Friday, April 20, 2018

A sort of homecoming: Marc Guggenheim returns to UAlbany, 4/20/18

Comic book fans come from all walks of life. In the case of award winning writer-producer Marc Guggenheim, he gave up a career as a lawyer to pursue his dream of being a writer.

Guggenheim, a 1992 graduate of the University at Albany, returned to the school earlier today, and was a guest speaker on the main campus prior to a scheduled appearance as a guest of the New York State Writers' Institute at Page Hall.

The evening began with a screening of the series premiere of the Emmy & Annie Award winning Netflix animated series, Trollhunters (reviewed at Saturday Morning Archives), followed by a generous helping of an episode of Legends of Tomorrow, particularly the conclusion of November's Crisis on Earth-X crossover.

Guggenheim, who is stepping down as show-runner of Legends & Arrow after this season to be a consultant instead, explained the structure of a season by stating that they create their ideas by equating portions of a season to acts in a play. In the course of his conversation with Writers' Institute frontman Paul Grondahl, Guggenheim also took questions from the small but interested audience. Seems the frigid weather kept a lot of people away.

After the program ended, I had a chance to ask Guggenheim a couple of questions. Satiating my curiosity, it seems they have discussed the prospect of developing shorter story arcs to build to their primary arc, and there may be some changes afoot, particularly for Arrow, with the creative changes taking effect in the fall. Also, for those of you who are fans of Arrow, and wondering how they came up with Overwatch as the codename for Felicity Smoak-Queen (Emily Bett Rickards), it comes from a novel of the same name that Guggenheim released a while back (copies were available for purchase and autographs), and internet fans encouraged him to give Felicity the handle of Overwatch on the show.

Guggenheim also has donated a grant of $100,000 to create an endowment for the Writers' Institute's Classic Film Series.

Update, 8/15/18: Following is an excerpt from the interview, from the Writers' Institute's YouTube channel:

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