Judy Stephens on Super Visible and Marvel’s Hidden Heroines – Episode 375

Jeff Dwoskin 0:00

All right, everyone. I'm excited to introduce my next guest, one of the co authors of one of the greatest books ever to come out. Thank you. Super visible, the story of the women of Marvel. This is deep dive into the history of Marvel and the impact that women had on it throughout the years. So I'm excited to dive in with Judy Stevens, one of the co authors, along with Jeanette Schaefer and Margaret stall, but Judy Stevens is the one that's here right now. We're diving deep. We're gonna have a good time. Let's talk women and Marvel Well,

Judy Stephens 0:35

Jeff, thank you so much for having me. I mean, this has been a long labor of love, this book. We've been working on this for almost five years, and my time at Marvel and both Janine and Margie is even more extended to that. So just happy to be able to put some of these women's names and lights. Finally, let's

Jeff Dwoskin 0:52

talk about your time at Marvel and what brought you to being a part of this amazing book. You're a podcaster as well women of Marvel podcast, yes, yes.

Judy Stephens 1:03

Now I predominantly do producing, so I'm behind the scenes, so not necessarily in front of the mic as much as I used to. Actually, my day job is podcast producing, but I co created the women of Marvel podcast all the way back in 2014 with Janine Schaefer, who is one of my co authors, along with Adria Cohen and Sana mana, who is the CO creator of Kamala Khan, along with J, Willow G, Willow Wilson and I spent almost 15 years at Marvel. Started there when I was in college, all the way back in 2006 before there were movies Marvel Studios, that was my time. Very small company back then, very family orientated in that idea. I mean, I think there was maybe 150 of us. Max. US Max in the office. It was kind of crazy. And I started going to conventions. I came actually, sort of into Marvel, sort of sideways, through cosplay and fandom. I had been going to conventions through anime many years before I started at Marvel, and then started going to conventions. But I recognized I was one of the few women that were in the Marvel booth, that were hanging out and there, there wasn't to say that they didn't exist. Like, the story of like any field is that women have always been there. They just along the way, their names have gotten lost in the Sands of Time and and so the four of us came together. Really, it started on the woman Marvel panel was initially introduced in 2008 which is sort of like, I think, the moment in time where this book sort of birthed, but it took a long time to get there, and it was just a panel to talk about the different women who worked at Marvel, from the editors to the comic artists to the writers to different people behind the scenes. And so in 2014 we realized that we were really enjoying the conversations that were happening in the space and seeing you a Comic Con and New York Comic Con and c2, e2, and other conventions along the way, but we wanted to continue it year long, and so we came together and launched the podcast in May. Over the years, we did over 300 something episodes, kind of insane. How many episodes we did? I produced. I learned how to edit audio for this podcast, which is kind of crazy. I didn't know how to didn't know how to edit audio at the time. Yeah, in 2020 Margie came on, Margaret came on, and we started working on this book. Janine and Margie are not able to be here today, but they're incredible. My incredible co authors, I wouldn't be here without them. Margaret fool is obviously very well known for writing beautiful creatures. And she also wrote the prose Black Widow novels for Marvel, which is sort of how she came into the Marvel world. And then Janine has an incredible storied career as an editor within comics. She worked at DC, and then Marvel and as boom. And so she obviously knows. So each of us sort of have our own little box, so we understand where the world is, and we were to bring those perspectives to the book. The book

Jeff Dwoskin 3:41

is great. And interview after interview, and you guys talked to like, over 100 120 some folks, yes, from all decades. Well, how far were you able to go back?

Judy Stephens 3:51

We were able to talk to women who worked in the office in the 60s, in the late 60s, early 70s, and obviously more modern creators. And we really, when we first started to write the book, it was really like an opportune moment, not an opportune moment society. It was. I came on board, really, in early 2021 we were stuck in our homes. We had sort of been stuck in our homes for almost a year at that point. So a lot of people were willing to just get on a zoom call and talk to us for hours, like some calls we would like, we talked to Kelly Thompson, who is a writer at Marvel, and within comic space, we talked to her for like, three and a half hours. We had to take like, a bathroom break halfway through our call with her, because a you know, we know these people, and they are incredible people, and they have great stories. But also, like, was about making sure that we got their story right along the way the but, yeah, there was a point where, like, I kept on being introduced to more and more women within the space physically worked in the 80s and the 90s, and I had to be like, okay, maybe I should stop interviewing people, because we have too much content, which is never a bad thing. This is an and we say this in the book. This is just the beginning of the story of these. Of the women that have worked at Marvel Comics, there are many. Many, many more stories that we, you know, didn't get a chance to hear. Obviously, some people have passed over the years, but we did get to talk to a lot of incredible people, including like Carol suleen and like some of these iconic women who wrote comics in the 1970s and are safely still alive today. Wow.

Jeff Dwoskin 5:17

So what was some of the things that you heard that one kind of, you're like, the rumor, oh, the rumors were true. And then that's one category. And then another category would be like, Oh, my God, completely, I don't wanna say, blindsided you, but like, you just didn't expect that you were about to uncover this type of

Judy Stephens 5:35

stuff. I mean, I will say, like, you know, the reason why I worked at Marvel for so long was sort of this family idea of like, this community that was built within the four walls, and that goes back all the way to, you know, the era of Stanley in the 1960s 1970s it truly was a family experience. Most of the people that ended up getting a chance to work within the buildings. Because back then, comics weren't what they are today. They weren't these exciting things to do. There were just one other piece of publication because, and at the time, especially in the 1950s comics were for everyone. There were hundreds of comics being printed all the time. It was truly if you look into, like, the history of comics and like, dive into like, what really happened, it evolved them, which obviously was the sort of like, backlash against horror and violence on covers. And like, what's what do children, what are our children reading? Sort of type of thing, sort of evolve that. So comics weren't necessarily like a thing you wanted to work at. They had kind of a bad rap. Oh, maybe not a bad rap, but they had a unique rap. So a lot of them were just like girlfriends. A lot of the women were just girlfriends or friends. That doesn't mean that they weren't fans themselves of comics. They probably came into this realm of these old comic legends because they liked comics, and they would go to comic book conventions. I mentioned Carol suleen. She her and her ex husband helped organize, like the first New York Comic Convention in the late 1960s they had gone to Worldcon, which still exists today, fell in love with this experience of this convention in this community, and, like, found an old like, an old hotel and brought together some of these iconic names of comic people like that. You wouldn't even believe like were, like, could be in the same room and signing comics, and you could buy comics for like, $5 like, they brought them together into these incredible conventions. And so she was a fan herself before, and then got asked if she wanted to write like anything. But anyways, got to write one of the comics in the 1970s and like, she was, like, glad to do it. You know, was able to tell that story. I mean, that was one of those I love conventions. So those are the stories that I really love. The thing that sort of was the continuous story was that, especially in the 1970s 1980s it wasn't a boys club yet. There was obviously a lot of boys, but there were a lot of women, and having other women in the space, especially in the 1980s like Louise Simonson, who goes by Weezy, she obviously wrote iconic and helped produce and edit iconic X Men comics. The X Men that we know today really come from the era of Weezy. So it's like, being able to, like, talk to her and just being like, she was like, Oh, I know, we just worked together. It was great. It was a community. We supported each other, we helped each other, we did our time, and then we went on to do something different. That was really an interesting story. So there weren't any skeletons, I would say there's probably, you know, like, we're not here to tell the skeletons, we're here to tell the stories of, like, these incredible women that were there. So every time anyone told me in a unique story of just like fun moments in the 19 and it sounded like working in, like the calm in Marvel in the 1980s early 1990s like with the bullpen and stuff like that, was just fun. It was just, it just sounded like fun. Part

Jeff Dwoskin 8:35

of the book talked about, I love comic cons as well. I love to hear like, how hardcore cosplayer you are, you know, because it's funny, like, when you go there's, like, I was taking a friend, and I was like, There's levels of cosplay. Those people over there, they're just holding a lightsaber that's like, that's like, barely trying

Judy Stephens 8:52

cosplayers. But yes, there are levels of cosplay, yeah.

Jeff Dwoskin 8:55

And then you got the ones that, like, they walk up to you and they got these contacts in their eyes, and they changed their eyes to, like, fire red or something. It was like, and like, this elaborate costume and all that. In the book, it talked about X Men, the animated series Comic Con I was just at, had eight of the original folks as matter of fact, right there. That's storm. She was cool. She was really and so she's saying, but it was such a cool thing. Like they had, like, you know, all the gene gray and Wolverine and Beast and, like, all of the core X Men there. It was like, but in the book, it was interesting that you guys kind of touched on that and that, think of that. And then now with X Men 97 it's back. Yeah.

Judy Stephens 9:33

I mean, I'm, I'm so happy that those voice actors are having their moment. When we would do the podcast, we'd always ask, how did you get started in comics? And obviously, like, I don't know necessarily need to ask that question to women anymore. I think a general it's a general question, but a lot of times it was the story, specifically, of the X Men animated series. For me, that was how I got knowledgeable about comics, because it was on after another show. That I was watching, and I was like, Oh, this is cool. Because, like, especially in the early 1990s was anyone gonna give a girl a comic? I was never gonna be given a comic unless it was like My Little Pony or Barbie. Although Marvel did actually print, did work with Mattel in the 1990s to print Barbie comic, and they were some of the first, some of the first work for women. Creators were given the work for Barbie. The X Men anime series was sort of like that thing. So when we were starting to work on this book, we got put in contact with Julia lewall, who is one of the writers on the series, and they brought her back to help with the new series. And she, along with her husband, put together a book, I think probably like five or six years ago that like showcases the art and the story of like, how it came to be. And then from there, she put us in touch with Margaret Lohse, who is the Who was the woman who helped Fox kids become what it is today. Truly reevaluate like, truly like, refresh the way that Saturday morning cartoons exist for kids a lot of the way that we watch cartoons now, really, thanks to what they did at Fox Kids. And she had worked when Stanley had built his production company in the 1980s she had worked with Stan. And so then when she had and but they couldn't sell a marvel, they couldn't sell an X Men thing. They really struggled to sell anything with X Men. And so she came, once she was in charge with Fox Kids, she came back to Stan and was like, we gotta do this. We have a little pull out chapter of hers. One of the things we really focus on in this book is the woman's words. Is who we talk to in their words. So there's so many quotes, there's so many moments where we just took like, whole parts of the conversation and sort of like collected them into little like, reads and like that, getting heavy Margaret on the phone. Honestly, truthfully, it was, like, one of our like, oh my god, we I can't believe we did

Jeff Dwoskin 11:47

that. That's awesome. Super visible. The story of the women of Marvel. That's the name of the book. We talked about a little bit for a second before we started taping. But talking about, like, the origin of the name of the book, where that came from. We

Judy Stephens 12:02

weren't sure what we wanted to call it. Obviously, we knew that we wanted had the woman of marble in there, and we were just pitching ideas around. And I think it was actually on a call with Kelly Thompson where she just went because we were talking about the way that we would always phrase the conversation was about sort of introducing how we wanted this book to feel was the first female superhero that is created and built into the Marvel Universe, not who existed previous to sort of the 1960s Marvel was a woman whose powers made her invisible. And does that say so much about women in society in the 1960s and even the struggle that we are running today? And Kelly was like, Why don't you call it, like, super visible, like, it's this idea of, like, taking this i this idea of the Invisible Woman Who is a strong woman in her own right. You know, she obviously, like, she is a fierce to be reckoned in the comics. Like her storyline is very changed now, but in that moment of time when you just look at this character and its powers, you sort of think about, like, what does that mean, and what does that say? And it took a long time also, for, like, a female character to be able to have powers that really mattered and made a difference. And she wasn't like, she wasn't like, overloaded by her powers, like, when you look at, like, Jean gray and like, all these different things, but yeah, so like the story, the title supervisor was just like, Oh, that's perfect. That works exactly. And all we had to do was get signed off from everyone up the chain. Thankfully, everyone signed off on it.

Jeff Dwoskin 13:26

Now, Judy, not to blow your mind or anything, but I don't know how being from Marvel you feel about the Roger Corman fantastic form movie, but one of my obsessions is that movie, and it came from Comic Con. I have the VHS, and at one point I made it my obsession to get as many people from that movie on my podcast, one of which was Rebecca Staub, who was the technically first live action Sue Storm. No,

Judy Stephens 13:55

I've never seen it, but I've obviously seen steals from that. And, like, we used to talk about that all the time in the office of like, especially as the movies really started to explode, and we were like, we have to, like, do a screening of this movie, because just like, when he, like, extends his arms, it's so funny.

Jeff Dwoskin 14:12

Obviously, doesn't compare visually to the but it's, it's a fun it's a fun watch. It's a fun one. But I was just like, oh, the first and now Sue storms having her moment again.

Judy Stephens 14:25

Yeah, the movie looks incredible. I mean, I'll follow Pedro whatever he does, but, yeah, I'm excited for it when it comes out this summer.

Jeff Dwoskin 14:34

And great timing for the book too, right? Because, yeah, ride that, right. Yeah. Alright, so we talk about Sue Storm being the first and invisible. We talk about the evolution of the female superhero. You know, I know that wasn't exactly what's covered in the book, but over time, like Margaret eventually wrote Black Widow and Carol Danvers, and it would have been of that time and versus, you know, you know where they're basically wearing. No clothes and they, you know, eventually Carol Danvers is as a full suit, you know. I mean, like, how women are thought of as superheroes changed over time as well. Yeah. I

Judy Stephens 15:10

mean, I think that a like, making comics for obviously, like, comics used to be made for everyone. There were a type of comic for everyone. And specifically, comics made for girls were romance. Comics were sort of this different era of comics. These sort of still exist. I mean, you can definitely look at Archie as like, one of those options that still exists in that idea. Those obviously, were, you know, all of the rage in the 40s and the 50s, and then sort of faded off. And like everyone's small, they bring them back, but they're not to what the sheer volume of comics were that were being made back then. But in the 1970s the Fantastic Four was doing incredible. So it was X Men, you know, looking at these Spider Man and so in 1972 as sort of second wave feminism was sort of exploding, and indie comics were really becoming this force over in San Francisco, with some incredible art being done like that. Some of the some queer comics, lesbian comics, all these different things. One of the women we specifically talked to for this book, who sadly passed last year, was Trina Robbins. And Trina was one of the like women just leading the charge in indie comics and just wanting to write comics that didn't care what comic was, but she just wanted to write it. And so she did a whole bunch of anthologies where she celebrated female creators. And so they existed. They're always over here. But so Stan Lee decided, and along with the Marvel editorial staff and then 1970s that they were like, we should create three or we should like, have three characters that are for female, like female led superheroes that are for women. And so they brought in Carol Selena is one of the people they brought in. And so they created Night Nurse, Shauna, the She devil, and black cat. And all three of these characters still exist today in different entities. The Black Cat is now like the cat and like different they've sort of evolved. They're not necessarily, not all of them are tied back their original Shauna is tied back to her original identity, but, like, they've kind of evolved over the time. Night Nurse is obviously a daredevil, and so each one of them were, you know, written and example for for the cat, one of the first women that ever worked at Marvel outside of Flo Steinberg, who was Stan Lee's assistant. She was known as fabulous Flo. She is. She's pretty famous within the space of Marvel, she was actually working there up until she passed away as a copywriter, as a proofreader. And she was the sweetest little lady come up and give you like a wet kiss on your cheek, whatever she saw you. She was very, it was very, you know, it felt very special that I had opportunity to sort of know her before she passed. Marie Severin was the first sort of female creator brought on, and she drew the, the original version of the cat. You know, these, all three of these women came on. Obviously, the books didn't sell. Great. It was a hard time for comics and for Women in Comics, and just the period of time. And so, you know, they sort of faded, and they, they ended the series. But over time they, you know, every, few years they'd bring a new person back. So like, for example, Miss Marvel Carol Danvers. A couple years later, they created her. She was Miss marvel at the time. She didn't become captain marvel until about a decade ago, and then in the 1980s I think it was really this introduction of more female editors into the space that started to introduce more female characters. But I don't think it was the way that we think about you know, gender identity and equality was not a way that they lived, necessarily. They were just sort of making content to make content, and they wanted to write characters that either look like them or just happened like, oh, this was a friend of mine. I needed to write a character and I put it in. When you ask them about it now, they kind of just go like, Oh, whatever. But so then over time, obviously X Men really exploded. A lot more female characters were introduced into that period of time. And then the 90s was a was a hard time for, I think, Women in Comics. And then really, I think it was this evolution of the movies that's truly brought a fresh new audience to, and this is going all the way back to the first Spider Man in it was like 2001 when the first spider man came out Tobey Maguire Spider Man. And then obviously the X Ben, and then obviously Marvel Studios. Then in 2008 bringing new audiences that to it at that point gave Marvel DC, all the comics to really evaluate, like, Oh, there. There's this new audience here we can a create new characters, bringing on also famous writers to come on and write books and just sort of evaluate. And I think that's where female characters have really become so much more real. They feel more like us now. You know, obviously going all the way to Kamala Khan, Miss Marvel and a Muslim superhero, I think, is sort of the pivotal of like, we're doing it, we're figuring it out. There are comics for everyone now, but it was definitely a long road to go down, and we have, definitely have to thank all the women who helped along the way, and men. Obviously, there were lots of men doing things too. Couple

Jeff Dwoskin 19:55

man, couple men, couple men. Theme of the. Podcast Episode Is it wasn't just Stan Lee. Why is it cool to be able to see the like, these movies become so big and like some of these characters that to see Carol Danvers become embodied by Brie Larson and like become like a real thing even, yeah, Miss Marvel, there's gotta be kind of cool to be able to, yeah,

Judy Stephens 20:21

I mean, I'm no longer at Marvel. I still freelance for them, but when I first got hired at Marvel, when I used to have to talk about working at Marvel, I have to say Marvel Comics, and then I'd have to say, like, Spider Man, the Hulk. No one knew who Iron Man was with at that time. And then the movie started coming out, and this sort of fandom of like, we lived in little bubble and we lived we, like, enjoyed our characters and we enjoyed reading, and like, okay, the movies came out, and then suddenly I would go to conventions, and the Marvel cosplay meetups would grow. They'd become these. I mean, by in 2015 I go to Dragon Con, which is this huge fandom convention down in Atlanta over Labor Day weekend. And it's everything goes fandom. It's incredible. It's like 80,000 people in costume. And the Marvel meetup, one year, we had over 800 people show up to this meetup in costume, which is like wrangling. Cosplays are already kind of hard to wrangle on. Like imagine wrangling 800 but it was just this incredible experience to watch as also Marvel grew, as social media grew. Marvel was one of the first big brands on Twitter. One of my old coworkers at Marvel who's still there, Ryan Penagos, Agent M he was, you know this, everyone knew who he was, and he really advocated for Marvel. And like, we would go to conventions and just experience this in a way that was like you just couldn't put into words that every convention we went to grew and the booth got crazier, and the talent every year got more and more famous, and suddenly I was interacting with, like, these incredibly famous celebrities. And I was like, How did I end up here? I don't know. I just, I would just did web design. Was kind of a crazy ride for a really long time and but the best part was just seeing the fan interactions, and seeing these fans connect to these characters in a way that was so unique, and also seeing the fandom get diverse, right like those first initial comic book conventions I went to, was predominantly white men, and then now you go to a comic book convention, and it's as incredibly diverse as possible, like everyone can enjoy these comics and enjoy them in different ways. Because I think that's also what's really interesting, is that now it's, it's more than just obviously reading comics as the OG, it's the origin. But these, all these creators, have built these, this sort of dynasty, these stories that now exists in mobile games, in console games. It exists in books. It exists in movies and TV shows. It's any way that you want to consume. This content is readily available and for all ages, which is kind of amazing.

Jeff Dwoskin 22:50

That is amazing. You can see by all my eight by 10s, I'm a big comic fan. That's where all my money goes. I love meeting the celebs, and then it's funny, like the comic cons, I assume the other ones. I like that too. It's like people signing autographs. Then you have the artists. There's a whole section of artists, and then people selling, like toys. I find every section fascinating. Of all that, it's I love it. So when you cosplay, when you dress Marvel, which character are you going as I do,

Judy Stephens 23:19

Carol. I'm pretty known for my Captain Marvel. I've done almost every version of her outside of the movies. I haven't done all the movies versions. They're much harder. They're much harder than comic book versions. But yeah, I started. I first cosplayed her in 2012 when she sort of came up as Captain Marvel, instead of being Miss Marvel, I went at the time when she first came out, she had my hair, and I walked into one of my coworkers office, and he goes, Oh, you have Carol's hair. And I was like, what? And I had seen the art, and they showed me Jamie mckelvey's Art of Carol's new uniform. And I was like, oh, oh, I do okay. I think I'll make that this year. And so I made that in 2012 and then I'd never made a soda spandex body suit at that point. By the way, they're much harder than they look. But since then, I've done almost every version of her suit, including the newest one that Jen Bartel just did, which is beautiful, and I love it. I'm making the jacket now with the embroidery, but that's what I typically do. But the other one I love to do is mystique. I love you mentioned contacts at the beginning. I love to become blue, put yellow contacts in, and not become me anymore, because she's not a villain, but she's not a good guy. She kind of lives in that that sort of middle ground of, like, what side is she on today? And I really like that as a character, of like, She's not perfect, and she doesn't want to be perfect. Unlike this sort of ideal that we put our superheroes on, our like we put Captain America on, we put Carol on, playing something like Mystique is fun and interesting and different.

Jeff Dwoskin 24:50

Those are two really good ones. Back to the book. Yeah, some comic books which, all right, we talked about flow. People and her powerhouse legacy. So what other women in the book do you talk about that? Couple other ones that you would highlight as having the biggest impact that we're not aware

Judy Stephens 25:11

of? I would say the 1980s is a really I specifically mentioned Louise Simonson. She was one of just a few, like there was a ton of female editors that worked at Marvel time. Annie nacenti is still working within sort of the space. She edits here and there. She writes here and there, but she was the one who killed Electra. So obviously she, she didn't really, there was a writer that wrote that, but she was the one who edited the book that killed Electra and then realized that she didn't actually want to kill Elektra. She talks about that. We have, I've had a chance to talk to her in the past on the woman Marvel podcast. She's great. And another one of another woman in that time period was Joe Duffy, who worked on a lot of Iron Fist apartment and Iron Fist books pretty long run in those you know, really helped sort of make that book a successful book. And so there's a lot of women like specifically 1980s behind the scenes, this era, obviously, we know Kelly sued Taconic, incredible. I mean, talking about Captain Marvel and Carol Danvers, and what she, what she has done and continues to do for Women in Comics, is pretty incredible. She does the thing. I'm not sure what platform she does it now on, but she used to do it on Twitter, which was once a year, she would all week you tagged to her, she would retweet that you were a woman who worked in comics. And here's what I'm writing, here's what I'm working on, just to sort of be like, put a spotlight on this. Like these people still exist, and she's still doing that, even now. One of the chapters that we specifically tied into was this era for the X Men comics, when Hickman came back and he wanted to bring in a much more diverse writing room, and he wanted to create it much more as a writing room, right? Every there were, there were writers on each book. He He wanted to feel maybe a little bit more like a TV show, like where there's a writing room, and he brought in these three specific comic writers who, at the time, sort of knew of each other, but didn't really, hadn't really had a chance to specifically meet each other until they worked on this book, and it's one of the non binary writers we have on, which is a vida Ayala. Vida came on, and then Leah Williams and teeny Howard, I believe. I'm not sure if Lena Leah is still not writing for more right now, but Tini is currently working on some books on DC. The three of them have never and never really had opportunity to meet, and then they met right before the pandemic. One of the photos I took in the book, where they all, like, met in person for the first time, was at c2, e2, 2020, which was the last week in February. What a time that was back then. But they became really good friends, and they would just get on calls and just like, write, just sitting on calls, write each other during the pandemic, keep them on and they were. They wrote these, like powerhouse books for a couple years at Marvel as part of under the Hickman, Jonathan Hickman era. But there, I mean, there's so many more. I mean, Kelly Thompson is incredible writer at Marvel. I mean, there's so many names. I mean, I I'd like go back through my list before this call is like, oh my god, I have to remember every woman's names. But there's a lot of there's so many people that we got to talk to that either were like writing, working on the comics bullpen, or the stare, or the stories of women that were, you know, were there and then, sadly, passed before we talked to them. Marie Severin is one of those names. There was a woman who worked in Marvel in the late 80s, early 90s, and she really was an advocate for the comic store, and really helped, sort of advocate for that space and help comic stores become sort of what you're known for today. Her name is Carol callish. She sadly passed away on her way to work one day going to New York City. And so those are the stories of like, you know, we we talked to other people that knew them and that they could tell me their story. So, but yeah, I just advocate, like, go buy the book. There are so many women's names. We have, like, a glossary at the front where we give everyone, like, what they worked on their date. So, like, we understand there's a lot of names of the book, but we're really happy about it,

Jeff Dwoskin 28:56

too. No, I mean, it's very compre Gail Simone, may

Judy Stephens 28:59

it see there's so many women's name I'm like, going through my brain. I'm like, what? Yeah, well, I'm

Jeff Dwoskin 29:03

just impressed I could come up with a name that you didn't mention. I know her from obviously, she's prolific with the comics, but I knew I followed her on Twitter. She was quite a powerhouse on Twitter. Back she's definitely posting

Judy Stephens 29:18

on Facebook a lot, and I think she's on one of the other platforms too. I highly recommend following Gail. She tells you all the gossip of what's happening in comics.

Jeff Dwoskin 29:29

Okay, so we know what inspired you to create the book. Sort of the goal also to inspire, kind of the next generations. For

Judy Stephens 29:37

me, it was really important that I had growing up, my mother worked in STEM. I mean, she still technically works in STEM, and she was a woman working in computer science before the idea that it was like, We need to get more women in this space and all this stuff. My mom just worked there, and she was the only one of the few women in the office, and she knew how to code, and she knew to code better than the boys. And so I. Grew up with a woman that could do something that wasn't expected of her, and so it just was seamless for me to decide to move to New York City and and just do what I wanted to do. I never second guessed who I was and what I wanted to do. I mean, obviously we all have sort of imposter syndrome. There have definitely been moments along the way. Oh my god, but, but when we started working on the podcast, on the panel, the number one experience that we got that would really sort of just be the like the cement that was like, This is why we're doing it. I'm not moving, was the moms who would come up and say, Thank you so much. My daughter can see that there is an opportunity for her in this space. She loves this. She doesn't know what she wants to do yet, but she knows that she could do something. And so I really always tried to have the panel. Obviously the most public facing thing we did be a diverse group of women and sometimes non binary people that would come up that did different things, right? They weren't just writers, they weren't just artists, they weren't just editors. They were all different ways. And that was something that was really important to me in this book too, was that I want anyone who's going to read this book be like, Hey, I you know, I can't write and I can't draw, oh, but I can project manage. They may not know that term, but I know how to I had to. I can keep myself on time with putting my homework in. That means I can also work in comics. I can also work at Marvel, I mean, and even now, you can also work on the movies, right? Like movies are all about project management, and so that's really important. And I think it's the number one thing was, for me, was I wanted to make sure that these women had their chance to have their name in lights. We all know the story of Stan Lee and Jack Kirby and Steve Ditko. But do we know the story of Marie Severin or Louise Simonson or some of the women that are coming up today writing? Not yet. And so this is just part one. And so hopefully this sort of advocates for more people to learn about these creators and and there be a sort of now. It's going to go into the Library of Congress. It is a part of history. These people's stories are now written in stone, and they'll exist for the next generations to read and learn about

Jeff Dwoskin 32:09

amazing Well, thank you, Judy, it's awesome. Anna to Jeanette and Margaret, your co authors, I

Judy Stephens 32:19

know I definitely go. We're going to be doing tons of stuff. If you are, if you are in the New York City area, we have a event that we're doing, a powerhouse books in Dumbo in Brooklyn on June 23 follow me on social media. We're going to be posting about it. Margie Margaret also is going to be doing a couple events across the country all up that week of book release. Our book comes out June 24 we would love if you pre ordered. You can pre order wherever you eat. Your books. Obviously support your local bookstores, if you can your Indie bookstores. But obviously it's available on the big boys too, on Amazon and Barnes and Noble and all that type stuff. But yeah, hopefully we'll be at Samuel ComiCon this year. We might do something in your comic con, so stay tuned.

Jeff Dwoskin 33:02

Awesome. The book is super visible. The story of the women of Marvel. You can also check out Judy's podcast women of Marvel as well. So much women of Marvel you get you've been hours and hours out. Yeah, Judy, thank you so much for hanging out with me and sharing all these stories. I'm excited for the book to come out. Thanks so much. Jeff.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai