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WEISMANSWERS 2009-05 (May)

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Todd Jensen writes...

In "City of Stone", you had Findlaech, Gillecomgain, and Duncan all die by either falling off something or getting burned up by the Weird Sisters' magic, to make the methods of their deaths acceptable for Standards & Practices.

But in Part Four, you had Canmore temporarily slay Macbeth by running him through with a sword. Did you have any difficulty with Standards & Practices over that?

Greg responds...

Nope. Because (a) the audience saw no details of the event and (b) a few seconds later he stood up.

Response recorded on May 15, 2009

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Anonymous writes...

"I did read "One More Day" and I read the first year or so of "Brand New Day" before my workload overwhelmed me. It would be pretty hypocritical of me to rant against the resetting of timelines, since in essence that's what I've done on this show. "

How would it be hypocritical? You are starting a new universe from scratch with the benefit of hindsight. Marvel reset an existing universe to a status quo that hadn't existed in two decades.

What are your thoughts on the marriage between Peter Parker and Mary Jane Watson? Do you think it was a good idea? Marvel, and a lot of anti-marriage fans seem to be stuck on this Spider-Archie character. It's like they don't want their characters to grow and evolve.

Spider-Man has always seemed to be a story about coming of age and growing up. That seems to be the theme of your show also.

Did Marvel drop the ball and lose sight of who this character is? Because it seems that way to me.

I would have loved to see him as a dad, raising Baby May with Mary Jane, but Marvel chose to have Norman Osborn kidnap or kill that child (they never said what happened) because they felt it would age him.

But what sucks the most is that Stan Lee was the one who married them. It's what he wanted for his characters. What Marvel did to them would be like some future writer of "Gargoyles" deciding that it's boring if Goliath and Elisa get together because the tension there was the core of the relationship and resets their entire relationship back to what it was in the first episode.

Greg responds...

SIMPSONS SPOILERS!!!!

Personally, I like characters who grow and change. My all time favorite episode of The Simpsons, is the one where Lisa is having her fortune told and we flash-forward to her in college, falling in love and NOT getting married.

But when you're working on a commercial property that fundamentally has to work commercially, it can be tough when your series has evolved beyond its original premise, especially when you have MULTIPLE authors who have pushed and pulled the thing in multiple (well-intentioned) directions over the course of 40+ years. (Stan wasn't REALLY the guy who married Pete & M.J., no matter how much he participated in the decision and execution of the wedding itself. His run on the book had long since ended.)

Ttake the argument to it's natural extreme. Let's say, to be generous, that Pete was 15 in 1962. So now in 2009, he's 62-years-old. By all rights, if we really wanted to see him change and grow over time, we wouldn't be reading about Pete and M.J. raising baby May. We'd be reading about Pete and M.J. attending May's wedding and the birth of HER kids. (Or whatever.) And we'd be seeing a 62-year-old Spidey swinging around the city... or seriously considering retirement (or whatever).

Now, me? Yeah, actually, that REALLY interests me. It totally does. But I get why it's a commercial nightmare -- and you must also.

You ask how would it be hypocritical of me to rant against resetting timelines, but the answer is pretty obvious. Sony and Marvel approach me about doing a new Spidey show, and I pitch them a sixteen-year-old Pete in high school in 2008. I'm resetting. (You call it "starting a new universe from scratch", but really, what's the difference?) I could have pitched them: I'd like to see Spider-Man as a grandpa. They wouldn't have bought it and frankly, as much as it interests me, I'm not sure I'd have wanted to do it as a Saturday morning cartoon even if they had said yes.

And bringing up an ensemble show like Gargoyles with (more or less) a single guiding hand is really apples and oranges. I can evolve the premise and the relationships and even age the characters, because I can constantly add younger characters at the other end to maintain commerciality. Best of both worlds.

But with a single character property like Spider-Man, what happens when you've aged him beyond his premise. Do you live with it? Do you try to make it work commercially anyway? Can the premise evolve? Or do you find a way to reset. There's no one right answer, but folks have to bite the bullet and decide. Once a decision is made, then it becomes about execution.

STAR TREK SPOILERS!!!

Look at the recent Star Trek movie. They took the continuity and reset it using time travel. The Spidey staff used Mephisto. The concept of the reset/clean slate was surprisingly similar. What remains is execution. Some folks may buy into the Trek reset because of the execution. Some may not. Same with Spidey. And then there are some folks who just don't like the idea of doing a reset AT ALL. That's legit too.

I had the advantage of doing an adaptation for another medium. So I could reset without any continuity excuse. And still, at the end of the day, whether people liked what I did had a lot more to do with execution than themere FACT that I did or didn't reset. Same, I'd guess, goes for One More Day/Brand New Day.

Response recorded on May 14, 2009

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Patrick writes...

When will you post a ramble for Hunter's Moon, Part III? I really enjoy reading those, and Hunter's Moon Part III is, for my money, one of the best and most dramatic episodes of the series!

Greg responds...

I don't know. I'll try to get around to it eventually.

Response recorded on May 14, 2009

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Clark Cradic writes...

Are there any particular Sagas you're hoping to intergrate with the Spectacular Universe? Like the Clone Saga, Six Arm Saga, Indentity Crisis Saga, or some combination?

Greg responds...

Yes.

Response recorded on May 14, 2009

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Anonymous writes...

why is Peter not trying to be with Mary Jane? Why is it Gwen? He married Mary Jane in the comics. He was in love with Mary Jane in all the other cartoons. He was with Mary Jane in the movies. Why is she not important here?

And why this stuff with Liz? Gwen/Peter/MJ should be the triangle. Not Liz.

And Mary Jane should be who he loves, not Gwen.

Greg responds...

Well, if you read the original comics, Gwen was his first real love, and his (much later) relationship with Mary Jane was a DIRECT result of their shared grief over her death. Betty was his first girlfriend, and Liz was someone else he was into as well for a considerable period of time. M.J. was always hot, but early on, she was never interested in being a one-man woman. That's just who she was. We're trying to be true to all that, and more. So have a little patience.

Response recorded on May 14, 2009

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Brad writes...

You answered my question about Morbius by saying that you could only confirm plans for Hobgoblin and Scorpion, but I guess what I really wanted to know was if you could actually use him at all? I've heard the 90's show had many problems clearing him for the network, not allowing him to use his fangs or say the word 'blood' (opting instead for suction cups in his hands and a desire for 'plasma'.)

Loved the first two seasons and particularly the framing devices used in the second (nice touch with the Opera), anxiously awaiting a season 3.

Greg responds...

No comment on Morbius. Thanks for the kind words.

Response recorded on May 14, 2009

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Bazell writes...

Glad this site is back up and running. I hope you got everything done that you needed during the hiatus.
Spectacular Spider-Man has been, well, freakin' spactacular. As a life long Spider-Man fan and current comic book reader, it is with an air of nerdy sophistication that I lend my compliments to all involved in the process.
Now that my nose is sufficiently brown:

I know that translations from one established medium to another require changes and adaptation, not only in terms of style but content as well. I don't pretend to know much about the official process of adapting a story into a new format, but watching many of these television shows and movies that are based on comic book (or novel) storylines that I am intimatly framiliar with often can leave me... wanting. Even in this current show, clearly many alterations of the original storyline have been made. Certainly some of the changes are for the purposes of pacing, keeping episode count down, updating things for modern audiences, etc. But other changes seem unneceassary in terms of such thing to the casual, yet involved, viewer like me. Now understand, I am in no way asking you to justify changes that have been made to a story I already know. If it was the EXACT same story, then I would know what's going to happen at all times. I am confident that changes you and your team have made have been for the purposes of telling the best Spider-Man story you could, so my question is this: what can dictate the changes you make? Also, I assume you must seek some sort of approval from Marvel or Lee/Ditko or someone... is that oversight strict, or are you given certain measures of freedom? Are there any changes you made that you regret? What aspects of the Spider-Man mythos did you consider sacrosanct beyond the obvious necessities about his origin story?

Thank you, as always, for the time you give us fans.

Greg responds...

SPIDEY SPOILERS!!!!!

Marvel approves everything. But I have to say, they've been great partners -- which of course to me means they seem to love what we're doing! ;)

Changes are dictated by all the things you mentioned above, but in adapting the property, we tried to follow what we came to call "The Five Cs": Make it Contemporary, Cohesive, Coherent, Classic and iConic.

When you lay eyes on any character for the first time, especially the villains, you want the viewer to say, "Wow, yes! That IS Doctor Octopus [or whomever]!" He has to be that iconic, that classic. But at the same time we want to make his look contemporary.

The same notion applies to storytelling. Over forty plus years of continuity (with ideas coming from Lee/Ditko, Lee/Romita and everyone since including Bendis' Ultimate Spider-Man and the Raimi movies, etc.), there's going to be a ton of interesting characters and story ideas, but there's also going to be considerable duplication, a false start here and there, conflicting interpretations, etc. Having the advantage of hindsight when looking at this wealth of material, we strived to make the show more coherent and cohesive than the original.

This in turn helps it feel more contemporary. Storytelling has changed over the last set of decades, and a modern audience is more sophisticated with more stringent expectations. For example, just having every villain (and your hero) created from random exposures to radiation is a bit tough to swallow... on many levels. So -- as arrogant as I know it sounds -- we try to improve on the origins, by weaving characters and plotlines together, by limiting the sources of where someone can get super-powers, etc. Likewise, we may combine two characters that overlap so much that they fulfill the same function. For example, Bennett Brant + Mark Raxton/Molten Man = Mark Allan/Molten Man, or it did for us, anyway. Doing this made things more coherent and more personal to Spider-Man/Peter.

Having said all that, it was EXTREMELY important to us that the characters remained Classic and Iconic in the writing as well as the visuals. I STUDIED these characters and all the source material intensely. I tried to get down to the core essence of each character, i.e. what made him or her who he or she was to the reader. Flash is a bully, who deep down is actually an honorable guy. He's a guy who starts out as Pete's nemesis (and ironically Spidey's biggest fan) and eventually becomes both a decorated war veteran and one of the few people that Pete can count on. We knew we were starting with High School Flash, but we wanted to plant seeds of the guy we knew he'd become.

On the other hand, I studied Shocker. Great powers. Fun battles. Iconic costume. Secret i.d. = a cypher. Yes, we know his name, but there's nothing about Herman that makes him special. So in an attempt to make our universe more cohesive and coherent, I combined Montana with Shocker. I don't make that decision likely, and I do get that this bothers some folks, but it really felt like it worked in the context of our series, and Marvel agreed.

Another example: The Green Goblin was introduced as a mystery. Stan and Steve kept us guessing as to who was the man behind the mask for years. That mystery seemed FUNDAMENTAL to the character. And yet we knew that the audience knew that Norman Osborn was the Goblin. So how do you create a fundamentally necessary mystery when the audience already knows the answer? The solution was misdirection. Many people still guessed or assumed that Norman was the Goblin, but some people were fooled (at least briefly) and because I was NOT above making Montana into Shocker, seeds of doubt were planted. There's been (thankfully) a lot of positive feedback on our second season finale. And many people said something along the lines of, "Even though I knew it was Norman Osborn, you still kept me guessing." That's exactly what we hoped would happen.

This, of course, is just the tip of the iceberg. There are many other examples. But it should give you something of a window into our very exacting process.

Response recorded on May 14, 2009

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Vaevictis Asmadi writes...

Hello Greg,

While I was looking in the GargWiki for information about the Olympians, I saw that you wanted to know the Ancient Egyptian name for the Egyptian pantheon.

The word which can be translated as "god" is _netcher_ or _netjer_, feminine _netcheret_ or _netjeret_, plural _netcheru_ or _netjeru_. TCH and TJ are just ways to spell the CH sound at the beginning and end of English "church," without confusing it with the German or Greek CH. As with every Ancient Egyptian word, the vowels were never written down, so the vowels in netjer and netjeru are speculatively added to make N-TJ-R and N-TJ-R-W pronounceable.

Netjeru refers to all the deities, including large numbers of minor deities who are servants to the greater deities, and who are often referred to in English as "demons" or "spirits." Netjeru sometimes also include other beings: deified mortals, the _akhu_ or souls of the dead, and divine beings like Ammut and Apophis that were not worshipped. Netjeru can also include the _bau_, which are "manifestations or emanations" send forth from a deity.

I do not know if netjer was also used to refer to gods of other religions, but I'm guessing it was.

What I have told you comes from Richard Wilkinson's "The Complete Gods and Goddesses of Ancient Egypt." In my non-expert opinion this is one of the best books on Egyptian Mythology that I have seen for the non-specialist.

Greg responds...

Wow, that's seriously helpful, both the info and the reference book. I'm definitely buying that book! Thanks.

Response recorded on May 14, 2009

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Anonymous writes...

Hi...

Can we see th Chameleon in season three?

Can we see the Lizard in season three, too?

Will Sandman be back in season three?

Will Rhino return for a third season?

Do you have plans for Doc Ock be in more than one episode for season three?

Is Venom going to be back for season three?

Can Mysterio be back in season three?

~ Thanx

Greg responds...

And again, no comment. NO COMMENT on what's planned for Season Three, beyond the arrival of Hobgoblin and Scorpion. Those are two BIG spoilers. And I'm not giving out any others.

Response recorded on May 14, 2009

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BackLash writes...

Hello sir,

1. In episode 9 "The Uncertainty Principle, who was that "cheerleader" in the ping wig and green jacket, hanging out with Flash and the "girls"?
2. How come Montana is the Shocker in the show?
3. If there is later seasons, will Bluebird or Prowler make appearances?

Greg responds...

1. Uh... honestly, it's been so long since I saw that episode, it's hard to remember which guy was wearing the pink wig. Was it Rand? Kenny? Hobie? Tiny?

2. I've addressed this. Check the archives.

3. No comment.

Response recorded on May 14, 2009


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