Alonso: No, not really. Superhero stories are tailor-made for serialized adventures, and that's what TV is built for. I grew up watching the "Spider-Man" cartoon, the "Batman" live-action TV show, "The Incredible Hulk" with Bill Bixby, even the truly awful "Spider-Man" live-action TV show, so to me, seeing comic book characters take life again on the TV screen was inevitable. The challenge, of course, is that the TV budget isn't quiet the same as it is for movies, so we've got to find a way to keep that sense of scale and wonder on the small screen, and part of that is picking the right characters.

As big as these movies have been, and they've obviously been very big, there's something about a TV show that feels like it has the potential to make comics even more mainstream -- there's just something about the fact that it's on every week, and it becomes more of a part of people's lives.

Alonso: I agree. TV shows are more intimate than movies -- they come right into your living room, there's a point where the characters almost become family. And few things make for better water cooler conversations than a good TV show. From "Breaking Bad" to "Game of Thrones," people can't wait to talk about what happened last night -- what the writers' room was willing to do the characters. Of course, that's not too different from comic fans, discussing this week's comics at the store on or on the Internet.

"The Walking Dead" has had a lot of success in TV viewers picking up the comics. It certainly seems possible, if these shows are hits, for that pattern to continue.

Alonso: Everything feeds off each other. Marvel is a multimedia company -- we're print, we're digital, we're a studio that produces movies, animation and now TV shows -- and all of these provide a doorway into the Marvel Universe. I absolutely think that TV is going to be yet another component in Marvel's continuing world domination.

It's not a Marvel thing, but I am curious to get your take on it -- you edited "Hellblazer" for quite a few years during your days at DC's Vertigo imprint. Have you been keeping an eye at all on what's happening with the "Constantine" TV series?

Alonso: Yeah, a little bit. I like to reserve judgment until I actually see something. Unless, the announcement is so "What the $#%@!?" that it boggles the mind -- like when they announced that Keanu Reeves would be John Constantine in the 2005 movie. The new guy is better, but he's a bit... pretty. Anyone who's worked on "Hellblazer," as I did, probably has cast their dream actor for the lead role -- so a pre-yoga Sting or Clive Owen immediately come to mind when I think of John Constantine. But my first pick would probably be David Thewlis, who played a pretty good non-mystical John Constantine-type misanthrope in the [1993 Mike Leigh] movie "Naked." To me, Constantine is a mystical "Yojimbo;" he plays all sides against the middle, because it's just in his nature. He's a tragic figure whose lived too hard to stay pretty. And he's going to Hell -- not because of some shenanigans he pulled with the Devil, but because he truly deserves to go to Hell, and he knows it.

Moving back to the Marvel world -- it was announced late last week that Marc Guggenheim is doing a stint on "X-Men" starting in August. You edited some of his earliest comics work, the "Wolverine" issues during "Civil War" back in 2006. What do you like about Marc as a writer, and what he's bringing to the table on this series?

Alonso: Frenetic pacing, big ideas. Marc is a veteran TV writer, so he knows how to pace a story, give it a sense of urgency, keep people reading. But unlike TV, comics aren't limited by the size of the studio lot or a special effects budget so he's taking full advantage of in this space/horror story he's undertaking in "X-Men." And I know Marc loves "X," because his first Marvel work was the Wolverine/"Civil War" arc he wrote for me. I was very happy when I heard he'd been tapped to do this, and I look forward to seeing what he does.

RELATED: Guggenheim Crosses "X-Men" Off His Bucket List in Space-Faring Arc

Let's talk a couple of the new series that launched this week, starting with "Deadly Hands of Kung Fu." The character of Shang-Chi certainly seems to be one that's up your alley -- what's significant to you about the new series? What has you excited?

Alonso: The writer, Mike Benson, is really a huge fan -- of both the character and the martial arts genre -- and he's visited the genre is as a screenwriter. This is Shang-Chi in a solo adventure that puts him in "Get Carter" mode: Seeking answers in the aftermath of the murder of a close friend. In this case, the murder victim is -- spoiler alert -- Shang-Chi's teammate and lover Leiko Wu. She's been brutally murdered, and all signs point to the fact that she might have been into some shady stuff before it happened. Shang-Chi needs to uncover the truth, wherever it might lead, and along the way, he'll encounter some of his deadliest foes from the past, and get some welcome aid from his friends, the Sons of the Tiger and the Daughters of the Dragon.

Mike is playing Shang-Chi as Zen Clint Eastwood. He isn't looking for vengeance -- indeed, he isn't looking for a fight -- but he sure as hell isn't afraid of one. Shang-Chi is looking for truth, and he's willing to go into the most dangerous places on earth to find it. Shang-Chi doesn't taunt, doesn't quip, doesn't gloat, doesn't take pleasure in dispensing pain. He'll wander into a bar, filled with the roughest, toughest customers you've ever seen, order a glass of water, and hold up a photograph of a man he needs identified. And after he's defended himself against the hell that rains down on him, he'll offer the bad guys Kleenex for their bloody noses.

And it's another example of a lower visibility character getting the spotlight.

Alonso: Yeah, it's really nice to see both Shang-Chi and Iron Fist in their solo series. I grew up loving them.

One more book that debuted today is the latest Icon line book by Bendis and Oeming, "The United States of Murder Inc." It's the first new Icon series in a while -- there's not a ton of material in the line right now, and it's always seemed rather selective. How do you see the current state of the Icon line, and how much a priority it is for Marvel currently?

Alonso: We're very selective of what we publish so when we do launch a new series, we do everything we can to shine a spotlight on it. Currently, we are publishing "The United States of Murder Inc." -- the first issue already sold out and is going to second print -- Jimmy Palmiotti's "Painkiller Jane" and Mark Millar and John Romita Jr.'s "Kick-Ass 3" has just about wrapped up as well, but we have more Icon series, by top-flight creators, on the way.

Let's wrap with a few questions from the CBR Community. "THANOSRULES," perhaps not shockingly, has a cosmic-based question: "Mark Waid really did a good job with Sam Nova in 'Original Sin' #0 and his work on 'AvX'... Any plans for him to work on more Nova in the future or perhaps a (historically) cosmic themed character?"