This week, the Women of Marvel podcast returns for the fall 2023 season with some rather massive changes. That includes a brand-new format and even a new co-host.
Hosts Ellie Pyle and Preeti Chhibber are bringing a variety of special guests, experts, and more together to get new insights into fan-favorite characters. Dubbed “magazine style,” the season will focus on characters like She-Hulk, Rogue, Shuri, and Jean Grey. With various ways to probe each character, the hosts told me in a recent chat that it’s all a way to get a unique look at these characters like never before.
Having already had a listen, there’s a lot to unpack for the new season (which debuted mid-day on September 6). As part of aforementione chat in the show’s inner workings, both Pyle and Chhibber shared their backgrounds, what to expect for the new season, and much, much more.
This interview has been edited. Be sure to check out the AIPT Comics podcast in the coming weeks for an extended edition of our chat.
Courtesy of Marvel.
AIPT: I was so lucky to listen to the first episode of Women of Marvel this season, the Jean Grey episode. AIPT has had X-Men Monday going over 200 weeks and monitoring Twitter and all of our socials, Jean Grey has got to be the most popular X-Men ever.
Ellie Pyle: That totally makes sense.
Preeti Chhibber: It does, it does. My like, Nightcrawler and Gambit heart is still beating, but Jean Grey tracks ’cause she’s amazing.
EP: As we nerd out about a lot this season on the podcast she’s one of those characters who captured my heart very early. You never forget your first favorites <laugh>.
AIPT: The Women of Marvel podcast is taking on a new format. What can fans expect, and why change things up?
EP: First of all, we have Preeti, which we are so excited about. We shook up the format a little bit to make it kind of more of a magazine style where we’re getting a lot of different takes on each of these characters. So we have one character who’s the unifying theme for each episode. And then we have different experts come in, whether those are writers, artists, actors who’ve worked on these characters, or we have a scientist every episode who’s gonna talk about people’s powers. We have people from the cosplay community, we have other fans who have particular connections to these characters, and we’re able to really kind of take a broad look at their impact on pop culture.
PC: It was really cool when, uh, Marvel approached me about it and they’re telling me about this sort of like, ideas they had for the new format. I’ve guested on the show and I’ve helped do interviews and stuff in the past, and I was like, that sounds so unique and such an interesting way to approach fandom. This is bringing in so many new avenues to fandom and showing sort of the wide breadth of impact these characters can have.
EP: It was a lot of fun to talk to so many different people about so many different kinds of things and see what they have in common and see where people have completely different perspectives than things we would’ve thought of on our own.
AIPT: You’re both incredibly talented with so many credits to your name. Could you talk a little bit about your other work and how you apply those skills to podcasting?
EP: Absolutely. Preeti, you could go first this time ’cause you’ve got a book to promote.
PC: I have been writing for Marvel, which has been really cool. My book Spiderman’s Bad Connection came out on Tuesday, which is very, very fun. Coming at it from the perspective of the creative side and knowing these characters, it’s really fun to have those creative conversations. When we write Marvel books, you’re working with editors like Ellie and with other writers and other people who are involved on the Marvel side. But getting to really nail down like the character and how many different ways people think about these characters will for sure influence my creative output moving forward in a really exciting way. It’s just another part of the creative process, which has been really fulfilling on that side now. So bringing the podcasting into that. And then the other side, bringing my writing into the podcasting is of course, just I love these characters. Like, I have my Gambit and Rogue mini for Marvel Unlimited. So getting to bring that joy and broadcasted out has been really, really fun with people who also feel the joy as you will hear in these episodes.
EP: So I have bounced around Marvel and done a lot of different things on a lot of different things. That makes it super fun to bring all of those different perspectives into doing these interviews and whether it’s getting to talk to people who have touched these characters in ways that I haven’t gotten to work on, that’s always fun. Also as Preeti said, getting to hear just the impact that these characters have had on people as well as new and interesting kind of ideas and places we could take these characters in the future is really a lot of fun. There are also nostalgic moments where we talk about a few things this season where I’m like, “Oh, yeah. You know, back at the beginning of my career, you know, many, many years ago I got to work on this thing and that was so much fun. And that was so cool.” It’s neat to kind of be taking such a broad view of the Marvel universe of these characters in ways that let us bring our own broad experience to it.
Courtesy of Marvel.
AIPT: Now your first episode is about Jean Grey. Was there anything you learned about Jean that you didn’t know before going into the prep and going into the recording of the episode?
EP: Not necessarily in terms of, you know, learned about, but something I had not given a ton of thought to was the hero versus villain, discussion that we kind of had mm-hmm. I just love Jean in all of her forms. So, I had not thought to kind of put it in those terms.
PC: I think it’s, it’s similar to that in I revisited some old Jean Grey books in preparing for the episode. I genuinely, it’s not that I forgot how emotional it was, but I was surprised by how emotionally I still reacted to it. I was crying reading this book that I like, I know this story, I’ve read it before it’s pop culture, like everybody knows, right? But still, I was reading it, and I was like, “Oh my God!”
AIPT: It was revealed at SDCC that this season of the Women of Marvel podcast we’ll have Jean Gray, Shuri, Gwen Stacy, Kate Bishop, Ms. Marvel, and Echo. Is there a particular episode you’re excited for fans to listen to? Unrelated to what you just said? <laugh>.
EP: My favorite X-woman is our girl Rogue, which will be our extra-long extended episode because of so much fangirling that we had to fit in. We will get to talk a lot about her. And Preeti and I both have a lot of feelings.
PC: Lots of feelings. You know what’s funny is now I can say Ms. Marvel. <laugh>.
AIPT: Preeti, I wanted to ask you about the Spider-Man book you mentioned earlier. How exciting is it writing Spot, considering there is now this new fandom that knows who Spot is…
PC: You know what’s wild. I chose the Spot for the second book about four years ago. I’m not even kidding. I’ll find my original pitch. ’cause I pitched the trilogy together. I love the Spot. No one talks about the Spot. He’s such a weirdo. My top five panels of Spider-Man are Spidey punching himself in the face through the Spot. I just think it’s so funny every time. I wrote the book, I turned it in, I’m not even kidding, like three weeks later they were like, the Spot’s gonna be the villain in Across the Spider-Verse. I love that the Spot is getting his moment. He’s such a weirdo. Such a wonderful enemy for Spider-Man to go up against because sometimes they’re both really annoying, which is fun. I had a great time writing him and I love that people are talking about the spot. He’s the best <laugh>
EP: I will jump on all of the Spot talk to plug the fact that we have a new arc of Spider-Man Unlimited. We’re actually relaunching after our Venom-verse summer to do Spider-Man Unlimited. And the first arc is gonna be a team-up between 616 Spider-Man and video game Spider-Man versus the Spot.
PC: It’s the summer of the Spots.
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