The first comic I can remember ever reading was a 'Fantastic Four' issue that my dad bought out of the drugstore once. The thing that struck me about it was that the ending wasn't an ending. It was essentially a cliffhanger. It was the first time I had ever read anything like that, where you read a book, but the book isn't the book.

Charles Soule

Categorized in : You Me Time Dad

Ive always loved the idea of mythologies linked to or underlying everyday life, like the kami gods of Shintoism, where every rock, tree and stream has its own little god associated with it.

Charles Soule

rocks tree ideas

Superman/Wonder Woman, people expected, I guess, a lot of romance, or maybe something that wasnt emotionally deep. Who knows?

Charles Soule

wonder-woman romance people

I had always thought that I would do something that was connected to music as a career, or possibly Chinese, which was my major.

Charles Soule

chinese careers connected

Us writers all like each other and want to write stories with each other; we're having a good time.

Charles Soule

stories want writing

This might seem impossible to believe, but some lawyers actually like lawyering.

Charles Soule

impossible might believe

Black Bolt is typically a stoic leader, part of a larger cast of Inhumans who get their hands dirty in ways that he doesn’t.

Charles Soule

leader hands dirty

You cant be a practicing attorney without being very disciplined and detail-oriented and having good time management.

Charles Soule

time-management details good-times

I've been a big music guy for a long time and a lot of my books have music in them so I like music analogies.

Charles Soule

guy long book

I'm always experimenting and trying different things. That's what keeps it fun and encourages growth.

Charles Soule

trying-different-things growth fun

The decision to work with Marvel for a while isn't any sort of denigration of DC. I had a fantastic time there, I was treated extremely well, I have strong positive feelings about all of my editors and the DC universe of characters, and I look forward to hopefully working with them at some point down the road.

Charles Soule

decision work time positive

I actually imagined 'Thunderbolts' as a straight-up comedy book in a lot of ways, like a very dark comedy book, whereas 'Red Lanterns' is more of a cosmic saga that has some jokes every once in a while.

Charles Soule

red comedy dark book

'Thunderbolts' I was mostly attracted to because I really wanted to write Punisher and Elektra and Deadpool, who are characters I have always really enjoyed. But the funny thing is that over time, I came to really like Red Leader; he became one of my favorite guys in the book. Sometimes characters surprise you.

Charles Soule

you red time funny

I was an enormous fan of Dan Slott's run, and John Byrne's run was a big deal for me. I found Slott's version of 'She-Hulk' first, and then I went back and looked up some of the older stuff because I liked it so much. And it was so good. It was perfect. It was my perfect comic book at the time that I found it.

Charles Soule

good me time book

The Marvel universe is a deep, weird, woolly place, and getting to expose strange corners of it is part of the fun of 'She-Hulk.' Honestly, it's part of the fun of any Marvel book.

Charles Soule

deep place universe book

Here's a list of some of the folks who have written Swamp Thing over the years: Alan Moore, Len Wein, Scott Snyder, Brian K Vaughan, Joshua Dysart, Rick Veitch, Grant Morrison, Mark Millar. That's not even a full list, but you see my point - ol' Swampy has had some seriously brilliant people behind the keyboard in his time.

Charles Soule

behind you time people

I actually started trying to be a professional writer with novels, and I wrote two that exist and are around... kind of. But they never really went anyplace in particular. I still like them both. What it showed me was that you can spend years on a novel, and then it could just be, like, OK, you spent that time and that's that.

Charles Soule

never me you time

Of all the things I've done, the first 'Strongman' story was one of the easiest things to write. It was almost fully formed from the get-go. It's almost a 'Dark Knight Returns' riff, except you have a battle-worn Mexican wrestler instead of Batman.

Charles Soule

story you done dark

I like writing characters that seem different from one another. So if you were to hypothetically look at a bunch of lines from books I've written, just out of context, hopefully you would be able to determine who said what. That's the goal, anyway. I try to strongly differentiate through dialogue.

Charles Soule

try look you writing

I love comics work, and I hope I never stop doing it. But at the same time, I have my own law practice that I've built up over quite a while - it's been more than a decade that I've spent building that business - so it seems a little premature to just shut it down after nine months of working at a high level in comics. We'll see.

Charles Soule

hope work time love

It's kind of like when you have guests coming over to your house, and you haven't really picked up in awhile, and you look around and say, 'Wow, my place is kind of a mess, but I never noticed it because it's what I've been living in every day.' That's kind of what Supergirl is to the Red Lanterns.

Charles Soule

day look you red