Nyla Rose looks back on her experience with Marvel and how it came together.
The former AEW Women’s World Champion Nyla Rose teamed up with Steve Orlando to write "Giant Size X-Men: Thunderbird #1", which came out on May 4, 2022;. In doing so, she helped lend her authentic voice to the character.
During an appearance on Complex Unsanctioned, Rose reflected on her time working with Marvel and noted that it started at AEW All Out 2021, where she wore ring gear that was inspired by the popular X-Men character Mystique.
“It was, I wanna say a roller coaster, but it wasn’t. It’s hard for me to put it in words. I never expected something like that to be offered, let alone happen. Left field, it kinda came out of left field. Two All Outs ago or whatever it was, I had Mystique gear because the subtle subtext of my mind, I’ve got a lot of gears, of looks that I want to tackle, that I wanna do. Mystique was on there, but she was down a little bit. I’m like wait, we’re doing a battle royale, lots of bodies. Mystique, shape-shifter, this makes sense, let’s bump that up. So I did the Mystique gear for the battle royale, and Steve Orlando, who writes for X-Men, saw that. Prior to this, unbeknownst to me, the talks in the office were to bring Thunderbird back, and they wanted to have some actual authentic indigenous voices attached to this. He was like, I wanna pick your brain, get your insight. He’s obviously a X-Men fan, a Marvel fan, a comics fan. But he’s also a wrestling fan as well. Like I said, unbeknownst to me, he kinda had in mind to at least talk to me a little bit. He kinda threw it out there to them to have me be attached to the project, and they were all for it. So he was like, ah, I don’t know how she’ll do with this, I don’t know how she’ll go, whatever whatever, and when he saw the Mystique gear, he’s like, Oh, she’s gonna love this, let’s do this,'" Rose said.
She continued and noted that while she didn't know how to write a typical comic book, she leaned into her experience with writing sketches. Rose made it clear that her partnership with Orlando was a smooth, collaborative relationship.
"So he pitched it to me and I was like absolutely, let’s rock and roll. Obviously the next part is history. We got together, and I had no idea how to approach writing a comic, so I wrote it how I would normally write a script when I do sketches, sketch comedy, whatever it is. I wrote it how I would normally just write a script, and he fine-tuned it and we bounced ideas back and forth off of each other. It was such a beautiful, harmonious relationship. It was probably supposed to be much more painful and much more of a headache, but him and I were absolutely on the same page almost every step of the way. If I was thinking, if he was already writing it down, or we would have written down very similar ideas. So it flowed very smoothly for a first-time comics writer and a first-time team-up," she said.
Overall, Rose noted that her two worlds came together, and she didn't see it coming.
"I didn’t expect it. There was no hint of it, and it was just like two of my worlds colliding," Rose said.
Rose joins CM Punk, among others, who have written comic books; Punk co-wrote "Drax The Destroyer" for Marvel in 2015.
Nyla Rose joins several other pro wrestlers who have written comic books, including her AEW co-worker CM Punk, who previously worked for Marvel Comics on runs for Thor and Drax The Destroyer.
