”A Pedestal is a Different Kind of Box” with Kelly Sue DeConnick and Adrienne Mayor

Kelly Sue DeConnick is a trailblazing comic book writer. She is credited with creating the new and improved version of the Captain Marvel heroine Carol Danvers that influenced the story foundation for the 2019 Captain Marvel movie. In response to criticism about her feminism, she created the series Bitch Planet, which has inspired a whole generation of female comic book readers. She moved from Marvel to DC comics where she reimagined the Aquaman series and, most recently, she completed DC’s Wonder Woman Historia: The Amazons.

Adrienne Mayor, is a pre-eminent folklorist and research scholar in the history of science and classics at Stanford University. She has written more than a half-dozen award winning books, including the seminal works The Amazons: Lives and Legends of Warrior Women Across the Ancient World and Gods and Robots: Myths, Machines, and Ancient Dreams of Technology. Her latest title, Flying Snakes and Griffin Claws, and Other Classical Myths, Historical Oddities, and Scientific Curiosities, was released in early 2022.

Though a generation apart, these two accomplished women begin their discussion with a mutual-admiration love-fest, and then dive into a spirited dialogue that includes super heroes, the myth of a female utopia, grieving like the Greeks and the consequences of having sex at Aphrodite's shrine.