Greg responds...

Thanks for the support. But the question is harder to answer, because it was gradual. Keep in mind the whole concept of the Third Race (introduced with Puck in THE MIRROR) was a late addition to the concept. I think we came up with it halfway through the writing of the first season.

Including the other gods came during the writing of the second season. I definitely knew I was headed that way. But I do remember Frank and Dennis being surprised when the script for "The Gathering, Part One" included Odin, Anubis and Coyote at Avalon. By then, I was certain that was the correct way to go. But I guess I had forgotten to tell anyone.

Greg responds...

1. I'm not really qualified to answer this question, but Marvel was going through some tough times then and they had a mini-implosion, with the first casualty being there licensed comics, of which GARGOYLES was one. That much is certainly true. But whether or not the sales of the comic were any good is something I just don't know.

2. I don't remember, that title doesn't ring a bell. I was scheduled to take over the writing chores within a couple of issues. (I had already written one story.)

3. All this stuff I give out here at ASK GREG, might have shown up in the comic. I wasn't going to discriminate between it and the tv series.

4. I have no idea. Wasn't writing or editing the book then.

Sorry....

Greg responds...

I am not familiar with any comic called "The Gargoyles". I know Marvel Comics had a trio of unrelated characters called Gargoyle, The Gargoyle and the Gray Gargoyle. But they weren't an influence.

As for the movie, I assume you're referring to the Cornell Wilde TV Movie. I had seen that, but it also wasn't an influence.

I've answered this question thoroughly in the old archives, so you might check there for more info.

But briefly, I've had a personal fascination with Gargoyles dating back at least to the semester I spent in Oxford during my Senior year of college. Gummi Bears, Captain Atom and Hill Street Blues were all much bigger influences then any of the projects you cite above.

Greg responds...

1. 878 A.D.
2. Which time?
3. One.
4. I'm sure she does.
5. Los Angeles... (And I don't have a clue what you're hinting about.)

Also, I should have blown off questions 3-5, cause they're on different topics. But they were short, so you got lucky.

Greg responds...

As usual, I prefer not to comment on The Goliath Chronicles (besides "The Journey").

Greg responds...

1. Two species all along. Or at any rate, once we switched from the comedy to the dramatic development direction. It was in the first draft of the bible.

Unfortunately, your other questions are on different topics. Please resubmit them as separate posts.

Greg responds...

No. Not Maggie anyway. It has nothing to do with Gargoyles being for kids, by the way. (Compare what we did in "Deadly Force" for example.)

If I wanted to do a drug or alcohol story, I'd do one. I'd try to be very responsible about it. But in those days, I could do so-called controversial material. But I don't do it for the sake of doing it, I have to have a great story in mind.

Maggie wasn't about that. I don't know what might have happened to her down the road if she had stayed on the streets without Sevarius' not-so-benevolent intervention... but she probably would have eventually admitted defeat and called her parents to wire her busfare back to Ohio.

Her problem wasn't drugs or booze. It was naivete. In my mind, as I think I've mentioned before, she was a would-be actress who came to NYC with her life savings. Maybe a couple grand, which she went through ridiculously fast, thinking that any minute she'd be discovered and become a Broadway star!

At least, that's how I figured her.

Greg responds...

I know of no reason, why they'd start messing up.

I also don't have any immediate thoughts as to how to correct them. I did it once, when I still knew people who worked at Disney Channel. Those folk are gone now...

Let me ponder...

Greg responds...

I have and will continue to resist addressing these questions at this time.

Understand, GOLIATH CHRONICLES was very, very PAINFUL for me. Besides "The Journey" I watched each episode exactly once -- a bitter experience each time. (And note: This is not the fault of the people who produced those episodes.)

I have no desire to put myself through additional needless pain.

Now if the show were to come back, the pain wouldn't be needless. It would be worthwhile, and I would gladly watch, even study, each episode again, looking for loopholes, for what I could ignore, etc. etc. etc.

It may sound arrogant, but I have no doubt I could salvage my continuity in its entirety.

But for now...

The only Chronicle that exists for me is "The Journey."

Hope you understand.

Greg responds...

Multiverses are so much fun, but like unrestricted time-travel they are subject to massive abuse.

The short answer is, I haven't decided definitively, but I'm leaning toward a "NO".

I'd never want to, for example, cheapen the Magus' death by introducing the Magus from another dimension. And isn't our Demona quite enough fun, so that we have no need to meet the so-called Good Demona from a parallel world.

Of course, I suppose it could help explain GOLIATH CHRONICLES. Hmmmm....

Greg responds...

No. It was the pure evolution of the characters of the Trio. I saw very clearly that they were going their separate ways. Writing "The Journey" cemented the idea in my head. I believe that Brooklyn, Lex and Broadway would never find better brothers, better friends than each other, but I also saw that the days when they acted as one were gone.

I wanted to visualize this. The initial Phoenix Gate story (the one that somehow melted into "Runaways" in TGC) came first. The idea of him coming back older, mated and with kids and a beast, was a great shocking ending. But I felt it would really demonstrate what I had in my head.

The spin-off idea was of course obvious after that. I mean he was gone for forty years. What was he doing all that time? But, as you noted, by the time I came up with that, it was too late. Disney had already made me feel unwelcome.

Hybris, on my part, played a big role as well.

Hindsight, whatchagonna do?

Greg responds...

You're just way ahead of me. I had the robot plotted through 6.0. I hadn't plotted him out farther, though I probably would have brought him back in some form in G2158. I hadn't thought about what I would name him at that point. Maybe COYOTE-2158?

By the way, though I wish I had used the Bible's spelling, the fact is I didn't, so it's COYOTE, not CY.O.T.I.

Greg responds...

Arrgghh...

Now, I'm nervous....

I answered this last time I visited ASK GREG. Man, I hope we don't have another technical problem. Hopefully, human error was involved...

Anyway, Phoenix, after we finished the writing on the second season of Gargoyles, Gary Sperling and I began working on some potential spin-off shows for the series.

One of these was set in the future, the year 2158 to be specific. Originally, we called it "GARGOYLES: FUTURE TENSE". But I later changed the name to "GARGOYLES 2158".

The series featured Goliath's grandson SAMSON, a largely-reformed DEMONA and a Time-Dancing BROOKLYN, among others.

CBS was interested in airing it, but before we could put a pitch together, the whole CBS Saturday Morning dept. was fired. And shortly thereafter Disney bought ABC, rendering any deal with CBS all but impossible. At about the same time there was a major regime change at Disney TV Animation as well. The new regime wasn't too interested in Gargoyles at all, at least not in making it a priority. ABC asked for a new version of the show. But no one wanted 2158.

Oh, well.

Greg responds...

Uh, it depends what you mean.

I came up with the original concept for the Pack. At least I think I did. At any rate, I led the development team that did. I definitely had Fox pegged as female. Her birth name came later. "Renard" was used in "Outfoxed" as both a clue to the clever viewer that Halcyon and Fox were related and a clue to the clever viewer as to where Fox got her name. I know it sounds like I'm always taking credit, but I think that was my idea as well. (But it might have been Cary Bates. I just vaguely remember that Cary named the character Something Halcyon. And I made Halcyon the first name and made the last name Renard. Frank Paur came up with the character of Halcyon Renard in the first place, though I think Cary and I figured out that he was Fox's dad.)

Greg responds...

1. The writers and story editors worked for me directly.

The actors worked for our Voice Director Jamie Thomason, but I sat right next to Jamie at every recording, so I knew them very well.

The pre-production artists worked under Frank Paur, Dennis Woodyard and Bob Kline, and I largely dealt with those three Director/Producers as opposed to having direct contact with the artists. BUT -- there were tons of exceptions and I got to know many of the storyboard artists fairly well. Plus I had brought our (2nd season) lead character designer Greg Guler onto the show in its development phase. So I worked fairly closely with him.

I also had one on one meetings with our timing directors.

As for the actual overseas production artists. People like Roy, I had no real contact with them. Mostly I left that to Frank, though I occasionally communicated with the head of Walt Disney Japan via FAX.

In post, I worked directly with everyone. Editors, Sound folk, music, etc.

2. There isn't one answer to this. I had a tremendous amount of authority on the first two seasons, but I did have people I answered to. Largely, they gave me pretty free reign. Frank had equal authority. We generally agreed or at least could reach a solution together. Occasionally, whether we agreed on something or not, a decision would go up the ladder.

Greg responds...

Yeah. Two reasons.

I felt that Dracon didn't look distinctive enough in his first appearance, so Frank and I discussed it and decided that Goliath scared him so badly it turned part of his hair white. We even considered doing the same thing to Glasses. The idea appealed to me on some level, but it just seemed to artificial. And in some ways Glasses already looked more distinctive. (I always loved Glasses.)

Greg responds...

1. Behind the scenes, we wanted Lex and Broadway to resemble Thom Adcox & Bill Faggerbakke as much as possible.
Within the universe, though some gargs are bald, few human teens are. So it made sense to add hair.

Plus, I've never said that Lex and/or BW ARE bald. Maybe they shave...

2. Lex isn't a different species. He's also not fully grown yet, so he will get bigger. Though he'll never be as big as Brook or BW. Some guys are just short. Like me.

3 &tc. Thanks.

Greg responds...

Nope. Sorry.

Greg responds...

Probably. But it wasn't a high priority for me. Sometimes it's fun just to have a couple characters who are nuts. Characters who don't have complex reasons for their actions. I'm very proud of the complexity that abounds in both Demona and Xanatos. But sometimes it's fun just to cut loose.

Greg responds...

I. Sorry, I did work on Darkwing, but it wasn't my show, and I'm not that intimate with the details. And no, it didn't influence TimeDancer.

II. It didn't directly give me the idea, but it may have been one of many airship influences floating around in my head.

As per our new rules, I invite you to resubmit your remaining questions as multiple separate posts.

Greg responds...

I suppose many are ambidextrous. Since in animation, that's not a detail we have the luxury of paying much attention to.

Greg responds...

I don't know. It was originally going to be one episode. Just one inside what became THE GOLIATH CHRONICLES. (How it morphed into "Runaways" is beyond me.) Then it would hang out there as a potential spin-off or back-door pilot. If that never got picked up, I'd eventually have told some of Brooklyn's adventures in various scattered flashback episodes within the main series. Some might have wound up as multi-parters. But I don't pretend, I worked that much out. I was hoping it would spin off -- at which point I'd have forty years worth of material to cover.

Greg responds...

I won't be held to this, but....

I think I would skip all of TGC except "The Journey". In a comic book, I'd have the opportunity to include a Text Feature, where I could explain what I was doing and why. That Text Feature would also allow me to bring new readers up to speed on what they need to know. That would give me the freedom to limit cannon to the first 66 episodes as opposed to the whole 78.

Greg responds...

Honestly, I can't answer that without knowing the circumstances of our proposed ressurection.

Are we coming back on TV or in some form of print media or both?

If TV: Are we coming back as an hour show or a half-hour again? Are we coming back as a daily or weekly? As prime time or in kids?

To take your specific example, lets say we came back in 2002 as a kid's show. I'd probably just set things in 2002, and assume that most of my audience hasn't seen any of the old episodes. I would maintain continuity for my old audience, but I would clearly have to introduce the show and its characters anew. Some things would seem to pick up right where we left off. Others would be different, and we'd occasionally do flashback stories (both from the distant past and from the 1997-2002 gap) to bring both audiences up to speed.

Also keep in mind that although I had planned to do, for example, TimeDancer in 1996, I didn't get to. So there's nothing to stop me from introducing TimeDancer as a brand new concept in 2002.

As to doing 2158. I'd be happy to do that anytime. But it doesn't prevent or preclude me from doing stories in the present. In fact, I'd love to do BOTH.

Greg responds...

Hi Derek,
1. A Leica Reel is a storyboard shot onto film or video (or into a computer) and cut to time. Dialogue, temp music and temp sound effect tracks are often added so that, you FEEL like you are watching a reel of actual footage. It's LIKE-A-REEL. (I'm told that's the real origin of the term, though I don't know if I believe that.)

The rest of your questions are on multiple different topics. So based on our new rules, you'll have to resubmit them as multiple separate posts. I welcome you to do just that.

Thanks.

Greg responds...

Once again, I'll attempt to recreate an answer I already typed up once.

First caveat: Keep in mind that every series, every studio, has
slightly different definitions for most of these terms. I'm describing
how we defined things, how we worked on Gargoyles.

1. Story Editors edit stories.

All right, I guess I can do better than that. Once a month, I met with
our story editors (Michael Reaves, Brynne Chandler Reaves, Gary Sperling
and Cary Bates) and we talked about stories. I'd usually start by
tossing out "springboards", i.e. notions for episodes that I had. The
Story Editors would each pick the ones that interested them and that fit
in with their delivery deadlines. We'd talk about the stories in the
conference room, and then the story editors would go off to work with
their stable of writers. (Some stables were bigger than others. Cary,
for example, personally wrote all the episodes that he story edited.
That decision is partially based on speed and financial issues. Cary
was a free-lance story editor who was very fast. He could make more
money by writing and editing his episodes. Gary Sperling, on the other
hand, was on staff. He made the same amount of money whether he wrote
the episodes or not. So he wrote the ones he had a personal affinity
for, and passed the others off to his free-lance writers.)

The editors would coach their writers through premise, outline and
script -- sometimes multiple drafts of each. (I would in turn coach the
editors.) Then the editors would take their pass on the work --
literally editing the stuff for content, quality, page count, spelling,
everything. Finally, they'd turn the documents over to me, and I'd do
my "Producer/Creator" pass. My job was to make sure that the show was
consistent. That four story editors and multiple writers all wrote with
one voice.

1b. Frank Paur and I were the original Producers on Gargoyles. I was
in charge of writing; Frank, of art. Both of us kibbitzed on the
other's guys territory. We were a real team. We both worked together
on voice and post-production. Basically, it was our job to follow
through on every single aspect of the show.

Later, Dennis Woodyard and Bob Kline were brought in to direct episodes,
and at some point they were "promoted" to Producer level. They were in
effect, "Line Producers", in charge of all the nuts and bolts of
production, making sure the individual episodes they directed were
completed. That freed Frank up to focus more on the big picture. When
Dennis and Bob got their "promotion", Frank and I were bumped up to
"Supervising Producers" to indicate that we still outranked the other
two, basically.

*Note: The reason "promotion" is in quotes is because the only thing
that changed for any of us was the credit we got at the end of the
show. It's not like we got a raise or anything. Nothing really
changed.

2. Tim was great fun. Professional, but he had a good time, and really
did a great job cutting loose on the bizarre (and hammy) Dr. S.
2b. Can't think of any off the top of my head. Sorry.

Now, let's pray this posts this time.

7-21-99

Greg responds...

1. I was aware that NYC had a ton of gargoyles. (I lived there for two plus years in my DC Comics days.) But I didn't have the stats. So I guess the answer is both.

2. We did and didn't, just for starters. What was revealed was not comprehensive, as I think I've mentioned. But the main behind-the-scenes reason was that we had this ready-made show NEW OLYMPIANS that I wanted to try and get on the air via a "back-door pilot" on Gargoyles. Didn't happen, but I'm glad we tried, and I felt the concept fit rather nicely into the Gargs Universe.

3. I haven't seen Eric in years, but he and his wife Julia Roberts Lewald are good people, who I like a lot. (I attended their wedding.) They're good writers too. And no, that doesn't mean I like what was done on Goliath Chronicles, but I don't think I COULD have liked anything that anyone else did. Anyway, any further speculation on my part is, I believe, inappropriate.

4. Plenty.

Greg responds...

You are welcome. Believe my motivations were purely selfish. I was horrified.

7-9-99

Greg responds...

Hey JEB,

Quick little answer for ya: Yes.

(7-9-99)

Greg responds...

1. Yes.
2. Quite a bit.
3. A lot had to do with what felt right for the characters I guess. Wolf was very animalistic and hostile. Seemed perfect to make him a genetic werewolf. Jackal & Hyena were just nuts. A sociopath and a psychopath. It felt right that they would take things to the ultimate extreme.
4. Quite some time, young feller.
5. Kenner decided not to make a toy out of it.
6. That wasn't my plan.
7. Indiviuals all react differently. I'm not going to give you thirty-six individual responses.
8. I think he figured it out that night on Lunfanan Hill.
9. Which Mutate?
10. Fake gargoyle flesh? What would be the point?
11. Well, the truth here is that Angela had seen him already in the Himalayas. At least that had been my plan if the comic book hadn't been cancelled.
12. He was trying to instill in her the idea that her preoccupation with her biological parentage was an unhealthy human notion. (And since he knew Demona was her biological mother, you can see where his fear was coming from.) Of course, he lost the forest for the trees as Diane Maza pointed out in "Mark". He tried to make up for it later.
13. Yes and no.
14. Protected minority.
15. They barely know each other. And on some level, I think they'd get along, except for one thing... Renard hates David. And though Petros doesn't approve of much of his son's actions, I can't see him standing calmly by while someone else berates his son. Blood. Whatchagonnado?

Greg responds...

Hey Todd,

1. I don't think you're reading too much in, but you need to keep in mind that I was breathing gargoyles at the time. It filled my thoughts. Whether I was conscious of those specifics parallels, doesn't answer whether they were intentional or not. Does that help?

2. We're up to eight now. Plus guesses need to be on their own post. Note: it's best to be as specific as possible. Bet hedging is no way to win a silly contest.

3. Originally, desperation. We had a hell of a time getting names approved. Coming up with a rationale for waiting until the twentieth century to name most of our characters was an inspiration I was grateful my boss went for. Fortunately, he saw that it solved all our problems. Gave us young characters with names that had a more contemporary, yet fun feel. Allowed Goliath to stand out from the crowd more. Made Demona's name less silly and more chilling. Etc. Making Gargoyles a unique culture was the solution to a difficult problem. One of the many things, that just made the show feel "right".

Greg responds...

Hi Entity,
1. Not telling this now. Had very specific plans though.

2. Michael Reaves and I wrote a pitch and then a treatment (actually two), not a screenplay. And it would be irresponsible to share it at this point, since the movie is still in development at Touchstone Pictures.

3. The decision not to make it a video came before the script (and maybe before the final draft outline) was written. It would have been at least a bit longer... we certainly wouldn't have had to cut the Jason/Elisa clock tower scene. But beyond that, it's too hypothetical a question for me to answer. We never were given the opportunity to explore that avenue in any real way.