Over the weekend, I had the incredible opportunity to talk with Marc Guggenheim, comic book writer and writer/producer for shows such as Arrow and Legends of Tomorrow, and let me tell you, it was a dream come true.

How did you first get into comics?

One of my earliest memories when I was a kid, was sitting on the floor of my room, flipping through a Superman comic, and my mother came into my room and was like, "Oh my god. You know how to read?!" I was like, "No, I'm just looking at the pictures." I have no idea where I got the comic book from, but even before I could really remember anything, I was into comics.

Do you remember a moment reading comics, either as a child or growing up, where you decided that that was something you wanted to do?

No, and I'll tell you why. It never occurred to me that I'd have the opportunity to be in comics. It never occurred to me in a million years, so I actually went off and became a lawyer, and just was lucky. I was really lucky that I started working in television at a time when Hollywood writers like...Kevin Smith started writing for Marvel. They kind of opened the door for me, and they made writing for comics a possibility that I never knew existed.

So when you're writing, because you're also a writer for [shows like] Legends of Tomorrow, and you're also being a producer, do you find that the producer side of you comes out?

I try really hard not to [let it]. I try very hard, when we're doing the live-action stuff, to write from a place of "let's not worry about production." Let's write the biggest version, the craziest version, and then we'll compromise as we start to get into pre-production...at some point the rubber's going to meet the road, and reality's going to start to intrude, but at the very early stages, let's not think about production. I think, as a result, the episodes are far more ambitious then they otherwise could be if you're censoring yourself for production right from the get-go. You end up making smaller episodes.The thing I've discovered through this approach is you can achieve a lot more in production then you originally think.

Doing it that way, do you find that it's easier to write for multiple seasons if you start with the very big story-lines and narrow them down?

A little bit. I think a lot of it is [that] we have amazing writers on both Arrow and Legends of Tomorrow. We're always thinking of big ideas, and those ideas we go "Oh, that's more a next season type of thing, it is nice working on shows that have ratings that we're confident we'll not be cancelled at the end of the year.

When you're writing the superhero shows in general, do you ever pull from stuff you've written?

Not yet! I haven't done it yet. In part because the DC comics that I've written haven't really overlapped with the Arrow and Legends shows, so I haven't even been tempted to do that, but now you've got me thinking about it.

If you could do that, from what you've written, what would you like to see come into the TV world?

I had a blast writing Bart Allen as the Flash. That was a lot of fun, so that's sort of the first thing that springs to my mind. But I don't work on Flash, so I don't think that's ever going to happen. There's a character I created for Justice Society of America called Doctor Chaos, who I really enjoyed writing. I can see a world where we bring him in as a villain one of these days. That's probably the most likely thing.

When you're writing the big crossovers, each show generally gets one part, the other gets part two...How do you decide how much of one show you want to put in each part? Like Supergirlhad part one of Crisis on Earth X. How do you decide how much time just her story gets?

Well this year's crossover was done differently than previous years' crossovers. What happened was the network first came to us and said "Here's how we're airing the crossover this year." We're going to air Supergirl and Arrow one night, and Flash and Legends another night. It got us thinking...you're basically doing these two two-hour nights, and Arrow's in a completely different time slot, and how do we top last year's? We thought, let's do a different approach. We adopted what I call a show agnostic approach, where we said, let's forget for a second that the first hour is Supergirl and the second hour is Arrow, and let's just do one big four hour story...We're not going to think about which show is basically filming or responsible production wise for this given moment. We're just going to come up with the best story we can, and tell one over-arching story, and we're not even going to call the first hour a Supergirl episode...we're going to do all Crisis on Earth X.

Writing the shows individually, a lot of the shows have very different tones, like Supergirl...has a very nice tone, Legends is so funny, and Arrow is a little more serious. How do you balance all of that, or bring elements of each show into the other ones?

When Supergirl came over from CBS, and we realized there were going to be four superhero shows on the network...we were like, for this to work, for all of these shows to co-exist on the same network, they're all going to have to have their own identity, and have their own tone, and their own sort of focus. Supergirl started attacking more towards hopeful, a super-show. It's hopeful, and inspirational, and also with more of a focus on aliens, because that show can do aliens and the others can't...Arrow we doubled down on it being a grim and gritty crime drama, because that's thing that Arrow can do well, and then Legends is just insanity, and embracing the devil may care, very broad tone that Legends seems to be doing well. I think all the shows started to gravitate more towards what they could do that the other shows couldn't.

What are some of the challenges when you're writing multiple shows that are also very different?

I will say it's nice. It's actually easier. If Arrow and Legends didn't have multiple tones, it would be harder, because when I'm working on Arrow, and it's dark and gritty, it's nice to be able to go work on Legends and laugh a bit. And going from Legends where it's so crazy and silly...it's nice and grounded on Arrow. So one feeds the other, and it makes my day go by faster, and the work comes out better if I'm juggling two shows that are very different from each other. If both shows were identical, it would just feel like I was working on one show, and that would be kind of a drag.

Is there anything else that really stands out for you that makes you just love producing and writing these shows?

Well, being a long time comic book fan, I always say I'm doing this for 10-year-old me. The 10-year-old boy in me is like "How the hell did this happen?" It's fun, and also, by the way, it's the people. I love the people I work with. The people in Burbank, and the people in Vancouver, they're all incredibly talented, they all care so much about these shows. They work so hard. You've got people on Arrow who have been there for all six seasons. You would think by this point they'd be phoning it in, and they're not. They put as much passion, and drive, and attention to detail into it as they did the very first episode, which is really amazing, and really rare, so that keeps me going.

With shows like these, you're going to have a lot of people who have grown up with comic books and love these shows. What is like when people come up and tell you, either for your comics or for the shows, how much you influenced their lives, or how important [your work is] to them?

It's very humbling. It's wonderful. Truth be told...I don't think you do this for the money. You do it for the love of the game, and part of the love of the game is the fact that, the idea that I can be producing stuff that is touching people's lives the same way the shows that I grew up on touched my life and inspired me. That's just awesome. It's super humbling, it's wonderful, and at the same time I recognize the responsibility not to screw it up. I never want to produce something bad. People make mistakes. We make wrong creative choices and what not. It's not always perfect, but myself and everyone involved in these shows, we really go into it. How can we produce the best shows possible?

How do you go about casting these shows? You cast them perfectly!

David Rapaport deserves all the credit. He has been the casting director since day one of Arrow, and all the shows he's responsible for. His instincts are so good. He always knows who the exact, right person is. I don't know how he does it.

In Legends of Tomorrow, recently you dropped a pretty big Easter egg with Themyscira. Are we going to see anymore of that?

A lot of the time, we throw in Easter eggs really for our own amusement, and for the amusement of the fans, but it's not an indication. Truth be the told, the trinity, the big three, you know, Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman...you know, we name checked Bruce Wayne on Arrow, we see Themyscira on Legends, but that's just us having fun. That's just us showing off the fact that we're fans as well as writers and producers.

Do you have a favorite comic book character?

Yes. Unfortunately, the answer changes depending upon my mood, but I would say...I gotta give you four, because I can't pick one: Batman, Spider-Man, Wolverine, and Kitty Pryde...I love Kitty Pryde. She is so awesome, and being Jewish, the fact that there was a Jewish superhero when I was growing up, that was not that common, and that meant a lot to me. It made me appreciate the fact that when anyone of any race, gender, orientation opens up a comic book, they want to see themself. I think it's really great right now. There's a lot more diversity in types of characters, types of people in comic books than there ever has been. I think that's really awesome.