Steve Schofield
December 05, 2016
In The Mix

A Super Natural

Turning comic books into successful series comes naturally to this lifelong fanboy.

Ann Farmer

Marc Guggenheim has loved comic books for as long as he can remember.

His earliest memory, in fact, involves a Superman issue that he got his young mitts on.

“My mother came in the room and said, ‘Can you read that?’” recalls Guggenheim, who was then only a preschooler. “I said, ‘No. I’m just looking at the pictures.’”

Decades later, Guggenheim still leafs through comics, albeit electronically. Keeping current with superheroes is critical when you are an executive producer and co-creator of two of the CW’s action-adventure series, Arrow and DC’s Legends of Tomorrow.

Guggenheim also executive-produces the animated comic-inspired streaming series, Vixen, for CW Seed, the network’s new online viewing platform, and is embarking on another Seed project that features a gay superhero.

“I’ve been lucky with my career,” says Guggenheim, who was working as a corporate attorney when his younger brother, Eric, still in film school, asked him to coauthor a spec script for the CBS drama Picket Fences. It featured a drunk-driving victim suing for one of the driver’s kidneys after his was injured. (In a twist, the victim only had one, having donated the other.)

While the episode wasn’t green-lighted, Guggenheim was soon penning more scripts. (Brother Eric is currently a writer–executive producer for CBS’s Hawaii Five-0; their brother, David, created and is an executive producer of ABC’s Designated Survivor; Guggenheim’s wife, Tara Butters, was most recently an executive producer of Marvel’s Agent Carter, for ABC.)

“Bit by bit, it opened up something in me that I couldn’t not do,” he says. Guggenheim’s legal expertise also proved useful as he began writing for crime dramas, including CSI: Miami and Law & Order.

In 2008, he teamed up with writer-producer-director Greg Berlanti to co-create the ABC series Eli Stone, about a lawyer whose hallucinations inspire good deeds. He subsequently teamed with Berlanti on the superhero features The Flash and Green Lantern.

Turning comic books into successful TV shows presents its share of super problems; fantastical scenes that are easily manufactured on paper are often formidable in a 3D world with budget limitations.

“It’s very, very tricky,” says Guggenheim, who serves as showrunner in addition to his writing responsibilities. “With Arrow, I’ve pissed off my share of diehard comic book fans.” For instance, there was the time he didn’t pursue a liaison between two characters (as in the print version) because the actors lacked romantic chemistry.

But he’s proud of the diversity in Arrow’s cast. And the time-travel twist to DC’s Legends offers reams of ready-made historical scenarios (last season’s finale transported the supergang to the Old West.). The challenge, he says, is not overloading scripts with “too much story.”

He also manages to squeeze out novels, screenplays, video games and comic book titles for Marvel and DC Comics.

And a few years ago — when his two daughters were too young to watch his shows — Guggenheim seized the opportunity to executive-produce Trollhunters, a family-oriented animation series directed and executive-produced by Guillermo del Toro and debuting in December on Netflix.

There is one task, however, that he keeps putting off. He needs to clear his old comic books from his mother’s house. “After 40-some years,” he says, “I have a huge collection.”

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