The Conjuror comes to DOCTOR STRANGER AND THE SORCERERS SUPREME loaded for bear and with almost no interest in being a team player. She presents as taciturn and brutal, but reveals almost nothing of herself.

With SORCERCERS SUPREME #4 this upcoming January, however, writer Robbie Thompson and artist Javier Rodriguez will pull back the curtain a bit and officially introduce Nina to readers.

Before her grand opening, we spoke with Thompson for a quick glance at the team’s resident bad ass.

Marvel.com: With DOCTOR STRANGE AND THE SORCERERS SUPREME #4, Nina moves into the spotlight. From a writer’s perspective why did you want to put the focus on her at this point in the book?

Robbie Thompson: When [editor] Nick Lowe and I first talked about this book, we talked a lot about how to tackle a story with a big team. I hadn’t written a team book before, so I was really excited for the challenge. With so many characters, it can be tough to flesh them all out and give them all their due. In that initial discussion, we came up with the idea that, at least for the first arc, we’d use a bookend flashback structure—each issue beginning and ending with a flashback that shines a light on an individual member of our team. It was a great and efficient way to build out characters as well as suspense. So, in the first issue, we focused on Merlin, second on Wiccan, third on Kushala. I don’t want to give too much away, but things get pretty intense in the fourth issue, and so it was the perfect time to shine a light on one of our most mysterious characters, Nina.

Marvel.com: Brazil of the 1950’s is an unusual setting for comics. In creating Nina, what made that setting feel right for her place of origin? How does the era and country inform her disposition, approach to teamwork, and goals?

Robbie Thompson: 1950’s Brazil is a fascinating time and it definitely is a part of who Nina is. However, since we’re not taking place in that era—not yet, anyway—it’s only an aspect of Nina’s character.

She’s not defined by where she comes from. The key aspect to her character that is something that she shares with the team is that as a Supreme, she’s not used to working with others. There are major trust issues for Nina to overcome, and she has to overcome them or it could cost her everything—so that has a bigger impact on her disposition, teamwork and goals.

Marvel.com: What is it like to write Nina? What challenges and rewards does she present you?

Robbie Thompson: With each issue, I sort of fall in love with whoever is getting the spotlight flashback, but Nina has been a favorite from the beginning. I knew she was carrying a more personal connection to The Forgotten from the jump, and then artist Javier Rodriguez’s design just really made her pop. They’re all fun to write, but I do have a soft spot for Nina!

Doctor Strange and the Sorcerers Supreme #4 cover by Javier Rodriguez

Marvel.com: How is Javier Rodriguez’s art aiding your storytelling? How is it influencing what you are showcasing in the book?

Robbie Thompson: I simply cannot imagine this book without Javier. He is the Sorcerer Supreme to me!

We’ve been in constant communication throughout building this book, and I had the good fortune to meet him Spain a few months back. He’s brilliant. A truly great storyteller. I write in a much looser style for this book and that’s all because Javier is so fantastic and brings so much thought and passion to the book.

My job is to set things up and get out of his way. I send scripts early to him to get his feedback right from the jump. And every time he’s always got a much better idea for how the story can flow, or a moment of great characterization, or an epic layout to really bring out the magic in the book. Nick and assistant editor Darren Shan did an unbelievable job assembling the artists for this book, and I’ve learned so much from everyone on this team.

Marvel.com: How do you see Nina’s role in the Sorcerers group? How is that role evolving and changing both within the book and for you the more you write her?

Robbie Thompson: I think she’s got the furthest to go in terms of becoming a true team member. Again, I don’t want to spoil anything from #4, but her judgment is clouded by her personal ties to The Forgotten. But I think she’s starting to see, especially watching Doctor Strange in action, that there’s value in working as a team. There’s value in trusting others. Unlike the other Supremes, Strange has been involved in a lot of teams and so he’s more open and trusting than the others. That affects everyone, for better or for worse, and it has a positive impact long term on Nina.

Marvel.com: She’s undoubtedly the most well-armed of the Sorcerers in terms of conventional weaponry. What motivates her to outfit herself this way despite her powers and what do you think it reveals about her character?

Robbie Thompson: I think it reflects how she likes to keep everything at a safe distance. These are not close range weapons! I also think it reflects how broad her magical knowledge is; she doesn’t just rely on spells. A lot of credit for that belongs with Javier, who designed the character and really brought her to life. I mentioned guns, but he came up with her whole get up and really fleshed the character out in a way you can see just by looking at her.

Marvel.com: You’ve previously mentioned a connection to Merlin. Anything more you can tease about that?

Robbie Thompson: You’ll see in the flashback that she fell into this story in a much different way than her compatriots—she’s on a mission, and that mission will be revealed by the end of #4!

Marvel.com: To switch the lens to the book in full, what is going on in #4? What are the other Sorcerers up to?

Robbie Thompson: It’s all been building to this issue, as our Supremes once and for all throw down with The Forgotten. There’s a ton of reveals in this issue, and an epic battle that Javier, inker Alvaro Lopez, colorist Jordie Bellaire, and letterer Joe Caramagna have done an unbelievable job in bringing to life. This issue rocks!

Follow Robbie Thompson and Javier Rodriguez’s DOCTOR STRANGE AND THE SORCERERS SUPREME with issue #3 on December 14 and then Nina’s big spotlight in January’s issue #4!

X-Men fans have followed the adventures of Jean Grey over the years, and for many readers, she has become a favorite character. Soon, she’ll have her own series for the very first time. We’ll get to see a time-displaced Jean battling some of her classic demons—but will things play out differently this time?

We caught up with series writer Denis Hopeless about what we can expect from him and artist Victor Ibanez.

Marvel.com: ResurrXion will shake things up across the X-Men titles—have you enjoyed taking part in and helping to shape that?

Dennis Hopeless: Because I’ve done ALL-NEW X-MEN for over a year and I contributed to the initial planning of everything leading up to Inhumans Vs. X-Men, I’ve seen it on the horizon for a while now. I knew it was coming, and I could plan into it. Because I’m going from writing all the time-displaced X-Men except Jean Grey, to writing just Jean, I’ve had to make a transition, but I’ve had fun with it. It feels sort of like starting over fresh.

Marvel.com: Jean will be going up against the Phoenix, a classic conflict for her. Can you tell us your experience with writing a story that’s familiar in some ways but also new?

Dennis Hopeless: We wanted to do a couple different things with this, because Jean has never had a solo series before. We wanted to do something that’s new and unique, but that also gives readers that classic Jean Grey feel that they love.

Now, we have a teenaged Jean Grey who hasn’t had all the experiences that the adult Jean did.

I spent over a year on ALL-NEW X-MEN delving into the other time-displaced X-Men and exploring how they live in the shadows of their older selves. In Jean’s case, her older self has died. Still, when you say the name “Jean Grey” or “Phoenix,” people already have an idea of what that represents—but that isn’t her. I wanted to take teenaged Jean and put her up against this massive, monolithic thing that the other Jean had to deal with and see how she’d handle it differently. I wanted to write something brand new that still takes advantage of this classic, beloved character.

Jean Grey by David Yardin

Marvel.com: As you mentioned, we’ll see a time-displaced Jean, trying to avoid the fate of her predecessor. How will things go differently this time around?

Dennis Hopeless: Very early in our series, we see her confronted with the idea of the Phoenix coming, and the reality that they need Jean Grey to stop it. But she’s not the Jean Grey they need, and the older Jean Grey has died. So she needs to level up. She needs to become a prepared Jean Grey by the time the Phoenix arrives. So she puts herself through a lot of things to try to get ready for something she can’t really prepare for. And I think a lot of people can relate to that—especially readers around her age. During those post-high school, early college years, you want to figure out the adult you’re going to become, but you largely base that on the experiences you had growing up and the expectations others have put on you.

Marvel.com: Jean seems like a complicated person with a lot of nuances that you’d want to get across. How did you approach developing and conveying her character?

Dennis Hopeless: In 2011, I worked on X-MEN SEASON ONE. We took the original five X-Men during the Stan Lee/Jack Kirby era and kind of updated them, adding a little more character. Jean posed a challenge because the writers hadn’t developed her as much in those early issues. We leaned into that with that book and made Jean the protagonist. So I put a lot of energy years ago into figuring this out. And in a lot of ways, [Brian Michael] Bendis and company brought that updated version of the character to the initial ALL-NEW X-MEN run—the more fleshed out, well-rounded, teenaged version of Jean. And she has had some crazy experiences lately, but she remains distinct from the adult Jean. In regular continuity, she becomes a really interesting character much later. So now we see her kind of in between those points, living in the shadow of all of the crazy events that never actually happened to her. That’s where the nuance comes in for me: taking that early Jean I figured out years ago and adding to that the weight of Dark Phoenix and Scott and Emma and all of these experiences that she didn’t have but everyone else remembers.

Marvel.com: Would you like to tease anything else?

Dennis Hopeless: Sort of similar to what I did in ALL-NEW X-MEN, the book will give us a road trip across the Marvel Universe, but very focused on Jean. She’ll have to fight and experience things in order to grow as a person for a very specific reason. So we’ll see a lot of guest stars, a lot of crazy Marvel Universe locales. And of course we’ll focus on Jean, whom we’ve traditionally seen in team books. Fans of hers will love this book!

Follow Marvel.com and our social channels for the latest on JEAN GREY and the rest of ResurrXion!

When Nadia Pym spreads her wings on January 4, 2017 with the release of UNSTOPPABLE WASP #1 by Jeremy Whitley and Elsa Charretier, she’ll be the Marvel Universe’s newest super hero with a big brain to match her abilities—and she won’t be alone.

Each month in the letters page of UNSTOPPABLE WASP, space will be devoted to spotlighting real world female scientists and their work.

“I have to credit our amazing artist Elsa with the original idea,” says Whitley of the profiles. “I had been kicking around that I wanted to do some outreach to STEM and women in science and she came up with an idea. She would draw headshots and we’d do a little profile on female scientists. Her original plan was to post these on Twitter or Tumblr, but ever since I started working on UNSTOPPABLE WASP I’d wanted to do a letters page. I love letters pages and as engaging as Nadia is as a character, I thought it would be perfect.  Elsa’s idea of profiling female scientists from our audience was exactly what I was looking for.”

Celebrating science and the innovative minds working towards advancement in various fields fits perfectly with Nadia Pym’s character and the overall feel of UNSTOPPABLE WASP.

“UNSTOPPABLE WASP is all about young female super scientists setting out to change the world,” notes Whitley. “It made perfect sense to us to highlight female scientists who really are shaping our future. We already knew several women who fit this description and were comics readers, so the idea of sharing their awesome work with the rest of our audience seemed like something that had to happen. We look forward to learning about more amazing comics loving lady scientists as we open up to submissions and hopefully a few of [our] younger readers may even find something that interests them as well as the expert that they can ask about it.”

Marvel.com proudly presents a first look at the initial pair of scientific spotlights; for more, check out every issue of UNSTOPPABLE WASP starting with #1 on January 4, 2017!

Hello, you magnificent people!  Nadia here to welcome you to our letters page, “Agents of G.I.R.L.”

Why do we call our letters page that, you ask?  Well, that’s a really good question!  You’re so on top of things!  While we love getting letters about how much you love the book (Of course you love the book, I’m delightful!) we are also hard at work recruiting lady adventure scientists for G.I.R.L. (Genius In Action Research Labs).  And I may be able to fly, but even I can’t get to every lady genius in the world.

So send us your suggestions for comic-reading, nerdy-birdy science adventure ladies, and we’ll use this space to profile our new members.  Elsa even agreed to draw their pictures! Can you believe that?  She’s so nice and I love her accent!

But now I’m rambling, so here are our first new recruits: Rachel Silverstein (@irrelephantidae on Twitter) and Marina Chanidou (@MarinaLovesChem)!

What kind of work do you do?

Rachel Silverstein by Elsa Charretier

Rachel: I’m a proboscidean paleontologist, meaning I study extinct elephant fossils. If you were wondering, not all paleontologists study dinosaurs! Of course, they’re cool and all, but ice age megafauna (large mammals) are what do it for me.

Marina Chanidou by Elsa Charretier

Marina: I am a PhD student at a UK university studying Chemistry, specifically Analytical Chemistry. I like to describe this as CSI but it takes longer and you usually don’t get any clear answers! Right now I analyze food samples, but my goal is to apply my method to archaeological remains and test them for residues of different food stuffs.

What excites you about your work?

Rachel: I think most people, professional paleontologists or not, would agree the field of paleontology is inherently exciting. I personally look forward to the collaboration aspect of it. Not all scientists like to work with others, but I prefer to share ideas and findings with my colleagues. Nothing excites me more than getting messages about new fossil elephant findings and the work being done on them.

Marina: This leads to the exciting bit. What I’m trying to do is more accurately identify what people in the past ate! Well, it’s exciting for me, okay? In modern samples I can identify even small adulteration of one type of food to another (for example traces of pork fat somewhere where there shouldn’t be any pork, or cheaper vegetable oils in what is supposed to be virgin olive oil). It would be very cool to do that for archaeological samples as well. (For example, did ancient Britons use olive oil, and if they did, was it imported from Greece or Spain or Italy?) The exciting part is that there is a problem and I’m working out the solution. There is no ready path, I am the one who will choose how I will go about answering this question and I will decide what to do every step of the way. It’s like a puzzle, but you don’t get a picture to tell you what it’s supposed to look like. You don’t even know if the picture is square, rectangular or a circle!

Why would you encourage young women to getting into science?

Rachel: Young women should get into science because they want to! Don’t let anyone tell you you can’t be a scientist, regardless of what science you want to pursue. This is your reminder you can do it. Really. I’ve found female scientists to be the most supportive human beings on the planet. Even if what you do is a hobby, that doesn’t make you less of a scientist. Remember that, ladies!

Marina: Same reason I would encourage them to do anything: if they like it, it seems interesting to them or they are good at it, they should go ahead and do it! I would encourage all young women to take science courses at school anyway for a number of reasons. First of all, it’s really cool and you might like it! But even if you don’t like it, science teaches you a way of thinking. It teaches you that there are problems and there are solutions. And even if you can’t find the solutions now, you’re laying the groundwork for others eventually solving a problem. We are indeed standing on the shoulders of giants, but even a small change puts us higher than we were before. Science teaches you to work, evaluate, adapt and never accept something without evidence–and when the evidence changes, to accept it and change with it.

What female scientists (real or fictional) have inspired you in your work?

Rachel: I have to give a shout out to Dr. Katy Smith, a fellow female proboscidean paleontologist (who also reads comics!), as my inspiration. Dr. Smith has always been there to encourage me to continue my studies to my full potential and give help whenever she can with my work.

Marina: I can’t remember many fictional female scientists from the books I was reading when I was younger. But I did have a female physics teacher in high school and she was brilliant. A brilliant physicist and a brilliant educator. She asked us in class how many of us had taken something apart to see what it looks like and the people who raised their hands were mostly boys and me. She said it is okay for girls to experiment, to mess with things, to fix things and find out how things work. One day she was telling some of us a story about how she was running an experiment in the lab and it took more than 24 hours and she had to stay there and make sure everything was going well. Her boyfriend at the time was not impressed. She said “Sometimes men don’t understand that I will forget about a date if I’m in the lab.” That’s when I thought, “What’s not to understand? Of course the experiment was more important than the date! You can have a date any time, science is more important.” I was hooked!

Do you have a favorite example of clever/unusual/or nonsensical use of science in comics?

Rachel: As a paleontologist, I always thought the concept of the villain Dinosaur Man was hilarious. He reminds me of everything that went wrong in Jurassic Park, but in comic book-form!

Marina: Most science reads like magic in comics and I need to really suspend disbelief to follow it. That is one thing that I would love to be improved. One that I do enjoy very much and is surprisingly quite a realistic depiction of a scientist’s life is Blood Stain by Linda Sejic.

How long have you been reading comics? What was your first comic book?

Rachel: I’ve been reading comics since I was 12. I remember bringing them with me to class in middle school and trying to hide while reading them. I would read Marvel, DC, indie–anything really. My first Marvel comic I got into at a young age was Spider-Man.

Marina: I started reading comics when I was around six. My first books were Asterix the Gaul and Lucky Luke. Then I read a lot of Disney Comics, Carl Barks was a favorite creator. Finally, when I was 17, I went to an actual comic book shop. And picked up Medieval Lady Death! Sure, she was semi-naked, but she was a woman kicking ass in a world that wanted her gone!

Please send all of your suggestions for girl, lady, or lady-identifying geniuses to us at MHEROES@MARVEL.COM and mark your letters “Okay to Print”! You can also tweet at us using the hashtag #AgentsOfGIRL! Come back next month to meet more amazing science ladies!