From Comics to Animation and Back Again: An Interview with Greg Weisman about Gargoyles, Young Justice, and Fandom - The Short Box Podcast Ep. 459
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In this episode of The Short Box.
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Fantastic Four protects the whole world, but Ben Grimm is a neighborhood guy, Lower East Side guy like Kirby was. And so you've got this idea of these two first families.
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Intro music plays
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Yo, Short Box Nation! Hello again, welcome back, and thanks for pressing play today. If you're new, welcome to the show. My name is Badr and this is the Short Box Podcast, the comic book talk show that brings you the best conversations about your favorite comics with the creators that put their blood, sweat, and tears into making them. This is episode 459 and today we're joined by the creator and producer of the Gargoyles television series, Greg Weisman. Now, before I go any further and give a talk about his accolades and his credits,
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I want to say just how much that animated show meant to me as a kid. But more so my dad, because he freaking loved the gargoyles. I thought they were just, you know, I thought it was a cool show. I loved the character designs. Keep David's voice is still in my head. But my dad, it was like a religious experience. We'd spend so many Saturday mornings watching the show together. And sometimes if my grades dropped low enough, he would actually growl and yell just like Goliath.
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Just like that, if I got to see, that's what I would hear. But jokes aside, and back to Greg Weisman, Gargoyle's fame aside, he's also been the producer on other shows like the spectacular Spider-Man and Young Justice. And he's also been writing comics for a long time now. He's written on titles like Captain Adam for DC Comics, he wrote the Marvel, Star Wars comic series, Canon, and the comic adaptations of Young Justice.
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in quite a few Gargoyle comic series. He is the definitive Gargoyle guy. there's ever been a Gargoyle guy, it is Greg Weisman. He's also written novels for World Warcraft. In addition to his own creator-owned novels like Rain of the Ghost and Spirits of Ash and Foam, currently right now he's writing the spectacular Spider-Men series for Marvel. And starting Wednesday, May 28th, he returns to writing, guess what, more Gargoyle comics in the new Gargoyles Demona series.
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which is a brand spanking new comic series unveiling the untold secrets of the life of Demona, the fan favorite matriarch turned arch nemesis of the gargoyles. The series will be written by Greg Wiseman and drawn by his former co-showrunner and accomplished animator at that, Frank Parr. Issue one is in shops May 28th, which will be the same time that you should be hearing this episode. Now, before we invite Greg on the show, I want to give a big shout out to my sponsor, Gotham City Limit, the Jacksonville's premier shop for comics, toys, collectibles and more.
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And an even bigger shout out to my Patreon subscribers who help me keep the lights on by supporting the show directly. If you like what I do, or if this show has ever given you even an ounce of entertainment or joy, please consider becoming a patron of the show at patreon.com slash the short box. In exchange for a few dollars a month, you'll help me keep the show going and you'll get access to bonus episodes as well as me and Drew's spin-off podcast, Save It For The Podcast, where we cover a wider range of comic topics and a bunch of rabbit holes and tangents.
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So once again, that's patreon.com slash short box, or you can go the free route and support the show by giving it a five star rating or review on whatever podcast app you're listening to right now. It's a small click for you, but would mean the world to me. So do that for me and I would appreciate it. Now, without further ado, Short Box Nation, let's welcome Weisman to the show. Greg, welcome to the Short Box. How are you doing today? I'm good, how are you, Bob? Not too shabby. I had a lot of fun researching.
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for this episode. actually, I want to say two years ago, I did a spin-off podcast or spin-offs podcast, but a spin-off podcast for the short box. was for our patrons and we called it Pilots License, where every episode we would pick one cartoon series and watch the pilot episode for. And sure enough, we did a Gargoyles episode way, almost like two years ago. And now granted, the first pilot episode of Gargoyles, as you obviously know,
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was a five-parter. So was like one of our longest episodes. And I remember learning so much. And it was kind of awesome to like go back, watch a couple of the episodes and, you know, just kind of like remember growing up with this show and how pivotal Keith David's voice is to my childhood. So this was a lot of fun to research. So thank you for asking. And I'm glad that you're on the show, I'm glad to be here. Is it safe to say that you might have like the coolest job? I mean, you've written for plenty of animated shows that are
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beloved, you've been writing comics since the 80s, you've written novels, mean, you even do voice acting. If you weren't doing writing, if you weren't a professional writer, what do think you'd be doing? Starving. That was a phenomenal way. It caught me off guard. So you could not see yourself doing anything other than writing. I'm a storyteller. If this were the Middle Ages, I'd be that troubadour on a mule going from town to town with a loop.
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telling stories that way. It's good it's not the middle ages because I don't know how to play the loop and no one wants to see me in tights believe me. I've been a storyteller my whole life it's the only thing I've ever wanted to do. It's just who I am. It's a transit. Here's a two part question. Do you remember the first story that you wrote and I guess what was the moment that you felt like hey this is a viable career field I can do this?
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I'm not sure it is a viable career. I don't know, Greg. I don't know. You prove otherwise. I've got a body of work I'm very proud of, but the notion of what I've done being a career, a career implies a of upward trajectory. You know, if I'm being honest, which I prefer to be, every time I've had a hit show, I then had to turn around and start over again, find a new thing to do and build myself, know, start as a freelance writer again, build myself back up.
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get that gig show running again. It's very rare. think once in my life did I go from one show directly to another show successfully. It almost never happens. It's a tough call, I guess. I don't want to over sell it. You know, I've had a good life. I've done well enough for myself and my family. And like I said, I got a body of work I'm very, very proud of.
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But I don't want to pretend either that it's somehow been easy. has. So it was a two part question. was part one. What was part two again? I guess what was the story or project or job that you decided, Hey, I'm going to go all in on this. Well, I mean, if you're going all the way back, I guess it depends how far back you want to go. When I was in second grade, we had spelling words and our homework was to write each word in a sentence. But instead of doing that,
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I I did that, but I made all the sentences play as a story. So, you know, once a week we got these spelling words and everyone else is just writing, if the spelling word is mule, they're writing, you rode the mule to school. And if the next spelling word was carrot, it's like he ate the carrot. You know, there was no connective tissue between the sentences, but I would take those sentences, I mean, I would take those words and write them into a story as opposed to a
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just writing random sentences with them. And my second grade teacher was sort of tickled by that. She took all my stories and she put them together into this little book. And my fate was set then, you know what mean? It's sort of like, I got praise and I got this book, which I still have. And in second grade, let me tell you something, I'm an old guy, so second grade was a...
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long bloody time ago, you know, over 50 years, half a century ago. But it did matter. When I was 19, I started freelancing for DC Comics while I was in college. And I think, though, the big sort of go for it moment for me was I was an executive at Disney. created and developed Gargoyles. And it got to the point where I said to my bosses, I don't want to be an executive anymore. I want to go over and produce this show.
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And that was a risk and it largely has paid off. I don't know financially it's paid off so great, but from the standpoint of my happiness and everything like that, think switching from being, I never really meant to be an executive, but I needed a job and I got that job and I actually did well at it. was successful at it. My heart was in writing and that's what I wanted to do. And so I moved over and was co-showrunner with Frank Barr
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We had to put together what I think is a show that sort of stood the test of time. I think that is very safe to say. Greg, I was on your website. What is it? Essate.com or Essate.org? Well, that's the host. That's not my website. My website is AskGregWeissman.com. There we go. I was on that website today. I had a blast on your website, man. I understand that you've had this website since 1997. And I bring this up because
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You know, I'm not saying you're downplaying the success of gargoyles, but I will say there is a rabid and very enthusiastic fan base for gargoyles, as you obviously know. And I found, and I could have easily gotten lost in the archives, right? Like, I mean, we're talking about a site that's been around since 1997, like the early days of the internet. You have posts that are talking about behind the scenes for gargoyles with young justice.
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You take questions from fans. And I mean, that archive, just the question archive is impressive. And then you've got like things that really tickled me, such as a media section with all these sound bites and sound clips from the show, which is where I got the growl today and many other sound drops. That's not me. The media section is that's the host of SA and other people who support that. big shout out to them. Yes, I have been.
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since the late 90s. Been answering questions about gargoyles and all the other things that I've worked on. and there's a searchable archive on the site. Now I'm not currently answering questions. I got a little burned out. I feel like you've answered every possible question someone could have about either show. I kind of feel that way. I'm sure they could come up with new ones, but I think 98 % of the questions people could ask have already been answered there. So go to the archive. It's searchable.
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I'll start answering questions again eventually, probably in about a year, but maybe a little less. the point is, that again, 90 plus percent of the questions you could think to ask have probably already been answered. And if you search that archive, you can probably find the answer a lot faster than I would get around to answering it. And it's been fun. I mean, I've engaged with the fans a lot since as early as...
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want to say 96. And I have very good friends among the fandom. And I do this podcast every couple of weeks or so called Voices from the Eerie, where we break down a Gargoyles episode in detail with other guests, like our voice director, David Thomason, or with Frank R., or with Keith David, or Brent Spiner, Jonathan Frakes, or
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Tom Adcox, etc. We've just had some great guests on the show. I mean, I'm not the host. I'm just a guest too. Greg, I guess in your own words, through your perspective, what is it about Gargoyles that has garnered such a dedicated fan base? mean, what we're talking about our show that is coming up on almost 30 years ago. Actually, we had our 30th anniversary celebration last summer, so we're past the
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Ultimately, I think it comes down to the characters. I think there are lot of elements. think the themes of gargoyles are universal and as relevant, if not more relevant today than they were in the 90s. know, themes of Don't Judge a Book by its cover, themes of empathy, individual being othered because of their appearance or because they are different. I think those themes resonate, but I think ultimately with gargoyles, we had a phenomenal writing staff.
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We had four amazing story editors starting with Michael Reeves, was our head writer of season one and was story editor for season one and two. It's Britton Chandler Reeves, Kerry Bates, and Gary Sperling. Plus a bunch of amazing writers working under the four of them. We had voice director Jamie Tomlinson and the most stellar cast of any that you could find ever, period. Edward Asgner.
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Tom Adcox-Ramandos, Jeff Bennett, Bill Fagerbach, Frank Welker, Keith David, Sally Richardson, Marina Sirtis, Jonathan Frakes. And those are just the regulars. We had John Rhys Davies, we had David Warner, we had Roger Reese. I think one point, I was in a session for the show and our voice director, Jamie, pointed out that we had simultaneously in this room, three of the greatest hamlets in history, all
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acting in Gargoyles at the same time. I love the Star Trek actors, Michelle Nichols, LeVar Burke, Michael Dorn. I think I joked on that recap episode that it seemed like Gargoyles was the funnel where a lot of the Star Trek actors ended up landing. It was like their second job for the most part because you guys had so many actors from Star Trek on there. Yeah. And there was a logical reason for that. Marina Sturtis auditioned for Damone. She was the first person to audition for Damone.
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and nailed it and Jonathan Frank auditioned for Xanatos and nailed it. So we had two Star Trek actors in the room almost every week. They're villains, so they're not literally in every episode, but a lot of them, particularly during season one. And so, you know, when we were thinking about who we need to cast, for example, you know, we'd be in the booth and we'd be taking a break from the recording. And Jamie was also our casting director as well as our voice director and saying, OK, what are we going to need for
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for next week, looking ahead, what are we gonna need? I'm like, well, we need Goliath's brother, so he needs to have big, deep chops like Keith has. so, but you know, I'm looking through the glass at Marina and Jonathan, and I'm thinking, what about Michael Dorn? And the good news for us is that Marina and Jonathan loved the show, talked it up at Paramount, where they were still making Next Generation. People forget, Gargoyles was happening
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simultaneously with Next Generation. And so, you know, they go in and they say, Hey, it's great gig. Hey, Michael, no makeup. You don't have to get here four hours early to put on your warp. He's like, so well, no costumes, no makeup. Hell, you don't even have to memorize the script because you can have it on a music stand right in front of you. the scripts are good. They're fun. And so, you know, we've got a lot of Star Trek actors.
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because they had heard from Jonathan and Marina that it was a good game. Then at some point, like I would never cast someone just because they were in Star Trek. But you know, we had Nichelle Nichols playing Diane Maz, Elisa Maz's mother. We began to realize there was a certain publicity value to that. For sure. At some point it became kind of a challenge. Can we get someone from DS9? Can we get someone from Voyager? And so we kept doing it. You know, again, never at the expense of character. But if you can get Kate Mulgrew to
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play Titania, why wouldn't you? If you can get, you know, um, come Nene, if you can get, um, Brent Spiner, why, why wouldn't you do that? So it, it became a, you know, a great source for us because Paramount was just over the hill and they had just a ton of phenomenal actors performing in various Star Trek shows. So we made use of that. Hell yeah.
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stellar voice casting. mean, you know, doing the rewatch, the show holds up so well and it made sense why someone like my dad would enjoy it. Then at the same time, I was talking to my wife and she was like, you know, my mom really loved that show a lot too. And I guess it just goes to show that it was, it was a show that appealed to kids because, you know, personally speaking, because of the character designs, the concept, the action.
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But at the same time, it totally engrossed someone like my dad and my mother-in-law because of the themes, Shakespearean atmosphere and the themes you guys were exploring. I guess, there ever any hesitance in making the show elevated like that? I guess for like a better term, was there ever any hesitance in making a kids show so adult? Did that ever backfire? No. mean, we wrote on layers and you talked about it yourself. We had to get
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boys six to 11. That was our target audience. Boys six to 11. It was a big part of our show. The budget was provided by Kenner Toys selling Garwell's action figures. So we had to hit that target. But that target wasn't enough for me or Frank or Michael or anyone working on the show. I wanted girls six to 11. Hell, I wanted kids who were four and five. I wanted tweens and teens and
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I wanted adults, I college students, and I 30-year-old geeks like me. A 61-year-old geek now, but back then I was 30. So we wrote on layers. There's plenty of the stuff you talk about. There's cool monsters flying around the city. There's explosions. There's a lot of eye candy in the show. So if you're young and you're watching it, it's just fun. But we also wrote on layers so that there's stuff for your dad or your mother-in-law to get out of it as well.
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We wrote Shakespeare, but we wrote, but you didn't have to know Shakespeare to understand it. You know, you didn't have to know that Macbeth was a Shakespeare play in order to understand the character of Macbeth in Gargoyles. He was hunting, you know, and he was trying to capture Domona. You know, we paralleled the story of Othello in our story of Cold Stone.
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but you didn't have to read Othello in sixth grade in order to understand the story. Everything you needed to know was in the show. But by the way, if you're a 20 year old who's just read Othello in college, you'd be looking at that episode going, it's Othello, you know, and that would be cool for you, right? You know, but you didn't need to know that to watch the show. And that's what I mean about writing on layers. You can't leave the kids out. You can't write it in such a way
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the kid can't comprehend what they're seeing. They have to be able to go with you. But you can have stuff in these shows, whether it's Young Justice or Spider-Man or Rebels or Gargoyles, that also appeal to adults so that it holds up. I thing about Gargoyles that holds up, I mean, Gargoyles holds up very well. And I absolutely would love it if everyone would go on to Disney Plus and re-watch the show if you've seen it already.
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or watch it for the first time if you have it. It's terrific. And it holds up, and I know I'm biased, but I think it holds up extremely well. In fact, the only thing that sort of even gives away that it's a 90s show are the cell phones. David Xanatos pulls out a cell phone. It's the size of a brick with a big antenna sticking out at the top. But short of that, everything else about it might as well be happening right now.
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There are a couple other exceptions too that I'm just not thinking of at the moment. for the most part, and certainly from the standpoint of the characters and the themes and the storytelling, all of that holds up really well. I take a substantial amount of credit for that, but I share all that credit with guys like Frank and Michael and Jamie Thomason and Keith David and Marina Sirtis and all the people we've talked about, Tom Antox, over the course of this podcast. There were literally
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hundreds of people who worked on that show and put all their passion in it as well, as much as I put mine. It shows, even now, 30 years later, it shows in those episodes. And I think in the comics we did with SLG back in 2007 and eight, and the comics we're doing now with Dynamite, that passion still shows through. From me, from the artists working on the books, certainly from Frank and Robbie on Timona.
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that passion and that storytelling I think carries through and makes the property still incredibly viable. A hundred percent agree on that. Absolutely holds up. And I think I know what I'm doing later this weekend for sure. I think I'm about to go on a gargle bend session. I'm all in favor of that. I bet you are. That said between animation, TV, know, animation and TV, comics and pros and writing novels,
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Which one do you enjoy writing for more? Like, do you favor any one medium over the other just slightly? No, not from standpoint of writing. mean, television pays more than comics and I have more to pay. My kids are all grown up now. I don't have to worry about it. But, you know, I had two kids and I had to make sure that they were fit and clothed and all that kind of thing. So, you know, I probably went in, you know, leaned into TV.
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writing and production as much as possible because it just paid more. And by the way, an animation pays nothing compared to live action. And I never was able to break into that. Not for lack of trying, but I wasn't. So, you know, there's a certain hierarchy that comes with monitor concerns, realistic monitor concerns. But in terms of the writing, what was always fun for me was alternating. You know, I love working in television. It's an extremely collaborative medium.
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working with literally hundreds of people. And then, you know, I love working in comics where you're working with like three or four people talks, you know. And then I really loved writing novels because then I'm just on my own. And what was great would be, you know, I work on one and
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great thing about all that collaboration is that you've got all these people helping you realize the vision and helping you bring it to life and all this sort of stuff and that's great. The thing that's not as great about it is that you've got all these people doing this stuff. So, you know, they've got their ideas too. And so you're sometimes you're all working to make the shows as good as possible. And that helps. But you know, sometimes you do get frustrated that, know, you had to compromise on this or not do this bit or
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or do a bit that you didn't want to do because your partners are all like, hey, I really love this. And you're like, well, I don't love it, but okay. So that it's nice to switch over to a novel where I don't have to please anybody but myself. On the other hand, when I'm working on a novel, it's all on me, 100 % on me. I've got no musical score to help guide the audience's emotion. I've got to make that musical score come through in the prose. I've got no voice actors.
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make my dialogue come alive, so it's got to come alive on its own by itself. It's hard. And so, you I would work on a novel for a while and then just feel like lonely. And it would be great to be able to go work on TV for a while. I do that for a while and feel surrounded and go work on the novels. So, you know, I'm a kind of contrary individual, so I'm constantly bouncing from one thing another. But I do think that
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all of it's the same. My process is very similar for all these media. Very similar. Thinking about comic books here, I was doing some research and ended up learning that you were working in DC Comics in the DC office around the 1980s, which for a lot of folks, that's some of the best time for DC Comics. Off top of the head is your Watchmen, your Dark Knight Returns. The Question series comes to mind. A lot of like,
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kind of really gritty DC comics were being put out at the time on top of like the British invasion. I guess, what do you remember from your time working at DC during that time? Like does any memory come about? Did you learn anything that, you you kind of carried with you throughout the rest of your career or even now writing comic books now? Yeah, learned a ton. know, Watchmen came out while I was there. Oh, I shared an office back then with Julia Saba, who was the design
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in charge of design for the Watchmen book, not the artist, she was in charge of designing the package, right? For those of you who've read the original Watchmen comics, Alan Moore at the end of each issue would write some text feature, which Dave Givens would illustrate with like something that was supposed to be a photograph or whatever. And so one of these, I for issue seven,
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wrong. It's been 40 years. one of them was Rorschach's psychiatric file. So Julia's job was to design how the file looked on the page. So there was sort of that file folder and you turn the page and there was the psych report and there were photographs of Rorschach which David actually drew and then there were an illustration that Rorschach drew as a child.
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which J.P.B. also drew, but then, you know, was typeset. It was lettered like comic book, it typeset. And then there was one space on this form for Rorschach's thumb prints. And Julia sort of yells across the office. It wasn't that big of an office, but she yells across and she says, come over here. So I did. I didn't know why I was going over there at the time. And she literally grabbed my thumbs, stuck them into, an ink pad, and then onto a piece of paper.
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And so if you look up the original Watchmen graphic novel, the collected, you know, dozen issues and you go to Rorschach's psych report, those thumb prints in the psych report, those are my thumb prints. I am Rorschach's thumb prints. Wow. And I think that's my main claim to fame. That is an epic claim to fame. Gargoyles be damned. Rorschach's thumb prints by Greg Weasman. That is epic.
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Greg, let me ask you this. Working and living in both worlds of animation and TV. And I'm thinking about like, we're on Talkin' DC Comics. I can't help but think about Young Justice and some of the fans of that show that I know. Who's the more enthusiastic fan base? Animation fans or comic fans? And then the second question, what's the more enthusiastic fan base between the Young Justice crowd and the Gargoyles crowd? I think in terms of your first question, there's so much overlap between comic book and animation.
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fans. You you throw a rock at a comic book fan, how do you miss hitting an animation? You know, I mean, it's not that I'm throwing a lot of rocks, but you get what I mean. That Venn diagram almost overlaps a lot. mean, lot, particularly if you're talking about animated series based on comic books. In terms of which fans are more enthusiastic, I think they're too big.
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factors. is that Young Justice has been around a while now, 15 years, but Gargoyles has been around 30. And that's still got this really incredibly solid fan base. So you have to sort of check back in 15 years from now and see if that's still there for Young Justice. I like to think it will be. You know, it's the difference between a really truly long haul when most of those years there was no new material. Young Justice has had years of no new material.
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But in the last 15 years, you we did two seasons, we were canceled, we came back, we did two more. In between those, I also did Garbo's Young Justice comic books for DC. We did a radio play. There's been more to keep YJ alive in the short term. And that's a good thing, I'm not complaining. I wish we were doing more still. I'd love to do a fifth season of YJ.
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Gargoyles had literally decades where nothing was coming in, nothing at all. And so that gives gargoyles a sort of long haul cache that as great as Young Justice fans are, it can't quite match up to that level yet. The difference between 30 and 15 years is big. The difference between 50 years and 35 isn't as big. So we'll just see how things go as time passes. The other aspect that I think is really different is the image.
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And the internet existed in the gargoyles days, but it was really in its infancy. It was not without ranker here and there, but not at a level like we see today. You get a lot of legit YJ fans, but who have decided for whatever reason that they like season one, but they hate season two, or they like seasons one and two, but they hate seasons three and four.
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or they like seasons one, two, and three, but they hate season four, or they like, and the thing that's different for me isn't that, because I don't need everybody to love every single thing I do. The thing that's different is that there's no sense of your mileage may vary in the internet today. It's all about absolutes. So if someone doesn't come in and say, yeah, I like the first couple seasons and the second two seasons didn't grab me.
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which is fine, that's their, you know, that's that's their prerogative. up to them. They don't have to like it all. But most of them don't say that. Most of them say, seasons three and four sucked. How can you like them? You know, they are adamant and they also let politics play in. So they start to say season three and four are woke. Show was never like that. I'm like, yeah, it was. It was always like that. Nothing's changed. I'm the same human being.
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I was, Brandon Vietti is the same human being as he was, my co-showrunner on it. It was always like that, always. People tell me that Gargoyles wasn't woke back in the 90s. It was as woke as we knew how to be in the 90s. And anyone who thinks that's not true isn't paying attention. They're remembering it because they were, I don't know, eight or nine years old back then and didn't think in political terms. So they don't
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didn't think that it was woke then, but in fact it was. The anger that goes with that now makes it much more unpleasant. So I had more fun with fans before the internet became what it has been in the last decade or so. There's a lot of great things about the internet, but there's a lot of nasties that has come with that. And I think part of it's anonymity, you know,
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I rarely have a bad time with fans at conventions. Almost never. They come up to me, I figure the ones who don't like my stuff, they just don't come up to me and that's fine. Almost never in person have someone come up to me and say, your stuff sucks, but they're happy to do that online. Because they know there's no repercussions, because I don't know who they are. But they wouldn't do that to me in person. And that level of rudeness, and again, I'm not saying they have to like it, that's not the point.
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but they don't need to be rude. And that level of rudeness on the internet today is a huge shift for me. Maybe I'm just too old to deal with it, I suppose. We could definitely have a longer conversation about toxic fandom. And I totally agree with your sentiment. I feel like woke is definitely a very easy cop out answer for, know, it's an umbrella term for describing something that maybe goes against someone's, know, personal views or whatever. But to your point, you know, a lot of the shows that
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in a lot of comic books too. like, you know, the term woke wasn't around then, but it essentially kind of fits that, that structure. know, it's a, yeah. mean, Star Trek, we didn't have the word, but Star Trek's been woke since 1966. And I think you say the same thing about many comic books that people enjoy. Exactly. Seriously. It's been a metaphor for racism from day one. You gotta be kidding me. And so that's me.
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I find incredibly tiresome because you could look at the surface of X-Men that Claremont was writing in the 70s and 80s, that Stan Lee was writing in the 60s, that Roy Thomas was writing in the 70s. And it was a metaphor for racism. It always has been. it's sort of like, I don't even have to say you need to just look a little below the surface. No, just look at the surface. It's always been there.
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So that I find very tiresome because it feels like people really working hard to maintain their blinders. I've gotten out of it. That's fair. is tiresome irony at that. It's very weirdly ironic. But Greg, I want to shift gears and maybe actually wrap up this part. So that I can stop yelling about the internet. I want to leave on a positive note here because one of the interesting things I ended up learning
35:44
during my research is that for a long time, I think from 97 to 2003, there was a dedicated gargoyles convention called, was it called the Gathering? I was curious if you could shed a little more light on that and then maybe share what is the most prominent memory you have of that gargoyles convention. Well, I made a lot of great friends there among the fans. The gargoyles convention started in New York and
36:12
1997 it was started by one woman on the internet who sort of said hey we've got all these fans on the internet what if we all got together and what if we brought Greg Weissman to the convention so he could talk to us about it and she organized the whole thing by herself completely by herself burned herself out so much but she didn't come again for 10 years. Wow. But she got it rolling and I think the last year was
36:39
So it went from 1997 to 2009 and it traveled. Kind of like the Olympics, people would bid, okay, we want it in our city next year. So we did a couple of years in New York, then we went to Dallas, then Orlando, then LA, then Williamsburg, back to New York, Montreal, Las Vegas, back to Los Angeles, Pigeon Forge, Tennessee, Chicago, and then again, our last one was in LA.
37:09
Um, and, uh, but at the very first one in New York, a couple of things. One is, is that I didn't know what I was walking into. Um, I'd been to very few conventions and most of what I'd been to were, you know, higher level pro organized things like San Diego Comic Con. Um, and this was at a hotel and it was in the basement, you know, conference rooms at this hotel in New York City.
37:37
And they'd flown me out there, but I literally hadn't met anybody. And I called a buddy of mine. I used to live in New York when I worked at DC Congress. I had since had moved back to LA, which is where I'm from originally. But I'm in New York and I call a buddy of mine who's in New York and I say, hey, come over here because I don't know what I'm walking into. So just come with me. So me and my friend Doug, we go down to the basement and they're doing
38:05
a trivia game sort of like Hollywood Squares but with all gargoyles trivia from the show. And at some point, someone says, well, Greg was supposed to be center square, but he didn't show up. And I'm like, no, no, I'm here. Because no one knew what I looked like. And so they all turn. And you can tell that there are at least half of them thinking that can't be him. That short guy, no.
38:35
Um, and the other half are like, Oh my God. Um, and so I get pulled in to this trivia game and I'm actually pretty nervous because I'm like, what if they know more trivia than I do? They're going to take my nerd card. So that was fun. But then the other thing was, is that, uh, at the time, Keith David was living in New York. And, uh, so I was there and I was at this convention, but I
39:05
said, are you free? You want to get together for dinner? So he says, sure. And he shows up to dinner with this young woman, Dion. And we're talking at the dinner. And I'm sort of telling him about this convention. I'm saying it's sort of fun. say, if you want to show up, they'll go absolute bananas for you. And he's like, yeah, I'll come. And I said, OK, I'm not going to tell them that way if you change your mind. He's like, I'm not going to change my mind. And I said, great. I found out later that
39:34
This was his first date with the art. And I paid for dinner on their first date. And he later, they later got married and had two kids. So I go back to the convention and I'm doing this Q and a at the convention. And I know Keith is coming. So halfway through the Q and a, I go and lady, gentlemen, Keith David. And they all turn around gasping, but he wasn't there. Right. And I said, I'm just kidding.
40:04
And they were like, oh, you're horrible. And we continue with the Q &A. And then a little bit later, not very long, but a little bit later, I see Keith and Dion standing at the back of the room. And so I go, ladies and gentlemen, Keith David. And they're like, oh, you're not going to fool us again. And then you hear Keith's voice from the back saying, I can't do Keith's voice. I won't pretend I can. But they all knew Keith's voice. Silence.
40:34
fell across the room. Slowly they turned and looked as he comes walking up the aisle towards me. And they then went bananas. that was the first Fargo's convention. Keith was there, I was there. And it just took off from there. And we did it for again, from 97 to 2009. And it was a truly wonderful experience for me. And again, I made tons of friends.
41:03
That is an awesome story. Like that is one of the best stories I've heard on this pod. That is great. Big fan of Keith David myself. One of these sound drops I actually picked up from the website is this classic right here. I've been denied everything. Even my revenge. I mean, the amount of quotables from just gargoyles alone for Keith David is, is numerous. I'd be here all day, but I was going to ask if you had a favorite memory of Keith David, but I don't.
41:31
I don't even want you to answer that because I feel like that story you gave was epic. So with that being said, let's talk about Domono. It's a brand new series that comes out, issue one comes out May 28th, which will be the same time this episode airs. People are hearing it now. I'm actually going to take a break from asking questions and let a good friend of mine, the sponsor of this year's show, Ben Kingsbury, the owner of Gotham City Limit, ask you a question about the new series. Some quick background before I press play on his.
42:01
voice message is that the Demona series, which comes out today, issue one, a lot of fans actually got a preview of the Demona series during free comic book day. There was a free comic book day gargoyles Demona issue that had two stories in one. And we're kind of semi pretty much connected, but two separate stories is what we'll say. And with that context, let's hear from Ben. Hey, Greg, I'm Ben Kay representing Gotham City Limit, a comic shop in Jacksonville, Florida.
42:29
Thanks so much for taking a minute to be here today. My favorite day of the year just happened, free comic book day, and we threw a huge community party. We handed out 400 copies of Gargoyles' Demona number zero. We love that you decided to highlight Demona, just love a great villain. So here's my question. Do you have a specific approach to writing Demona's villainy to make her so compelling and relatable to readers and fans?
42:57
I'll leave you to answer. Thanks so much for the passion you put into everything you do. We literally couldn't do it without you. And remember, short box nation, we'll always take it to the limit. Big shout out to Ben. I was there for free comic book day. It was insane, the line that he had. from, they were supposed to open at 10. I think I got there like 940-ish, thinking that I'll just hang out for a while. No, he already opened up the shop early and he had this line that was wrapped around the block.
43:24
And I left around 10, 30, 11, because I had to host a party. And I was told by friends who showed up around four, it was still wrapped around the block. So they had a very successful free comic book day. can absolutely believe them giving out 400 copies of Demona. That's great. There are two things about writing Demona. One is that, you know, Demona was brought to life by Marina Sirtis and I have Marina's voice in my head. You know, it's locked in.
43:53
So writing for her is relatively easy because I know I've got that sound in my head. I've got that sense of how she delivers a line, how she talks. And that helps me write the dialogue immensely for that character. But I also think Demona was, particularly in the 90s, a really unique kind of villain, layer upon layer of complexity to that character. She has some legit bribes, but she's also her own worst enemy, the cause of
44:23
Most of what's gone wrong in her life is herself. So I think that richness of character keeps things interesting. The idea for this mini series, which was Frank Parr's idea, I've been doing gargoyle comics with dynamite for a couple years now, and Frank approached me and said, hey, what if you and I did something with Demona during that thousand years when she was...
44:50
awake and alive and all the other gargoyles were sleeping in stone statues. And I'm like, that's great. That actually dovetails with some stuff that Dynamite's been asking for and Disney's been asking for. I've got this timeline for the whole gargoyles universe that's over 400 pages long. And I'm constantly adding to it. Every time I write any gargoyle story, it me ideas for three or four more. And I add those to the time.
45:18
What that means is, and I don't want make it sound like I've got fully written stories at the time, I don't, but I've got these certain tentacles. This event happens this year. This event happens there. Frank and I talked through that timeline. And look, it's five issue mini-shares. I'm not going to pretend that we're going to cover a thousand years in five issues. know, lots happens across a millennium.
45:47
We're going to sort of show five snapshots of Demona's life across the first couple hundred years of this thousand years. Each story, each issue tells its own unique story. There's a through line to the five issues or to the six issues if you count Demona zero. But each story has its own feel to it. They're all a different genre. Issue one is historical fiction. Issue two is swashbuckling adventure. Issue three is horror.
46:17
Issue four is mystery and issue five is an elegy. So they've all got their own feel, their own tone. They're all set in different years and different places. Frank and I went through and we picked a couple of tent poles and we picked a couple and we came up with a few stories that fall between the tent poles. with that mix, throwing in a few handful of other characters that the fans would know as we go along.
46:47
But really focusing on Demona and a new character, foster daughter, Angelica, as the through line for the five issues, I think has given us something truly special. And Frank's art is just gorgeous. It just knocks me out. And it's colored by Robbie Bivard, who was our colorist on a bunch of the SMG barbellizations that we did back in 2007, 2008, something like that.
47:16
And so it feels a bit like that Jeff Eichelberry through the letters, she's been our letter on the Diamond books, and Cosby's my editor on it. It feels a little bit like an All-Star team, you know. And it's just been truly, you know, a blast to do it. And Dimona, again, is a character of endless fascination. seems that to your credit,
47:39
know, Gargoyles is, you know, back in the forefront, back in the spotlight when it comes to comic books. What is it like working with Dynamite on the property? Like it sounds like, you know, they're giving you kind of free reign to do a lot and they're empowering you and, you know, bringing in like old colleagues and, you know, show runners from the show. How's it been working with Dynamite on the Gargoyle property? It's been fantastic. I mean, we talk about what I'm going to do before I do it. It's not like I'm catching people off guard, but I am given a lot of freedom in terms of
48:10
how I execute things and I have a great relationship with Nate Cosby, who's been my editor on all these Gargoyles books. So yeah, it was 12 issues of Gargoyles, six issues of Gargoyles Dark Ages. We did a Halloween special, five issues of Gargoyles Quest, and then a winter special. Now Demona Zero and now five issues of Gargoyles Demona. Starting May 28th, we have a
48:39
couple fantastic four books coming out in the fall. have other things in the works and in planning stages that we haven't announced yet, so I'm not going to talk about them. the fact that I love that Gargoyles is working for Dynamite, that they're happy with it. We started that Gargoyles-Demona series, then after we were, Frank was only part way through drawing issue one when it was like, wait, wait.
49:08
We needed Zero. We need a car that's a Mona Zero. We're going to use the Mona as Dynamite's free comic book take. And that was great. You know, that was great news. It sort of, you know, we had to stop the train and switch over to Zero because Zero was going to come out before one. But we got it done and one is coming out on May 28th. And so it's it. I'm happy it's working. It doesn't surprise me, but I'm happy it's working for Dynamite.
49:37
They've been great about supporting the book. And yeah, I have a lot of freedom to do what I want to do from a storytelling standpoint. I like that. Damn right. Who wouldn't? Man, no, that sounds great. It feels like Gargoyle has found a great home for Dynamite. It's a company that has so many, I mean, it floors me sometimes.
50:04
keeping track of what licenses and properties they have. But they seem to do all of them justice. seem to do like, you know, put in a lot of care and effort and thought into the creative teams they put out, the marketing and all of that. So I'm very happy for you. And I'm extremely happy for the Gargoyle fans because they are eating good. I mean, the amount of comic books that have come out in these two, three years for Gargoyles has been super impressive. So I'm extremely happy for you, Greg. Yeah, I had a chance to read their free comic.
50:33
day issue actually this morning. And I got to say, yeah, Frank Parr's artwork is insanely good. It brings me back to the original cartoon. You could tell he's putting in like some of his best work, know, channeling the cartoon, bringing it into a comic format. But staying on the topic of the free comic book day for Demona. So there was two stories, right? We're getting issue zero of the new Demona series. But then there was a backup story that I could use a little more, maybe more information. But if you've read
51:02
I'm talking to listeners now. If you read the free comic book day issue, that second story, was just a crazy surprise cameo by none other than the Fantastic Four, which Greg, I got to say, as someone who grew up a Marvel head, still loves and reads Marvel, and then is a gargoyle fan, I never in a thousand years, or in this case, a hundred centuries, would have thought I would have seen a crossover like this. I guess, how'd you pull this off and where'd the idea to combine these two franchises come from?
51:32
think it came from Disney. Disney owns Marvel and Disney owns Gargoyles. It licensed Gargoyles out to Dynamite, but I Gargoyles is doing fairly well. But Fantastic Four is Fantastic Four, you know what mean? And there's a big movie coming out. So they came to us and I'm doing, I'm writing two, I have written them already. They're done from a script standpoint. The art's being done. So that'll be a separate series from Demona. Yeah, separate thing.
52:02
They both come out in the fall. Marvel is doing Fantastic Four meets the Gargoyles. And then Dynamite puts out Gargoyles meets the Fantastic Four. And they're the two stories are, they're each separate stories, but they're in continuity with each other. And with this little four pager at the end of Demona Zero. I think they're really fun stories. They both have very different feels to them. Different editors, same writer.
52:31
different artists, different editors. So they've got different feels to them. Can you share who's doing the art for, is the same artist doing the art for both of the, the cross? I know the answer to who's doing art for each one, but Marvel hasn't announced yet. So I don't feel comfortable. That's completely fine. Revealing that, but George Kamadaes, who was our Gargoyles pencil for Gargoyles 1 through 12 and for the Gargoyles Winter Special, which featured bronze.
52:59
and did that little four pager at the end of... Demona Zero, where the gargoyles first meet the Fantastic Four. George Campadais is doing the dynamite issue. And I know who's doing the Marvel issue, but they haven't announced it yet, so I'm not sure if that's a secret or not. No, that's fine. I can definitely be patient for that. So this is exciting. I guess, Greg, in your mind, why does gargoyles and Fantastic Four make sense, synergy with the movie aside?
53:27
I'm talking thematically story wise, I guess like how are you bringing them together? What you have are two families, Manhattan plant of gargoyles and the Fantastic Four family, which is from day one, been a family, both in Manhattan. You've got the Erie building where the gargoyles live, Central Park South. You've got the Baxter building in Midtown Manhattan and they're both
53:54
Protectors gargoyles protect the city Fantastic for pers text the whole world, but you know Ben Grimm is a neighborhood guy Lower East Side guy like Kirby was and so you know you've got This idea of these two first families gargoyles, you know one of the things that's been fun about gargoyles one of the things that happened in that 90s when we're making the show It didn't end up working out, but there was a point. I was in a meeting with Michael Eisner
54:24
who at the time was chairman of the Walt Disney Company. So somewhere around 94, 95, 96 maybe, but probably not 96, I guess probably 95. And he wanted to buy Marvel Comics. Disney wanted to buy Marvel Comics. Michael Eisner wanted to buy Marvel Comics for Disney. Marvel was in bankruptcy and he's like, we can get it for nothing. All the executives, I was like, that'd be great, but all the other...
54:52
big time executives in the room, talk Michael out of it. They said, no, you don't want to buy Marvel. It's a mess. It's a disaster. The rights to Spider-Man, you want to do it so you can make a Spider-Man movie. Carol Coe has rights to Spider-Man. Sony has, you won't be able to make a Spider-Man movie. You'll be sued by all these different people. And Fantastic Four is with Roger Corman, but Fox also thinks it's a mess. You don't want Marvel. Now, of course, flash forward to 2000.
55:22
I don't know, eight, nine, probably nine, 10, something like that. Bob Iger buys Marvel for Disney, but has to pay a fortune for it. Whereas when Iger wanted to buy it, he could get it for pennies, right? Because they weren't bankruptcy at the time. And in that meeting, when they had successfully talked him out of buying Marvel, he goes, well, but we've got a problem because Warner Brothers, they've got the DC Comics heroes like Superman and Batman.
55:51
We don't have that at Disney, you know? And we need a Disney action universe the way Warner Brothers has DC to draw from. And if it's not gonna be Marvel, he turned to me and he said, can we make a Disney action universe out of gargoyles? Start with gargoyles and make, and I said, absolutely. And so we did a bunch of episodes in season two, New Olympians, Pendragon, and others. We developed a time dancer series, a bad guys series.
56:21
a prequel called Dark Ages, sequel series called Gargoyles 2199, all these things so that Gargoyles would be the first family of the Gargoyles universe and we would have all these other heroes and we would build a whole action universe. Now that went away. It evaporated because all sort of the, there was so much man of a shake up at Disney that it just sort of evaporated and ended there. But that's how Gargoyles was intentionally built.
56:50
make the clan the first family of the Gargoyles universe. And when you look at Marvel back in the early 60s, that's exactly what Fantastic Four was. It was the first family of the Marvel universe. And then they create Thor and they create Iron Man and Spider-Man and all these other characters, the Avengers, and they start crossing them all over. But the first family headquartered at the top of the Baxter building is Reed, Soon, Johnny, and Beth, then the Fantastic Four.
57:20
the first family of the Gargoyles universe headquartered at the top of the Erie building is Goliath, Brooklyn, Lexington, Broadway, Hudson and Bronx and Angela. we have these things in common going into these stories. There are other smaller commonalities. Lex's computer skills sort of match up with Reed. Angela and Sue have very similar personalities. Lisa, there are
57:50
lots of elements that make the mesh. I think part of what went into this, if I'm being honest, is I've been doing this book for Marvel for the last 15 months, The Spectacular Spider-Man. And in a handful of issues, I had Johnny and Ben guest star in those issues. They show up at the coffee shop where Peter and Miles hang out on Wednesday afternoons. And so I think the folks at Marvel sort of said,
58:19
This guy writes Johnny in Bed pretty okay. He hasn't screwed it up anyway. they had me write one story, just a short 10 page, 11 page story for an anthology, a Fantastic Four anthology that I think comes out this summer. And I guess I didn't screw that up either. So that when they were saying, hey, let's do a crossover between Gargoyles and Marvel. Oh, Greg knows how to write Fantastic Four. Let's do Fantastic Four.
58:48
And I think that was part of it. But I just think that, again, it's sort of a compliment to Gargoyles that they think we are doing well enough that it's worthwhile to mix these two products. Yeah, I mean, it makes sense when you you break it down like that. I feel like we have gone through almost everything. I know I've actually got hundreds more questions at Gargoyles, but I also know that I can't do a seven hour podcast today. guess let me I'm looking at my list of questions.
59:17
And there's one here that's a little selfish. It's for me, but I got to know. Is it true that Jordan Peele submitted a pitch for a live action or maybe an animated gargoyle film back in like 2018? A pitch may be overstated, but Jordan, I had very limited contact with Jordan. mean, he exchanged a couple of messages on what was then called Twitter. I think he just expressed to Disney an interest after Get Out.
59:47
A lot of, I don't think this comes as a surprise, a lot of companies were wooing Jordan and wanted him to do some work for them. And in his conversation with Disney, he expressed an interest in doing a Gargoyles live action movie. And at the time, my understanding is that Disney didn't say no, but they also didn't green light anything. So it never went any further than that. sort of, I mean, maybe it was a pitch, but it's not a pitch I ever heard.
01:00:17
My sense of things from our, again, very brief communication, it was less of a pitch, more just that interest me, Gargoyle's interest. Okay. But nothing ever came of it. And then he went on and made a bunch of other things. But it's got to, I mean, it's got to kind of feel good to know that someone of Jordan and Peele's like caliber and, you know, fame is interested in a fan of Gargoyle. I mean, he's got to be a fan of his, you know, pitching and showing interest. I think that's awesome. It made me very happy. There we go, Greg.
01:00:47
Hell yeah. And I think with that being said, ladies and gents, this is ShortBytes Podcast and we just finished talking to Greg Wiseman about the brand new Gargoyles Demona series and obviously a bunch of other things revolved around gargoyles. I was going to get around to the Spectacular Spider-Man and some other stuff, but as you can tell, I was really fascinated by gargoyles. Hopefully you had a great time. Once again, Gargoyles Demona issue one is in shops right now, May 28th. Be sure to pick that up. Put that on your pull list.
01:01:17
And if you're not following Greg Weasley on social media or the official website, go and correct yourself. I'll have links to follow Greg in this episode. Show notes. I have preview. I have a preview of the Gargoyles Demona, the solicitation, all of that. Any show notes. Please take a look. Greg, any parting words or shameless plug before we wrap up? You know, I'm saying this coming out May 28th. up Demona number one. Pick up by this time, Spectator Spider-Man number 15 is also out.
01:01:47
If you haven't already, Spectacular Spider-Man, I'm also really proud of that book. And issue 15 came out May 14th, so check that out. Otherwise, have a great night.
01:02:03
There you have it short box nation. That's the end of the show. Thank you for hanging out. Thanks for being here. And a special shout out if you made it this far. If you enjoyed this episode and you have some thoughts or comments that you want to share with us, write us at the short box, jacks at gmail.com. And if you really liked this episode, help us spread the word, share this episode with a friend or someone you know that loves comics as much as we do. And don't forget to leave us a five star rating and review on apple podcast or Spotify.
01:02:31
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01:02:58
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