'Marvel Rising' Writer Nilah Magruder Teams Up with Marvel's Voices

If you are a frequent listener to the Marvel’s Voices podcast than you already how much I love a good origin story. The best, in my opinion, being the stories that surprise, excite, and bring our passionate and complex antagonists—or protagonists—to unexpected places.

So, needless to say, I had a blast talking to writer, artist, and lover of all things animation, Nilah Magruder.

The Maryland native knew from a very young age that she wanted to be an animator. Starting with her love of popular animation, anime, and comics, Nilah soon began branching out into creating her own characters and working on comics for her high school newspaper. But, as with any good origin story, there's always a detour or two. On her way to the world of animation, she branched out into storyboard art and, eventually, into comics.

Nilah’s love for comics would come full circle when she created her own webcomic book in 2016. Her young adult webcomic, M.F.K, went on to win the first-ever Dwayne McDuffie Award for Diversity in Comics.

In addition to her independent work,  Nilah became the first Black woman to write a comic for Marvel with the digital comic, A YEAR OF MARVELS: SEPTEMBER INFINITE COMIC #1, featuring two of my favorite anthropopathic Super Heroes: Tippy-Toe and Rocket. In 2018, Nilah wrote for the mini-series  VAULT OF SPIDERS, a tie into SPIDER-GEDDON and is currently writing 2019’s MARVEL RISING limited series featuring Captain Marvel, Squirrel Girl, America Chavez, Ghost-Spider, Inferno, Miles Morales, and Kamala Khan. And Nilah’s journey is far from over.

I sat with Nilah to chat about her origins growing up in the country and how that influenced her penchant for writing and drawing animal characters such as Rocket and Tippy Toe, and her current run on MARVEL RISING. Listen to the full interview right here:

Download this episode of Marvel's Voices from Marvel.com/podcasts and subscribe to the show on Apple Podcasts now!