Take a guided tour of Marvel's mightiest creators with Marvel Tales! Ben Morse, currently a visiting lecturer at UNLV, previously spent a decade working within the House of Ideas. In each installment of this series, he utilizes that insider knowledge—plus his lifelong fandom—to connect with comics professionals as they spin stories about the Marvel Universe and its inhabitants!

“It was a real feast or famine for me this year,” sums up writer Kelly Thompson when thinking back on 2019, a 12-month period in which her workload went from several projects across multiple lines of characters to the solo adventures of a single Avenger and back again. “I was either working too much or not enough,” she continues. “There were either a bunch of my books on the stands every month—which feels great—or not enough, which feels weird and makes you paranoid! Even when you have stuff coming, it’s so easy to feel forgotten in a market that moves as fast as comics with so much new content every week.”

As a regular contributor to the Marvel Universe who came into her own over the past couple years, Thompson knows well the equal parts pressure and pride that comes with the gig. “I feel I work better and faster when I have too much work rather than not enough,” Kelly contends. “That said, burnout is real and especially if you don’t have enough real estate to let your brain recharge, it can really affect your work quality. Coming up with new stories and pitching is by far the most time consuming part of comics for me, and if you don’t have some downtime to let yourself figure those new ideas out it can become a problem fast.”