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Gargoyles

The Phoenix Gate

Comment Room Archive

Comments for the week ending March 5, 2007

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So, have I missed any BIG announcements???

Wow, this is cool! Geez, I go away for a little while... and we get a new book. Well, I'll say more at home on tuesday...
later!

Battle Beast - [Canada]
That is all I will say.

DK2> "Bad Guys" is a spin-off Greg planned. Here's a bit of info:

Bad Guys was one of six proposed Gargoyles spin-offs, and the one that came closest to being created. A leica reel for the series was produced.

In the series, a mysterious personage known only as the Director recruits a series of "semi-reformed" villains from the original series to run missions for him, choosing these people because, as "bad guys", they are expendable. Robyn Canmore serves as their leader; the other members are Dingo, Matrix, Yama, and Fang. In the course of their "Dirty Dozen"-style adventures, they encounter many familiar figures from "Gargoyles", such as the terrorists from "City of Stone Part One" (in the course of which we would learn what their cause was), the Pack, Castaway and the Quarrymen, and even Goliath's clan. The Director would be using the Redemption Squad in part as a means of battling the Illuminati. Character-based complications along the way would include Dingo and Robyn developing a stormy relationship and Yama and Fang taking a strong dislike to each other.

Greg Bishansky - [<---- The 11th Annual Gathering of the Gargoyles]
"The ambassador is correct. I went to Z'ha'dum. I've seen the face the enemy. They're not gods and they're not indestructible. I fought them and I've killed many of them and I've survived. There is a way out of this, a way to stop this insanity once and for all, and Delenn's fleet is a start. Now we have to build on it. Together we will form the largest fleet in history, not just for a battle, but to change the shape of the galaxy. Not just for ourselves, but for our children, and our children's children. You tell your governments, that the only man to survive Z'ha'dum, sends this message. We can end this, not just for now, not just for the next thousand years, but forever! I stand before you as proof that it can be done. We can fight and we can win, but only if we do it together! Can I count on you?! Can I count on you?! Will you stand together?!" -Captain John Sheridan

Thats great news about a spin off comic. But I too have my doubts about anything being out on time though. If Disneys the problem for the approvals, then what about this? Another good article, with Greg mentioning Gargoyles conceptions of proposals to Disney. Didn't know this stuff. My only problem is what is the "Bad Guys"? I've never seen half the animated series. Was this group in those episodes? Or is a group I'm forgetting about from the earlier half of the episodes? Thats why I so wish for Disney to release the rest of the series' dvds. Cause this ain't helping me now with a spinoff. Maybe I'll look for eps on youtube, if any.
DK2

After reading the report about Greg Weisman's panel, I'd like to extend an apology to Hedgecock. I had earlier speculated (largely because of his bio in #1) that his role in the long delay of #2 was due to heading off unexpectedly to embark upon a few more adventures like the ones listed in his bio. But it turns out that it was merely due to his regular day job slowing him down. I don't know if you're reading this, Hedgecock, but I'd like to apologize for my mistaken assumption about you.
Todd Jensen
Gargoyles - did for monstrous-looking statues what "Watership Down" did for rabbits!

Wow. That is amazing! I mean, I hope they've got their facts straight that this is a definite go and not an aspiration, and I won't be entirely happy until I see it 'in green' at Ask Greg but otherwise... YES!

I suppose it makes sense to mitigate the loss of time making use of the lisence by trying out a spin-off. I don't think it's too early. 'Gargoyles' has a strong fanbase at this kind of level, and it will only help the momentum of the comic to have the Gargverse in the public eye on a regular basis. A new release can spike attention in the universe after #1 and the new storylines in #3. Also, Bad Guys can provide a less cluttered, more accessible 'in' to the universe for comic book people new to the universe than the main comic (or many of the other potential spin-offs).

I don't think it will be any more difficult to get 'Gargoyles' and 'Bad Guys' out together than it will be to get, say, 'Gargoyles' and 'Tron' out together. But if there are delays, we'll just have to take them in our stride. The important thing is that Greg is getting opportunity to tell more of his stories.

Ed

DEMONSKRYE> Yeah, my opinion is similar to your's. I don't think we should "just be happy" nor do I think we should be doom and gloom. As I have said, in the long run, it's just a comic book. But, I want it to do well. And despite ridicule that has been thrown my way on other message boards because I keep pimping this, and it's late, I still keep doing it.

Maybe it's perseverence. Maybe I just don't know when to quit. Believe me, I have a lot of negative things to say about the whole thing. Pardon my French, but there have been many times when I just wanted to throw up my hands and say "Fuck Disney! Fuck SLG! Fuck the fandom! I'm gone." Believe me when I say I've been more than tempted.

But I won't. I love this thing. I want to support it. If it fails, well, I'll know I tried. I won't lose any sleep over it. What ever happens, happens.

Do I question this as a business decision? Yes. It could be a really good business decision, or a really bad business decision. Personally, I there should be a third option out there for fictional universes besides Marvel or D.C. and if this is done right, it has potential. We've known this for years. If it doesn't work, well... I don't need new material to be a fan. Do I think it will work? Given the nature of the business and how this franchise has been mishandled so far? No. I don't. But, I'll let SLG, Greg and Disney worry about that. They release the comics I'll buy 'em, I'll pimp 'em. They stop... well, spilt milk. Maybe that makes me a lesser fan, but I'm not going to put myself on an emo roller coaster for this.

I'll never stop supporting "Gargoyles", but I refuse to lose sleep over it either. Does any of what I said make sense?

Greg Bishansky - [<---- The 11th Annual Gathering of the Gargoyles]
"The ambassador is correct. I went to Z'ha'dum. I've seen the face the enemy. They're not gods and they're not indestructible. I fought them and I've killed many of them and I've survived. There is a way out of this, a way to stop this insanity once and for all, and Delenn's fleet is a start. Now we have to build on it. Together we will form the largest fleet in history, not just for a battle, but to change the shape of the galaxy. Not just for ourselves, but for our children, and our children's children. You tell your governments, that the only man to survive Z'ha'dum, sends this message. We can end this, not just for now, not just for the next thousand years, but forever! I stand before you as proof that it can be done. We can fight and we can win, but only if we do it together! Can I count on you?! Can I count on you?! Will you stand together?!" -Captain John Sheridan

They're already coming out with a spin-off? That definitely surprised me. (I'm not surprised that it was "Bad Guys", since it was the one that got closest to being made - close enough to get a leika reel. "Bad Guys" was the spin-off that least interested me, but at least it's still in the Gargoyles Universe.)

I think that Bishansky made a good point about the "gloom and doom" in one sense; the world won't come to an end if the comic gets cancelled. I'm still hoping that Disney will get its act straightened out, but it's only the third issue that's been delayed because of approval problems; the second issue was delayed because of art difficulties. (I still privately suspect that what that meant was that Hedgecock decided to go off on a few more adventures rather than sit down to draw the comic, but that's another story.) And the first issue did come out in the month that it was scheduled to come out in.

I think that Bishansky is correct in suspecting that the delay is simply due to the fact that Disney puts the more well-known properties (such as Disney Princesses) ahead a comic book based on a show that was cancelled ten years ago and whose following is (in terms of size) more "cult" than "mainstream".

PATRICK - I doubt that Angela was called "Angie" on Avalon, in light of the formal speech patterns of the gargoyles living there (not too surprising, when you consider how little contact they'd had with the outside world - just Tom making a visit every hundred years, and the last time before the present day would have been in 1895), so I suspect that it was the trio who were the first to come up with that nickname (and who will, I hope, be the last).

Todd Jensen
Gargoyles - did for monstrous-looking statues what "Watership Down" did for rabbits!

"Bad Guys"> Maybe it's just my nature or maybe part of me just feels like playing devil's advocate, but my feelings on this are a bit mixed. I am really happy that even just one of the spin-offs may happen as its own comic. I'm pretty sure that Greg W. had said thatif only the main TV series was continued or picked up again, events from the spin-offs would be folded into it and I figured that would be the case for the comic as well. But an honest to godness spinoff means the concept will get a lot more individualized attention. And yeah, that is pretty cool.

But on the other hand, I can't help but feel like this is bad timing. The only thing I can think of is that doing spin-offs was the plan all along and this is just the point it was going to get announced at. Because otherwise, it doesn't feel like a logical decision given what we know. The main book is not yet selling up to projections, putting it out has been a pretty difficult task for a variety of reasons, just two issues have come out, and it's time to add on a spin-off? Excited as I am for "Bad Guys", I can't help but feel that SLG may be making more challenges for themselves before they even have the ones they took on previously under control. If we were anticipating issue #6 or #5 coming out at this point, I'd be pretty happy with no concrns lingering in the background. Unfortunately, that's not the case.

In response to what I've seen a few comment room members saying, I don't think the concerns being voiced are just gloom and doom talk for the sake of gloom and doom. I can only speak for myself, but my feeling on the comic are more complex than either Eeyore level pessimism or unquestioning joy. I am happy that there's a "Gargoyles" comic out, But I'm not feeling like I should be grateful that anything at all has come out anymore than I feel I should be grateful for one half of season 2 and not the other. Whatever the reasons, the consistant delays on the book make it hard for anyone to get into it and make it even harder to promote it, no matter who you are. I imagine people who are trying to get their friends to start reading the comic feel pretty silly constantly having to revise the next issue's release date. Everyone's entitled to their own opinion and I'm happy for you if you're just happy that there's a comic at all. But I'm hoping you can still respect my opinion as being more thought out than just a knee jerk pessimistic reaction.

Demonskrye

Hi, just link dropping... MGC has a new topic up you KNOW you want to draw for... ;) And voting on 'Canon Romance' is running through the 15th, head on over and give us your vote! Thanks! ^_^
kess - [< mgc]

*reads the first part of Spacebabie's comment*

So, technically, I was the one who just yelled.

Harvester of Eyes - [Minstrel75 at gmail dot com]
"A wise Nar once said "A Nebulon under the foot is worth two behind a plasma cannon," but the Nar are still waiting for their mythical savior with green pee to fly their coal-powered interstellar battlewagons to glory against the Nebulons."

I'm surprised that Greg W didn't say something in here or in Ask Greg about it first... but I'm not surprised Bad Guys was the spinoff made seeing as how it was the closest to being made before.

I'm not saying that Bad Guys was my first choice to be made, but I do think at this point it may be one of the more likely ones to succeed. I hope so, anyway. I'll sure be buying lots of copies of both.

Matt - [St Louis, Missouri, USA]
"Long ago, there were gargoyle clans all over the world... but I was not aware any of them had survived..." - Goliath, "The Green"

Greg B: Well, obviously you're refferring to me and/or Vaevictus.

And I didn't think we said anything that horrible to warrant that response. I was just thinking out loud. It's not like I said I think the comic is doomed to fail or whatever. In fact, I'm feeling a bit more optimistic about it from the news, and I was just wondering how it will play out with all the problems with the delays.

So, why are you even here then? Why aren't you at the CNN or Fox News message boards instead? Obviously Gargoyles is important to you seeing as you post here almost every day.
I mean God forbid we should discuss our concern over GARGOYLES issues in a GARGOYLES chat room! I mean, obviously the threat of nuclear war is a hell of a lot more important than anything else on the planet, so I'm sorry that I dare to think about anything else and am actually trying to think of other things than being blown up on a constant basis.

Geeze, I'm with Vaevictis here, maybe it would be better to just stop posting seeing as how no one can take an opinion that's different than their own.

Purplegoldfish - [skydragonn at aol dot com]
"Whoa, Tiny, you mean there's more than one of you?" "My name is not Tiny! I am Goliath!" - Elisa and Tiny

Vaevictis, no one is yelling at *you*. Greg is addressing the whole room. He is also not yelling. If he was yelling he would have typed in all caps.

I think it is great news we are getting a Bad Guys comic. Yes I am peeved we have to wait, but who knows how much stuff Disney is handling. I do also agree with the Wont believe it until it happens, but remember how long we had to wait for the first DVD? The announcment came in the summer of 2002 and we had to wait until December of 2004.

Spacebabie - [spacebabie at hotmail dot com]
"Looks like breakfast, smells like your auntie. Why do we need that?" Steve on Potpourri

Greg B: Yeah, well... it was, um... turning into a licensed product. But seriously, my mistake.

Vavictus: I will agree with you that it wasn't the spin-off at the top of my list (this subject has come up in here before), but still... WE'RE GETTING A SPIN-OFF. I honestly was not expecting anything like this so soon.

I generally try not to worry about things too much (worry ages you prematurely, both outside and in). I live day-to-day, and my philosphy is whatever happens, happens. If it happens, fine. If not, it doesn't. And today, we've got some great news. As far as I'm concerned, it's a great day to be a fan of the show.

Harvester of Eyes - [Minstrel75 at gmail dot com]
"A wise Nar once said "A Nebulon under the foot is worth two behind a plasma cannon," but the Nar are still waiting for their mythical savior with green pee to fly their coal-powered interstellar battlewagons to glory against the Nebulons."

I have to agree with Greg B. here. We've just received some awesome news. Bad Guys is coming out in comic book form, and we'll be getting new Gargoyles material every month. What's with the doom and gloom I'm seeing here? This is a good thing, guys! Rejoice!
D. Taina
"This is a job for the gargoyles!" - Elisa

If people want to voice their concerns, rant in frustration, or propose crazy conspiracy theories... seriously, what's the harm? This forum is for talking about "Gargoyles." You're welcome to worry about whether or not Iraq had WMDs (they didn't) and were supplying al Qaida (they weren't) over on the CNN.com and Fox News message boards. :P
Patrick - [<-- The Gathering 2007]
Welcome to the internet... where the men are men, the women are men, and the teenage girls are undercover FBI agents.

VAEVICTIS> Who yelled at you? I didn't yell at you. I just told people in here to calm down. I didn't even address you specifically.

I am not out to get you. I will freely admit, I am out to get the Doom & Gloom attitude I am seeing in here.

Please, I have much better things to do with my time than yell at you.

Greg Bishansky - [<---- The 11th Annual Gathering of the Gargoyles]
"Plato once said that for everything that exists, there is a perfect form of it somewhere. A perfect human being, a perfect chair, a perfect stick, so that everything is a shadow of that one perfect form. Now, if we follow that train of thought, that means that somewhere in the universe there exists the perfect form of the absolute and complete idiot and he left here an hour ago." - Matthew Gideon

Um, OK, calm down. Nobody here said that comic book delays are more important than nuclear war. Geez. This is a Gargoyles CR so we talk about Gargoyles.

I'm really beginning to reconsider why I bother to come to this room at all. I feel like I'm not allowed to talk about anything without Greg B yelling at me.

Vaevictis Asmadi

Well, maybe we should let Greg and SLG worry about this. We either get the comic, or we don't. I hope we will.

In the mean time, I think I'll spend my time worrying about Iran's nuclear weapons program. Or who will be the next President of the United States. Or whether anything will be done about illegal immigration.

That is the sort of thing you worry about. That is the sort of thing worthy of doom and gloom about. The comics are really for SLG, Greg and Disney to worry about. I love them, I want them to keep coming out. If they get cancelled, I'll still be a fan, I'll still attend the cons, and I'll still have the friendships I made in this fandom. I do everything I can to spread the word, all over the place. I'll even continue to support and help run Gatherings as long as we can keep having them.

But I'll save this level of worry for Iran supplying al Qaeda with a WMD.

Greg Bishansky - [<---- The 11th Annual Gathering of the Gargoyles]
"Plato once said that for everything that exists, there is a perfect form of it somewhere. A perfect human being, a perfect chair, a perfect stick, so that everything is a shadow of that one perfect form. Now, if we follow that train of thought, that means that somewhere in the universe there exists the perfect form of the absolute and complete idiot and he left here an hour ago." - Matthew Gideon

"Bad Guys"-I'm kind of on the fence about that actually. While I do think it's awesome that it seems Gargoyles is moving forward, are we jumping the gun here? I mean, we still don't have #3 of the original approved yet and a spinoff is coming out already?
(Ok, I admit I'm a little biased-"Bad guys" is not really a spinoff I'm that interested in- and I would much rather the main "Gargoyles" series be a monthly comic than a spinoff coming out alongside it...well at least it's not "New Olympians".)

I don't mean to sound all gloom and doom, it's just hard to get my head around when we're having so much trouble with delays.

Purplegoldfish - [skydragonn at aol dot com]
"Whoa, Tiny, you mean there's more than one of you?" "My name is not Tiny! I am Goliath!" - Elisa and Tiny

I do believe it's legit. I think my problem is that it doesn't *feel* real to me, in part because of the delays in the existing comic.

It isn't going to feel real to me until Disney allows SLG to publish an issue (just one!) without massive delays. I mean, we were told by legit sources before now that the comic would be bi-monthly, and there's no sign of it. If this 10-person assembly requirement is permanent, how could it ever possibly happen?

That doesn't mean I'm not pleased. But it does not feel real to me at all. It is like being told that Niagra Falls is 100 feet tall and 1000 tons of water falls over every second (or whatever the numbers are) versus actually standing there, seeing and hearing it.

Vaevictis Asmadi

Vaevictis> The part about a "Gargoyles" book each month doesn't mean "Gargoyles" as a monthly. It means, having a comic set in that universe out each month.

And the news is legit. It was Greg himself that announced it. Why would something he says not be legit if it was announced elseware first?

Greg Bishansky - [<---- The 11th Annual Gathering of the Gargoyles]
"Plato once said that for everything that exists, there is a perfect form of it somewhere. A perfect human being, a perfect chair, a perfect stick, so that everything is a shadow of that one perfect form. Now, if we follow that train of thought, that means that somewhere in the universe there exists the perfect form of the absolute and complete idiot and he left here an hour ago." - Matthew Gideon

Sorry Harvester, more doom and gloom is forthcoming. :)

Wow, a Bad Guys comic already! That is awesome news, although it is the spin-off I'm least interested it is a good sign for Gargoyles. But I'll wait to be absolutely certain it's true until Greg announces it here, I assume he will. Does it seem a little soon to be working on Bad Guys when they're still having so many problems with "Gargoyles" itself? Are they feeling optimistic that the problems with Disney can be worked out?

The part about "a gargoyles book every month" is the only part that I don't believe at all. I mean, seriously.

Vaevictis Asmadi

HoE> Cinderella 3 is not a licensed product.
Greg Bishansky - [<---- The 11th Annual Gathering of the Gargoyles]
"Plato once said that for everything that exists, there is a perfect form of it somewhere. A perfect human being, a perfect chair, a perfect stick, so that everything is a shadow of that one perfect form. Now, if we follow that train of thought, that means that somewhere in the universe there exists the perfect form of the absolute and complete idiot and he left here an hour ago." - Matthew Gideon

Greg B: <Because, gosh darn it, we need another Disney Princess storybook on the shelves.> Not to mention "Cinderella III." Though how they got as far as 3, I'm still trying to figure out.

What's this I hear about "Bad Guys"? Oh, this is f**king awesome. Though I do have doubts about whether this news will finally silence the whole "doom and gloom" nonsense once and for all. Still, very exciting.

*does happy dance and sets a car on fire*

Hope there was no one in that.

Harvester of Eyes - [Minstrel75 at gmail dot com]
"A wise Nar once said "A Nebulon under the foot is worth two behind a plasma cannon," but the Nar are still waiting for their mythical savior with green pee to fly their coal-powered interstellar battlewagons to glory against the Nebulons."

"Disney could possibly want to stick to kiddie-stuff ONLY and not do anything more mature than that."

-That's because 8 year olds can't/won't do much to bother Disney if/when Disney treats them badly.


Greg B? What!? So theres gonna be a Bad Guys comic AND Gargoyles? That is good news, though I must admit, it seems TOO good to be true.

Matt - [St Louis, Missouri, USA]
"Long ago, there were gargoyle clans all over the world... but I was not aware any of them had survived..." - Goliath, "The Green"

Greg B.> Weeee!!!!
Asatira

On a much, much, much, much cooler note!

Comicbookresources did a write up on Greg's spotlight at Wondercon. And there was this announcement:

"It was also announced at the spotlight panel that a new bi-monthly series taking place within the 'Gargoyle' universe will be out soon entitled "The Bad Guys." The plan will be to have some kind of Gargoyles book out each month. Soon new books based on the other pilots will be announced as the franchise expands."

http://www.comicbookresources.com/news/newsitem.cgi?id=9865

Greg Bishansky - [<---- The 11th Annual Gathering of the Gargoyles]
"Plato once said that for everything that exists, there is a perfect form of it somewhere. A perfect human being, a perfect chair, a perfect stick, so that everything is a shadow of that one perfect form. Now, if we follow that train of thought, that means that somewhere in the universe there exists the perfect form of the absolute and complete idiot and he left here an hour ago." - Matthew Gideon

ANTIYONDER> That is the most retarded theory I have ever heard. Disney is not delaying the comic on purpose as part of a conspiracy to lower sales and justify cancelling it. They can't just cancel it, Dan Vado can. But they have approval over it, and all the rest of the SLG comics.

What is probably going on is that Disney has a lot of licensed products that go through that office, and the comic (all four of them, not just Gargoyles) are considered lower priorities. Because, gosh darn it, we need another Disney Princess storybook on the shelves.

Greg Bishansky - [<---- The 11th Annual Gathering of the Gargoyles]
"Plato once said that for everything that exists, there is a perfect form of it somewhere. A perfect human being, a perfect chair, a perfect stick, so that everything is a shadow of that one perfect form. Now, if we follow that train of thought, that means that somewhere in the universe there exists the perfect form of the absolute and complete idiot and he left here an hour ago." - Matthew Gideon

Warcrafter > If you're that worried about hurting the paper, I suggest you invest in some latex gloves and a pair of tweezers. There are no more copies of the 2004 and 2006 anthologies left, so if you don't read the ones you have you're going to be out of luck.

Re: Turf > I wonder if anyone on Avalon ever called Angela "Angie", or if her incredible dislike for it came purely from the Trio behaving like the Stooges.

110 days left until The Gathering 2007 in Pigeon Forge, Tennessee!

Patrick - [<-- The Gathering 2007]
"I *am* serious... and don't call me Shirley." - Dr. Rumack (Leslie Neilsen), "Airplane!"

Comic> Let's face facts. Like I've said before, Disney does not give a *bleep* about us. They care about money, not the fans, and, to them, Gargoyles is not a financially respectable property. Not enough that they would care about it.

It theoretically could also be Disney could possibly want to stick to kiddie-stuff ONLY and not do anything more mature than that.

But then, that is just a theory.

KingCobra_582@hotmm - [KingCobra_582 at hotmail dot com]
'Ignore Me!' - Venture Bros.

Warcrafter -- why can't you read them? I'm pretty sure they won't self-destruct. Many copies have made it through the vigorous wear and tear of Gathering Signing Parties relatively unscathed.
Christine - [christine at sabledrake dot com]

Forgot to finish what I was typing.

> I think it's the latter, as it seems like most executives/higher ups seem to be out of touch with well mankind.

What I meant by this. Yes, I know that people take jobs for money. Greg Weisman and Steve Loter are working to make money, but they aren't obsessed with profiting.

Disney management on the other hand obsessed to the point where they don't understand their customers and how to deal with them. What do they do with their earnings? Pull a Scrooge McDuck and swim in it?

Antiyonder

On one hand I believe Disney is starting to have a change of heart about the comic, but they figure if they canceled it outright then there would b a lot of angry fans and letters to go with it. So by delaying it, the sales would lower, and they could somewhat justify canceling or choosing not to renew it.

Or like with my first thought, the higher ups probably don't think that poor handling of a product doesn't affect its success.

I think it's the latter, as it seems like most executives/higher ups seem to be out of touch with well mankind.

Antiyonder

I have a predicament at the moment. I want to read the stories in the 2004 and 2006 anthalogies (i wish i had 2005 as well) but i dont want to risk ruining them since they are my only copies. Nearly nine months and i havent read a single word :(

As for the 10 people checking the comic, that's doesn't sound good to me, but then again what do i know.

Warcrafter - [grafixfangamer1 at sbcglobal dot net]
Humans are such easy prey for a gargoyle!........oh, and my new gamertag on xbox live for 360 is "I am Goliath"

GXB - <He said originally three people would review the comics before they were printed, but now around 10 people review them.> I'm confused. Does that mean that a)Disney has 10 people to review comics and it has to pass 1 of them or b)all 10 people have to approve each comic? If it's the latter, why did Disney change the policy?

Purplegoldfish - <I'm getting so tired of hearing that the book is done and waiting and we just need the approval. How long is this going to go on for? Indfinitely?> I have already posted a question to the slg blog about if slg's contract with disney specifies how long Disney can take to either approve or reject a comic so that Disney can't hold a comic in the state of limbo indefinitely. I would be mad/surprised to discover that Disney could hold off approving/rejecting a comic indefinitely without slg having any recourse.

What would really make me wonder is if slg sends the final version of gargoyles comic #4 to be approved/rejected before we hear a response back about #3. If Disney keeps dragging their feet about approving/rejecting comics, they're effectively hurting slg's sales. Unless the contract provides penalties for Disney keeping a comic in limbo for excessive amounts of time, Disney could screw slg completely over by refusing to either reject/approve comics in a timely manner.

dph_of_rules
Whatever happenned to simplicity?

The comic has to be reviewed by 10 people?! WTF!

I'm getting so tired of hearing that the book is done and waiting and we just need the approval. How long is this going to go on for? Indfinitely?

Sorry, needed to get the rant out of my system

Purplegoldfish - [skydragonn at aol dot com]
"Whoa, Tiny, you mean there's more than one of you?" "My name is not Tiny! I am Goliath!" - Elisa and Tiny

They also had a line in the season 2 finale of Reboot, "The ABCs are turning on us".
Antiyonder - [antiyonder at yahoo dot com]

er, "non Violent way" knew I'd blow the line
Wingless

Speaking of B S & P - back in the days of Reboot, they had a horrible time with ABC. Most notably with Dot Matrix's Uniboob(which was finally changed in season 3 when the show was revived and off that network). There were many issues in the show on ABC, like showing real actual blood & such, but they did get even in one episode, which featured a Birthday party for Enzo which had Dot auditioning acts for the event. One of which was a Village People type act doing a song called "B, S & P" - where the lyric goes "We love to play in the none violent way". Gotta love it when the writers can get even.
Wingless

VAEVICTIS> It's not Gargoyles' prospects... it's dealing with Disney that has been difficult.
Greg Bishansky - [<---- The 11th Annual Gathering of the Gargoyles]
"Plato once said that for everything that exists, there is a perfect form of it somewhere. A perfect human being, a perfect chair, a perfect stick, so that everything is a shadow of that one perfect form. Now, if we follow that train of thought, that means that somewhere in the universe there exists the perfect form of the absolute and complete idiot and he left here an hour ago." - Matthew Gideon

<<Interesting that Dan wouldn't have done the Dinsey deal if he could undo it.>>

Oi, that doesn't sound good. Is Dan Vado still being really pessimist about Gargoyles' prospects? :(

Vaevictis Asmadi

Thanks for the article Greg B. Hopefully we'll see more Gargoyles for a few months straight even for a bit. Man can't believe that SLG wants to go digital for their regular line of comics. Interesting that Dan wouldn't have done the Dinsey deal if he could undo it.
Good read though, one publishers thoughts on comics' future and SLG's.

DK2

Incidentally, since Spiderman/Peter Parker lives in New York City, I wonder if Greg will manage to insert one or two little "Gargoyles" in-jokes into the new series. (Though the 90's Spiderman cartoon already used the idea of Spiderman periodically having "one-sided chats" with a gargoyle statue that he'd land next to during his web-swinging patrols, so the new series probably won't be using that.)
Todd Jensen
Gargoyles - did for monstrous-looking statues what "Watership Down" did for rabbits!

When my brothers and I would play out in the yard, we pretended our toy uzis were laser guns.

I seem to remember real guns in "The Green." And also in "Mark of the Panther." I think it was just that in New York, all those guns that Glasses fenced still hadn't gotten off the streets.

Harvester of Eyes - [Minstrel75 at gmail dot com]
"You have to learn how to die if you wanna be alive." -Wilco ("War on War")

Harvester: And thank goodness that no one can have a Magical orb, otherwise, S&P would have NEVER allowed Duncan to crash and burn . . . or is burn and crash?? :P

On the subject of Laser guns . . . I do agree its ridiculous to think that Laser weaponry isn't as imitatable as bullet guns . . . but perhaps they do remind the audience just subtly that they show IS fictional - especially if the flying gargoyles and changelings haven't made you realize that already. :P

Of course, that argument dies miserably the moment we develop laser weapons . . . (Shudder).

Phoenician - [theoneandonlyphoenician at yahoo dot com]
The Suspense is Terrible . . . I Hope it Lasts -- Willy Wonka

Newsarama just posted an article on Dan Vado's panel at Wondercon. Here's an excerpt:

"Their licensed Disney titles, for instance, will continue to be published in the monthly format. Vado gave an update on Gargoyles, which has seen delays since it launched.

"Gargoyles we just mishandled from the get-go. On top of that, there's just a real lengthy set of approvals that affects all the Disney comics that's slowed them all down. For example, Gargoyles #3 has been done for three weeks, almost a month now, and we're waiting for Disney to give us the go ahead to print it."

Gargoyles #4, #5 and #6 will have a series of fill-in artists as SLG attempts to catch up.

When asked if Disney asks for a lot of changes, he said "Surprisingly no, but the process is not a quick one." He said originally three people would review the comics before they were printed, but now around 10 people review them.

When asked why Disney licensed their characters to someone else instead of doing their own books, he said Disney benefits because they retain the rights to the comics that SLG creates without having to spend the money on staff and other costs associated with creating the comics."

Greg Bishansky - [<---- The 11th Annual Gathering of the Gargoyles]
"Plato once said that for everything that exists, there is a perfect form of it somewhere. A perfect human being, a perfect chair, a perfect stick, so that everything is a shadow of that one perfect form. Now, if we follow that train of thought, that means that somewhere in the universe there exists the perfect form of the absolute and complete idiot and he left here an hour ago." - Matthew Gideon

Who can fathom the minds of S&P? I freely admit to being one of those geeks with a knee-jerk hatred and distrust of Them (tm), though I try to keep it restrained because it doesn't serve (much of) a purpose to rage without action.

That "Deadly Force" and other episodes made laser guns into credible threats is further proof that Gargoyles is awesome. :P

I also admit to having fond memories of the 90's Spider Man cartoon, but from your reports, I recant them without ever seeing an episode. Ugh, it sounds like an anime edited for television. I do believe, though, that it should be judged primarily in comparison to other American action cartoon series. It still fails, but at least it fails in its own court.

(Morbius' sucker-hands were hella creepy to me, though)

Re: "Turf". It's a pretty good episode, if predictable in its character interactions. I've always wondered something about it, though. I read the Marvel comic while it was coming out, and while I now feel it's a terrible comic (though a different take on the Gargoyles art style was interesting), I can't help but notice the parallels between "Turf" and that issue with the vampire-mutant-girl, "Blood from a Stone".

You've got the Trio both fighting over a girl to comical extent, including crashing into a roof structure in both stories. And both Angela and LaVonne end up with Broadway, the unconventional love interest, with Broadway being portrayed as the kindest and most sympathetic involved (though it wasn't precisely that which initiated the relationship in the comic. Broadway happened to be in the right place at the right time, though he is also portrayed very positively in the story). The endings and quality were very different, of course, but I'm still curious about how the stories are related. I know that Greg was said to have "consulted" on some plot points, but how did that exactly work?

And, yes, I know part of it can be attributed to the cliche of "guys will fight over girls", but the parallels still get to me. You watch, it'll turn out just to be a coincidence.

Incisivis - [incisivis at hotmail dot com]
"No live organism can continue for long to exist sanely under conditions of absolute reality; even larks and katydids are supposed, by some, to dream" -- Shirley Jackson

But there is one thing that's inimitable: slicing a magical orb in half, causing it to burn you alive from the inside-out, and then falling off a cliff.
Harvester of Eyes - [Minstrel75 at gmail dot com]
"You have to learn how to die if you wanna be alive." -Wilco ("War on War")

Lasers vs. bullets> I've always wondered how that even mattered that much. I mean, I see kids using sticks as swords and flashlights as lightsabers all the time. It would not surprise me to hear of a kid who does discover a gun using it to play "laser gun" with. A gun is a gun, afterall. Dracon shooting at our heroes with a laser gun IS imitatible.
Matt - [St Louis, Missouri, USA]
"Long ago, there were gargoyle clans all over the world... but I was not aware any of them had survived..." - Goliath, "The Green"

Of course, S&P does consider high-tech weapons to be less violent than real guns, since kids are more likely to have access to real guns and thus more likely to imitate things they see.
Jurgan - [jurgan6 at yahoo dot com]

Vaevictus: <*What is with all the laser guns in Gargoyles? Is it just some lame S&P thing that we can't have real guns, but somehow lasers are less violent according to Disney? Oh well. :\>

Well, as Owen told Goliath in "Deadly Force", there's still a few energy weapons that got fenced that are floating around out there. Broadway still has some crushing to do. ( ;

Harvester of Eyes - [Minstrel75 at gmail dot com]
"You've gotta learn how to die if you wanna be alive." -Wilco ("War on War")

On "Turf": This is one episode that has made me especially grateful for Greg Weisman's rambles (I hope that he gets caught up enough on the queue soon that he can do the rambles for Parts Two and Three of "Hunter's Moon"). Before the ramble for "Turf" came out, I'd been puzzled by the scene where, after Brod's favorite restaurant goes up in flames and he's standing there angrily watching, the camera pulls back to show a pay phone. Greg gave a good explanation for the significance of that moment.

This episode also has some very amusing lines from Dracon and Brod, such as "'Chop shop?' What is 'chop shop'?" or "What's going on here? I didn't order a break-out!" Not to mention the ending with Dracon and Brod winding up as cell-mates (though I doubt that such a thing would happen in real life).

And this episode definitely makes the trio come close to looking like the gargoyle equivalent of the Three Stooges, especially when they crash into the factory chimney and when Brooklyn's calling Broadway and Lex "you muttonheads". Can't say that I blame Angela for being so unimpressed with their behavior.

Todd Jensen
Gargoyles - did for monstrous-looking statues what "Watership Down" did for rabbits!

HoE> That clip just made me wanna re-watch the series again, lol. Each to their own I guess.

Greg B>I never read the comics so I don't have that to compare it to. My brother just caught up to the current issues so I may have to borrow them and check it out.

So Greg W is the supervising producer, what does that mean and how much influence will he be able to have on the show?

Ntripy

Greg Bishansky> Meant to include this in my last response, just couldn't think of how to word it (No, I'm not trying to change your mind on the cartoon).

While I do agree that my comment on taking bad over worse is weak, saying good is good, suck is suck is kind of simplifying things. Because there's good, better and great. Take the shows you like watching. Do you enjoy all of them just the same or are there some you enjoy watching more than others?

Antiyonder - [antiyonder at yahoo,com]

Todd: I've done a little digging just now through the unanswered questions queue and found ten that have already been answered a number of times. Since you do so much for this fandom, I figured I'd take a little of it off your hands and hunt down some answers for you. After doing so, let me just say that I appreciate even more the service you provide. Three cheers for Todd Jensen!

Anyway, I found the best answer I could for each question and attached it. I included both the date the question was asked and the date that Greg gave the response. That way you can confirm that I copied the answers correctly, in case you feel uncomfortable relying on someone else to do the job Greg entrusted to you. Of course, if you don't think the answers I gave are appropriate, or you think some of the questions haven't been frequently asked and should be let through to Greg, that's your call. But if you think they're within your domain, I thought I might make your life a little easier.

Here we go:

1. Question received on Mon, January 01, 2007 01:34:57 AM
Jonny Modlin writes...

Hi Greg, Happy New Year. Did you get Gargoyles Season One and Season Two, Volume One on DVD at Amazon.com to increase sales to get Season Two, Volume Two released? Thank you.

Greg responds:

I'm still hoping for the new set to be released. But as I've stated we need to get Disney's attention ALL OVER AGAIN... by increasing sales on the first two sets so much that they can't imagine not releasing the third set. So SPREAD THE WORD!!

Response recorded on December 20, 2006

2. Question received on Sat, December 30, 2006 03:21:22 AM
maria writes...

Why did the creators of the show stop making the series?

Greg responds:

Check the archives and/or FAQ.
Response recorded on November 24, 2003

3. Question received on Mon, December 25, 2006 02:17:33 AM
Bill writes...

When is Season 2 Volume 2 comming out? I own both DVD sets and want the last two, Season 2 vol 2 and Season 3, to complete my collection.

Greg responds:

I'm still hoping for the new set to be released. But as I've stated we need to get Disney's attention ALL OVER AGAIN... by increasing sales on the first two sets so much that they can't imagine not releasing the third set. So SPREAD THE WORD!!
Response recorded on December 20, 2006

4. Question received on Thu, December 21, 2006 08:23:43 PM
Cori writes...

Hi!

Well, first of all, like everyone else here I loved the series (even though I started watching it many many years after it ended, xD).

But I have a small question. Why is "Seeing Isn't Believing" animated differently? It seams like a compleatly different style then all the other episodes.

Just wondering. :)

Greg responds:
Except for "The Journey", I've only seen each episode of "The Goliath Chronicles" once (back in 1996/97). Frankly, I can't even remember which episode you're referring to.

I do recall that one of the episodes looked like it was an episode of Aladdin.

In any case, I had nothing to do with the production of those episodes. Couldn't tell you why it looks the way it does. Sorry.
Response recorded on June 10, 2004

5. Question received on Tue, December 19, 2006 07:27:37 PM
mark writes...

seeing season 1 and 2 on dvd when can we expect the others to follow as i am collecting them all.a estimate on dates to expect the rest is all i am asking ?
thank you

Greg responds:

I'm still hoping for the new set to be released. But as I've stated we need to get Disney's attention ALL OVER AGAIN... by increasing sales on the first two sets so much that they can't imagine not releasing the third set. So SPREAD THE WORD!!
Response recorded on December 20, 2006

6. Question received on Tue, December 19, 2006 03:05:27 PM
Andrew writes...

Have you ever thought about writing some novels based on the series? I figured the creator would have thought of something along those lines. at least to continue the story as you envisioned it.

Greg responds:
Sigh. Yes. Novels. I'd love to. Need a publisher.
Response recorded on March 07, 2005

7. Question received on Sat, December 16, 2006 05:47:02 PM
Jonny Modlin writes...

It is December 2006 and Gargoyles Season Two, Volume Two didn't come out on DVD yet that I was going to get the last set of Gargoyles Season Two, Volume Two on DVD to complete the entire series and where would we find Season Two, Volume Two of Gargoyles on DVD in the comic books, Amazon.com exclusive websites, stores? How are the sales doing now for Season Two, Volume One of Gargoyles? Why didn't we release Gargoyles The Complete Second Season on DVD with all 52 episodes? Thank you.

Greg responds:

I'm still hoping for the new set to be released. But as I've stated we need to get Disney's attention ALL OVER AGAIN... by increasing sales on the first two sets so much that they can't imagine not releasing the third set. So SPREAD THE WORD!!
Response recorded on December 20, 2006

8. Question received on Fri, December 15, 2006 10:38:15 PM
tim watson writes...

how much money do you think it would
take to bring Gargoyles back

Greg responds:
I hope by now you know all about the DVDs, the Gathering and the comic series. You want more Gargoyles, those are the places to look!
Response recorded on January 07, 2007

9. Question received on Fri, December 15, 2006 09:11:33 PM
JUAN BATISTA writes...

If stone sleep heals gargoyle wounds
why did't Hudson's eye heal

Greg Responds:

There are a number of possible answers: the attack was magic based, Hudson was old enough that he doesn't heal as quickly, the attack happened too close to sunset and some scarring took place BEFORE the healing process could begin, etc.

Response recorded on November 20, 2006

10. Question received on Sun, December 17, 2006 06:09:57 AM
Danny Dyche writes...

Have you thought of how you would handle traditional gargoyle namelessness should you make "Dark Ages"?

Greg responds:
I admit I have not as yet fully decided this question.
Response recorded on October 20, 2000

Whew!

Jurgan - [jurgan6 at yahoo dot com]

Greg Bishansky> But you won't be changing my mind on that awful Spider-Man cartoon.

Don't plan to change your mind. You respect my opinion, I'll respect yours.

Antiyonder - [antiyonder at yahoo,com]

I know what Roger Stern's intentions were, and although I've never read the early Hobgoblin stories, what I've heard suggests the Ned Leeds revelation was pretty bad storytelling. But when Roger Stern left Spider-man (to edit Superman- backstabber!), he told Tom DeFalco that it was ultimately his choice about what was done with the Hobgoblin. So, while Kingsley probably fit Stern's issues better, the official canon at the time was that Leeds was the Hobgoblin. The cartoon could have picked anyone they wanted to be the Hobgoblin, but I wouldn't expect them to guess who Stern had in mind. Readers had spent a lot of time trying to guess who the Hobgoblin was, and there was certainly no unanimous consensus while Stern was writing.
Jurgan - [jurgan6 at yahoo dot com]

ANTIYONDER> "Still, a cartoon or a comic doesn't always have to be a Batman The Animated Series, Gargoyles or Civil War to be good. Simplicity doesn't always mean lack of good quality. I do see your point on my earlier comment, so I hope I made some better points in this one."

I didn't say it does. But good is good. Suck is suck. Quentin Tarantino's movies are pretty simple, but, except for Jackie Brown, I think they're all solid movies.

But you won't be changing my mind on that awful Spider-Man cartoon. I can't wait to see what Greg does with it, because, I know he's a good story teller.

JURGAN> Yes, you're right, the cartoon came before "Hobgoblin Lives". But the Kingsley revelation was not a retcon. Roger Stern (who created Hobgoblin) always meant for him to be Kingsley. The clues all pointed to him in Stern's issues. The Ned Leeds revelation was the retcon. And it didn't make any sense.

Greg Bishansky - [<---- The 11th Annual Gathering of the Gargoyles]
"Plato once said that for everything that exists, there is a perfect form of it somewhere. A perfect human being, a perfect chair, a perfect stick, so that everything is a shadow of that one perfect form. Now, if we follow that train of thought, that means that somewhere in the universe there exists the perfect form of the absolute and complete idiot and he left here an hour ago." - Matthew Gideon

My view on the 90's Spider-man is certainly biased, because it was really my first major exposure to the character in a story setting (that is, outside of video games). I did and still do basically like the stories up until the last season, but the overly restrictive S&P did weaken it. This was particularly evident when they brought Carnage in, only they couldn't have him kill anyone, so they had some extra-dimensional being hire him to "drain people's life energy." Ugh. Same was true of Morbius- he didn't kill, he sucked plasma (with his hands!), and they got better later. And let's not forget The Punisher, whose friend convinced him to capture Spidey alive to help overcome his image as a lethal vigilante- as if The Punisher cares about public opinion. Also, the things about everyone in the world having laser guns instead of real guns. And, yes, there was some stock footage that was overused, though I didn't notice at the time.

Still, I thought it had some good aspects. I don't see a problem with the voice acting- I thought Ed Asner did a very good job as Jameson (I remember the first time I saw "Protection," when Danforth appeared I shouted "that's Jameson!" not realizing that he was also the voice of Hudson). I think I like the way they did the Kingpin better in the show than they did in the original Spider-man comics. Stan Lee sort of threw the Kingpin in as just another villain, participating personally in robberies and jumping into the fray even though he was seriously risking exposure. It wasn't until Frank Miller took over Daredevil that Kingpin turned into the calculating string-puller he is today. The Spider-man show started off with him as the mastermind behind the scenes, and I liked the idea that he was the man behind much of Spider-man's woes, yet it was two-and-a-half seasons before Spidey even knew he existed. It seems like that's how the Kingpin would have been presented had Frank Miller's superior version been the conception from the beginning. Still, it was a little silly to tie him in to everything.

I thought the Norman Osborn stories were pretty good, particularly the last one. Yeah, they wimped out on doing The Death of Gwen Stacy with that dimensional portal thing, but I have very strong memories of the subtle way Osborn toyed with Peter when he first learned his secret identity. I also remember the first battle with the Sinister Six, which is another case where I thought they did it better than the comic. The first comic story with the Sinister Six is incredibly silly- the villains don't even really team up, they just take turns, and Spidey rushes through each of the fights, so we hardly see any good action. By contrast, in the cartoon, Spidey snuck around, keeping out of sight as much as possible, and turned the villains against each other. I thought that was one of the best episodes.

Also, they couldn't have used the Roderick Kingsley Hobgoblin, since the show was before Roger Stern got the chance to retcon the Hobgoblin's identity. At the time, it was still understood that Ned Leeds was the original Hobgoblin. I suppose they could have used him. And I don't really see what's so bad about marketing having some driving force in storytelling. Remember the Eye of Odin?

So, bottom line, it wasn't great, and rewatching there are some things that don't hold up as well, but there are still parts that I'm fond of.

Actually, something I thought of a while ago: I think every Spider-man cartoon (at least until the nineties) was a reaction to a Batman show. In the sixties, there was the Adam West Batman and the original Spider-man, both of which were very campy and used goofy gadgets (Batman's utility belt, and Spider-man's do-anything webbing). In the eighties (or was it seventies?), there was the Superfriends and Spider-man and His Amazing Friends, which were silly team-up shows. In the nineties, we had a Batman and Spider-man animated series, which were both more serious versions with start-from-scratch continuity.

Jurgan - [jurgan6 at yahoo dot com]

Greg Bishansky> "So, don't tell me Bad is good because there is Worse. It's a horrible argument and would lose you any professional debate."

Still, a cartoon or a comic doesn't always have to be a Batman The Animated Series, Gargoyles or Civil War to be good. Simplicity doesn't always mean lack of good quality. I do see your point on my earlier comment, so I hope I made some better points in this one.

Antiyonder - [antiyonder at yahoo,com]

I noticed a typo in my last post:

"So, don't tell me Bad is good because there is Worse. It's a horrible argument and would lose you any professional debate."

Fixed.

Greg Bishansky - [<---- The 11th Annual Gathering of the Gargoyles]
"Plato once said that for everything that exists, there is a perfect form of it somewhere. A perfect human being, a perfect chair, a perfect stick, so that everything is a shadow of that one perfect form. Now, if we follow that train of thought, that means that somewhere in the universe there exists the perfect form of the absolute and complete idiot and he left here an hour ago." - Matthew Gideon

STOCK FOOTAGE> Yes, Gargoyles had some stock footage, but I didn't notice it. It was that seamless. The Fox Kids Spider-Man was 90% stock footage. Very noticable.

ANTIYONDER> "It's not really the first time though, as he was part of the comic book Secret Wars, has a battle with Firelord (Herald of Galactus) and joined with The Thing and the Avengers to fight Thanos."

I thought Secret Wars was terrible. It was a glorified toy commercial. Okay, bring a bunch of good guys and bad guys to a planet and watch then just watch them hit each other. Forgive me if I prefer my stories with more substance to them than that. Yes, I did love "Civil War"

"There's the problem right there. Compare it to a show that's much worse. I'm sure you'd agree that the cartoon is at least better than say preschool programming or anything with the Olsen Twins."

I'm sorry, but I never understood that line of thinking. Yes, those shows are worse, but, that doesn't make the Fox Kids Spider-Man show good, just because there are worse out there. Either something is good, or something isn't.

It's like telling me that the stench of garbage isn't so bad because feces stinks worse. I'm sorry, but I don't buy that arguement. Recently someone tried to convince me that "Revenge of the Sith" is great because it's better than the other two prequels... um, still doesn't make it a good movie. Sorry, but it doesn't work that way.

Now, some people say my standards are way too high... honestly, I don't mind. I enjoy what I enjoy. I am a tough critic. I want to be a writer. I like storytelling. I know the kinds of stories I like. Yes, very few things please me, but, well... give me quality any day.

"Gargoyles" ruined most other cartoons for me. There are other great ones. Batman the Animated Series, a select few other entries in the DCAU (second season of Justice League and first two seasons of JLU)... and a few anime here and there like "Cowboy Bebop" and "Berserk".

"Babylon 5" ruined most hour long TV dramas for me. Aside from it, I love "The Sopranos", I love Joss Whedon's shows. And the first two seasons of 24... but I don't care for most Trek, or the new BSG.

So, don't tell me Bad is good because there is Worse. It's a horrible argument and would love you any professional debate.

Greg Bishansky - [<---- The 11th Annual Gathering of the Gargoyles]
"Plato once said that for everything that exists, there is a perfect form of it somewhere. A perfect human being, a perfect chair, a perfect stick, so that everything is a shadow of that one perfect form. Now, if we follow that train of thought, that means that somewhere in the universe there exists the perfect form of the absolute and complete idiot and he left here an hour ago." - Matthew Gideon

Greg Bishansky> Why was Spider-Man traveling to other dimensions and timelines? He's an urban hero. Not a cosmic traveller. That sort of thing is fine for the Fantastic Four, or Superman. But, it's like doing a Batman story where he travels back to Camelot... it's just not the sort of story you tell with this character.

It's not really the first time though, as he was part of the comic book Secret Wars, has a battle with Firelord (Herald of Galactus) and joined with The Thing and the Avengers to fight Thanos.


I could go on and on, but I guess that "Gargoyles" ruined these other shows for me. Nothing measures up in terms of not just the storytelling, but the production itself from the voice acting, to the animation... say what you will about some of the more poorly animated episodes, but they never resorted to stock footage.

There's the problem right there. Compare it to a show that's much worse. I'm sure you'd agree that the cartoon is at least better than say preschool programming or anything with the Olsen Twins. And with "The Batman" (Season 1-3, Weisman episodes aside), compared to say Nickelodeon's Rocket Power. "The Batman" hands down.

Antiyonder - [antiyonder at yahoo,com]

Stock Footage > And some shots in Pendragon were from M.I.A.


Anyway, finally getting around to my thoughts on Turf, although I watched it at least a week ago.

*I feel sorry for Angela. The Trio are being so immature! Then again, they are running on a sort of "Last man on Earth" kind of mentality, so they have some excuse. Goliath has told them about the other clans, but I don't think it has sunk in subconsciously yet, since they haven't met any of these besides Griff and Angela.

*I agree with her, the nickname Angie doesn't sound as nice as Angela.

* "Are they always like this?"

*Their reaction when Angela told them she's not the only female gargoyle on Earth was amusing. They acted like Goliath hadn't already told them about the clans. It was a funny scene. "I have fifteen sisters on Avalon!" I wonder how many of those are already mated, though.

*I was surprised to see the gang from Prague. I don't see why those specific criminals should come all the way to New York, instead of using some other group. It seems too much of a coincidence, and not important enough not to be a coincidence.

*Dracon talks over his plans with Glasses when the guard is right there! It's difficult to believe he didn't notice what they were discussing.

*I completely did not figure out that the blond was Elisa, until she headed up the tower and I suspected. Practically, I wonder how well a woman with her complexion could pull off blond hair unless she told everyone it was a dye-job. But the animation didn't reveal anything that I noticed consciously.

*What is with all the laser guns in Gargoyles? Is it just some lame S&P thing that we can't have real guns, but somehow lasers are less violent according to Disney? Oh well. :\

Vaevictis Asmadi

Not that this has anything to do with the current topic...

Did anyone know that Tom Wilson (matt bluestone) is a stand up comedian and a traditional artist as well! I never knew that-I think that's really cool.
Check out this link: http://www.bigpopfun.com/
His paintings are really cute.

He also has a couple of funny songs on youtube: http://www.youtube.com/profile?user=TomWilsonUSA

I just thought this was pretty cool. He seems like a real awesome guy

Purplegoldfish - [skydragonn at aol dot com]
"Whoa, Tiny, you mean there's more than one of you?" "My name is not Tiny! I am Goliath!" - Elisa and Tiny

Oh, and sorry for the double post, but I wanted to tell DPH:

What I meant by that comment is that Greg has said Demona is her own worst enemy (least, I think he has). For seventeen years, she was allied with a human who never meant her any harm whatsoever. Her thinking that those seventeen years were just a ruse to lull her into a false sense of security fits that facet of her character beautifully, at least I think it does. That was what I meant.

Harvester of Eyes - [Minstrel75 at gmail dot com]
"If I must beat this lesson into you, then so be it. It's for your own good!" -Demona ("Vows")

Greg B: Thanks for putting it more eloquently than me. Ironically, that was the first hit I got for the Fox Kids cartoon when I did a search on youtube.

Now that I've had a chance to gather my thoughts, I wanted to add: when I saw "Spider-Man" in the theater, I hadn't touched a comic in years. But I loved the movie. Yes, he was directing a summer blockbuster, but Sam Raimi actually managed to not lose sight of the fact that Harry and Norman were like family to Peter, which I do remember from the comic (and it also helped that the Goblin was played by one of the greatest living actors of our time).

No matter the genre or medium, if you can't do human drama well, then all the eye candy in the world amounts to nothing.

Harvester of Eyes - [Minstrel75 at gmail dot com]
"If I must beat this lesson into you, then so be it. It's for your own good!" -Demona ("Vows")

BISHANSKY - Re stock footage: If you want to be technical about it, "Protection" repeated the scene of the guy hailing the taxi from "Awakening Part Four". But I suppose that it's not the same thing.
Todd Jensen
Gargoyles - did for monstrous-looking statues what "Watership Down" did for rabbits!

Yeah, I watched that clip and it reminded me of every thing that was wrong with the Spider-Man cartoon.

Bad animation. Atrocious dialogue. Horrid voice acting. Stories that make no sense. Ugh.

- The Green Goblin is Spider-Man's arch-nemesis. Always was, always will be. But, in that cartoon, they made him just another villain. He took a backseat to the Kingpin (who's really more of a Daredevil villain), the Hobgoblin (who I can't believe they introduced before the Green Goblin... more on that in a minute), Venom... and hell, he even took a backseat to Morbius the vampire. This is the guy who was the first to unmask Spider-Man. The villain who ended the Silver Age by killing Spidey's girlfriend, Gwen Stacy... of course, that cartoon messed it up by replacing Gwen with Mary Jane and throwing in that stupid dimensional portal thing so she wouldn't die... she was sent to the next dimension.
- Terrible voice acting. I don't know if it was the actors, or the voice director, but everyone was phoning in their dialogue. Either they didn't care, or they were so completely over the top that it was laughable. Which is inexcusable when you have Ed Asner, Efrem Zimbalist Jr, Mira Furlan and others making appearances. Mary Jane's actress was just... ugh, I'd rather cut off my own ears than listen to her again.
- It was a great big toy commercial. Why did the Hobgoblin come before the Green Goblin? Because there were Hobgoblin toys on the shelves... not to mention that really retarded super-glider they gave him... which never existed in the comic, but they had a toy to sell. And to top it off, they used the wrong Hobgoblin... they should have used the cold, calculating mastermind Roderick Kingsley Hobgoblin from Roger Stern's stories to the stupid thug Macendale Hobgoblin.
- Guest stars that appeared for no reason. Hey, let's show the X-Men, or Iron Man, or Blade, or the Fantastic Four... no reason. And some of these characters made their first and only appearances there, with no background, so, okay... they were there. But, unless you were a comic reader, you didn't know much about them anyway. Focus on the cast you have.
- Why was Spider-Man traveling to other dimensions and timelines? He's an urban hero. Not a cosmic traveller. That sort of thing is fine for the Fantastic Four, or Superman. But, it's like doing a Batman story where he travels back to Camelot... it's just not the sort of story you tell with this character.

I could go on and on, but I guess that "Gargoyles" ruined these other shows for me. Nothing measures up in terms of not just the storytelling, but the production itself from the voice acting, to the animation... say what you will about some of the more poorly animated episodes, but they never resorted to stock footage.

Now, I like Spider-Man. He's one of my favorite comic book characters. I think he's a great character, has a great supporting cast and one of comicdom's best rogue's galleries. But, that cartoon was abysmal. Greg Weisman is a storyteller with a proven track record, and I'd love to see how he handles the character. I'm sure it will be much better than that 90s cartoon.

I'll definitely check it out.

Greg Bishansky - [<---- The 11th Annual Gathering of the Gargoyles]
"Plato once said that for everything that exists, there is a perfect form of it somewhere. A perfect human being, a perfect chair, a perfect stick, so that everything is a shadow of that one perfect form. Now, if we follow that train of thought, that means that somewhere in the universe there exists the perfect form of the absolute and complete idiot and he left here an hour ago." - Matthew Gideon

Ntripy: Out of curiosity, and mostly because I didn't really remember these things about the cartoon, I only remembered that I saw the first few episodes and stopped watching after the Venom three-parter. But anyway, I recently did a search on Spider Man. Just freakin' look at this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UL6OUKwMk04

As I was telling Bishansky not too long ago, Greg Weisman had the right idea about how to handle time. If you don't have a good plan, shit like this happens.

Harvester of Eyes - [Minstrel75 at gmail dot com]
"If I must beat this lesson into you, then so be it. It's for your own good!" -Demona ("Vows")

Greg B> I must admit I never noticed things like that while I was watching it. Only later I read about that S&P stuff and, while it was annoying and the show would have been better without those restrictions, I still think the stories and characters were great.
Ntripy

DR. BAT - I think that Demona blames both the Captain *and* Goliath - and the Vikings, and Princess Katharine and her human subjects - and everybody involved in the Wyvern Massacre, except, of course, for herself.
Todd Jensen
Gargoyles - did for monstrous-looking statues what "Watership Down" did for rabbits!

Antiyonder: Ooo, that'd be great if he did! I know he wrote one ep in Season 2, "Queen Bebe," (which I enjoyed!), but I hadn't heard till now that he could be doing a Season 4 ep as well!

Correction: "Could have done" Most of KP Season 4 is already written and produced, I imagine.

On 90's Spiderman: It was one of the few Superhero shows that I ever watched (I was always a Disney kind of guy, and never really bounced off unless it was this, Carmen Sandiego, or something on PBS), and I particularly enjoyed it. I just appreciated that they actually had some consistancy and development of the characters, something that I always loved that Gargoyles did.

But I was dissapointed as well that they didn't finish it properly.

Phoenician - [theoneandonlyphoenician at yahoo dot com]
The Suspense is Terrible . . . I Hope it Lasts -- Willy Wonka

Spidey > There was also the Spider-Man Unlimited cartoon, which immediately followed the first 90s show with a completely new story.

As for comic book shows constantly "reinventing the wheel"... I just think it's proof that comic book characters and concepts are very adaptable. And thank god, because then we never would have had Batman Begins. (And does anyone really want Batman and Robin to be the last Bat-flick?) Or, for a non-comics example, Battlestar Galactica. I hear they're redoing Hulk, and the movie is only a few years old!

I think we only run into problems when the remake/restart is worse than the predecessor. The Batman has nothing on Batman: The Animated Series.

Scott Iskow - [smiskow at lycos dot com]

90s Spiderman series> I think it was alright for what it was, but not something I found I could watch again when it was aired on ToonDisney (I find it personally amusing and annoying that they've taken to showing so many old Fox and WB shows. Gee, why don't they air some actual Disney series, like, I dunno, Gummi Bears??). Looking at it now, I can definately see how the dialogue was not its best feature. And I distinctly recall Entertainment Weekly once did a comparison of sample dialogue from the many versions of Spiderman; needless to say, the sample they chose was so much techno-jargon, even I winced at it. What I saw of the MTV series was pretty cool, not great, but enjoyable. Had to keep in mind while watching it that it was the MTV VERSION, and so things were skewed towards more personal stuff, which can be cool to watch. While I'm glad to hear Greg's going to be part of the new series, I'm going to wait and see.
Asatira

Ntripy> Fox Kids Spidey blew. Fox S&P was all over that series. Spidey wasn't allowed to throw a punch. Everyone, and I mean EVERYONE used some hi-tech lasers. The dialogue was weak. The voice acting (especially Mary Jane) horrendous. And it was 90% stock footage.

And let us not forget the Fox Kids rule against the use of the words "die" or "death" or "kill" or any other form of those words. Instead, we constantly got to hear characters threaten to destroy one another, again, and again, and again. Its like none of the writers had a Thesarus handy.

Greg Bishansky - [<---- The 11th Annual Gathering of the Gargoyles]
"February is Black History Month. Now, I don't see color. People tell me I'm white and I believe them, because police officers call me 'sir'." - Stephen Colbert

What do you think Demona thinks of the Captain? Does she blame him for the massacre, or does she just think it was Goliath's fault for not taking the gargoyles with him like their plan was?
DrBat - [drbat00 at yahoo dot com]

Whats wrong with 90's Spiderman animated series? It was awesome, the only problem was they didn't finish the story line, and then they made the mtv Spidey and, again, didn't finish the story line.

So I don't like the idea of a new Spiderman series when they didn't finish the previous two.

But bring on the B5 movie, yay!

Ntripy

dph_of_rules> What's with reinventing the wheel on series produced during the 90s? 1st, X-Men, 2nd, The Batman, and now Spiderman.

Because there's no point in making a cartoon an exact copy of the comic, otherwise why not just read the comic? The Silver Surfer toon did well in keeping faithful to the character and with some originallity, as did the Justice League League/Justice League Unlimited. Though they are starting him in High School for a change, because previous Spider-Man cartoons start him in college.

If Greg can make some good episode from The Batman, then a Spider-Man cartoon where his involvement is higher is a sure thing.

Phoenician> but I'm also enjoying 22 NEW episodes of Kim Possible!
I remember reading somewhere that Greg is writting (or has written) an episode for the season.

Antiyonder - [antiyonder at yahoo dot com]

DPH> Well, the 90s Spider-Man cartoon sucked. And as for re-inventing the wheel. There were not one, but two Spider-Man cartoons in the 80s, and another in the 60s... and don't forget that comic book that started in 1962.
Greg Bishansky - [<---- The 11th Annual Gathering of the Gargoyles]
"February is Black History Month. Now, I don't see color. People tell me I'm white and I believe them, because police officers call me 'sir'." - Stephen Colbert

GXB - <Am I the only one who's amused by Greg's replies to Makhasu's flood of questions? Especially after the way she behaved in here when we called her on the fact that most of those are "what do you think?" questions and that Greg specifically asked to not be flooded?> Only 24 more of those left. Of course, Greg's response indicates, to me, that he wouldn't mind some limit imposed on the number of questions a person can submit for a specified period of time. <Gargoyles is returning in comic form with new canon stories in a few weeks time.> I still would like a response to a question that I submitted to the slg blog about if the contract spelled out how long Disney could keep a comic in the state of limbo (neither approved nor rejected). I assume the contract does have a clause that keeps Disney from keeping comics in state of limbo indefinitely.

H.O.E. - <I did find Greg's response that Demona probably saw her seventeen years as Macbeth's advisor as a plan to lull her into a false sense of security to be interesting, but at the same time, it fits the whole "own worst enemy" aspect very nicely. But otherwise, yeah... amusing.> Put yourself in Demona's position: Can you really afford to trust somebody absolutely? The answer is no. All it would take is a couple of hours during the daytime and her clan could be slaughtered. I wouldn't be surprised if Demona kept part of her clan hidden away from Macbeth at all times as a safeguard. Even she thought she could trust Macbeth and possibly his immediate family, all it takes is one rogue and her clan is toast.

I do like this response: "The question isn't can they, but HAVE they.". There is no need to ask questions about the impossible.

Anityonder - <I'm looking forward to Greg's take on Spider-Man.> What's with reinventing the wheel on series produced during the 90s? 1st, X-Men, 2nd, The Batman, and now Spiderman.

dph_of_rules
Whatever happenned to simplicity?

I'm sorry if this has been brought up before, but I thought this stuff needed to be put here
for those who may not know. All the credit goes to Greg X on the Toonzone forums, whom I'm
thinking maybe someone on these boards. So on toonzone.net I found a forum under the disney threads about the Gargoyles comic. Theres a pic of issue #3's cover.
http://forums.toonzone.net/showthread.php?t=180240&page=5
Personally I wished Greg Guler was the artist of this book. His covers alone for issues #1 & #3 can easily be the covers for a trade paperback/graphic novel collection, unless he were to do new cover for those, if they ever come to be. Even if he did one issue's interiors would be a treat.
Here are the things we can expect from the comics future issues (that I've copied and pasted here):
- Demona returns in issue 3.
- Also in issue 3, there is a major setback in Goliath and Elisa's relationship.
- Macbeth returns in issue 2 and then in issues 5 or 6.
- At some point, Lexington will go on a trip of some kind, Greg didn't way why or when though.
- Issues 4 or 5 will show us that Xanatos is still up to his old tricks, and we will be seeing more of the Illuminati.
- The first arc, "Clan Building" will cover about twelve issues. His third season should cover close to thirty issues. Depends on how he paces the stories.
- We will be seeing the London Clan of gargoyles again, along with King Arthur and Sir Griff.

There was a question about the Marvel comics series when Greg W. was supposed to take over
its writing duties. I actually didn't know this until sometime last year in an interview with Greg W. I believe. Posters asked:
"Is Greg still planning to use the Avalon World Tour story with Coldstone in the Himalayas?
Since Greg had nothing to do with the Marvel stories, it isn't the planned issue 12. Those stories are not canon. Anyway, we've been told that Greg will be using a script that was in mind before Marvel Comics Gargoyles was canceled.
But, the World Tour story with Coldstone is something Greg would like to do, he's not sure how yet. But, eventually, he'd like to do it."

I look forward to this story arc as well as that be neat to read a story that was meant for the previous comic series. I'm thrilled that this is the 3rd season of the cartoon/comic
under Gregs storytelling. But I'm surpised about the length off issues it may take to tell these. At 30 issues if it came out bi-monthly would take 5 years. Pray the comic can come out regularly for us to all see these tales.

DK2

"Four dead series, all returning in the same year. This should be the Year of the Phoenix."

Amen to that, GXB: For me, not only am I getting new canon for Gargoyles, but I'm also enjoying 22 NEW episodes of Kim Possible!

Time is pretty good right now, if you ask me.

Phoenician - [theoneandonlyphoenician at yahoo dot com]
The Suspense is Terrible . . . I Hope it Lasts -- Willy Wonka

Convergence is a matter of two species having a similar body structure and niche adaptations. I wouldn't say that Leo has a body shape at all similar to a lion. It's really only his face and tail that look similar.

But my point is that it is only a matter of appearance. Leo isn't related to lions biologically any more than other gargates are.

Vaevictis Asmadi

Just thought everyone here would want to see this:
http://forums.toonzone.net/showthread.php?p=2445049#post2445049

I'm looking forward to Greg's take on Spider-Man. How about the rest of you?

Antiyonder - [antiyonder at yahoo dot com]

The term is actually 'convergent evolution'. This refers to the process by which organisms that not closely related independently evolve similar traits as a result of having to adapt to similar environments.

113 days left until The Gathering 2007 in Pigeon Forge, Tennessee!

Patrick - [<-- The Gathering 2007]
"They tell us that we lost our tails, evolving up from little snails..." - Devo

Vaevicitis> Be careful not to assume that when two gargoyles produce children that their children will blend the parents features into an average form. Most of the time it seems that a hatchling inherits the exact features of the parent (Angela inherits Goliath's coloring, not a blending of Demona and Goliath's). I don't see why Una and Leo would produce a hatchling with an intermediate form or why Leo and Ophelia would produce a hatchling with a smaller crest and a blended coloration. If that were the case than we wouldn't see all the diversity in clans we see now because they'd all eventually start to look roughly the same as every generation was a little more blended than the last. I think the fact that gargoyle appearences are so diverse and REMAIN so diverse is an important part of their pysiology.
Matt - [St Louis, Missouri, USA]
"Long ago, there were gargoyle clans all over the world... but I was not aware any of them had survived..." - Goliath, "The Green"

Well, at least Makhasu's flood of questions led to Greg's confirming my suspicion that the English were really invading Scotland in 1057 to put Canmore back on the throne, rather than to get rid of the Scottish gargoyles.
Todd Jensen
Gargoyles - did for monstrous-looking statues what "Watership Down" did for rabbits!

That Anon post was me....damn refresh
Siren

There is something called "cross evolution". Its the existance of similar traits in different species.

For instance there is the Praying Mantis and then the Mantid Fly...Both look very simliar, so much so they were classified in the same group for years. And yet, they are serperate species.

Dolphins and sharks have similar aerodynamic body shapes, fins, and colors and yet are seperate species.

I don't think its a far cry to have mammal and bird-like gargoyles that look similar to real animals.

It all comes down to genes. Humans have soft skin with thin hair, yet there are genes that can cause reptile-like skin, long hair all over the body, or no hair at all. Genes for albinos are always there. So the fact that gargoyles too can have "flukes" in the gene pools and have gargoyles that have different shapes and skin and fur/hair types make sense. Since gargoyles live in clans, the gene pool can be dimished, its likely to see those traits more and more in a localized area.

Anonymous

Oops, sorry. Winged lions with bull horns were also depicted in ancient Turkmenistan art. Forgot about that.
Vaevictis Asmadi

<I dunno, are bears that different from lions? Are bulls that different from horses? Are eagles/hawks that different from griffons? These are heraldic animals afterall, and they don't seem too crazy or anything. It's not like I'm suggesting the aformentioned dinosaur-gargoyles or as Greg has denied Ostrich-goyles and Giraffe-goyles.>

I think it is a question of how much variation is there in unicorn-gargoyles and lion-gargoyles? Is there a complete gradation of variations between the long, narrow, horse-like snouts and the shorter, wider lion-like snouts? Is there a gradation between narrow manes/crests like Una and Griff, to wider manes like Leo's? A gargoyle offspring of Una and Leo could end up with a snout that is in between in apperance, and may look somewhat wolf-like or bear-like, or at least remind a human of those animals more than of a horse or lion. Since none of the gargoyles actually are related to these animals in any way (unlike, say, some of the New Olympians) so it really is a question, not "Are there bear gargoyles" but "will the comic artists every design a gargoyle that looks vaguely like a bear?"

For bull-like gargoyles, or goat-like, it would be a question of how much variation there is in horn shapes. Central and West Asian griffins and winged lions were often depicted with goat horns instead of unicorn horns, so it is likely that gargoyles looking like that once existed. Whether goat-like horns exist among the London Clan is a question. There are very few examples of winged lion images with bull-like horns, I only know of them from the Indus Valley civilization. That's a long ways for the genes to travel to London.

As for hawk gargoyles... I think that would just be a griffin with neither ears nor a crest.


And if Ophelia married a lion gargoyle? Wow. Um, well probably skin color either golden, turquoise, or maybe yellowish-green. The wings could go either way, but I can't imagine a mixture of bat and bird features in the wings, unless those black things on Yama's wings are feathers. The face might or might not have a snout. There would be hair, and probably a crest and two horns but not as large as Ophelia's. It certainly wouldn't look like a lion! But even a completely lion-like gargoyle with turquoise skin would look right, to a gargoyle. It would only force a human observer to realize that the "winged lions" are not lions at all, even if some of them look remarkably like.

Vaevictis Asmadi

Are we sure Greg's not a replicant? That was a fantastic display of patience. I did find Greg's response that Demona probably saw her seventeen years as Macbeth's advisor as a plan to lull her into a false sense of security to be interesting, but at the same time, it fits the whole "own worst enemy" aspect very nicely. But otherwise, yeah... amusing.

Matt: I think that looking at the traits of lions, unicorns, and griffins, there are probably quite a few permutations on how those traits can be mixed and matched. I'd never actually devise a mathematical model on it, though. I'll leave that to my friend who's pursuing a PHD in it.

Harvester of Eyes - [Minstrel75 at gmail dot com]
"I'm the doctor who's trying to save your son. And you're the mom who's letting him die. Clarification: it's a beautiful thing." -Gregory House, MD

I dunno, are bears that different from lions? Are bulls that different from horses? Are eagles/hawks that different from griffons? These are heraldic animals afterall, and they don't seem too crazy or anything. It's not like I'm suggesting the aformentioned dinosaur-gargoyles or as Greg has denied Ostrich-goyles and Giraffe-goyles.

As for blending, I think among the London Clan this isn't so bad. Perhaps there is always a dominant feature (lion, horse,etc) that can be modified slightly by the other parents genes. I think a few weeks ago I mentioned a drawing I did of Una and Leo's biological son. I actually went in search of it the other day and I really did think it looked great (if I do say so myself) despite the mixing of traits. He mostly looked like Leo, but he had Una's skin and wing color tones. He still had Leo's tannish mane, but also had Una's ear shape and horn.

The real question mark with breeding is when gargoyle from the London Clan start mixing with gargoyles elsewhere (like in the Liberty Clan and other new clans). Lets say we had a gargoyle looking like Leo mate with a gargoyle looking like Ophelia. Would a lion-esque gargoyle look right with turquise skin? What if a gargoyle looking like Una mates with a gargoyle looking like Yama. Would a horse-esqu gargoyle look right with massive brow horns or clawed feet?

Matt - [St Louis, Missouri, USA]
"Long ago, there were gargoyle clans all over the world... but I was not aware any of them had survived..." - Goliath, "The Green"

JURGAN> I'll e-mail you a little later, I promise. Just really busy right now.

Am I the only one who's amused by Greg's replies to Makhasu's flood of questions? Especially after the way she behaved in here when we called her on the fact that most of those are "what do you think?" questions and that Greg specifically asked to not be flooded?

On a much more positive note, I realised that 2007 is going to be a good year for old stories I've loved. Gargoyles is returning in comic form with new canon stories in a few weeks time. Buffy the Vampire Slayer is getting an eighth season in comic form, written by Joss Whedon. Joss is also writing a Firefly comic. And Babylon 5 is returning with Direct-to-DVD movies written by Joe Straczynski.

Four dead series, all returning in the same year. This should be the Year of the Phoenix.

Greg Bishansky - [<---- The 11th Annual Gathering of the Gargoyles]
"February is Black History Month. Now, I don't see color. People tell me I'm white and I believe them, because police officers call me 'sir'." - Stephen Colbert

Greg Weisman will be supervising a new Spider-Man cartoon for Kids' WB! Click the link!
Scott Iskow - [smiskow at lycos dot com]
http://forum.newsarama.com/showthread.php?t=103394

There are a wide variety of different griffin styles in ancient and medieval European art. There's a great website with links to tons of ancient griffin art:

But we're not allowed to post urls anymore? "Lions are eating the server!"

Vaevictis Asmadi

Augh. Please dismiss anything that repeats Vaevictus' post that he made while I was typing this. :P
Incisivis - [incisivis at hotmail dot com]
"No live organism can continue for long to exist sanely under conditions of absolute reality; even larks and katydids are supposed, by some, to dream" -- Shirley Jackson

Patrick> Doing gargoyles live would be tricky, though the fact that they glide and then flying could be cut down on would help. I completely admit that I'm more versed in animation than live-action, though, and there could be a recent movie that does a *great* job with winged humanoids in extensive flight that I'm forgetting.

I like CG animation, but CG creatures in live-action movies always feel a little less real to me than animatronics and prosthetics do. Even oldtime stop-motion inserts somehow feel more real to me...dunno why. It's not to put down the immense amount of effort that goes into creating CG creatures, certainly. (I can't for the life of me remember if Jackson's Gollum was an exception, since I only saw those movies once)

Anyway, if a garg movie happened, I think a combination of differet types of special effects would work best.

Matt> There's something about the London gargoyles that I didn't bring up in our last chat about them: what about hybridization? Normally you'd have offspring that blend the features of both parents, but with London gargs that could quickly distort their resemblence to real animals, so I wonder what's the take on that. Are they all born looking like a certain animal, regardless of parentage? Or are the features blended enough to still resemble a real animal *and* a combination of the parents (eg, Una and Leo's child looking liike a unicorn but with brown skin, or a Griff-like gargoyle with hooves)?

As to art of London gargoyles, I assume you're thinking about fanart, and if you haven't, I apologize. Their existence seems to have opened up the door to creating "furry"-style gargoyles, which seem to be the second-most popular fanart/fanchar subject after nearly-humanoid gargoyles (I prefer non-London style gargs with beaks and snouts myself). Off the top of my head, I've seen wolves, dogs, horses, birds, dragons, dinosaurs, and many other species. But it looks like Greg's put a damper on that.

A compromise might be to research animals used in English heraldry and use that to limit the possibilities, but I dunno.

Incisivis - [incisivis at hotmail dot com]
"No live organism can continue for long to exist sanely under conditions of absolute reality; even larks and katydids are supposed, by some, to dream" -- Shirley Jackson

I'm going to go with what Greg said, that winged unicorns, winged lions, and griffins are basically what there is. Combinations of those three include pegasi, hippogriffs, horned hippogriffs, horned griffins, hooved winged lions, and horned winged lions. But I don't think there are bears, bulls, or other animals.

I do think that what we have will allow a lot of diversity. The unicorns don't have to all look like Una, and the griffins don't all have to look like Griff. We don't know how many different skin colors and hair colors there are. There could be griffins with ears, as most heraldic griffins have ears. There could be different variety of ears, tufted, long and asinine, short and leonine. There could be griffins with no crest, griffins with a crest made out of a membranous fin, griffins with leonine manes, etc. There could be long horns and curved horns and short horns.

Maybe that isn't as much variety as the Scottish gargoyles have, but I think it is still plenty.

Vaevictis Asmadi

Sooo...

I was thinking about the English Clan. So far, we've seen winged lions, winged unicorns and griffons. Greg has said that basically what we've seen is more or less what there is. At first, this struck me as odd given how diverse the gargoyles of other clans can look (I mean look at Lexington, Ophelia, Brooklyn and Hudson all from one clan originally).
But lately I've been thinking more about it and I've thought of a few other "looks" among the London Clan that I don't think are too unlikely because they are not too different from some of the three we've seen and they are all British heraldic animals (I think). In short:

We've seen Winged Unicorns, Winged Lions and Griffons

Other combinations of these three include Winged Horses (Pegasi) and Hippogriffs

Possible "looks" include Bulls, Hawks/Eagles, and Bears.

Anyway, what do you guys think. Anyone know of some art of London gargoyles?

Matt - [St Louis, Missouri, USA]
"Long ago, there were gargoyle clans all over the world... but I was not aware any of them had survived..." - Goliath, "The Green"

Oh, I shouldn't have said that in public. Sorry, guys. I really don't want the comment room to get eaten up by a flame war. Greg B., I admit I made some mistakes, and I'd like to talk to you about this via e-mail. I don't know your address, though. Can you please e-mail me? Mine's right below my post.

Everyone else, please forget this ever happened and accept my apologies.

Jurgan - [jurgan6 at yahoo dot com]

Greg B.: After making my post last night, it occurred to me that I should have realized it was a joke from the context. Calling someone "the greatest hero America will ever know" is just the sort of over-the-top hyperbole that Colbert uses all the time. I was just about to admit my mistake and apologize for mischaracterizing what you said. Then I saw you ask "how dense could you be" and tell me to "grow a sense of humor," simply because I missed the point of one joke and/or didn't find it especially funny...

F*** you.

Jurgan - [jurgan6 at yahoo dot com]

Re role-playing games:

One that I'd like to recommend (though I'm biased, on account of the subject matter) is "King Arthur Pendragon" ("Pendragon" for short) by Arthaus. It's a role-playing game set in Arthurian Britain, which is of particular interest in that it places a very strong emphasis on characterization and internal conflict. It's also well-researched (I have my disagreements with a few of its takes on the characters and events of the legend, but they're generally minor ones) and enjoyable. (I must confess that I've never actually played it with anyone, so my critique is taken from the standpoint of an Arthurian buff rather than from that of a role-playing gamer.)

Of course, its immediate relevance to "Gargoyles" fans is its connection to King Arthur, but "The Great Pendragon Campaign" (which gives a start-to-finish history of Arthur's reign to help the gamemaster weave it into the player-knights' adventures) provides cameos for Oberon and Puck. (Oberon visits Camelot at one point with a train of faerie nobles, under the alias of "King Today of Overthere" for a friendly chat with Arthur, and later on invites Arthur and many of his knights to a great tournament being held at Oberon's court. Puck appears in an adventure based on Christina Rossetti's "Goblin Market", where he attempts to trick the player-knights into doing him a service; the scheme winds up backfiring upon him, in the best trickster fashion.)

Todd Jensen
Gargoyles - did for monstrous-looking statues what "Watership Down" did for rabbits!

Harvester> LOL @ Chewbacca

I wonder if maybe you don't watch a little TOO MUCH South Park. :P

KingCobra_582 - [KingCobra_582 at hotmail dot com]
"Ignore me!" - Venture Bros.

So, I guess now would be a bad time to talk about my idea for a crossover between "Gargoyles 2198" and "Stephen Colbert Presents: Stephen Colbert's Alpha Squad 7: The New Tek Jansen Adventures."

"Ohhh, Tek. You've obviously had hundreds of girlfriends."
- Demona

And hey, as I said, my comments on Colbert are really part of the joke. How he presents himself on TV, the character he plays. In his own words "my character is a high status, poorly informed, well intentioned... idiot."

And you've never heard me talk about anyone like that, because, well... I don't hero worship people. I'm a cynic. Always have been. I respect and admire the guy, especially for his performance at the White House Correspondents Dinner But, I don't hero worship anyone.

Well, not entirely true, unfortunatly the only person I could ever call a hero is a fictional character. That character being John Sheridan.

Oh well.

Greg Bishansky - [<---- The 11th Annual Gathering of the Gargoyles]
"February is Black History Month. Now, I don't see color. People tell me I'm white and I believe them, because police officers call me 'sir'." - Stephen Colbert

Yeah, esspecially online where we have no access to body language or tone.

Honestly Greg, I wasn't sure if you were joking or not either. I've never heard you talk about anyone else like you talk about Colbert.

Matt - [St Louis, Missouri, USA]
"Long ago, there were gargoyle clans all over the world... but I was not aware any of them had survived..." - Goliath, "The Green"

Whoa Greg, please back off, you're getting rather nasty. Can you forgive somebody for a tiny mistake? People miss jokes all the time.
Vaevictis Asmadi

I knew you were being sarcastic. But I still wanted to point out it wasn't true what you said, since Jurgan had asked about the Storyteller rules.

Anyway, I was reading part of the Wiki today in a moment of spare time, and was thinking about how similar some of the voice actors look to their characters, particularly Johnothan Frakes and Salli Richardson, and how in a live-action movie they could probably just play their characters live. But how would a live-action movie handle the gargoyles? Would CGI be better, or would humans with masks or digital alteration be best? Which would look most realistic? I tend to think that humans in masks, especially with extra appendages and trying to fly around, would look too much like puppets. And if you made them CGI then you could use the voice actors for multiple roles more easily. But CGI would have to look very good to make the gargoyles come out realistically. What do you all think? Who would be the best actors for some of the other human characters, like Macbeth or Matt or Owen? I don't know what their voice actors look like at all.

Vaevictis Asmadi

PATRICK> Yep, I mean, god, how dense does someone have to be to not see such an obvious joke. How dense?

Jurgan, if you're reading this, grow a sense of humor.

Greg Bishansky - [<---- The 11th Annual Gathering of the Gargoyles]
"February is Black History Month. Now, I don't see color. People tell me I'm white and I believe them, because police officers call me 'sir'." - Stephen Colbert

New topic, eh? Well, here's a picture of Chewbacca:

http://www.wookies-etc.com/html/450wookie-window2.jpg

Now think about this. Why am I talking about Chewbacca in a Gargoyles Comment Room? Ladies and gentlemen, THIS DOES NOT MAKE ANY SENSE!

Harvester of Eyes - [Minstrel75 at gmail dot com]
"When angels are forced out of Heaven, they become devils. You agree, don't you, Spike?" -Vicious

I remember the days when most of the people in this forum understood sarcasm and comedic exageration when they saw it. Hint: When I punctuate with a Bronx cheer smily, it means I'm being sarcastic. :P

114 days left until The Gathering 2007 in Pigeon Forge, Tennessee!

Patrick - [<-- The Gathering 2007]
"His name is Jaws. He kills people." - James Bond

Yes, different systems work better for different people.

Also, if you're not fond of modern settings, you probably wouldn't like the World of Darkness much anyway. I actually prefer fantasy settings more as well, but I prefer fantasy that is not sword and sorcery.

I still haven't had the time to review Turf but I promise I will eventually! Maybe this weekend I'll have time. I've been pretty busy with school.

Anonymous

Vaevictis Asmadi-- The opposite was true for me. People have tried to teach me Vampire, and no matter how they explained it, or how many times I read over the rules, it was all Greek to me. I was just doing whatever the DM told me without understanding, and I HATE that. When I picked up the 3.0 rulebook for D&D, I had a character rolled up in under 15 minutes. Unfortunately, it took me another week to find a gaming group, but I digress. :P

Different strokes, I guess.

Kythera of Anevern - [kythera (at) gmail dot com]
"Civilized men are more discourteous than savages because they know they can be impolite without having their skulls split, as a general thing."

*Scrambles to find some other topic to end the comic topic with*
Matt - [St Louis, Missouri, USA]
"Long ago, there were gargoyle clans all over the world... but I was not aware any of them had survived..." - Goliath, "The Green"

Todd > Or the writers of TGC in Disney. No, you're right it is very far-fetched.

Kythera > Having played both Werewolf and D&D 3.5, I can tell you the systems are extremely different in feel and outcome. Storyteller is fundamentally a system in which characters have no classes and no levels, and that has a massive impact on the way it works. There is, for me, no comparison either in game-play or in character creation. The Storyteller system is also vastly easier for me to understand, I learned it just by reading the rule-book once, whereas D&D makes no sense to me. The dice-rolling system is hardly the largest difference between the systems.

Someone? <A-ha, a trick question! In the "Werewolf" game, your character would not touch the computer because it's human technology and to use it would cost a permanent point of "Gnosis.">

Uh, no, that is not true. o.O

Vaevictis Asmadi

I probably shouldn't be contributing to this discussion, but I find myself periodically wondering how long it'll be before this particular conspiracy theory surfaces:

A group of disgruntled fans of "The Goliath Chronicles", indignant at Greg Weisman's plan to ignore those particular episodes, have infiltrated both Slave Labor Graphics and Disney for the purpose of deliberately delaying the comic's issues and thereby sabotaging it.

Though I doubt that this will ever become a very popular or widespread conspiracy theory, simply because most of the people here would have a hard time believing that there are enough fans of "The Goliath Chronicles" to pull off such an effort. :)

Todd Jensen
Gargoyles - did for monstrous-looking statues what "Watership Down" did for rabbits!

DK2: I agree you're being a little hasty. It looked to me like Vado was saying that SLG was too ambitious, and now they're working the kinks out of the system. Article actually explained a lot. I don't know when in 2008 the license renewal is supposed to occur, but it's still a long way off.
Harvester of Eyes - [Minstrel75 at gmail dot com]
"When angels are forced out of Heaven, they become devils. You agree, don't you, Spike?" -Vicious

I did pose one question to the blog about the contract: does Disney have a limit on how long they can wait before approving/disapproving the final version of a comic. I would think such a point would have been dealt with in the contract that would prevent Disney from indefinitely withholding approval/disapproval on the final version of a comic.

I don't want to sound paranoid, but establishing a limit on how long Disney can sit on a comic without granting it either approval or disapproval would be essential when forecasting potential sales. So the real question to me is how long the contract specifies that Disney can withhold either approval/disapproval on the final version before some kind of penalty on Disney would kick in. What I would imagine in a such a penalty is Disney pays slg every day in lost sales over not approving/disapproving or by default, the comic gets approved because a deadline passed for Disney to act.

dph_of_rules
Whatever happenned to simplicity?

I found this on the SLG news blog about corrections from Toonzones article:
"The first is an interview with SLG head honcho Dan Vado at Toon Zone, in which Dan talks to "Ace the Bathound" (I assume this is a pseudonym) about the SLG's Disney-licensed comics, the crazy world of optioning, and more. A couple of corrections:
Ace writes, "Vado noted that Eric Jones and Landry Walker's Little Gloomy comic was optioned and might become a live-action movie. He also said he thought James Turner's Rex Libris would be a great prime-time cartoon in something like an Adult Swim block, and that there has been interest in the title but nothing definitive yet." The titles here are switched around -- it is Rex Libris that has been optioned (we were waiting for an official announcement, but I guess the cat is out of the bag) and Little Gloomy that Dan thinks would make a great cartoon.
And toward the end, Ace writes: "He said that the the new coloring studio working on Gargoyles really 'gets' the art style, and that both 'didn't want it to be just another licensed comic.'" Here Dan was actually talking about Tron, which is colored by the talented guys at GURU eFX. You can see their work, as well as that of artist Michael Shoykhet and the Walker Jones team in Tron #3.

And here is the link of the Wizard Tron article:
http://www.wizarduniverse.com/magazine/wizard/003564014.cfm

I take note about the comments relating to the Disney/SLG comics comments from Tron writer Landry Walker. It kind of stresses the problems somewhat from SLG's perpective of how much they can handle and the economics as well.
I don't mean to cause any concerns but I thought others might want to know about this info from my last 2 posts.

DK2

DK2> I think you're way jumping the gun. Too soon to say on anything. Vado wants to renew the license, and for Disney, it's like free money. We'll see.

In the mean time, I fully expect this topic to cause angst.

Greg Bishansky - [<---- The 11th Annual Gathering of the Gargoyles]
"February is Black History Month. Now, I don't see color. People tell me I'm white and I believe them, because police officers call me 'sir'." - Stephen Colbert

I found an interview feature bit of the NYCC and it talks to SLG's Dan Vado. It pretty much sums up what Greg B. mentioned earlier in these posts, but it has a little more info bits.
Please read first before you read my rants about this.

NYCC: Slave Labor Graphics' Dan Vado Talks Disney Licensed Comics
http://news.toonzone.net/article.php?ID=15534

I'm just worried about the future of the Gargoyles comics after this article. I'd hate to just get only issue #6 or #7 (assuming it can even reach that number) of the Gargoyles comic by the end of the year only for SLG to not make it anymore. SLG was given Tron after 88MPH Comics originally was going to do the books (they were that close to releasing Tron, also had
the Ghostbusters license) then Disney turned the license to SLG. I mean if you looked at the Previews catalogs, sometimes Disney's Disney Press is listed and they're listing some small books themselves. You can't help but wonder why Disney doen't make the comics themselves? They did do their own comics back in the early 1990's during the comic book glut/speculators boom. But then stopped probably when it all crashed. Then in the mid '90's when Marvel did the Disney comics, or was it just for Gargoyles (does anyone know?). I'd hate to see SLG lose the licence, then what would happen by next year? Greg W. gonna lose that chance to tell new Gargoyles stories? The collected paperbacks would be cool too but again Disney has the final say on book volumes. Will Disney renew the license or scrap it altogether or take over the comics duties themselves? Just by reading this small article makes me wonder. I mean even Dan Vado seems to suggest the SLG/Disney relationship looks strayed. Disney doesn't seem to be with the comics. My local comics store owner told me he thought that Disney could make their own comcis like in the past, but would prefer to make money off the licensing fee. Wizard Magazine said that 88MPH comics paid $10,000 to get the Ghostbusters license from Sony Pictures. I mean to me thats alot for a starting comic company to pay. I wonder what SLG paid for the whole 4 title Disney deal? What do you all think after reading this article?

DK2

Vaevictis Asmadi-- Which, at its core, is not terribly different from d20. You have your base six stats (strength, dexterity, constitution, intelligence, wisdom and charisma), and various skills. The value of your base stat has either a bonus or penalty, which you add or subtract to your ranks in a given skill. That sum is in turn added (or subtracted, if you have a penalty, rather than a bonus) to the roll of a d20. The DM has a target number. If you meet or exceed the target number, it is a success. Rolling a natural 20 on the die is often a spectacular success ("Not only does your thief disarm the trap on the lock, he realizes how to reset it, if he so chooses later on"). Rolling a natural 1 is often a failure, or critical failure, depending on the circumstances ("You not only fail to disarm the acid trap on the lock, but you SPRING IT, causing the lock to disintegrate beyond all repair. Some of the acid splashed onto your fingers, so you also take damage. There's no way you can open that lockbox, now"). The main purpose classes serve is determining which skills are easier for your character to develop and learn, and whether or not they have inherent abilites (casting spells, etc).

Same principle, different mechanic. **Shrug** I'm not saying either is better or worse, but at the core, they're still basically the same.

Kythera of Anevern
"Civilized men are more discourteous than savages because they know they can be impolite without having their skulls split, as a general thing."

*Distributes Chill Pills to various Room denizens*
Matt - [St Louis, Missouri, USA]
"Long ago, there were gargoyle clans all over the world... but I was not aware any of them had survived..." - Goliath, "The Green"

A-ha, a trick question! In the "Werewolf" game, your character would not touch the computer because it's human technology and to use it would cost a permanent point of "Gnosis." :P

115 days left until The Gathering 2007 in Pigeon Forge, Tennessee!

Patrick - [<-- The Gathering 2007]

Just wanted everyone to know the comic is selling well.

Ive been to a few comic stores in california and I always ask about the gargoyles comic and they say it is sold out or they only have a few issues left.

Shara

JURGAN> I always think about what I say. And it was such an over the top line, I figured anyone with a sense of humor would recognize it as such.

I mean, Stephen Colbert asks the Congressmen he interviews: "George W. Bush, great President? Or greatest President?" Without getting into politics right now, because I am sure Blaqthourne, in all his self-righteous "wisdom", or someone would love to get into it... such a question like that is a joke because it is a definite exageration.

The fact is, Colbert was the topic of that paragraph, so I figured using a Colbert-like joke in there was appropriate. It's not my problem you were too dense to see it as such.

But seriously, come on... how the hell could you not see it?

Greg Bishansky - [<---- The 11th Annual Gathering of the Gargoyles]
"February is Black History Month. Now, I don't see color. People tell me I'm white and I believe them, because police officers call me 'sir'." - Stephen Colbert

"Jurgan-- O.o It sounded to me like you were talking about the manufacture of actual dice... which didn't make sense for a reason to develop the d20 system, since it still uses all of the different polyhedral dice, not JUST the d20. :B"

I was saying that it wouldn't make sense to base it on 15-sided dice, for example. If they wanted the dice to be convenient, they only had five choices to be the main one.

"Um, actually, if someone says the word "RPG", usually the first thing that comes into my mind is Final Fantasy VI or VII. Hey, I'm a sucker for classics."

I don't think I'd call FFVII a classic- it's tremendously overrated. I'd say the "classics" are the ones that came before they started adding all the FMV sequences. FFVI I would count, and it's my favorite of all time.

"Jurgan: Maybe you should just remember what the arsonist said to the prostitute and try taking the extreme exaggeration at face value. Exaggerations can be funny, if you let them. ( ;"

I wish I were on an ezboard right now, so I could do the little "rolleyes" icon. It just didn't sound like a joke- it sounded like he was getting extremely carried away and not thinking about what he was saying.

Jurgan - [jurgan6 at yahoo dot com]

Vaevictus: Um, actually, if someone says the word "RPG", usually the first thing that comes into my mind is Final Fantasy VI or VII. Hey, I'm a sucker for classics. But anyhoo, I'm actually quite illiterate when it comes to D and D, and D20 is the only thing that I am familiar with (and my friends still have to talk me through most of it). So I'm sorry if it's the first thing that came into my head.

Jurgan: Maybe you should just remember what the arsonist said to the prostitute and try taking the extreme exaggeration at face value. Exaggerations can be funny, if you let them. ( ;

Harvester of Eyes - [Minstrel75 at gmail dot com]
"When angels are forced out of Heaven, they become devils. You agree, don't you, Spike?" -Vicious

OK, well, in Werewolf say your character wants to hack into a computer system. You count how many "dots" your character has in Intelligence, and how many they have in Computer. Intelligence is an Attribute, like Strength or Dexterity or Wits. Computer is an Ability, like Firearms or Law or Drive. There are 9 Attributes, and lots of different Abilities to choose from.

If your character has a 2 in Intelligence (2 is average for attributes) and a 2 in Computer, then you roll four 10-sided dice. The Storyteller (DM) decides how difficult this roll is going to be and assigns it a difficulty. 6 is the average difficulty, but it can be anything from 2 to 10. If the difficulty is 8, then every die that shows 8, 9, or 10 counts as a success. Every die that shows 1 cancels out a success. The number of successes you roll tells you how well you succeeded. If you got 0 successes, then you failed. If you got no successes and one of the dice shows a 1, then you "botched" and something spectacularly bad happens.

Vaevictis Asmadi

Jurgan-- O.o It sounded to me like you were talking about the manufacture of actual dice... which didn't make sense for a reason to develop the d20 system, since it still uses all of the different polyhedral dice, not JUST the d20. :B
Kythera of Anevern
"Civilized men are more discourteous than savages because they know they can be impolite without having their skulls split, as a general thing."

"Jurgan-- You DO also know that the d20 system still uses all of the other polyhedral dice too, right? ;)"

Um... yeah? Didn't I say that? Maybe not. I'm not entirely sure what my original point was, actually. I guess I'd understand this conversation better if Vaevictis would give an example of how some other system works.

Jurgan

I like polyhedral dice. They're fun to just run through my fingers. They're also colorful and some are shiny.

I don't like 4-sided dice though, they aren't round and are hard to roll.

OK, I am more than a little weird. :p

Vaevictis Asmadi

Jurgan-- You DO also know that the d20 system still uses all of the other polyhedral dice too, right? ;)

I had some d20 rules for gargoyles as PCs (Playable Characters) a while back, but it was specifically for D&D, since I've got a deep-rooted love for the sword & sorcery genre and general dislike of modern or sci-fi RPGs. Even steampunk pushes the line with me. ;P There were also some differences to Greg's gargs--the version I wrote up required exposure to sunlight in order for them to turn to stone (so a gargoyle deep in an underground dungeon wouldn't turn to stone). On that note, though, since sunlight is their energy source, a gargoyle who didn't turn to stone would temporarily lose strength and/or constitution (up to a certain point) for every day they remained flesh, until they turned to stone again.

I guess I've been lucky. I had some flexible DMs who let me come up with a way to make just about any idea work. The only one I continuously fell short on was coming up with a Cleric type that could spontaneously cast like a Sorcerer. :B

Kythera of Anevern
"Civilized men are more discourteous than savages because they know they can be impolite without having their skulls split, as a general thing."

"JURGAN> Um, you do know what a joke is, right?"

Something that makes me laugh? I'm not sure that extreme exaggeration constitutes a joke by itself.

Jurgan - [jurgan6 at yahoo dot com]

I think dice are just poured plastic in a mold, like any other piece of machine-made plastic. They're more expensive than plastic forks, anyway, which are not regular polyhedrons at all.

Has anyone else here ever tried to come up with RPG rules for gargoyles? I've seen a set of World of Darkness rules for gargoyles. It looked pretty good, but it was set in the World of Darkness itself instead of the Gargoyles Universe, and the author's interpretation of gargoyles was as magical creatures, not mortals. The World of Darkness is similar in many ways to the Gargoyles Universe, it is basically the modern world with hyper-technology and sorcery, and several races of supernatural "monsters" of legend trying to hide in the shadows. It has a similar attitude to the "All things are true" bit in Gargoyles. But the WoD is much darker in tone, being a horror setting.

I was inspired to do this by that set of gargoyles rules, but I'm aiming to make this set in the Gargoyles Universe, using all of the information available here at Ask Greg.

Vaevictis Asmadi

JURGAN> Um, you do know what a joke is, right?
Greg Bishansky - [<---- The 11th Annual Gathering of the Gargoyles]
"February is Black History Month. Now, I don't see color. People tell me I'm white and I believe them, because police officers call me 'sir'." - Stephen Colbert

I always assumed the original reason for doing d20 was that it was easier to make the dice. d4, d6, d8, d12, and d20 are the only regular polyhedrons. Any other is much more complicated to make.

Greg B.: "The man is a true, blue American hero. The greatest hero our great nation will ever see..."

Um... yeah, I like Colbert (and Stewart, who seems to have been largely lost in Colbert's new celebrity), and I think what he does has real value, but don't you think that's just a bit of an overstatement?

Jurgan - [jurgan6 at yahoo dot com]

TODD> Yeah, Colbert did that. I laughed my ass off watching it. If you're interested in seeing it:

http://throwawayyourtv.com/2006/07/conan-obrian-interview-with-stephen.html

He's a funny guy.

On another note, here's a link to an interview with Dan Vado: http://news.toonzone.net/article.php?ID=15534

Greg Bishansky - [<---- The 11th Annual Gathering of the Gargoyles]
"February is Black History Month. Now, I don't see color. People tell me I'm white and I believe them, because police officers call me 'sir'." - Stephen Colbert

Like I said, just because I hate D&D doesn't mean you have to get offended if you like the game. Geez. What brings my reaction first of all is that whenever somebody mentions RPGs, the non-gamer ALWAYS thinks of D&D. No other game has any name recognition outside gamer circles. This leads non-gamers to think that all RPGs are D&D-style sword and sorcery fantasy stuff, which is a genre I hate. Whenever anyone hears I'm a gamer, they say "Oh, you play D&D. Just because I like gaming does not obligate me to like D&D, but lots of people assume that.

I do know that Wizards of the Coast bought out the company which used to produce L5R, immediately discontinued its Rokugan RPG line, and then released a different Rokugan RPG using the D20 system. And according to Rokugan fans I know the new game is terrible. What reason did they have to eliminate a game system from the market, when they already owned it?

Wizards of the Coast has also generally done a bad job on the old Planescape material in their 3.5 publications. Planescape was an awesome game, the only part of D&D I ever liked, and I really don't like what Wizards of the Coast has been doing to it.

Anyway, I've had lots of bad experiences with D&D, caused by the extreme restrictiveness and arbitrariness of its class system, which made it impossible to use any character ideas I had. I really hate class-based games, and I do not want to use one, ever. And it bothers me a lot that when I mention that I'm writing a RPG, the first thing someone says is "Oh, you're writing a D&D module." I hate the game for a variety of reasons, and I hate that non-gamers assume I play it.

Vaevictis Asmadi

BISHANSKY - I'm not that familiar with Colbert myself, I'm afraid, but I remember reading a couple of letters referring to him in a Tolkien newsletter that I subscribe to which indicated that he's also very familiar with Tolkien's works (one mentioned how he set the record straight when CNN mistakenly used a picture of the Balrog as an image of Satan in a news report; the other was when he had Viggo Mortensen as a guest on his show and showed himself to be very familiar with the life-history of Aragorn during the interview).
Todd Jensen
Gargoyles - did for monstrous-looking statues what "Watership Down" did for rabbits!

Christine, re: avmists ...

The very first issue, for the mailing list, was issued February 1995, and the reason I started AvMists way back when was that the majority of fans only had e-mail -- they didn't have FTP or Web access to the rat.org archive. And people were getting in trouble promoting fanfic on the rat.org mailing list, as well.

Man, times have changed ...

And yeah, I get the feeling old thing ...

Leva

Re: gaming with gargoyles -- some of the back issues of Avalon Mists included articles on various systems. Clickie my name or go to http://avmists.gargoyles-fans.org/archive.htm

(zomg ... I just went there myself ... my first issue of AvMists was almost 10 years ago ... gads, now I feel ANCIENT)

Christine - [christine at sabledrake dot com]

Matt - I do have a theory that explains the visual absence of youngest generation and the oldest one: The youngest generation was out with the generation between Kai and Yama. Of course, there's another possibility that I am going to email you.

GXB - <I spoke to Dan Vado for a little while. He's hoping to have issue 3 on the stands soon. If it gets approved today, it'll take two weeks to print. So, two weeks after approval, it'll hit the stands. We just need to wait.> Thank you very much for the information.

I visited the 'comic book store' in my town and they can order the issues for me. They're supposed to call me. I have a theory that it's going to be me to alert them about when it's coming.

dph_of_rules
Whatever happenned to simplicity?

I learned RPGs using a d20 system. I played the Palladium games all through high school, and got into the White Wolf system a little during college. It never seemed to me that the d10 system was better or worse, it was just different. Both systems had their strengths and weaknesses.

116 days left until The Gathering 2007 in Pigeon Forge, Tennessee!

Patrick - [<-- The Gathering 2007]
Jesus Saves... with a natural 20. (The rest of you take full damage.)

Vaevictis Asmadi-- I came very close to posting a decidedly acerbic reaction to your post about the d20 system, but decided against it. I can reply much more calmly to this one. ^_^

I DO think the d20 system has super-saturated the market, which is VERY unfortunate and VERY irritating at times, but at its core, I think it is a solid system. It doesn't do *everything*, but for what it is, I'm quite fond of it.

For years I wanted to get into D&D, but all versions prior to d20 were just plain inaccessable to the novice who didn't already know somebody who played and could teach it. d20 finally threw the doors open wide. It IS a good system to cut your teeth on when RPing for the first time (I've witnessed this personally when one of my bosses started up the unofficial SEI D&D campaign). It's very easy to learn, and I think that's one of its benefits.

Ultimately, it comes down to whether it's a system that does what you need it to.

Kythera of Anevern - [kythera (at) gmail dot com]
"Civilized men are more discourteous than savages because they know they can be impolite without having their skulls split, as a general thing."

Now I have to epilogue this by saying I didn't mean to jump on anyone. I have a kind of visceral reaction to D20 and difficulty evaluating the actual game system objectively. So if any of you here play D&D and feel offended, please don't get mad at me.

I do think that in general class-based systems make very poor games, but my personal feeling about D20 goes beyond that.

Vaevictis Asmadi

Ack, no, D20 is an abortion of a game system designed for the sole purpose of forcing all other game systems entirely out of the market, that I refuse to have anything to do with if I can help it.

I am using the White Wolf Storyteller system, which is an excellent system and should work quite well for what I have planned. One of the great things about this system is that it actually enforces character development with the way the rules work. Well, it would if the books I own contained the rules for using Virtues and Humanity.

Unfortunately the only Storyteller games I have are Werewolf and Exalted, whereas the games that contain the material I really need to write the rules I want are Vampire and Mage. Oh well. It means more work for me reinventing the wheel, so to speak. But if I manage to make it "generic" enough, it will work with any core game book from the Original World of Darkness line.

I'd prefer to use the New World of Darkness system for this, actually, but I don't own that either and I have no other reason to buy it.

Vaevictis Asmadi

Greg B: Agreed. "Star Wars" is a fun movie, but it's far from Oscar quality. Anyway, yeah, that clip was good. Wonderful to see Lucas getting ribbed by the man that brought us "Apocalypse Now" and "The Godfather, Parts I and II." Now I've got to print off Scorsese's filmography on IMDB and check all the ones I still have to see.

Vaevictus: <I'm kind of absorbed in a spontaneous effort to write rules for roleplaying gargoyles> What exactly do you mean by "roleplaying"? Something along the lines of D20?

Harvester of Eyes - [Minstrel75 at gmail dot com]
"You can write this shit, George, but you sure can't say it." -Harrison Ford.

Vaevictis> At this point, they either will, or they won't. We did what we could. This is not optimistic or pessimistic. We'll just have to wait and see.
Greg Bishansky - [<---- The 11th Annual Gathering of the Gargoyles]
"February is Black History Month. Now, I don't see color. People tell me I'm white and I believe them, because police officers call me 'sir'." - Stephen Colbert

Has there been any progress on convincing Newsarama to run an article? It wouldn't be much work for them if they let one of us write it.
Vaevictis Asmadi

HoE> Yeah, Lucas pointed out that he never won an Academy Award.

You can see it here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dnfGvrw7wBc

Of course, Lucas hasn't directed a good movie since 1977, so, maybe that's why. And you know what, "Annie Hall" was better anyway.

Scorsese should have won many times over, and Im so happy for him.

Greg Bishansky - [<---- The 11th Annual Gathering of the Gargoyles]
"February is Black History Month. Now, I don't see color. People tell me I'm white and I believe them, because police officers call me 'sir'." - Stephen Colbert

Greg B: <A lot of fans out there don't know this comic exists. They're out there. They're interested.> Exactly. Same thing with the DVDs. A friend of mine had no idea the DVDs were even out, and went out and bought them when I told him of their existence.

On a lighter note, I just got off the phone with my brother, and he told me that George Lucas presented last night with Spielberg and Coppolla, and apparently Lucas actually said: "I've never won an Oscar." Amused me to no end. You're a third of the way there, George. Step Two is figuring out why.

Harvester of Eyes - [Minstrel75 at gmail dot com]
"When you love someone, you've gotta trust them. There's no other way. You've got to give them the key to everything that's yours. Otherwise, what's the point?" -Sam "Ace" Rothstein.

That's awesome, Greg. Great job!


There's another old-looking Ishimura guy on the group-shots page.
http://lynativerse.artchicks.org/Screencaps/Gi_Group.htm
He's a grey one with white hair, green wings,and big horns, and his lips look all grizzled like his teeth have all fallen out. At least that's my impression of him. He looks older than Hudson.

I watched Turf and I swear, I'll get around to commenting on it eventually. I'm kind of absorbed in a spontaneous effort to write rules for roleplaying gargoyles, plus the population dynamics thing.

Vaevictis Asmadi

Hey gang,

I'll be appearing at Wonder-Con this coming weekend, March 2-4, 2006 in San Francisco.

I've got a couple panels on Saturday the 3rd at 3 and 4pm. One's an animation panel moderated by Shan Muir and featuring many animation pros, and the other is a spotlight panel moderated by Dan Vado of SLG.

For more info, check out: http://www.comic-con.org/

If you're in the neighborhood stop by, say hello, introduce yourself, get something signed or whatever!!

Greg

Greg Weisman
"How could I not believe in animism? Every time I get on my bathroom scale, proof is there before my eyes of the sentience (and perversity) of all things."

Good for you, Greg. Too bad Colbert didn't say anything about Gargoyles... I can only imagine.
Matt - [St Louis, Missouri, USA]
"Long ago, there were gargoyle clans all over the world... but I was not aware any of them had survived..." - Goliath, "The Green"

So, I spent the weekend at New York Comic Con. Which was fun. Had a great time.

I got to meet my hero, Stephen Colbert. That was a real honor. The man is a true, blue American hero. The greatest hero our great nation will ever see... to be that close to the man. To talk to him. To shake his hand.

Here's a picture of us: http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v661/gregx/IMG_0359.jpg

I wore my "Gargoyles" sweatshirt, which got me a lot of attention... I was sending people to the SLG booth all weekend. A lot of fans out there don't know this comic exists. They're out there. They're interested. This convention was proof.

I spoke to Dan Vado for a little while. He's hoping to have issue 3 on the stands soon. If it gets approved today, it'll take two weeks to print. So, two weeks after approval, it'll hit the stands. We just need to wait. Disney's licensing office is a lot smaller than one would think, and they get a lot of stuff to read and look over... unfortunatly, the latest Disney Princess books are probably higher priorities than any of SLG's comics. He's hoping they correct this soon.

Issues 4 and 5 are well into production. 4 is being colored, and Karine is posting updates on issue 5 in her LJ and she's in the middle of inking it... speaking of Karine, she's giving birth to her second child today, so everyone congratulate her and wish her luck.

There were a couple other tidbits. There will be "Gargoyles" graphic novels when enough issues are released to collect into a book which should be in book stores. Comics get a huge percentage of their income from the sales of trade paperbacks.

Overall, it was a good con. I really enjoyed it. And it proved something to me, find local cons like this, go and promote the comic... wear a Gargoyles t-shirt, you will be noticed. Fans are out there, they are interested. This is a great way to reach them.

Greg Bishansky - [<---- The 11th Annual Gathering of the Gargoyles]
"February is Black History Month. Now, I don't see color. People tell me I'm white and I believe them, because police officers call me 'sir'." - Stephen Colbert

DPH> I agree about the Ishimura Clan. I can't think of any gargoyles younger than Sora, I mean those would just be children equivalent to 9 year old humans, but I think we saw at least one gargoyle that was probably older than Kai:

http://lynativerse.artchicks.org/Screencaps/Gi_Clan.htm

He's the blue one with the beard. Thank Lynati for the screenshot!

Matt - [St Louis, Missouri, USA]
"Long ago, there were gargoyle clans all over the world... but I was not aware any of them had survived..." - Goliath, "The Green"

Ask Greg backlog is down to double digits. Right now, I'm more interested in following the genetics of my 32 member clan all the way down to the 13th generation.

One thing, I was just thinking about: when I was watching Bushido, how many different generations of gargoyles did you see? Kai was hatched in 1898, Yama was hatched in 1938, and Sora was hatched in 1958. That's 3. But did you see any gargoyles who looked like they belonged to the generation between Kai and Yama? Or any gargoyles that looked like they were younger than Sora? Older than Kai? The reason I'm picking on the Japanese clan is two-fold: it's the only clan on the world tour (outside of the Mayan) that we get to see pretty much all of them and it's lived in peace. When we're trying to work out the size of gargoyle clans in the modern world, the Japanese clan is probably the best canon model from the series.

dph_of_rules
Whatever happenned to simplicity?

Harvester, Greg B.>

*parties like it's 1999... again.*

KingCobra_582@hotmm - [KingCobra_582 at hotmail dot com]
'Ignore Me!' - Venture Bros.

*reads Greg B's announcement*

The week's off to a great start already. Movie geeks rejoice!

Harvester of Eyes - [Minstrel75 at gmail dot com]
"When you love someone, you've gotta trust them. There's no other way. You've got to give them the key to everything that's yours. Otherwise, what's the point?" -Sam "Ace" Rothstein.

And away we go on with the show!
Vinnie - [tpeano29 at hotmail dot com]
Remember the old Gargoyles comics!

10th
Justin - [justin dot lindley at gmail dot com]
Justin M. Lindley

9th in the name of reptiles everywhere...
KingCobra_582@hotmm - [KingCobra_582 at hotmail dot com]
'Ignore Me!' - Venture Bros.

Eighth!
Makhasu - [aknellthatsummonsthee at yahoo dot com]

seventh in the name of me and.......ice cream :)
Warcrafter - [grafixfangamer1 at sbcglobal dot net]
Humans are such easy prey for a gargoyle!........oh, and my new gamertag on xbox live for 360 is Avalon123

sixth
Purplegoldfish - [skydragonn at aol dot com]
"Whoa, Tiny, you mean there's more than one of you?" "My name is not Tiny! I am Goliath!" - Elisa and Tiny

Fifth!!
Phoenician - [theoneandonlyphoenician at yahoo dot com]
The Suspense is Terrible . . . I Hope it Lasts -- Willy Wonka

... it was a long time coming. Raging Bull. Taxi Driver. Goodfellas... he should have won decades ago!

Finally, Hollywood's greatest living director wins an Oscar!

Congrats, Martin, congrats!

Greg Bishansky - [<---- The 11th Annual Gathering of the Gargoyles]
"February is Black History Month. Now, I don't see color. People tell me I'm white and I believe them, because police officers call me 'sir'." - Stephen Colbert

Fourth!
Kaylle
GargoylesDVD.com

Third.
Lynati - [Lynati_1 at hotmail dot com]

ok, *Bows to Greg B.s Greatness* Second in command this week
Wingless

Since no one else is taking it, First
Wingless

FIRST in the name of Truthiness!
Greg Bishansky - [<---- The 11th Annual Gathering of the Gargoyles]
"February is Black History Month. Now, I don't see color. People tell me I'm white and I believe them, because police officers call me 'sir'." - Stephen Colbert