkboy and Lavagirl 151 Sgt Kabukiman NYPD 152 The Toxic Avenger 2025 153 The Phantom 154 Toxic Avenger 155 The Mighty Morphin Power Rangers 156 The Shadow 157 The Toxic Avenger Part III 158 Spawn 159 Batman and Robin 160 Elektra 161 Morbius 162 My Super Ex-Girlfriend 163 Zoom 164 Underdog 165 Catwoman 166 The Spirit 167 Jonah Hex 168 Fant4stic 169 Max Steel 170 Superman IV: The Quest For Peace 171 Dark Phoenix 172 Citizen Toxie: The Toxic Avenger IV 173 Fast Color 174 Joker Folie a deux 175 Kraven The Hunter 176 Archenemy 177 Son of the Mask 178 The Crow: Wicked Prayer 179 Super Capers 180 All Superheroes Must Die

In this episode, the hosts conclude their superhero series by discussing the representation of women in superhero films and ranking their top superhero movies. They engage in a lively debate about various films, exploring both popular and lesser-known titles. The conversation highlights the importance of quality in movie selections and showcases the hosts' camaraderie and shared love for film. In this engaging conversation, the hosts delve into various superhero films, discussing their impact, box office performance, and cultural significance. They explore the Matrix franchise, the Old Guard, Black Widow, Black Panther, Kill Bill, Everything Everywhere All At Once, Captain Marvel, Wonder Woman, and The Marvels, providing insights and personal opinions on each film. The discussion also touches on the future of anime, showcasing the hosts' passion for the genre.

We have Astonishing X-Men artist Philip Sevy on the podcast today! We discuss their career in comics, from breaking into the industry via Top Cow to working on Astonishing X-Men on Marvel Unlimited! Philip shares insights into their process as an artist and what it was like discovering the X-Men! 

Kelly Sue DeConnick from 2012 lays out her Carol Danvers plans. They led to 32 issues a big movie hit and a new wave of Marvel readers 

Finally, Pedro Pascal is getting some work. We're watching The Fantastic Four: First Steps this time on Harmless Phosphorescence! Support the show and get early access and exclusive content at https://www.patreon.com/harmlessentertainment https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCEDmdtUAW_pJYCJfaZV7Unw/live https://www.reddit.com/r/harmlessentertainment Buy some Merch! https://www.teepublic.com/stores/attention-hellmart-shoppers Check out Executive Producer Michael Beckwith's movie website at https://upallnightmovies.com/ Ranked: #67 RANKINGS 1 Endgame 2 Spider-Man No Way Home 3 Infinity War 4 Superman 2025 5 Logan 6 Deadpool & Wolverine 7 Captain America: Civil War 8 The Avengers 9 The Dark Knight 10 THE Suicide Squad 11 Thor Ragnarok 12 Guardians of the Galaxy vol 3 13 Black Panther 14 Iron Man 15 Captain America: The Winter Soldier 16 Guardians of the Galaxy vol 2 17 Guardians of the Galaxy 18 Batman Begins 19 Batman 89 20 Spider-Man 2 21 Spider-Man Homecoming 22 Spider-Man Far From Home 23 Black Panther: Wakanda Forever 24 Thunderbolts* 25 Thor: Love and Thunder 26 Deadpool 2 27 Deadpool 28 The Batman 29 Captain America: The First Avenger 30 Spider-Man 31 X-Men: Days of Future Past 32 Dr Strange in the Multiverse of Madness 33 Shang-Chi 34 Joker 35 Captain Marvel 36 Ant-Man 37 Blue Beetle 38 Black Widow 39 Ant-Man and the Wasp 40 Eternals 41 Avengers: The Age of Ultron 42 Birds Of Prey 43 Wonder Woman 1984 44 Wonder Woman 45 Iron Man 3 46 The Dark Knight Rises 47 Superman 1978 48 The Marvels 49 Dr Strange 50 Thor 51 Kick-Ass 52 X-Men First Class 53 Hellboy 54 X2 55 Darkman 56 Iron Man 2 57 Swamp Thing 58 Hellboy II: The Golden Army 59 Watchmen 60 X-Men 2000 61 Batman Returns 62 Blade 63 Defendor 64 Unbreakable 65 The Crow 66 Batman 66 67 The Fantastic Four: First Steps 68 Orgazmo 69 Superman II 70 Ant-Man & The Wasp: Quantumania 71 Shazam! 72 Thor: The Dark World 73 The Wolverine 74 Superman Returns 75 Blade II 76 Mystery Men 77 Super 78 Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 79 Venom: The Last Dance 80 Chronicle 81 Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance 82 Man of Steel 83 Venom: Let There Be Carnage 84 The Green Hornet 85 The Incredible Hulk 86 Sky High 87 The Mask 88 Constantine 89 The New Mutants 90 The Rocketeer 91 Superman III 92 Buffy the Vampire Slayer 93 The Return of Swamp Thing 94 The Flash 95 Shazam! Fury of the Gods 96 Superhero Movie 97 Blade Trinity 98 Batman V Superman: Dawn of justice 99 Venom 100 Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom 101 Captain America: Brave New World 102 Black Adam 103 Fantastic Four: The Rise of Silver Surfer 104 Hancock 105 Fantastic Four 106 Madame Web 107 Blankman 108 Supergirl 109 The Crow 2024 110 Hellboy 2019 111 Power Rangers 112 The Meteor Man 113 Justice League 114 X-Men Last Stand 115 Van Helsing 116 Spiderman 3 117 The Amazing Spider-Man 118 TMNT2 119 Superman and the Mole Men 120 Green Lantern 121 Ghost Rider 122 TMNT3 123 Hero At Large 124 Push 125 Jumper 126 Condorman 127 Howard The Duck 128 Aquaman 129 Punisher: War Zone 130 Toxic Avenger Part II 131 TMNT: OOTS 132 TMNT14 133 Hulk 134 Bloodshot 135 Daredevil 136 The Crow: City of Angels 137 The Punisher 04 138 The Punisher 89 139 Batman Forever 140 Kick Ass 2 141 Steel 142 Glass 143 The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen 144 The Amazing Spider-Man 2 145 X-Men: Apocalypse 146 Split 147 Suicide Squad 148 Brightburn 149 X-Men Origins: Wolverine 150 The Adventures of Sharkboy and Lavagirl 151 Sgt Kabukiman NYPD 152 The Phantom 153 Toxic Avenger 154 The Mighty Morphin Power Rangers 155 The Shadow 156 The Toxic Avenger Part III 157 Spawn 158 Batman and Robin 159 Elektra 160 Morbius 161 My Super Ex-Girlfriend 162 Zoom 163 Underdog 164 Catwoman 165 The Spirit 166 Jonah Hex 167 Fant4stic 168 Max Steel 169 Superman IV: The Quest For Peace 170 Dark Phoenix 171 Citizen Toxie: The Toxic Avenger IV 172 Fast Color 173 Joker Folie a deux 174 Kraven The Hunter 175 Archenemy 176 Son of the Mask 177 The Crow: Wicked Prayer 178 Super Capers 179 All Superheroes Must Die

Want to listen to this episode ad-free? Visit our Patreon! Welcome true believers to X-Men Horoscopes where each week our host Lodro Rinzler is in conversation with a special guest to discuss the X-Men issue that aligns with a significant month and year from their life and what that issue reveals about their future. This week we have the extremely talented comic writer Alyssa Wong on the show to talk about their Psylocke, Deadpool and many, many other series. Lodro blows their mind by revealing that they have created over 97 characters for Marvel. We talk about their writing process, Shinobi Shaw hanging out in bathtubs, and a bonkers Shadow King issue that came out during their birth month and year, Uncanny X-Men 278. Also in this episode: - The Shadow King is big - Shinobi Shaw is a sh*tty f*ckboy with daddy issues - Don't bend your enemies to your will; it never goes well for you - Thieves should always dress in bright gold armor...so as to be inconspicuous - Rogue makes out with the Shadow King - Gambit versus Multiple Man = a great fight - Nightcrawler‘s sister girlfriend is back All this plus we ask a question of you, dear listener: What did Moira do in the bedroom that made Banshee turn into a prude? And what does any of this mean for Alyssa's future? Tune in to find out! Alyssa Wong writes award-winning fiction, comics, and games. Their work has won the Nebula, World Fantasy, Alfie, and Locus Awards, and been shortlisted for the Hugo, Bram Stoker, Shirley Jackson, and Campbell Awards. They are a story architect of Star Wars: The High Republic and co-authored the middle-grade novel Escape From Valo (2024).   Alyssa's comics include Marvel's Psylocke, Deadpool, Alligator Loki, Captain Marvel, Iron Fist, and the GLAAD Award-winning Doctor Aphra Vol 2; Spirit World and Batman: Urban Legends; and titles for Dark Horse and IDW. Previously, Alyssa was a writer at Blizzard Entertainment, where they worked on Overwatch and Overwatch 2. They live in North Carolina and are online as @crashwong. More of Lodro Rinzler's work can be found here and here and you can follow the podcast on Instagram at xmenpanelsdaily where we post X-Men comic panels...daily. His BRAND NEW BOOK is coming out next month - You Are Good, You are Enough. Have a question or comment for a future episode? Reach out at xmenhoroscopes.com Want to listen to these episodes early/ad-free and get your own X-Men Horoscope read/an awesome t-shirt? Check out our brand-new patreon! Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Episode Notes Ugh, the heroes of today. Always with their nose in their gadgets. Game boys? Maybe try a Save Lives, huh Carol? - Parents of the Silent Generation back in the 90's or something, idk man I wasn't really chatting with them back then. Anyway: Carol makes a phone call. Today's scene can be found at: Captain Marvel [49:08-49:29]. You can find us on Bluesky @timelinescav! And individually you can find your hosts at @ColinMParker and @Jamienerdgirl. BIG thank you for the intro and outro music from @NBramald! Check out his website at https://www.nickbramaldcomposer.co.uk. If you need music for any occasion, he's your man.Read transcript

The Road to Doomsday continues as Jarod and Taylore travel back to the 90's to go higher, further, faster with Captain Marvel!Sunday's Bloody Mary: https://sundaysbloodymary.com/shop/ Luminous Odyssey:https://www.youtube.com/c/AllRemainingSystems Mitch692 Channel: https://www.youtube.com/@TheMitch692Channel Help us out by chuckin' a buck on our Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/thenerdacademypodcast

At Last! It's Superman vs Captain Marvel!   Join David, Peter and a huge cast of talented guests as they bring you the conclusion of the 1976 JLA/JSA/Shazam crossover.   You can find some of our contributors with the following links -   Brandon "Superman" Peters is currently covering the 1966 Batman TV series at https://thebrandonpetersshow.com/ Kenny “King Kull” Smith and various co-hosts cover all things Doctor Who at https://soundcloud.com/powerof3pod  Ross “Jay Garrick” Aitken and Kirby "Barry Allen"at https://stopletsteamup.libsyn.com/ Max “Mercury” Traver covers Weird War Tales at https://weirdwarriorspodcast.podbean.com/ The Irredeemable "Alan Scott" Shag hosts the Justice Society in the 90s  Podcast at https://fireandwaterpodcast.com/show/jsapresents/ Paul "Brainiac" French can be found on the Legion of Substitute Podcasters at https://paulfrench.ca/losp/   You can find Martin Gray's comic review blog at https://dangermart.blog/   And finally, the official Elliot S! Maggin website is at https://elliot.maggin.com/ and you can find Elliot's latest book, LEXCORP, here http://bit.ly/3DfVL02   A huge thank you to all our guest voice artists.   Email us at theearth2podcast@gmail.com Facebook www.facebook.com/theearth2podcast Instagram www.instagram.com/theearth2podcast Twitter www.twitter.com/podcast_earth2 Leave us a Voicemail at www.speakpipe.com/theearth2podcast Find our Linktree at https://linktr.ee/theearth2podcast   #DCCOMICS #JLA #JSA #SHAZAM #ELLIOTSMAGGIN  #GREENLANTERN #IBIS #BRAINIAC #MRATOM #SUPERMAN #CAPTAINMARVEL #KINGKULL #MARYMARVEL #THEFLASH #ROCKOFETERNITY

MRC finishes our Magical Mystery Tour through September 1968, with Iron Man 5, Captain America 105, Captain Marvel 5, and Avengers 56! We've finally created the Torment Nexus! Check it out!

Jim Starlin is the Eisner Award Hall of Famer who created Thanos, Drax the Destroyer, Pip the Troll, and Gamora, and co-created Shang-Chi with Steve Englehart. He brought the Infinity Gauntlet into the Marvel Universe and took Jason Todd out of the DC Universe (for a little while anyway). His creator-owned epic, Dreadstar, is currently being collected in a series of beautiful softcover omnibus editions by Dark Horse Comics.For TWO HOURS of bonus content — including 20 more minutes of our conversation with Jim Starlin where we talk about who owns Thanos, why Captain Marvel has stayed dead, and the infamous "1,000 Clowns" Warlock story, plus 21 more Marvel comics in the Mighty MBTM Checklist — support us at patreon.com/marvelbythemonth. $5 a month gets you instant access to our bonus feed of almost 200 extended and exclusive episodes. $10 a month lets you help pick the comics we cover in depth and gets you a shout-out at the end of the episode! Stories Covered in this Episode:"The Final Threat" - Avengers Annual #7, written by Jim Starlin, art by Jim Starlin with Joe Rubenstein, letters by Tom Orzechowski, colors by Petra Goldberg, edited by Archie Goodwin, ©1977 Marvel Comics "Marvel by the Month" theme v. 4 written and performed by Robb Milne. All incidental music by Robb Milne.Visit us on the internet (and buy some stuff) at marvelbythemonth.com, follow us on Bluesky at @marvelbythemonth.com and Instagram (for now) at @marvelbythemonth, and support us on Patreon at patreon.com/marvelbythemonth.Much of our historical context information comes from Wikipedia. Please join us in supporting them at wikimediafoundation.org. And many thanks to Mike's Amazing World of Comics, an invaluable resource for release dates and issue information. (RIP Mike.)

Episode Notes Sometimes, all you need is little reminders to give you the context you need to remember something from the past. Though sometimes life reminds you that even when something stares you in the face you can have no recollection of it. Kinda like our partying days, amiright? (We were not invited to a lot) Today's scene can be found at: Captain Marvel [46:10-48:36]. You can find us on Bluesky @timelinescav! And individually you can find your hosts at @ColinMParker and @Jamienerdgirl. and . BIG thank you for the intro and outro music from @NBramald! Check out his website at https://www.nickbramaldcomposer.co.uk. If you need music for any occasion, he's your man.Read transcript

What are all these colors doing in my DC movie? They rebooted the universe and made a brand new Superman on Harmless Phosphorescence!   Support the show and get early access and exclusive content at  https://www.patreon.com/harmlessentertainment   https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCEDmdtUAW_pJYCJfaZV7Unw/live   https://www.reddit.com/r/harmlessentertainment   Buy some Merch! https://www.teepublic.com/stores/attention-hellmart-shoppers   Check out Executive Producer Michael Beckwith's movie website at https://upallnightmovies.com/   Ranked: #4   RANKINGS   1 Endgame 2 Spider-Man No Way Home 3 Infinity War 4 Superman 2025 5 Logan 6 Deadpool & Wolverine 7 Captain America: Civil War 8 The Avengers 9 The Dark Knight 10 THE Suicide Squad 11 Thor Ragnarok 12 Guardians of the Galaxy vol 3 13 Black Panther 14 Iron Man 15 Captain America: The Winter Soldier 16 Guardians of the Galaxy vol 2 17 Guardians of the Galaxy 18 Batman Begins 19 Batman 89 20 Spider-Man 2 21 Spider-Man Homecoming 22 Spider-Man Far From Home 23 Black Panther: Wakanda Forever 24 Thunderbolts* 25 Thor: Love and Thunder 26 Deadpool 2 27 Deadpool 28 The Batman 29 Captain America: The First Avenger 30 Spider-Man 31 X-Men: Days of Future Past 32 Dr Strange in the Multiverse of Madness 33 Shang-Chi 34 Joker 35 Captain Marvel 36 Ant-Man 37 Blue Beetle 38 Black Widow 39 Ant-Man and the Wasp 40 Eternals 41 Avengers: The Age of Ultron 42 Birds Of Prey 43 Wonder Woman 1984 44 Wonder Woman 45 Iron Man 3 46 The Dark Knight Rises 47 Superman 1978 48 The Marvels 49 Dr Strange 50 Thor 51 Kick-Ass 52 X-Men First Class 53 Hellboy 54 X2 55 Darkman 56 Iron Man 2 57 Swamp Thing 58 Hellboy II: The Golden Army 59 Watchmen 60 X-Men 2000 61 Batman Returns 62 Blade 63 Defendor 64 Unbreakable 65 The Crow 66 Batman 66 67 Orgazmo 68 Superman II 69 Ant-Man & The Wasp: Quantumania 70 Shazam! 71 Thor: The Dark World 72 The Wolverine 73 Superman Returns 74 Blade II 75 Mystery Men 76 Super 77 Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 78 Venom: The Last Dance 79 Chronicle 80 Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance 81 Man of Steel 82 Venom: Let There Be Carnage 83 The Green Hornet 84 The Incredible Hulk 85 Sky High 86 The Mask 87 Constantine 88 The New Mutants 89 The Rocketeer 90 Superman III 91 Buffy the Vampire Slayer 92 The Return of Swamp Thing 93 The Flash 94 Shazam! Fury of the Gods 95 Superhero Movie 96 Blade Trinity 97 Batman V Superman: Dawn of justice 98 Venom 99 Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom 100 Captain America: Brave New World 101 Black Adam 102 Fantastic Four: The Rise of Silver Surfer 103 Hancock 104 Fantastic Four 105 Madame Web 106 Blankman 107 Supergirl 108 The Crow 2024 109 Hellboy 2019 110 Power Rangers 111 The Meteor Man 112 Justice League 113 X-Men Last Stand 114 Van Helsing 115 Spiderman 3 116 The Amazing Spider-Man 117 TMNT2 118 Superman and the Mole Men 119 Green Lantern 120 Ghost Rider 121 TMNT3 122 Hero At Large 123 Push 124 Jumper 125 Condorman 126 Howard The Duck 127 Aquaman 128 Punisher: War Zone 129 Toxic Avenger Part II 130 TMNT: OOTS 131 TMNT14 132 Hulk 133 Bloodshot 134 Daredevil 135 The Crow: City of Angels 136 The Punisher 04 137 The Punisher 89 138 Batman Forever 139 Kick Ass 2 140 Steel 141 Glass 142 The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen 143 The Amazing Spider-Man 2 144 X-Men: Apocalypse 145 Split 146 Suicide Squad 147 Brightburn 148 X-Men Origins: Wolverine 149 The Adventures of Sharkboy and Lavagirl 150 Sgt Kabukiman NYPD 151 The Phantom 152 Toxic Avenger 153 The Mighty Morphin Power Rangers 154 The Shadow 155 The Toxic Avenger Part III 156 Spawn 157 Batman and Robin 158 Elektra 159 Morbius 160 My Super Ex-Girlfriend 161 Zoom 162 Underdog 163 Catwoman 164 The Spirit 165 Jonah Hex 166 Fant4stic 167 Max Steel 168 Superman IV: The Quest For Peace 169 Dark Phoenix 170 Citizen Toxie: The Toxic Avenger IV 171 Fast Color 172 Joker Folie a deux 173 Kraven The Hunter 174 Archenemy 175 Son of the Mask 176 The Crow: Wicked Prayer 177 Super Capers 178 All Superheroes Must Die

Happy weekend everyone! Today on the podcast Paul and I continue our MCU coverage with a discussion on 'Captain Marvel' from directors Anna Boden and Ryan Fleck.

The Cyclops solo series is finally here—and we're breaking it all down with series writer Alex Paknadel.We dive deep into Scott Summers' history, his complicated origin story, his relationship with Jean Grey, and how Mister Sinister has been pulling the strings—plus what readers can expect as Cyclops steps fully into the spotlight.

In 1974 one of the most popular superheroes of the golden age made his long-awaited return to pop culture. DC Comics had already started publishing the adventures of Captain Marvel in the pages of the Shazam! comic book.  Now that hero, in a slightly altered form, took to the TV screens on Saturday mornings in 1974.  Billy Batson, a socially conscious teenager in this version, travels the country with a totally not creepy old duded called "Mentor" in a camper van... I swear this is actually going somewhere wholesome... helping other youngsters in need.  Jackson Bostwick stars (originally) as Captain Marvel.

What if depression was the big bad and we hugged it to death? We're watching thunderbolts* on Harmless Phosphorescence!   Support the show and get early access and exclusive content at  https://www.patreon.com/harmlessentertainment   https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCEDmdtUAW_pJYCJfaZV7Unw/live   https://www.reddit.com/r/harmlessentertainment   Buy some Merch! https://www.teepublic.com/stores/attention-hellmart-shoppers   Check out Executive Producer Michael Beckwith's movie website at https://upallnightmovies.com/   Ranked: #23   RANKINGS   1 Endgame 2 Spider-Man No Way Home 3 Infinity War 4 Logan 5 Deadpool & Wolverine 6 Captain America: Civil War 7 The Avengers 8 The Dark Knight 9 THE Suicide Squad 10 Thor Ragnarok 11 Guardians of the Galaxy vol 3 12 Black Panther 13 Iron Man 14 Captain America: The Winter Soldier 15 Guardians of the Galaxy vol 2 16 Guardians of the Galaxy 17 Batman Begins 18 Batman 89 19 Spider-Man 2 20 Spider-Man Homecoming 21 Spider-Man Far From Home 22 Black Panther: Wakanda Forever 23 Thunderbolts* 24 Thor: Love and Thunder 25 Deadpool 2 26 Deadpool 27 The Batman 28 Captain America: The First Avenger 29 Spider-Man 30 X-Men: Days of Future Past 31 Dr Strange in the Multiverse of Madness 32 Shang-Chi 33 Joker 34 Captain Marvel 35 Ant-Man 36 Blue Beetle 37 Black Widow 38 Ant-Man and the Wasp 39 Eternals 40 Avengers: The Age of Ultron 41 Birds Of Prey 42 Wonder Woman 1984 43 Wonder Woman 44 Iron Man 3 45 The Dark Knight Rises 46 Superman 1978 47 The Marvels 48 Dr Strange 49 Thor 50 Kick-Ass 51 X-Men First Class 52 Hellboy 53 X2 54 Darkman 55 Iron Man 2 56 Swamp Thing 57 Hellboy II: The Golden Army 58 Watchmen 59 X-Men 2000 60 Batman Returns 61 Blade 62 Defendor 63 Unbreakable 64 The Crow 65 Batman 66 66 Orgazmo 67 Superman II 68 Ant-Man & The Wasp: Quantumania 69 Shazam! 70 Thor: The Dark World 71 The Wolverine 72 Superman Returns 73 Blade II 74 Mystery Men 75 Super 76 Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 77 Venom: The Last Dance 78 Chronicle 79 Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance 80 Man of Steel 81 Venom: Let There Be Carnage 82 The Green Hornet 83 The Incredible Hulk 84 Sky High 85 The Mask 86 Constantine 87 The New Mutants 88 The Rocketeer 89 Superman III 90 Buffy the Vampire Slayer 91 The Return of Swamp Thing 92 The Flash 93 Shazam! Fury of the Gods 94 Superhero Movie 95 Blade Trinity 96 Batman V Superman: Dawn of justice 97 Venom 98 Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom 99 Captain America: Brave New World 100 Black Adam 101 Fantastic Four: The Rise of Silver Surfer 102 Hancock 103 Fantastic Four 104 Madame Web 105 Blankman 106 Supergirl 107 The Crow 2024 108 Hellboy 2019 109 Power Rangers 110 The Meteor Man 111 Justice League 112 X-Men Last Stand 113 Van Helsing 114 Spiderman 3 115 The Amazing Spider-Man 116 TMNT2 117 Superman and the Mole Men 118 Green Lantern 119 Ghost Rider 120 TMNT3 121 Hero At Large 122 Push 123 Jumper 124 Condorman 125 Howard The Duck 126 Aquaman 127 Punisher: War Zone 128 Toxic Avenger Part II 129 TMNT: OOTS 130 TMNT14 131 Hulk 132 Bloodshot 133 Daredevil 134 The Crow: City of Angels 135 The Punisher 04 136 The Punisher 89 137 Batman Forever 138 Kick Ass 2 139 Steel 140 Glass 141 The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen 142 The Amazing Spider-Man 2 143 X-Men: Apocalypse 144 Split 145 Suicide Squad 146 Brightburn 147 X-Men Origins: Wolverine 148 The Adventures of Sharkboy and Lavagirl 149 Sgt Kabukiman NYPD 150 The Phantom 151 Toxic Avenger 152 The Mighty Morphin Power Rangers 153 The Shadow 154 The Toxic Avenger Part III 155 Spawn 156 Batman and Robin 157 Elektra 158 Morbius 159 My Super Ex-Girlfriend 160 Zoom 161 Underdog 162 Catwoman 163 The Spirit 164 Jonah Hex 165 Fant4stic 166 Max Steel 167 Superman IV: The Quest For Peace 168 Dark Phoenix 169 Citizen Toxie: The Toxic Avenger IV 170 Fast Color 171 Joker Folie a deux 172 Kraven The Hunter 173 Archenemy 174 Son of the Mask 175 The Crow: Wicked Prayer 176 Super Capers 177 All Superheroes Must Die

Let us know what you enjoy about the show!What does it actually take to be joyful—not performative-happy, not “fine,” but truly joyful in a way that feels brave, embodied, and real?In this episode, I'm joined by two brilliant storytellers and screenwriters, Meg LeFauve and Lorien McKenna, whose combined credits span beloved studio and indie projects across animation and live action—including Inside Out, Up, The Good Dinosaur, Captain Marvel, and more. Together, they also host the outstanding podcast The Screenwriting Life.We begin with Inside Out as a doorway—asking which character each of them most identifies with (and why). Lorien claims Disgust: truth-teller, protector, and sharp point of view. Meg surprises us with Sadness—not as an identity, but as a writer's intimacy with vulnerability, self-doubt, and instinct. From there, the conversation opens into something deeper: the stories we tell ourselves that don't serve us, and what it looks like to rewrite them.Meg shares an unforgettable moment of meeting her inner critic head-on—visualizing a small red chair and asking that voice to sit down while she moved forward anyway. Lorien speaks candidly about imposter syndrome, the discomfort of receiving praise, and the belief that love has to be earned—then traces how her creative work is helping her practice hope in real time.And then we land on the heart of the episode: joy as vulnerability. Meg offers a powerful reframe—true joy requires courage, because joy opens us up. It makes us visible. It asks us to hope. The two of them explore what it means to be observed again after the pandemic, how community reflects us back to ourselves, and why friendship can be genuinely life-saving.You'll also hear beautiful distinctions around self-acceptance vs. self-celebration, creative presence, and what “living in the moment” looks like when you're someone who naturally lives in the future. We close with a playful “What makes you…?” lightning round—stress hunger, curiosity hunger, overwhelm-as-a-signpost, and the small ordinary moments that carry real joy.If you're navigating self-doubt, trying to receive the good that's coming toward you, or learning how to choose hope without needing certainty—this one is a geIf you are enjoying the show please subscribe, share and review! Word of mouth is incredibly impactful and your support is much appreciated! Support the show

Episode Notes Today's scene has a new cat and a woman's self-sufficiency. What more could you want? A stellar line delivery by Samuel L Jackson? You got it! Today's scene can be found at: Captain Marvel [45:20-46:10]. You can find us on Bluesky @timelinescav! And individually you can find your hosts at @ColinMParker. BIG thank you for the intro and outro music from @NBramald! Check out his website at https://www.nickbramaldcomposer.co.uk. If you need music for any occasion, he's your man.Read transcript

Wonder Man is the newest Marvel Studios television series on Disney Plus. In this episode, I chat with Brian Gay, Co-Executive Producer of this series, about Wonder Man and about Brian's career. Brian worked alongside Kevin Feige and Marvel executives to develop Black Panther, Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania, Thor: Ragnarok, Avengers: Infinity War, Avengers: Endgame, Spider-Man: Homecoming, Spider-Man: Far From Home, Captain Marvel, Loki, Hawkeye, Black Panther: Wakanda Forever, and Werewolf by Night. As Wonder Man is described on Disney Plus, "Aspiring Hollywood actor Simon Williams is struggling to get his career off the ground. During a chance meeting with Trevor Slattery, an actor whose biggest roles may be well behind him, Simon learns legendary director Von Kovak is remaking the superhero film "Wonder Man." These two actors at opposite ends of their careers doggedly pursue life-changing roles in this film as audiences get a peek behind the curtain of the entertainment industry.” To plan a trip, be sure to work with KMV Travel.   Get bonus content, ad-free episodes, and more at patreon.com/imaginationskyway.   Tag me and join the conversation below. YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@imaginationskyway Instagram: www.instagram.com/imaginationskyway Facebook Group (ImagiNation): https://www.facebook.com/groups/imaginationskyway Facebook: www.facebook.com/imaginationskyway TikTok: www.tiktok.com/@imaginationskyway  Threads: https://www.threads.net/@imaginationskyway Twitter: www.twitter.com/skywaypodcast Email: matt@imagineerpodcast.com  How to Support the Show Share the podcast with your friends Rate and review on iTunes - https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/the-imagineerpodcasts-podcast/id1244558092 Join our Patreon Group - https://www.patreon.com/imaginationskyway Purchase merchandise - https://www.teepublic.com/stores/imagineer-podcast?ref_id=8929 Enjoy the show!

It's 2025 and America still isn't ready for a Red Hulk. We're watching Captain America: Brave New World on Harmless Phosphorescence!   Support the show and get early access and exclusive content at  https://www.patreon.com/harmlessentertainment   https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCEDmdtUAW_pJYCJfaZV7Unw/live   https://www.reddit.com/r/harmlessentertainment   Buy some Merch! https://www.teepublic.com/stores/attention-hellmart-shoppers   Check out Executive Producer Michael Beckwith's movie website at https://upallnightmovies.com/   Ranked: #98   RANKINGS   1 Endgame 2 Spider-Man No Way Home 3 Infinity War 4 Logan 5 Deadpool & Wolverine 6 Captain America: Civil War 7 The Avengers 8 The Dark Knight 9 THE Suicide Squad 10 Thor Ragnarok 11 Guardians of the Galaxy vol 3 12 Black Panther 13 Iron Man 14 Captain America: The Winter Soldier 15 Guardians of the Galaxy vol 2 16 Guardians of the Galaxy 17 Batman Begins 18 Batman 89 19 Spider-Man 2 20 Spider-Man Homecoming 21 Spider-Man Far From Home 22 Black Panther: Wakanda Forever 23 Thor: Love and Thunder 24 Deadpool 2 25 Deadpool 26 The Batman 27 Captain America: The First Avenger 28 Spider-Man 29 X-Men: Days of Future Past 30 Dr Strange in the Multiverse of Madness 31 Shang-Chi 32 Joker 33 Captain Marvel 34 Ant-Man 35 Blue Beetle 36 Black Widow 37 Ant-Man and the Wasp 38 Eternals 39 Avengers: The Age of Ultron 40 Birds Of Prey 41 Wonder Woman 1984 42 Wonder Woman 43 Iron Man 3 44 The Dark Knight Rises 45 Superman 1978 46 The Marvels 47 Dr Strange 48 Thor 49 Kick-Ass 50 X-Men First Class 51 Hellboy 52 X2 53 Darkman 54 Iron Man 2 55 Swamp Thing 56 Hellboy II: The Golden Army 57 Watchmen 58 X-Men 2000 59 Batman Returns 60 Blade 61 Defendor 62 Unbreakable 63 The Crow 64 Batman 66 65 Orgazmo 66 Superman II 67 Ant-Man & The Wasp: Quantumania 68 Shazam! 69 Thor: The Dark World 70 The Wolverine 71 Superman Returns 72 Blade II 73 Mystery Men 74 Super 75 Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 76 Venom: The Last Dance 77 Chronicle 78 Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance 79 Man of Steel 80 Venom: Let There Be Carnage 81 The Green Hornet 82 The Incredible Hulk 83 Sky High 84 The Mask 85 Constantine 86 The New Mutants 87 The Rocketeer 88 Superman III 89 Buffy the Vampire Slayer 90 The Return of Swamp Thing 91 The Flash 92 Shazam! Fury of the Gods 93 Superhero Movie 94 Blade Trinity 95 Batman V Superman: Dawn of justice 96 Venom 97 Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom 98 Captain America: Brave New World 99 Black Adam 100 Fantastic Four: The Rise of Silver Surfer 101 Hancock 102 Fantastic Four 103 Madame Web 104 Blankman 105 Supergirl 106 The Crow 2024 107 Hellboy 2019 108 Power Rangers 109 The Meteor Man 110 Justice League 111 X-Men Last Stand 112 Van Helsing 113 Spiderman 3 114 The Amazing Spider-Man 115 TMNT2 116 Superman and the Mole Men 117 Green Lantern 118 Ghost Rider 119 TMNT3 120 Hero At Large 121 Push 122 Jumper 123 Condorman 124 Howard The Duck 125 Aquaman 126 Punisher: War Zone 127 Toxic Avenger Part II 128 TMNT: OOTS 129 TMNT14 130 Hulk 131 Bloodshot 132 Daredevil 133 The Crow: City of Angels 134 The Punisher 04 135 The Punisher 89 136 Batman Forever 137 Kick Ass 2 138 Steel 139 Glass 140 The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen 141 The Amazing Spider-Man 2 142 X-Men: Apocalypse 143 Split 144 Suicide Squad 145 Brightburn 146 X-Men Origins: Wolverine 147 The Adventures of Sharkboy and Lavagirl 148 Sgt Kabukiman NYPD 149 The Phantom 150 Toxic Avenger 151 The Mighty Morphin Power Rangers 152 The Shadow 153 The Toxic Avenger Part III 154 Spawn 155 Batman and Robin 156 Elektra 157 Morbius 158 My Super Ex-Girlfriend 159 Zoom 160 Underdog 161 Catwoman 162 The Spirit 163 Jonah Hex 164 Fant4stic 165 Max Steel 166 Superman IV: The Quest For Peace 167 Dark Phoenix 168 Citizen Toxie: The Toxic Avenger IV 169 Fast Color 170 Joker Folie a deux 171 Kraven The Hunter 172 Archenemy 173 Son of the Mask 174 The Crow: Wicked Prayer 175 Super Capers 176 All Superheroes Must Die

Episode Notes Things in the 90s were a little too loosey goosey in terms of true technologically powered security. A lot of our modern day security features - on our phones but also in buildings with state secrets - is thanks to the meddling of Nick Fury and Carol Danvers! Plus, speaking of spy stuff, our guest Ty (from https://www.sidecharacterquest.com ) has a new entry for the segment: Spycraft Life Raft! Today's scene can be found at: Captain Marvel [44:07-45:20]. You can find us on Bluesky @timelinescav ! And individually you can find your hosts at @jamienerdgirl and @ColinMParker. BIG thank you for the intro and outro music from @NBramald! Check out his website at https://www.nickbramaldcomposer.co.uk. If you need music for any occasion, he's your man.Read transcript

Jeph Loeb on the podcast! Buckle in for this two hour deep dive into Nate Grey, Age of Apocalypse, and Marvel in the 90s!

MRC *finally* wraps up August 1968 with Captain Marvel 4, Iron Man 4, Avengers 55 and, in his elephantine debut issue, Silver Surfer 1 (also featuring the Watcher)! Check it out!

Episode Notes Nothing like a quick product placement for your government agency and/or for your podcast about the MCU. Also nothing like kind of doing a sick little dig at your new partner by proxy. And for sure nothing like being a surly security dude. Just a lot of great energy being brought here today. Today's scene can be found at: Captain Marvel [43:10-44:07]. You can find us on Bluesky @timelinescav ! And individually you can find your hosts at @jamienerdgirl and @ColinMParker. BIG thank you for the intro and outro music from @NBramald! Check out his website at https://www.nickbramaldcomposer.co.uk. If you need music for any occasion, he's your man.Read transcript

Nixon Newell (formerly known as Tegan Nox) is a Welsh powerhouse known for her resilience, heart, and hard-hitting in-ring style across the world's biggest stages. Whether she's fighting from underneath or bringing the fight to anyone in her way, Newell's comeback story and undeniable grit make her one of the most inspiring talents in modern wrestling.In the newest "Casual Conversations with The Classic'' episode, the Wrestling Classic Justin catches up with Nixon Newell formerly known as Tegan Nox. They discuss her life after WWE, NXT Black and Gold, injuries, Captain Marvel, collectibles, AEW incident, relationship with Miranda Alize, Team Kick, main roster run, the reality show "Baddies" and much more! Enjoy!My Official Website + Demo Reel - https://www.justindhillon.com Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/thewrestlingclassic/ TikTok - https://www.tiktok.com/@thewrestlingclassic X - https://x.com/twcworldwide Youtube - https://www.youtube.com/@TheWrestlingClassic/ Limited Edition TWC Tee https://headquartersclothing.com/products/headquarters-x-the-wrestling-classic-logo-tee?_pos=1&_psq=wrestlinhg&_ss=e&_v=1.0 WWE Shop Affiliate wwe-shop.sjv.io/RGRxQv 500 Level https://www.500level.com/ Join the Discord Community https://linktr.ee/thewrestlingclassic All Episodes are on "The Wrestling Classic" Youtube Channel https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCOQOYraeFlX-xd8f3adQtTw#TeganNox #NixonNewell #CasualConversations Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/twc-show--4417554/support.

Chat over calamari with Megaton Man creator Don Simpson as we discuss why he splurged on a special issue of Captain Marvel at the Baltimore Comic-Con, how the business practices of comics affect the artistic side, the way two early visits with artist Keith Pollard taught him he didn't want to be a Marvel Comics penciller after all, where he feels the Silver Age ended and the Bronze Age truly began, how classic cinema and the auteur theory influenced his creative choices, the lessons he learned from the first few issues of Love & Rockets vs. the unfortunate expectations set up by the first few issues of Megaton Man, how working on DC's anthology title Wasteland caused him to reinvent himself, what path his publishing life would have taken had Megaton Man been only a one-shot as originally planned, the career differences between Basil Wolverton and Will Eisner, why he's able to let others play with his characters without feeling proprietary, the alternate universe in which he would have been a Crusty Bunker or one of Romita's Raiders, how 9/11 caused him to head back to school for a PhD, why he wrote a Ms. Megaton Man prose novel, whether he already knows the final chapter to his comics universe, and much more.

Episode 93 - Murdock and Marvel: 2019 In 2019 Marvel Studios completed the most ambitious movie cycle in history with its 2 billion dollar Avengers: Endgame masterpiece, even as comic stores wondered about the future and politics made deeper and deeper inroads into comics and comics fandom. The Year in Comics  Comics in Other Media Comic Sales Notable Comics Top Comic News Notable Passings Marvel Eisner Awards Dan's Favorite The Year in Daredevil  Appearances: Daredevil v5 #611-612, Man Without Fear #1-5, Daredevil v6 1-12, Marvel Knights 20th #2, Guardians of the Galaxy #1, Spider-Man / Deadpool #47-48, Avengers: No Road Home #10, War of the Realms #1-6, War of the Realms: War Scrolls #1-3, Avengers #20 True Believers: Spider-Man – The New Spider-Man! #1, War of the Realms Omega #1, History of the Marvel Universe #3    Writer: Charles Soule (#611-612), Chip Zdarsky (#1-12)  Pencils: Phil Noto (#611-612), Marco Checchetto (#1-5 and #11-12), Lalit Kumar Sharma (#6-9), Jorge Fornes (#10)  Inks: Phil Noto (#611-612), Marco Checchetto (#1-5 and #11-12), Jay Leisten (#6-9), Jorge Fornes (#10) In the final storyline of volume 5, “The Death of Daredevil”, We open with Matt Murdock on the brink of death—lying in an ER after being hit by a truck while saving a child, eerily echoing the childhood accident that made him Daredevil in the first place. And as the doctors fight to keep him alive, Matt mentally resets his mission. He decides this is war with Wilson Fisk, and war requires honesty. So he tells his entire team the truth: he's Daredevil. No more secrets.  When he gets back out on the streets in his mind's version of events, he barely has time to breathe before a bone-knife-throwing assassin attacks him. And when he limps home afterward, who's waiting in his apartment? Elektra. They fall back into old patterns, but when Matt asks her to stay and join the team.  From there, Matt and his crew move aggressively—they decide to kidnap John Wesley, Fisk's right-hand man, to force him to spill how the election was rigged. The plan blows up in their faces, but somehow, they still manage to grab Wesley. They lose his guards, get attacked by more bone knives, and end up scrambling into a church for cover…where Fisk's assassin, Vigil, is already waiting. Daredevil and Elektra take him on in a brutal fight. Elektra almost kills him, Daredevil stops her, and in that split second, Vigil drives a bone knife straight into Wesley's back. The only man who could presumably tell them how Fisk did it is now dead—Elektra walks out.  While out on patrol he's ambushed by a swarm of Stilt-Men, forced into an arena, and dropped into a who's-who gauntlet of enemies—Klaw, Ikari, Electro, Gladiator, Typhoid Mary. But Matt turns the tables, manipulating the villains into fighting each other for the “honor” of killing him. It works. At least until he reaches the roof, hoping to catch his breath, and is immediately shot by Bullseye. Matt's seconds from dying again when he's unexpectedly saved…by his magically created, now-fully-real brother, Mike Murdock, who claims he can help end all of this.  Mike's intel leads Matt straight to the truth: the Mad Thinker helped Fisk rig the mayoral election. With that, Matt convinces the DA to prosecute the mayor and put Daredevil himself on the witness stand. A parade of heroes testify. Fisk slips up under questioning, admits to “adjustments,” and Fisk loses the court case and he's recalled as mayor. It's a victory…until Vigil returns. Daredevil unmasks him—and sees his own face staring back.  And that's when the illusion cracks. We realize the entire story, every moment, every battle, every twist, has been in Matt's head while he lies unconscious in the hospital. He's still fighting for his life. In the quiet between heartbeats, he sees Karen Page beside him. She tells him gently that it isn't his time. The panels go dark…until a single heartbeat rises from the silence. Daredevil isn't dead. He's choosing to fight.  In March we get the Man Without Fear limited series from writer Jed Mackay and artists Danilo Beyruth, Stefano Landini, Iban Coello, and Paolo Villanelli. It's a haunting bridge between Daredevil's fall and whatever comes next. It's a really interesting story – deserving our spotlight for this week.  In April, Volume 6 starts with a new creative team – Writer Chip Zdarsky and art by Marco Checchetto. The opening storyline is titled “Know Fear”. In it we see Matt Murdock back on the streets as Daredevil—too early, too shaky, and already in over his head. Between flashbacks of young Matt talking to a priest, we watch him struggle through patrols, botch a robbery takedown, and accidentally kill one of the thieves due to head trauma. New-to-NYC Detective Cole North zeroes in on him immediately, refusing to play the usual “look the other way” game, and soon Daredevil is shot, chased, cornered, and nearly arrested as Wilson Fisk—now Mayor—watches from a distance, thrilled to see his old enemy unraveling.  Things spiral further as Daredevil finds himself rescued—and judged—by the one man he never wants to owe anything to: the Punisher. Frank Castle drags Matt to his hideout and brutally challenges the idea that Daredevil is still a hero. A prisoner dies, blows are exchanged, and Matt ultimately escapes, injured and ashamed, just as the NYPD begins questioning Cole North's escalating methods… even while Fisk quietly rewards him for keeping the pressure on.  The breaking point comes when Matt is rescued from the Owl's men by Luke Cage, Jessica Jones, and Danny Rand—street-level peers who've been watching him self-destruct in real time. After Matt admits he accidentally killed the robber, the others acknowledge they've made mistakes too… but they also agree he's too unstable to keep wearing the mask. Matt slips away, heads home, and meets Spider-Man waiting for him on the rooftop—delivering the final gut punch: Matt's done. No more Daredevil. And if he suits up again? His own friends will stop him.  In the final full story arch of 2019, “No Devils, Only God”, Eight weeks after Daredevil “died,” Matt Murdock is trying hard to live a normal life—working as a probation officer, meeting ex-cons, even starting a romance with Mindy from the local bookstore—but the shadows keep tugging at him. NYC is shifting: Fisk is secretly beating inmates to a pulp while publicly claiming he's going legitimate, and Cole North—now targeted by dirty cops and nearly killed—is the lone detective trying to clean up a precinct drowning in corruption. As Matt finds himself drawn into Mindy's family dinner, he realizes her in-laws are the Libris crime family… just moments before a sniper attack (courtesy of the Owl) leaves one man wounded and Matt forced to intervene without revealing who he once was.  The city whispers that Daredevil is back, but Matt insists he's not—at least, not fully. He shadows crimes with his senses and quietly calls them in, plays tortured theology chess with Reed Richards, and wrestles with whether God expects him to rise again. He slips into a makeshift costume to save a runaway boy from gang life, and that taste of heroism only deepens his conflict. Meanwhile, Matt's relationship with Mindy crosses into an affair, complicating everything just as the Owl escalates his war, burning down her bookstore and pulling Matt in deeper.  When Cole North is targeted again—his partner beaten so badly he later dies—Matt can't stay retired. He joins North in the police station brawl, stopping the detective from killing corrupt officers and telling him to pin the chaos on Daredevil. As Matt slips away into the night, bleeding and conflicted, he finds Elektra waiting on a rooftop… it seems on a matter of time until Matt Murdock is putting the mask back on for real.  This Week's Spotlight: Man Without Fear Limited Series issues #1-5 from March 2019 Recap Why We Picked This Story Daredevil Rapid Fire Questions The Takeaway The Billion dollar question: Is the comic world just too small for both the Joker and Captain Marvel? Questions or comments We'd love to hear from you!  Email us at questions@comicsovertime.com or find us on Twitter @comicsoftime. ------------------ THANKS TO THE FOLLOWING CREATORS AND RESOURCES  Music: Our theme music is by the very talented Lesfm.  You can find more about them and their music at https://pixabay.com/users/lesfm-22579021/.  The Grand Comics Database: Dan uses custom queries against a downloadable copy of the GCD to construct his publisher, title and creator charts.  Comichron: Our source for comic book sales data.  Marvel Year By Year: A Visual History  DC Comics Year By Year: A Visual Chronicle  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_films_based_on_English-language_comics  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Marvel_Comics_superhero_debuts  https://comicbookreadingorders.com/marvel/event-timeline/  https://www.comic-con.org/awards/eisner-awards/past-recipients/past-recipients-1990s/ 

Chris Claremont on the podcast! From his start as a gopher at Marvel Comics to the Doomsday tease—from Dark Phoenix Saga to his X-Treme X-Men run—we cover it ALL with the legend himself!

Hang on to your seats, familia! A super-size 2 hour episode breaking down our top 10 of Marvel Legends in 2025...unfiltered!!!!

March 2026 Solicitations (Image, DC, Others) Weekly Comic Reviews: DC DC K.O.: Harley Quinn vs. Zatanna by Leah Williams, Mirka Andolfo, Romulo Fajardo Jr Titans 30 by John Layman, Pete Woods, Bruno Abdias Marvel Black Panther: Intergalactic 1 by Victor LaValle, Stefano Nesi, Bryan Valenza Marvel Unlimited Strange Tales 1 by Preeti Chhibber, Bailie Rosenlund AWA AGGIE – Aggregated Human Experience Database 1 by Mark Russell, Aco, David Lorenzo, Ive Svorcina Dynamite ThunderCats Ho!(Liday) Special 2025 by Ed Brisson, Fabio Gallo, Emanuele Ercolani, Giona Zefiro Image Wrestle Heist 1 by Kyle Starks, Vladimir Popov Mad Cave New Space Age 1 by Kenny Porter, Mike Becker, Kevin Betou OGN Countdown: Black Heart Billy by Rick Remender, Kieron Dwyer Witcher by Andrzej Sapkowski, Aleksandra Zielinska, Michael Dowling, Luis NCT Athanasia by Daniel Kraus, Dani, Brad Simpson Red and Blue Monster Hunters by Sara Soler Rodeo Hawkins and the Daughters of Mayhem by John Claude Bemis, Nicole Miles Dire Days of Willowweep Manor and the Nefarious Nights of Willowweep Manor by Shaenon Garrity, Christopher Baldwin Additional Reviews: Chutzpah The Dropout Knives Out 3 Sunny Side Down ep3 War Between the Land and the Sea finale David News: new Jessica Jones series, She-Ra leaving Netflix, more DC KO fighters, Oscars moving to YouTube, Netflix commits to theaters for WB movies, Tarzan to IDW, Sony buys Peanuts, Archie merging with Oni, new Archie titles announced, Woods and w0rldtr33 optioned for animated series, Paul Jenkins writing Sentry and Captain Marvel, Brainiac cast, Omninews Trailers: Disclosure Day, Odyssey, Muppet Show Comics Countdown (17 Dec 2025): Exquisite Corpses 8 by James Tynion IV, Pornsak Pichetshote, Michael Walsh, Adam Gorham, Jordie Bellaire Endeavour 2 by Stephanie Phillips, Marc Laming, Tony Shasteen, Lee Loughridge w0rldtr33 17 by James Tynion IV, Fernando Blanco, Jordie Bellaire DIE: Loaded 2 by Kieron Gillen, Stephanie Hans Everything Dead and Dying 4 by Tate Brombal, Jacob Phillips, Pip Martin Absolute Flash 10 by Jeff Lemire, Nick Robles, Adriano Lucas Sacrificers 18 by Rick Remender, Andre Lima Araujo, Dave McCaig Bat-Man: Second Knight 2 by Dan Jurgens, Mike Perkins, Mike Spicer Space Scouts 2 by Matt Kindt, David Rubin, Xulia Pison Wonder Woman 28 by Tom King, Daniel Sampere, Jorge Fornes, Tomeu Morey

Let's breakdown the Doomsday trailer featuring Ian McKellen, Patrick Stewart, and JAMES MARSDEN! 

HAPPY HOLIDAYS! Legendary X-Men writer Scott Lobdell breaks down Uncanny X-Men #341, one of the most beloved Christmas stories in X-Men history. Scott reveals how the issue came together, the iconic Cannonball vs. Gladiator fight, the mystery of Joseph—who he was originally supposed to be and how he suppressed Rogue's powers—and all the Easter eggs hidden throughout the issue.

Groo is back for another adventure. Red and Blue Venom is back in a new one-shot. Paul Jenkins takes on Captain Marvel.SUBSCRIBE ON RSS, APPLE, SPOTIFY, OR THE APP OF YOUR CHOICE. FOLLOW US ON BLUESKY, INSTAGRAM, TIKTOK, AND FACEBOOK. SUPPORT OUR SHOWS ON PATREON.Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Angel actress STEPHANIE ROMANOV swings by to discuss upcoming cons and the Buffy revival...will Lilah return?