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by tsox
(unregistered id: 4BF7CE2F96)
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TOYFARE: What were your earliest ideas for the show, and how did it develop from there?
JP: I think I found the first sketch I ever did of them which was a doodle done while I was still working on The Tick, so the latest it could have been was the beginning of 97. And there was no idea, I was just trying to draw the most annoying, cheesy dorks possible. That's pretty much all I did for a couple of years. And then I would draw a father/doctor kind of character with them... immediately it became Johnny Quest plus Scooby Doo plus The Hardy Boys. And I was like, "Oh it would be fun to take that 'Golly gree' and mystery angle, and just murder these kids every time." Because if 15-year-old boys tried to follow jewel thieves into a mine, they would probably get their heads caved in with a rock by jewel thieves. [Laughs] So I think that's what I started with, and then they picked up a Brock along the way, who I think I was calling Vince at first. And when my friends and I started publishing a comic anthology Monkeysuit, I started a little bit of a story intending to publish it in that.

Toyfare: So you eventually took the idea and turned it into a pilot script, but what was the comic story going to be like? Was it basically the same story the pilot ended up being?
JP: Well, you know we only put on of those out a year. I'm sure I intended it as maybe a dozen-page chapter three of an ongoing story. And there were going to be a lot of little references and editor's notes. Like, anytime anything comes out of their mouth, "Oh remember when", there'd be that little asterisk and a little editor's note that says, "See the 'Adventure of the Crystal Skull'". As if there had been this rich history the whole time. And yeah, I think it was going to be some part of the pilot. It was just going to be a slice of their dumb lives.

Toyfare: How did you decide to add costumed super-villains into that Hardy Boys/Johnny Quest kind of world?
JP: Just look at everything I've done. I'm so weaned on superheroes and crap that there's no way that wasn't going to find its way in there. And that's what was exciting to me. I think why I was able to write it so quickly was because I realized that all these little stray ideas in my notebook for a variety of different things--whether they were comic stories or just like half-ideas--so many of them fit under this umbrella because it crossed so many genres. It can be Marvel Comics or James Bond or Scooby Doo and whatever we want it to be.

Toyfare: Was the Monarch sitting around in your notebook, waiting to find a home?
JP: No, no Monarch I made up on the spot while I was writing the pilot. I didn't put a lot of thought into him on purpose, because writing The Tick was all about, "Who's the villain of the week, and what pun is he based on?" I really thought that there would be a new villain every week. And actually I think the earliest draft of the pilot really had them intersecting with a lot more jerks. Like, even just quick cut-aways for no reason of people hating Dr. Venture, who then never get involved in the story. Like, they see somebody at the airport who's like, "Ooh, I hate Dr. Venture...but I have to catch this plane." It was a little bit more ironic and meta and all that crap. When you don't have characters yet, you're a little more conceptual. [Laughs] And I thought that it would be kind of bad-on-purpose animation, it would look like a Spider-Man cartoon from the 60s...and then you just slowly fall in love with your characters. I think the Monarch became a main character because we were coming up with story ideas for the first season and we would pretty much have a blank slate for a villain, and it's, "There's this guy who's doing this to Dr. Venture this week, and he should turn him into a caterpillar." And I was like, Well...Jesus, why we just make that the Monarch?" [Laughs]

Toyfare: Were there any major plot points that you knew about from the very beginning?
JP: I think that because my original idea was that the boys would die in every episode, probably we knew about the clone thing. And I thought we would kill them a few times during the first season, and we just held it...then you learned temperance, too. So you learned, "Oh maybe it's better to hold that until your finale." And then it becomes a cool thing instead of just one more throwaway joke. There's a lot of stuff that was in the pitch book that was indicating characters that we wanted to work with, and Doc and I would both every once in a while remember to flip through it and go, "Oh yeah, what's that guy's deal again?" Doc would go, "Hey, has Brock ever been in love?" and I'd go "Yeah, Molotov Cocktease. This is her deal." I think there's even one or two characters that are in the pitch that I still haven't gotten to because you start thinking about it and you're like, "Oh that's not funny," or veers too much into taking itself too seriously. "OH that's some Weapon X stuff. That's way too up its own ass an

Mar. 20, 2009, 6:55am

by tsox
(unregistered id: 4BE2982B61)
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That's way too up its own ass and not funny, and
I'll figure out a funny angle on it someday," but it goes by the
wayside.

Mar. 20, 2009, 7:58pm

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