Go Speed Racer With David Pepose

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome back everybody time again for Word Balloon. The Comic
Book Conversation Show. John Sutris here happy to welcome David
Peppos back to Word Balloon. He's got some fun stuff.
But David, I got to ask you right off the
bat I warned you about the opening a little old
NBC promo from the sixties. Do you know about Captain Nice?

Speaker 2 (00:20):
No? I think I think that might be before my time.

Speaker 1 (00:24):
Well, I don't know if you recognize the art, but
that was Jack Kirby art for the promo.

Speaker 2 (00:28):
Oh wow, that's cool.

Speaker 1 (00:30):
Yes, very short lived. I don't think it made it
past thirteen episodes, but late sixties kind of drifting off
the Batman craze and it was a broad comedy. But
what was William Daniel's name, the teacher in Boy Meets World.
It's okay if you don't remember, No, you know, all right,

(00:51):
I'm gonna hit you with the quiz. I think I
feel let's see mister something. Obviously. Yeah, he still does
comments in his nineth which is insane. William Daniels is
the there you Go? So yeah. So he before he
was Kit on night Rider and before he was on
another greade eighties show Saint Elsewhere, and of course Boy

(01:13):
Meets World. He was Captain Nice in that.

Speaker 2 (01:16):
Ardiculous I have the Wikipedia open for him now, and
it's blow in my mind that I did not know
mister Feenie was the voice of Kit. So thank you
for educating me the more you know.

Speaker 1 (01:28):
That's all right, man, No, no, no, And again we'll
give people some knowledge if they're not aware of some
of the ips that you're working on. I do want
to start with speed Racer in first. I'll show you
the most recent cover as well. But here's the Free
Comic Book Day and it was pretty smart of Mad
Cave to make speed their poster child for Free Comic
Book Day. When was your first awareness of speed Racer?

Speaker 2 (01:54):
Yeah, you know, I think I'm sure I caught reruns,
you know, just through like kind of culture osmosis as
a kid. And then I remember when the two thousand
and eight movie came out the same weekend as Iron
Man one, and you know, you can kind of feel
like pop culture, like the sliding doors of it all
that you know, that was the weekend that Iron Man
dominated so heavily and sort of formed the MCU and

(02:17):
the bedrock of today's modern polp culture, and so it
was one of those things that when Mad Cave first
approached me about speed Racer, it was last year's San
Diego Comic Con. Chaz Pangburn is an editor over at
Mad Cave, and I've worked with him in the past,
and I've had such a great relationship with the publisher

(02:37):
doing The Devil Whaar's My Face with Alex Kuarmick, and
so we've been looking to find something else to work
on together, and Chaz approached me and said, listen, we've
been doing Gotcha Man comics with That'snoco Production, and it's
been a great relationship. We're looking to expand our license.
Would you have any interest in speed Racer? And it

(02:58):
was like in I could feel the wheels turning. Just
I love writing car chases in comics. You might know
it from even my earliest work, you know, Spencer and Locke,
both volumes had big car chase sequences in those. I
love how comics can take a static medium and still
inject all this speed and intensity and motion, and so

(03:22):
I think it's such a cool, interesting challenge and being told, oh, hey,
you know you'd be able to do this over a
fifteen issue run, and actually it turned out to be
sixteen issues because we had it free comic book data
to the mix. I knew instantly I was never going
to get this opportunity again, and I remember thinking about
it on the show floor. I couldn't stop thinking about it,

(03:43):
and Mad Cave wound up having some sort of event
at San Diego, I think later that night or the
next night, and I remember cornering Chaz, I remember cornering
Mike Martz, the editor in chief. I remember cornering Mark London,
the publisher and CEO of the company, and telling all
three of them, Hey, I want this book. I think
we could do something really cool, And so I pitched

(04:06):
them a story that was more or less Rocky in
a race car, seeing speed, sort of trials and tribulations
as he goes from being sort of this unassuming back
alley street racer to joining the official Formula X League
and his journey to becoming a champion. And so I'm
working with artists A. V. Tinto on that book, and

(04:27):
he is just so sensational with it. And issue three
actually is going to be hitting stores this coming Wednesday,
where we've officially officially introduced racer X into the mix
after spending less few she's teasing him in the shadows.
So it's just been a real gift of a book.
It feels very unlike anything I've ever done, but it

(04:48):
still has If you're reading my Space ghost Run, you
know we're doing primarily done in one and done in
two adventures in this but getting to kind of watch
Speed learn and grow and sort of you know, take
his hits and figure out how to you come back
from the brink of defeat. It's just been a really
just amazingly fun book to work on, and seeing the

(05:10):
responses that we've been getting to these opening issues has
really meant a lot to me as a creator.

Speaker 1 (05:15):
That's excellent. Man, And I'm an old school Speed fan,
well seventies Speed fan, and I have a feeling I
really don't know. And it's great that there is somebody
in charge of the IP because it really seemed like
when the original contracts for the old cartoon were happening,
they didn't have one of those cla clauses of you

(05:36):
got to send the films back to us or destroy
them after whatever run, so that those things just you know,
ran and ran and ran and again. I was a
benefit factor of that kind of situation, and that and
even some of the earlier anime that we were getting
from sixties shows. I remember Gigantor, I remember eight Man

(05:58):
and Prince Planet. Those were all black and white. But
Speed was just it was great and really scary for kids.
Fair I don't know much of the original ones you've watched.

Speaker 2 (06:09):
I watched every episode to prepare for this, and yeah,
it's it's so interesting because you can see the influences,
you know that, like James Bond was a big influence
on that. You can see that with all them five's gadgets,
and also in particular a lot of the Razor X
related subplots, you know. I mean, he's really he's almost

(06:30):
like Batman, you know, in a race car in a
lot of ways. Yeah. Yeah, I watched every episode, similar
to what I did on Space Ghost. I was I
wanted to make sure that I knew all of the
mythology because the advantage that I have when I'm working
on some of these sort of classic cartoon properties is
they were kind of making it up as they went along,

(06:51):
and so I have the benefit of hindsight where I
can sort of take everything and kind of digest it
and find different dots to connect that. You know, the
original showrunners couldn't do that. They didn't have the time
or the wherewithal to connect those dots. And so, you know,
for me, there's so many interesting characters in the speed

(07:12):
Racer universe just kind of you know, unlike say, you know,
some of my superhero fair that I've been doing a
lot of recently. Speed has no powers. You know, the
closest thing he has to his superpower is the Mak five.
But he's very he's flesh and blood. You know, his
stakes are not world shaking, they're actually just deeply, deeply
personal and a small spoiler for anyone who hasn't been

(07:36):
reading our run on speed Racer yet, the real impetus
behind our entire run is that Speed's looking to save
his father, Pops his life. Pops has a heart attack
in issue one, and you know heart transplants when you
have no insurance, they can go up to almost a
million dollars, and so Speed needs to win the Formula

(07:57):
X Championship in order to pay for that surgery. So
that sort of is like kind of the the emotional core,
the emotional drive behind the series is that it's not
Speed just racing for glory, it's that he can't afford
to be in second place. He really has to kind
of like win that championship if he wants to keep
his family intact. So, you know, the very the series

(08:21):
is very much you know, Speed kind of playing off
of those around him, whether it's learning things from his rivals,
sometimes painfully, but also kind of that that that interpersonal
dynamic between his supporting cast. You have we see Trixie
for the first time, and I love our take on Tricksie.
She's sort of the Carol Feris to speeds Cal Jordan,
and that she owns the racing company, and so that

(08:44):
adds like a little something to their dynamic where there's
a will they or won't they? But also like she's
his boss and he's the hot shot race car driver,
and you know, how do you navigate when their interests
are not always necessarily aligned. You have racer Rex, who
you know, for those who know the cartoon, that's Speed's
long lost brother Rex, who in our series was presumed

(09:07):
dead in the middle of a race, and that's sort
of this like driving tragedy that has kind of shattered
the family in a lot of ways. And so Rex
meanwhile has been operating the Shadows as this mysterious enforcer
named Racer X. And it first, as we'll see in
this series and in fact in this issue coming up,

(09:27):
he doesn't love the idea of Speed joining Formula X
as a sport. He knows there are some kind of
corrupt undertones going on, particularly with Alpha Automotive and the
car Acrobatic Team, and so you know, his thinking is,
I need to kind of stop my brother from doing
this before he gets himself hurt. And so you're going
to see some sparks fly in that initial meeting between

(09:51):
Speed and Racer X this coming Wednesday. Spritle, who we
you know, he was actually the trickiest character for me
in the whole book, because if you seeing those original episodes,
Spritle might be the most of his time. You know,
he's played very broadly. It's it's very much in sort
of a caricature kind of mode that wouldn't necessarily fly

(10:11):
in the Air twenty twenty five. And so once we
kind of dig drilled deep into that character and realize like, oh,
you know, he's sort of this precocious street wise he's
the younger brother who was forced to grow up a
lot faster, but doesn't have that tragedy that Speed carries
over Rex's loss because he's too young to remember him.
So we kind of recontextualize Spridle as sort of this

(10:35):
street wise hustler of a live streamer and sort of
he's like the color commentator behind some of Speed's you know,
back alley exploits. So he's you know, he gets to
view the love of racing from a very different angle
from Speed. And then of course Pops, who we will see,
you know, he'll kind of come in towards our second

(10:57):
arc really sort of at first not wanting Speed to compete,
you know, he lost one son to the sport. He
doesn't want to lose another. And now he realizes, oh,
like I'm stuck for this and maybe the only way
I can keep my kids safe is if I train him.
And so he winds up being Speeds kind of like
coach and cornerman through the course of this series. So

(11:17):
watching Speed kind of like evolve over the course of this.
You know, he's talented, but he is very emotional. He's headstrong,
he can be arrogant and reckless. I consider him as
like Hamlet in a race car in a lot of ways.
You know, these these he broods, he struts. He's got
these big emotions, these high highs, these brooding loves. He's

(11:39):
such an interesting character because having those flaws is inherent
to him. He's got so much he needs to grow
up in a big way. He's got so much room
to learn. But at the same time he's got all
this natural talent. You know, something that I really found
inspiring for the movie was this idea that, you know,

(12:01):
to kind of make up my own quote here, it's
sort of, you know, like Jordan Dunk's Picasso paints. Speed
drives this idea of racing being an art form, being
a form of self actualization for him, something that the
world throws all these obstacles to try to keep him
from doing the thing that he was put on this
earth to do, and Speed still finds ways around it

(12:22):
and finds ways to kind of rise to the occasion,
even in the face of defeat and hardship. That's something
that really speaks to me as a comics creator. You know,
I live and breathe this stuff. I mean, we've talked
about it in the past, but I'm a third generation
comics fan. My grandfather used to read me Calvin Hobbs
when I was a kid, and you know, this business

(12:43):
like the idea of going from being a fan to
maybe dipping your toes into the indie pool, and then
from going from the indie to the big leagues and
figuring out like, oh can I hack it? What's the
learning curve behind all this? How do I kind of
like step up my game and as fast as I
can to make sure I can keep up. That's something

(13:05):
that feels very autobiographical to me. That's something that I
can really relate to as a comics creator. But being
able to do it through this like larger than life,
heightened action erase every issue and so you know, having
a collaborator like t V Tinto is like just paramount
to a book like this. The way that he portrays speed,

(13:27):
you know, I think he's one of the all time
greats in terms of doing that. I think he's right
up there with like Trad Moore and All New Ghostwriter,
or David Aja with his issue of Hawkeye. David is
taking the ground for car chases and comics and just
seeing the way that he's been doing all this he's
working on our sixth issue right now as we speak.

(13:47):
Just really sensational looking stuff. I couldn't have asked for
a better collaborator on this book.

Speaker 1 (13:53):
That's cool. Here's an image from Yes, She's great. Yeah,
I'll keep it. I'll keep it does spoiler free, but
there's some great examples of the art and certainly you
have to, you know, acknowledge again its origins coming from
anime and everything, and that's a great anime feel.

Speaker 2 (14:12):
Yes, you know, I think that was something that you know,
when Chas Pangburn and I were talking about possible artists
in the book, we wanted to make sure that it
still felt in keeping with the original cartoon, but something
that you know, we wanted to make sure it also
felt as modern as possible. And I had worked with
Davide on an issue of Avengers Unlimited a few years back.

(14:33):
It was a Captain Marvel she Hulk team up, and
I was so struck by how he really is the
full package. He does these amazing expressive characters, but he's
also got this very fluid sense of motion and the
action is just so intense that you know, the stars
really aligned in a nice way where it was last

(14:53):
year's New York Comic Con. I had just sent in
my outline to Tatsunoko with sort of my roadmap for
the series, and I just turned it in and then
went straight to Comic Con and I ran into David
and I was like, what are you working on right now?
And we're catching up and I was like, do you
have any time in your schedule? And so thankfully, you know,

(15:18):
everything kind of worked out timing wise. But I think
this book is just as much his baby as it
is mine. I think the just fun character beats that
he's injecting into our core cast. You know, he knows
the assignment, He understands kind of what this book is
in a lot of ways, and so it really kind

(15:40):
of allows us to bring in I think the widest
possible audience that we do have. It's a little bit
more of a modern take, a little bit more of
an adult take, but it's not gritty. But I think
David is able to sort of kind of keep that
sense of humor that the original series had while still
kind of making sure that it's been modernized for the

(16:01):
year twenty twenty five. And just seeing the way that
he portrays the car chases you know, it's very technically demanding.
Even for me writing it. I'm like, Okay, how do
I paste this out? How do I keep the choreography
feeling unique? And you know, figuring out what are speeds,
rival strengths and weaknesses and weapons that they bring to

(16:22):
their Formula X cars And that's how we kind of
like change it up a bit. But it's a lot
to put on an artist's shoulders, and it's really sort
of a trustfall exercise for a writer like me to say,
all right, like I can only sort of describe this.
I can maybe add in a little bit of reference
art here and there, but it's up to you to
sell this thing. And Davide is never back down from

(16:43):
a challenge that I've given him. You know, he he's
right up there with some of the most talented artists
I've ever worked with. And yeah, I feel like every
issue that he's done with speed Racer looks better and
better and better than the last.

Speaker 1 (16:57):
I got to ask about one character we haven't talked to, well,
actually two, but I want to talk about Chimp Chim
first because you know, again, product of its time, and
it is so crazy because of course you've got a
Monkey and space Ghost as well or in yeah, and
well there you go. So three monkeys, My god.

Speaker 2 (17:14):
You're joking abou has winged monkeys. I'm basically comics is
leading monkey laureate.

Speaker 1 (17:21):
But yeah, like, did you debate within yourself about using
chim chins, because again it is, you know, it's this
weird thing that there were a lot of chimpanzees both
on camera and cartoons back in the sixties.

Speaker 2 (17:34):
We waffled on that one to the point where it
was it was chim chim sort of made it into
the thing in the in the very eleventh hour, like
I was scripting our free comic book Day issue, and
we sort of had kept going back and forth with
it about should we use him, should we not use him?

(17:56):
Is it going to be too much? And I think
that a lot of that discussion was a product of
not having an artist attached to the book at that time,
And so sometimes when you're kind of planning these things out,
you're doing it blind and you don't know kind of
what the final visual tone is going to be, and
so something like speed Racer, you know, you're kind of
figuring out, like, what's this thing going to look like?
What you know, what can you get away with? And

(18:18):
so I'll admit I was like, can I get away
with a monkey? Like? Is it too much? And after
kind of talking it over with Tazenoko, we were all
kind of like, you know, I think the readers are
going to expect it, And so having kind of chimp
Him in there is sort of Spridles kind of monkey mascot.
I would love to write a story someday about like

(18:39):
how did Spridle win Chim Him. I'm sure there's a
tale of misadventure that resulted in that, you know, knowing
how kind of precocious title is in this book, but yeah,
he's you know, I think looking back on it, I
think it was the right call to just have the
character in there, just you know, it's it's to remind

(19:04):
the the original fans like, hey, we see, but hey,
this is like we want to kind of stay true
to the original vision of the cartoon, sure, and so
doing it through kind of a lens of modern day storytelling.
So yeah, Chim Chim was We'll be seeing. I do
have a little story of Spridle and Chim Chim's misadventures

(19:25):
coming out in speed Racer Tails from the Road number one.
H Mark London is going to be doing our main
story with Racer X, but that'll be coming out around
this time next month.

Speaker 1 (19:39):
Oh okay great. I had Russell on a couple of
weeks ago to talk about the Racer X book because again,
I mean, even as much as I love speed and
especially as a little kid, come on, we all like
you said, yeah, man, come on, absolutely, you know what
you said. They gave him the secret agent kind of angle. Yes,
forgive me as inspector to tech has has he made

(20:01):
a uh.

Speaker 2 (20:03):
We we we've used his Japanese name in the book,
Inspector Raguko, but yes, he has appeared in issue zero
or a free comic book Day Issues. Actually our narrator
for all that that kind of introduces us to Palm City.
And Palm City is so fun because it really is
it's sort of like our take on Miami, but it's

(20:25):
it's a racing town. It's the town that Formula X
was born in, and so everybody's obsessed with racing, and
so it's it's kind of it's inspired by my time
being a small town news reporter and just figuring out
that every town has their own character to it. What
do they what is the town believe in? And so
Inspector is kind of our narrator for that. He appears

(20:47):
as well at issue too to get Speed out of
some legal hot water, uh, owing to his his his
past relationship with Pops. So we'll see him kind of
come and go in the series, particularly when there's like
crime related stuff. That's been the cool thing about this
book is that Speed Racer it's very much a crime story,

(21:07):
or I'm sorry, it's very much a sports story I
should say that has crime underturrent undercurrents to it, and
you know, just talking about not only like speeds adventures
on and off the track, but also knowing that like
Formula X represents an ideal for speed, but the reality is,
like there's there's some things rotten in the sport. You know,

(21:31):
it's sort of big money, big interests. You know, people
like Dante Ferno, who's the head of Alpha Automotive, the
owner of the car Acrobatic team, and as we allude
to in our second issue, he used to be a
pretty cutthroat racer in his own right by the name
of Captain Terror And so you know, Speed kind of

(21:54):
has to show that like integrity matters and that you
know skills and that like you can't just cheat your
way to the finish line, like at the end of
the day, like your actions speak louder and so. But yeah,
Mark has been doing some really cool stuff over in
Racer X. I've gotten a chance to read some of

(22:15):
those scripts, and yeah, I love the take that he
has on Racer X. It's sort of when we were
discussing it, he had this idea of kind of doing
a little bit more of an Noorish kind of take
on the character, and I think it works so well.
This idea of Speed is like a pure racer, whereas
Racer X in my mind, he doesn't have quite as

(22:39):
much of the natural skill that somebody like Speed does.
But he's trained, he's he's already sort of built up
his technique and his fundamentals in the finesse. But also
he knows how cars work. He is his father's son
in that regard, and so I think you're going to
see a lot of like Rex using his smarts, using

(23:00):
and sort of principles of design in terms of car mechanics,
and that I think play out in some interesting ways
over the course of Mark series.

Speaker 1 (23:09):
Regarding the two Cards, the Mock five, and forgive me,
I always forget the name of the Shooting Star. Shooting Star,
of course, so and if it's part of the story,
don't spoil obviously, But did did Rex build the Shooting
Star after being involved with the building of the Mock five?

Speaker 2 (23:27):
Uh, that's a good question. I believe the answer is yes,
although I'll defer to Mark on that one. It's not
something that we go into in the main speed Racer storyline,
but I would assume the answers yes. I would assume that,
you know, the way that our continuity goes in the

(23:47):
main speed Racer book is that you know, Rex wanted
to be a formula ex racer and Pop said you
were not ready. I forbid it, and you know, being
a rebellious son, says I don't care what you think,
old man, I'm out. And so he winds up joining
the car acrobatic team, and through some kind of shadiness
and back room dealings, winds up having a horrifying crash

(24:11):
and is presumed dead. And you know, meanwhile Rex has
been sort of saved from the brink of death but
with some scars, and winds up kind of living this
new life as a as a getaway driver, I believe. Yeah,
And and so he's had this whole other life. And meanwhile,
Speed and the whole family has just been shattered over

(24:31):
this loss. And it's really taken this thing that they
all loved in different ways, the sport of Formula X,
and it's really corrupted it. You know that Speed, you know,
he carries this tragedy in his shoulders. Pops meanwhile, wants
nothing to do with this sport that's defined it because
again he lost a kid. And meanwhile, like Spritle, you know,
he's too young to remember any of this, so he's

(24:52):
he's he's very enthusiastic. And meanwhile, you know, Mile Racer
like she's their their marriage is gone.

Speaker 1 (25:01):
You know, David anticipated my question because I think she's
the most underserved character as far as the cartoons. So
tell me about my Racer.

Speaker 2 (25:10):
Yeah, you know, she she when she makes her appearance,
it'll be important, is what I'm going to say. But
you know, it's sort of a couple of different things.
Some of it just you know, kind of logistical and pragmatic,
but also just some of it of figuring out you
know that characters, you hit it right on the head
and the original cartoon, you know, she sort of she

(25:33):
appears occasionally, yeah, so sort of so sort of show
up to say something that maybe like, you know, deflate
Pops a little bit, you know, when he's getting all
worked up. But it was one of those things that
Speed Racer as a cast, there's a lot of supporting
cast members, you know, and it was sort of as
I was kind of triaging, like who are the ones

(25:54):
that feel the most important to me? You know, Tricksy Racer, ex,
Spriitle Pops. As I was sort of going down that list,
Ma Racer was sort of the one that thought the
least developed, And as I was kind of thinking about
what to do with her, I realized like, oh, this
is the story of a broken family, and every one

(26:15):
of them sort of reacts to this tragedy in a
very different way. And the idea of Ma Racer just
saying I can't do this, I can't be here like
I can't, I can't do this struck me as like
something you don't see a lot of in popular culture.
But we are going to be addressing that as the
series continues. But I kind of like this idea first

(26:38):
and foremost of having her off the board to start,
because then all the pressures on speed, he can't turn
to his mom and say how do we do this?
He's like, I'm the man of the house. I have
to figure this out, and my only way of getting
that money is if I win the Formula X championship.
And so it was a nice way of kind of
put heaping more pressure on his shoulders without having a

(26:59):
second parent to be able to lean on. But we
do have a plan.

Speaker 1 (27:03):
From a racer, that's great, No, it sounds great, man,
And again, I don't blame you. That's a good that's
a good turn to kind of yeah, I look forward
to her appearance and see what happened.

Speaker 2 (27:13):
It was kind of nice also just to add more
texture to Pops, you know, like just this idea of
he lost his son and now he's kind of a
single dad and he's not great at it. You know,
he's got he's doing the best he can, you know,
but he's not built that way. And so we have
that conversation where he's trying to call her an issue
one before the cat team shows up to rough them up,

(27:38):
and yeah, we do have plans for her, and I'm
very excited to see how we pay those off sounds cool.

Speaker 1 (27:46):
And forgive me Sparky. What's happening with Sparky.

Speaker 2 (27:49):
Sparky. Sparky is the chief mechani of the of Trixy's
race card treatment team of Turnwell Automotive, And so yeah,
Sparky is a fun character in that like he's trying.
He's trying so hard, and I think he is in

(28:09):
a little over his head a little bit. But Tricksy
is like hemorrhaging cash. This is like a family business
and she is like running out of money, and so
speed is sort of her last ditch attempt at like
keeping this family company alive. So knowing that she's kind
of like a good hearted person without a lot of cash,
sometimes she's got to cut some corners and make some compromises.

(28:32):
And so that's how Sparky winds up on the team,
is that he's good at what he does, but he's
very soft spoken. He's very easily overwhelmed. I thought a
little bit of a Kenneth the page from thirty Rock
a little bit with him. But he's got a really
fun sequence in issue five that'll be coming up, just

(28:54):
the idea of like having you know, this guy who's
sort of in charge of the pit crew and seeing
like like, oh, like you know, when the chips are down,
the pit crew will be there to kind of catch you.
He's a fun character and and he's one that I'm
looking for to kind of like delving into a little
bit more as the series goes on.

Speaker 1 (29:12):
That's cool. I gotta ask also about Jimchim. Would you
do a pizza dog kind of thing where we might
see an issue of speed Racer from Chimchim's perspective.

Speaker 2 (29:21):
That would be super cool. I would love to do that.
It's not it's not in the current plans, but I
have the feeling that is something that we could do
something really cool with entails from the Road. And also
I know that Mad Cave there's discussions about like how

(29:42):
can we sort of build this speed Racer universe? And
I feel like Spridle and Chimjim are something that have
been in conversation for a bit, So yeah, I would
love to do something like that. I mean, I did
my Blip centric issue in Space Ghost and it was
one of my favorites. We do have, like I said,
we have a Spridle and Chimchim centric short coming up

(30:06):
in tails from the road. You know, I'll spoil a
little bit. It's called Spridle Racer's Day Off and it
is what happens a day in a life of Spridle
and Chimchim when they take the mock five out for
a joy ride. So that's going to be really fun.
And it's drawn by the amazingly talented Alessio Zono, who

(30:28):
was doing the main covers on the main speed Racer book.
You might know their work from a skull Crusher, but
Alessio just absolutely understood the assignment. It's super like dynamic,
but very cartoony and very funny. So you'll be able
to check out that short October.

Speaker 1 (30:47):
Twenty second Beautiful Man. That sounds great, No, that sounds
like Matt Cave has good plans for the speed Racer
franchise and I like, I like the you know what
you're doing with it.

Speaker 2 (30:58):
They've been very supportive of this book, and I think
similar to Space Goes like both that Cave and Tatsunoko
have given us a huge amount of attitude on this.
I think we knew, you know, going in. They gave
us a permission to say, like, how do you feel
like we could modernize this. I think they saw what
I had done on Space Ghost, and so I kind of,

(31:19):
you know, I gave them, I think, like a thirty
two page outline sort of outlining the whole series, and
then I wound up doing like another seventeen pages of
like references for like costume design and car design and
and so I had a pretty strong idea of what
I wanted to do, and uh Tatanoko has been wonderful.
They've really kind of been like yeah, like and when

(31:41):
there has been like the occasional like cultural like just
explanation that has to be sort of shared. Chas Pengbern,
our editor, has been an amazing conduit through all that,
where sort of he's been able to kind of like
connect the dots for all involved, and so it's been
a really kind of smooth streamline process. I'm very happy

(32:01):
with how everything has come together. And I want to
give a shout out as well to our amazing colors,
Rex Locus, who's done amazing work on David's inks, and
our letter Buddy Bowden, who really has left it all
out on the field. It reads really smoothly, but like
very intensely, and so it really has been like a
team effort on this book, and Chris Batista as well,

(32:22):
who's done variant covers and character designs on for Speed
and Razor Acts and Tricksy. Yeah, it's it's just been
an amazing team to work with and we're really trying
to kind of give it our all to make sure
that this book reads as fun as possible.

Speaker 1 (32:37):
Excellent man, all right, we've danced around space coasts, another
one of my childhood favorites and everything. I remember my
parents being very mad at me because it was kind
of like seven in the morning and you hear that
Space go ye down Saturday, leave us alone. But we're
done a great job with Spaceghast, David. I've really enjoyed it.

(32:57):
And I guess with Dynamite, are they number like do
they go back to issue one when it's a different arc?
I mean, because you've done more than three issues?

Speaker 2 (33:07):
Yes, this is our boy. This is our sixteenth issue
so far. And yeah, you know that was sort of
an ongoing conversation that we actually we went back and
forth a number of times about whether we were going
to continue the numbering or whether we were going to
do a new number one after our first year storyline ended.
And I think it made sense the decision to do

(33:28):
a new number one because our first year issues one
through twelve, and our annual it was meant to it
was built around our ongoing robocor storyline and introducing the
Council of Doom, and by the time we finished up
our annual, we had kind of we had already gotten
the resolution to all of that, and so for the
I think that the consideration was, how do we invite

(33:51):
readers to the table who might have missed the first
year's worth of storytelling. Having a new number one, we
can kind of started. It's really more of a season
two sure, where we've sort of introduced brand new plot threads,
including Tempest the Time Master, who's sort of our big
bag for our second year. That was our way of
sort of how do we elevate the stakes and scale

(34:13):
from sort of the universe being mind controlled in the
first season. Now it's all time and space are in danger,
but also the personal stakes, you know, rather than Robocorps
trying to hunt down Blip and Jan and Jase. Now
we see we saw at the end of our annual,
a figure comes returns from Jan and Jase's past. His
name is doctor Henry Contra, who is the twins' maternal grandfather,

(34:37):
and now that he's learned the twins are still alive,
he wants to bring them back, and that for me
really kind of spoke to I think the core fantasy
of Space Ghost to me and my approach to this
whole series, which is beyond the found family elements and
sort of space Ghost as a widower and the Twins'
orphans kind of healing each other's wounds, I think, to me,

(35:00):
the core fantasy of Space Ghost as it was originally intended,
it's it's the escapism. It's the wish fulfillment of being
a young kid, whether you're a young boy or a
young girl, being able to team up with this like
sci fi superhero and save the galaxy. And what is
sort of the ultimate threat to a fantasy like that,
it's when your parents say we need to bring you home.

(35:23):
And so that is sort of like I think, kind
of the personal stakes that are going to be threaded
through our Villain of the Month storyline is that it's
Space Ghost and the twins, now that their sort of
found family dynamic had finally been solidified, suddenly it's shaken
up where space Ghost is like maybe like should the
twins like go back with their family even if they

(35:46):
don't know him, but also him feeling very insecure and
jealous about the whole thing, and the Twins also sort
of doubling down and saying, you know, like Space Ghost
is our family, and you know, we don't know with
this guy, and you know Space ghosts Meanwhile, it's been
with us through thick and thin. So you know, I

(36:07):
think for me how this series kind of came together
was I think it was around our tenth issue. I
had written our Space Specter issue, and I remember thinking
when I first came up with that first year's outline,
I have the villains that I if I, you know,
if I got hit by a bus tomorrow. These are
the villains that I would want to use the Council

(36:27):
of Doom, Ultima and Space Specter. But there were so
many other villains that I really wanted to tackle. And
so when Dynamite came to me and said, listen, Space
Ghost is doing great for us. We would love to
do a second year. Do you have any ideas? I
was like, boy, do I There are so many great villains,

(36:48):
both in the original run and the Space Stars Revival.
You know, you have characters like Toymaker or the Eclipse
Woman who are actually created by Jack Kirby. You know,
you have Tarco the Terrible, who's a ten thousand year
old Viking warrior who can give Space Ghost to run
for his money. He was the villain in this week's.

Speaker 1 (37:08):
Issue, and I was gonna say, yeah, absolutely.

Speaker 2 (37:11):
You know, down to like just like fun, crazy concepts
like space Vampires, which Jonathan Loue just turned in his
final inks for that. I'm doing the lettering on that
right now, my lettering pass. So you know, I think
this second year, the villains I think are a little
bit more Silver Age influenced, but we're still taking kind

(37:34):
of that modern approach to it. And so that's the
thing I love so much about Space Ghost as a characters.
He's so versatile, you know, you know, saying like he's
half Batman, half the Mandalorian, a whole bunch of stories
of different types of stories organically fit on his shoulders.
And he's got such an interesting and eclectic and deep

(37:57):
bench of rogues that by the time I wind up
finishing my run whenever that winds up being, will have
exhausted just about every viable villain, uh for of Space
Ghost War. And so yeah, it's just been a really
fun series to be working on. Seeing the way that

(38:19):
people have continued to rally around the book has been wonderful. Yeah,
it's just a book, like Space Ghost is a real gift.
It's something that I think comes very naturally to me.
I think the themes are some of the themes that
I tend to like to explore in my work in general.
And Jonathan Lao on art has just been the Man's
a juggernaut. That guy, like he draws like a damn terminator.

(38:45):
He's so fast, but he every issue looks sensational. He
really is like just one of the unsung talents of
the comics industry. And so it's been nice being able
to sort of I think like he challenges me to
kind of like bring my a game every issue, and
every issue I want to give Jonathan something really cool

(39:06):
to draw. So yeah, I think it's been a really
wonderful partnership with him. And yeah, I'm very excited for
people to see kind of what we have in store
for Space Ghosts. You know, continuing are done in one
kind of approach, but sort of continuing to build not
just on our tempest storyline, but eagle eyed fans of

(39:27):
the original series might recognize the name of doctor Contra
as the villain known as the antimatter Man. And he's
going to kind of be like our Harvey Debt of
our series as tragedy winds up turning him to the
dark side in a very metaphysical and literal kind of way.
And what's the fallout going to be for Space Ghosts

(39:47):
and the Twins once they've finally gotten to know and
like this guy, what happens when he finally breaks bad?
So stay tuned. That'll be coming up, believe in issues
seven and eight.

Speaker 1 (40:00):
Okay, Jonathan, I've been a fan of since his Green
Hornet days, so you know, yeah, I know it's a
good choice. And yeah, is there a Hannah Barbera any
sort of vetting or Space Ghost in the way that like,
for instance, Speed or other ips.

Speaker 2 (40:16):
No. I well, you know, Warner Brothers has been really
wonderful to work with both on Space Ghost and Captain Planet.
And I remember I met our our licensing coordinator, Megan Logan,
I believe it was San Diego this year, and she's
just a wonderfully nice person, and I think we're very
much on the same wavelength in terms of, like, you know,

(40:39):
these characters that you know, uh, you know, we're big
generations ago. Now there's a whole generation of people that
aren't as familiar with these characters, and so how do
we kind of bring them into the modern day, not
sacrificing there's nothing broken about Space Ghost, quite the honest
how do we kind of find the bones of that character,

(41:01):
how do we lean into the strengths of that property,
but do it in a way that's accessible to a
new audience. And I think that way we've been able
to have our cake can eat it too. I think
there's there's two approaches to taking on a licensed book
like this. You either try to do sort of like
and here's the next season. And I think for certain
books that works a little better, you know, like I

(41:23):
think they've done great work with that and Powerpuff Girls,
for example, which already has that very distinctive visual style.
But I think when it's something that's a little older,
whether it's Captain Planet from the nineties or Space Coast
and speed Racer from the sixties, I think you run
that risk of you're never going to capture that exact

(41:43):
quality that those creators did from generations ago. And secondly,
even if you did, you'd be showing up to the
party decades late trying to compete with the original creator
secret sauce. I think that's a lose lose. I don't
think there's any way of winning that. I think the
best thing you can do for something like that is
to try to kind of make something fresh and new

(42:03):
with it while taking all these sort of prime ingredients
that the original series left for you. And so I've
been really fortunate and that all the books that I'm
working on, like they really all have the building blocks
for success. And so Warner Brothers has given us a
ton of attitude on this. I I don't think I've
gotten a single note on Space Ghost or Captain Planet

(42:27):
space Ghost. I don't think I've gotten a single note
since issue four of the original run. Okay, and even
that was just like hey, this like splatter of blood?
Can it be a silhouette of blood? Like you know,
that's that's that's not even really my job. That's that's
that's that's that's that's for Jonathan to do. And Captain Planet,
I think like they gave me one note and the

(42:49):
entire thing, and it was just like it was our
bontage at the beginning of issue two. That was a
great note from Megan was just can we add in
more mythology for Captain Planet and issue too?

Speaker 1 (43:00):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (43:01):
So yeah, they've been really they Like I've worked with
a lot of licensers over the years, and Warner Brothers
is just above and beyond. They're in a class unto themselves,
just a wonderful licenser to work with. I will work
with them, and I've told began this, but I'll say
it in public. I'll work with Warner Brothers on anything

(43:21):
they ask because that they have been such wonderful licensers
to work with. They've really trusted us to kind of
tell the best possible stories as we can envision it
and have not thrown up any sort of obstacles to
doing that. So they really are just fantastic to work with.

Speaker 1 (43:40):
Have you put beyond the Villains of Space Ghost and
his core family? You know, it's funny because obviously, yeah,
I guess Kat the planet technically, you know, even I
don't even know who animated it. But my question more
is about another sixties property. That's another space property. I
can even think of two of them, actually, the Galaxy

(44:02):
Trio and the Herculoids, which I don't know even from
a mythological standpoint, but it would seem to me you
could put the herculoids on an alien planet and have them.
But yeah, are they fair game for you to play with?

Speaker 2 (44:15):
So it's it's slightly more complicated because they're all separate licenses. Yeah,
so there's there's there's It's not to say that it's
impossible that any of this might happen. I've been lobbing
to do uh Herculoids for a while, okay, to have
that team up, because you know, I watched Space Stars,

(44:36):
you know, to kind of this, and I kind of
love that idea of I love the team for us
even I think there's like a cool kind of like
almost like Legion of Superheroes kind of parallel to them,
or I'm sorry, not Legions of New Gods kind of
parallels oh okay, you know, but also a little bit
of Legions of superheroes. And I like the idea in

(44:56):
particular of like you know, of jan kind of like
interacting with them because there was always that sort of
love interest thing going on with Sure and I think
that's like a fun little wrinkle that we It's something
we can't do in the original with just the core cast,
So I would love to do something like that. It's
something that I keep bringing up, you know, keep telling

(45:18):
Dynamite if you want to see that happen, because I
think the more people who say it, like, the more
likely we can make that happen. But I know the
current Herculeids round has been wonderful. I've been reading that
every month, so you know, I yeah, I would love
to tackle those characters. Right now, I'm focusing just on

(45:38):
the Space Ghost license just because that's sort of where
my that's where my pay grade kind of ends. But
you better believe I'm lobbing for that, and I'm already
sort of watching some of those old cartoons and taking
notes just in case.

Speaker 1 (45:53):
I'm thinking back too, when when DC had the license
and they had future question when park Jeff Parker right
it and Chrisomny was drawing, and you know, some help
too from and why am I blanking on?

Speaker 2 (46:05):
Next?

Speaker 1 (46:05):
Is this great creator Steve Ruth, Thank you buddy. There
you go, absolutely yeah, you know, and obviously Steve loved
those original Hanna Barbara design. Steve's a purist, and I
respect that about Steve, you know, I mean, I know
that about Steve. You know.

Speaker 2 (46:20):
It's it's the thing I love most particularly about like
Herculeoids and the Teen Force and all that is that,
you know. I think the big challenge that I would
imagine that that Jeff Parker would have had to deal
with on Future Quest is that all those Hannah Barbara
characters they all do they're all kind of like different
flavors and and and sort of different tones, and so

(46:43):
that he did. He just did a herculean effort to
kind of figure out how to I sort of bring
all this together, what's the common ground? And Joe Casey
just did you know, some really admirable work in that
score with his US question Crossover Space absolutely using one
of the few villains I hadn't hadn't already locked down.

(47:04):
I felt I felt bad. I think he went into
that assignment being like, oh, what about Creature King or
whatever and died. I had to be like, oh no,
he's Pepples is using like all of them, Doctor Night.
Mary did a great job with so. But you know,
I think the Space characters they work really well together.
It's very natural, but they all kind of bring something

(47:25):
very different to the table. But I think if I
were able to tackle something like that, it would be
kind of figuring out you know, it's you figure out
what are the overlapping qualities of Space Ghost and Herculeids
and the Team Force and then figuring out, like, now,
how are they? How are they wildly different? And I
think there's some really interesting stuff that could be done

(47:48):
with those characters. So yeah, knock on what I would
I would love to do something with all them, and
uh so write your congressman, and maybe it'll happen.

Speaker 1 (48:01):
All right, now, we got to talk about Captain Planet,
and I was telling you off the air, I was,
you know, hey, man, listen to the Captain Planet fans,
no disrespect. I'm like, oh, that could potentially be interesting.
But for me, and again I wasn't a little kid.
It was kind of that last animation era of simplified cartoons.

Speaker 2 (48:23):
Yeah it was.

Speaker 1 (48:24):
You know, cartoons got more sophisticated because of Batman the
animated series and also everything that followed Justice League and
It's Sue the Superman cartoon, things like that. But so, so,
what gravitas are you bringing to Captain Planet beyond the
environmentalists that he was originally designed to be.

Speaker 2 (48:45):
You know, so anyone who has followed my interviews over
the years knows that Captain Planet was a white whale
for me pretty much from my first book. You know,
everyone was asking like, is there a license that you
would like to tackle? I always said Captain Planet, because
I feel like that book has always been just an

(49:05):
overlook gem that has all the building blocks for success.
You know, You've got this diverse, international, multicultural team that
is so natural apparent to the core principles. You've got
these really interesting powers in the in the various elemental
rings that in a post Avatar the Last Airbender world,
you're like, oh, you can do really interesting stuff with

(49:28):
the elements with each of these rings. You know, it
was just Captain Planet, the original cartoons a little ahead
of its time in that regard. I think Captain Planet
as a character is really interesting. You know, this idea
of this sort of immortal elemental demigod fighting to protect
our planet. Why you know, like, and I think it's

(49:48):
it comes down to this very deep not just humanist streak,
but this idea that like, you know, he's he's he's
protecting life as we know it. But human beings are
sort of the complex creatures on the planet, and this
idea of sort of you know where they create, you
know who, and whose image was who created you know.

(50:10):
I think Captain Planet ultimately has this very deep, abiding
respect and love for humanity. That is something that kind
of puts some shoulder on your shoulder with somebody like
Superman or Captain America. And so you kind of put
all these things together and then you have this kind
of very forward thinking message about environmentalism and capitalism, sort

(50:31):
of two sides of the same coin. That a lot
of the issues that we have that are plaguing our
world are fueled by sort of rich billionaires that just say,
we know this is happening, but we don't care. You know,
we can buy our way out of consequences. Well, what
happens to people like you and me on the ground.

(50:51):
I think in nineteen eighty nine, when the original show
came out, climate change was seen kind of as hypothetical.
You know, they have the whole on the ozone layer,
they had acid rain, but like all the aggregate, it
was still like, oh, you know, like if we kind
of course correct we can stop this now in the
year twenty twenty five. It's not hypothetical, you know. I mean,

(51:14):
I live in Los Angeles. We had the wildfires, you know,
as I was working on this storyline. You know, I
lived in New York during Hurricane Sandy. My parents live
in the Midwest. You know, they had tornadoes.

Speaker 1 (51:27):
Yeah, we tornadoes and flooding here in the Midwest. Absolutely.

Speaker 2 (51:31):
Now, you know, I think it's it's no longer just
climate change. It's it's it's environmental disaster. It's a disaster
movie that we're all extras in, you know, sadly. And
so this idea of you know, trying to take a
series that to me feels like Giant Seisa, X Men
meets Avatar The Last Airbender, It's something I really wanted

(51:55):
to kind of tackle for a very long time. And
so what wound to Pap was it was last year's
San Diego Comic Con, the same con that I Want
a Landing speed Racer. Dynamite had announced an expansion to
their partnership with Warner Brothers, and they announced Captain Planet
is one of their books. And it's so funny because
I remember writing the Train to San Diego Comicon that year,

(52:19):
and I wound up sitting with Jody Hauser, a writer
and a friend of mine, and I remember us talking about, like,
you know, what we were working on in projects that
we wanted to work on. I remember telling her on
the way down, you know, I've wanted to write Captain
Planet for a long time. I don't, I just maybe
that dreams just not meant to be. And then forty
eight hours later, Dynamite says we've got the rights to

(52:42):
Captain Planet, and I get this, I get this email.
It's you know, while we're at the hotel bar and
I see Nick Barucci and my editor Joe Rieban on
the other side of the bar, and I march over
to them with my phone saying, is this true? Do
you have anybody on this book? Because if not, you

(53:03):
have to give me this book. And yeah, you know,
thankfully Joe Ryman gives me a lot a latitude, and
so yeah, they kind of kind of came to be
that way. But I think similar It's similar to Space
Ghost in that I think it's very easy to take
the bones of that and then modernize it without sacrificing

(53:26):
too much of the original core concept. But I think
the difference is, you know, Space Ghost is very much
escapist fantasy. You know, it is not at all in
our world. It's very much in this heightened sci fi universe.
But Captain Planet, and I think that's the reason why
so many people see the original cartoon as maybe dated,
is that it has always been meant to reflect the

(53:47):
world outside its window at that very moment. And that's
why Captain Planet had the mullet, that's why he had
the crop top, and because in nineteen eighty nine, that
was really him. For me, the big challenge and the
thing that I was really haided to dig into was
things have changed quite a bit since nineteen eighty nine,
and how do we sort of keep the planeteers but

(54:08):
have them be reflections of the world outside today. And so,
you know, it's been really cool being able to explore
these characters, you know, and sort of kind of push
the envelope a little harder in terms of diversity and
inclusion in ways that weren't part of the conversation in
nineteen eighty nine. So Kwame, for example, is sort of,
you know, a former soccer star who suffers a career

(54:30):
ending injuries, so we have him as sort of we
actually have, you know, somebody with a disability being represented
on the team. It's sort of our cyclops meet Sam
from ted Lasso, the team leader, and we got to
see him step up in a pretty cool and dramatic
way and keptain Planet issue five that came out last week. Wheeler,

(54:53):
you know, we sort of recontextualized him as an autoworker
from Detroit because I like this idea that and it
makes sense to clearly with the American of the group,
there's going to be a skeptic in here, somebody who
doesn't understand, you know, and maybe answers the reader's question
of why should I care about any of this? Why
should I give a damn about this mission?

Speaker 1 (55:12):
Like why me?

Speaker 2 (55:14):
You know, can't we just hand this over to somebody else?
And so Wheeler's whole arc is sort of about like
why should I do this? Why should I step up?
And I think that's something we can all kind of appreciate.
We have Linka, who is the power of Wind, and
she's my favorite of the planeteers. She's sort of like
our Ilian or Respute and a little bit of our

(55:34):
Wolverine in the original cartoon. She's in the Soviet Union.
You know, she's very conservative, and things changed even in
the course of that cartoon, like by season like two.
They had to be like Eastern Europe, they couldn't say,
you know, so the wall fell, and so for us,
you know, I was thinking in the year twenty twenty five,
Russian you know, twenty something would have a very different

(55:57):
view on things, and so she really is. She's by
far sort of our most left leaning character of the group.
She's basically an anarchist, this idea of this like punk Russian,
like you know, she's got her own band.

Speaker 1 (56:11):
She she like puts like.

Speaker 2 (56:14):
That was that was that was, That was the influence
behind her character. She's the wild card. She's the scrapper
of the team, and so I think that kind of
positions her with her relationship with Wheeler really well. And
that opposite is kind of a tract. But also they
both are born scrappers and that's the thing that kind
of binds them together. But you know, like that struck

(56:36):
me as like, oh, that's very representative of like what
Russia might look like today. If he who you know,
I wanted I wanted to make sure we had somebody
who was LGBT on the team. You know, she's a
South Korean marine biologist, and I having written Savage Avengers
and Marvel, I've learned that having a tech head on

(56:58):
your team is always very It helps you kind of
connect story points because you can say, oh, hey, what's
you know? The genius is able to say, like, you
can science your way out of this. But I also
kind of, you know, took a little bit of like
Greta Thornberg under her this idea. She knows the sign
she knows the stakes better than anybody. She knows what

(57:21):
like you know what's going on with the you know,
the glaciers and you know, rising sea levels and global temperatures.
And at the same time, she has this deep, I
think reserve of hope where she's like, you know, if
I give in to despair, then we've already lost. And
I think that's something that I think is very important
to keep the planeteer's mission from feeling fatalistic. This idea

(57:45):
of like, oh, it's already too late. Well, if it's
already too late, then like why don't you just curl
up in a ball, you know, Like I think there's
always room to kind of fight for a better tomorrow,
and it just kind of takes, you know, being inspired
to do it last. But at least we have Mati,
who is sort of our i think, our big one
eighty from all the characters you know, the original cartoon.

(58:07):
He has the power of Heart, and he was seen
in the original cartoon as kind of a punchline. You know,
he's this wide eyed, naive, innocent from Brazil. And I
knew going in that if we sort of portrayed him
in that way, fans would continue to kind of see
him as a little bit of a punchline. So we
kind of turned him into sort of our dark, smoldering Mati,

(58:32):
and that his you know, his people are being forced
off their native land by corrupt lithium miners, and so
he was ready to sort of fight back in a
particularly violent way. And then he gets the power of heart.
It suddenly cleanses his mind of all rage and anger
and turns into a pacifist. But he's a pacifist who
could absolutely wreck you. He's sort of our Batman or

(58:53):
shang Chi. He's got, you know, the power of heart
is sort of like tactical telepathy and a lot of ways,
and we've been able to see different applications of that
over the course of the series. But you know, Aman
Casalo's are are artists in the book, really talented. Guy
kind of reminds me a little bit of Gary Frank
in a way, and a little bit of Steve Dylon,

(59:17):
a little bit of Doug Monkey. You know, you can
tell like certain characters like he really resonates with and
I feel like MATI like from the moment he started drawing,
I was like, oh, like yeah, like, yeah, he did
a great job with that. And so, you know, having
these kind of characters with these very kind of I
think firm established backstories and personalities and just different cultures

(59:39):
that they come from. Bringing them all together in New
York City, sort of the ultimate melting pot city felt
right to me. And having these big personalities kind of
play off each other and clash off each other, seeing
the sparks that fly. That's like what makes a team
Writing a team book really fun for me. And then
you know, you sort of put all that together with

(59:59):
Captain Planted himself. A mon did an amazing redesign of
the character. We wanted to kind of dig in a
little bit more into the elemental side of him. We
also wanted to give him pants. You know, it was
a mon who actually was the one who he drew
a couple of different takes on the character. One of
them had a beard, and every single person involved in

(01:00:22):
the process it was like a record scratch, like we
all just stopped and we're like, yeah, the beard, Yeah,
you gotta do the beard. I said it, Joe Rybant
said it. Our licensers at Warner Brothers, they all were
just like, yeah, the beard, that's it. That's super cool.
And so yeah, you know, I think being able to
kind of explore this kind of storyline it feels at

(01:00:43):
times like uncomfortably timely, you know. I mean, I I've
been thinking about this kind of big storyline for ten years,
but I was working on it the outline. I turned
it in the Monday before the election, and we were
greenlit the week after the election. And so as I'm

(01:01:07):
writing all this stuff, you know, you see these things
sort of being reflected in the headlines, sometimes in ways
that like I didn't expect, you know, for example, having
Kwame and Ghee being rounded up by you know, faceless
officers in the airport, you know, coming right off the plane.
That was not meant, well, I didn't think that was

(01:01:30):
going to be as timely as it was. And then
suddenly you're seeing you know, reports of like ice arrests,
you know in the headlines, or having Lucian Plunder, who's
sort of are a lawn musk figure, this guy who's
sort of this billionaire who has these sort of utopian
sound bites, but it's all just window dressing to like,
how do I enrich my own wealth and consolidate my

(01:01:52):
own power? And as we see in this opening storyline,
you know, how he tricks Wheeler into giving up his
ring and using it to create synthetic duplicates that turns
it into Captain Pollution, sort of our evil Captain Planet.
You know, I was not expecting to see Lucian Plunder

(01:02:12):
like throwing, you know, Hyle Hitler, you know, salutes at
the inauguration, you know when I when I wrote this thing,
So it really is kind of but I think that
speaks to Captain Planet. I think it's it's it's a
character who I think people maybe saw him as as
unnecessary back when he came out, But I think the

(01:02:34):
storyline is getting more relevant and resonant by the day,
and so I take it as a huge responsibility to
sort of I think Captain Planet really speaks to me personally.
You know, I grew up as a Jewish kid in Missouri.
I knew pretty early on I was not part of

(01:02:55):
like the dominant cultural norm, you know, And so for me,
I think that's the thing I love most about this
country is that you know, you can live in this
country and you can practice whatever religion you want, you
can love whoever you want, You can come from any
number of places and backgrounds, speak any kind of languages,
and this place is home. And for me, I think

(01:03:16):
that's what I love so much about Captain Planet as
a concept, as it really does speak to that level
of diversity and inclusion and tolerance and friendship that you know,
we can we all have more in common than we
have We are always stronger together than we are apart.
And that's the sort of thing that I think it's

(01:03:40):
easy to forget that in today's headlines, and I think
there are more and more and more people who are
afraid of people who they think are different than them.
And I hope for a book like Captain Planet, if
you know it can get people think, you know, even
just to stop for a second just to have that

(01:04:01):
moment's hesitation and to say, hey, like, you know, to
have that representation, to have heroes from different walks of life,
then I think I've done my job. And so that's
something that has really kind of stood out to me
from the jump is that Captain Planet really is kind

(01:04:21):
of this ultimate front group. I have all these different
walks of life, and so yeah, there's such a wonderful
cast to play with. And so our big season finale,
with our big origin storyline, it wraps up actually this
coming Wednesday along Speed three, so you'll be able to
sort of see Captain Planet's final head to head with

(01:04:44):
Captain Pollution. But yeah, I would love to do more
with the series. You know, it's really just a matter
of I'm on had some other work that that was
he needed to take care of, and I was sort
of kind of cleaning up my schedule a little bit.
So yeah, we have to talk with Dynamite about it.
We have to talk with Warner Brothers about it. I

(01:05:05):
have to kind of come up with a storyline. I
have sort of some broad ideas, but a book like
Captain Planet is very much a Rubik's cube of a
book in terms of how you plot it, because you
have to figure out how do you get Captain Planet
in the mix without sort of pushing the planeteers to
the sidelines. They lose their powers when Captain Planet is summoned.

(01:05:27):
How do you sort of have a threat that's worth
Captain Planet's time? And when he's when he's been summoned,
what do you do with the planet tears? So it's
a lot of different moving parts. So those stories take
a little longer to put together than something like Space
Coaster speed Racer. But yeah, there are a couple of villains,
particularly Hoggish Greedley. I think there's some very clear parallels

(01:05:50):
that we could do in today's a historical moment. So
I would love to return to that. You know, if
I'm on his game for it. It's TVD at the moment,
but you know, if you order all the issues the
Captain Planet, it's more likely to happen.

Speaker 1 (01:06:07):
Sure, absolutely, well, I'll be honest, man. That's good that
it sounds like you got a good story going and
certainly more sophisticated than what we got back in nineteen
eighty nine. So that's great to hear. Yeah, So to
wrap up, we got to talk about something that you're
doing for paper Cuts division of Mad Cave, and for

(01:06:29):
the audio audience, it looks like it's an armored dog
and the name of the dog is Titan Terrier.

Speaker 2 (01:06:35):
Yeah. A ten Ton Titan Terrier is my new book
with Ornella Greco. It's coming out October seventh. You can
order it through Amazon, your local comic shop, the Simon
and Schuster website, anywhere comics are sold. And that is
a book that has been in the works for a
long time. It's been a real passion project of mine
and I'm so thrilled that's finally going to see the

(01:06:55):
light of day through paper Cuts, which is a division
of Mad Cave Studios and ten Ton Titaned Terrier. The
quick pitch for it is an asteroid crash lands on
Earth and it's got a clutch of Kaiju eggs and
an alien battlesuit, and the only creature on Earth capable
of turning the suit on is an eleven inch tall

(01:07:18):
terrier named Holly. And so it really is sort of
like Pokemon meets Pacific Rim. It's about Holly and her
scientist owner Sam, who they quickly have to kind of
learn the ropes of like, oh, this dog is sort
of in control of this ten ton you know, battlesuit.
How do we kind of train this rambunctious dog to

(01:07:39):
actually like do what we need the dog to do.
Because it's one thing when a dog is rambunctious and
you can scoop them up when they're ten pounds. It's
quite another when they're have this sort of gigantic weapon.
How do you kind of deal with that sort of codependent,
you know, sometimes dysfunctional relationship. But it really is, in

(01:08:00):
certain ways a very autobiographical story. I started writing this
story in twenty nineteen. It was the summer before COVID,
and it was based on my real life terrier, Holly,
who she was my family's dog. My wife and I
took her in. It was supposed to be for a month,
It wound up being like three and a half years.

(01:08:21):
It wound up being the rest of her life. And
Holly that summer before COVID was diagnosed with melanoma, and
so I wound up taking this family dog to all
these appointments, to radiation treatments. Just what could we do
to kind of keep her comfortable and healthy for as
long as we could. I remember feeling so powerless as

(01:08:43):
I waited in the waiting room of just you know,
I don't know how I can save my dog. And
not only that, she was this beloved family dog. So
I felt like my parents and my siblings they were
all counting on me sure, And I said to myself,
I don't know if I can keep my dog alive,
but I can make her a more And so this
kind of that kind of became I think the initial

(01:09:04):
snowball that you know, we tossed down the hill that
turned into this story. I think some of it also
came down to, you know, I think a lot of
people who know my work, they know that it's a
little bit more adult fair. You know, I'm the guy who,
you know, did what if? Calvin Hobbs grew up in
Sin City with Spencer and Locke. I was very It

(01:09:24):
always broke my heart as a third generation comics fan
when I would be at conventions and there'd be young
kids reaching for Spencer and lockecause they see the cat
guy on the cover and me having to be the
bad guy and say, oh, I'm really sorry, like you're
not old enough to read this. I didn't have anything
on my table. That felt age appropriate. Sure, this book
is if your kids are watching you know, Pixar movies

(01:09:46):
that they're watching like The Incredibles, or they're watching The
Iron Giant, they're perfectly fine for ten Ton Titan Terrier.
You know. I like that idea of sort of taking
the excitement of giant robots versus Kaiju, but doing it
in a way that doesn't sacrifice like the fun or
the action or the excitement, but doing it in a
way that like, we can invite kids to this, to

(01:10:08):
that table. It's not dumbing it. Excuse me, it's not
dumbing it down by any means. I think kids can
kind of sniff that out, you know, from a mile away.
I grew up in nineties Marvel. You know Eric Larson
drawing Venom and the page is a spider Man. You know,
as a five year old, I thought this was so cool, Like,
you know, I was part of the club. I was
part of the big kids group. That's something I wanted

(01:10:30):
to do with ten Ton Titan Terrors. Whether you're five,
you're ninety five, it's something exciting, it's something fun. If
you know, whether you're a Kaiju fan or just a
dog lover. There's something for everybody to that working with
Ornella Greco, She's a super talented Italian artist. I found

(01:10:51):
her on Twitter years ago and I remember I reached
out to her and I was like, I think you're
the one for this book. You know, this very personal
book of mine. And I wasn't aware that Ornella had
a dog of her own, Wilma, but you can sort
of see the influence on all the pages. But Ornella
has this wonderful sense of range where she's able to

(01:11:12):
do these like funny, kind of quirky moments with Holly,
you know, just kind of out and about being a dog,
and then started translating that into this bigger scale when
she's in the mech suit, but also just doing this
like really cool Mech versus Kaiju action with the monster
designs and all this kind of cool stuff. And so yeah,

(01:11:34):
it's a book that I swore to myself. And when
Holly passed just a couple of weeks before the COVID lockdowns,
I swore to myself that I would get this book
made by hooker by Crook, even if I had to
self publish it out of spite, and thankfully I did
not have to do that. Mike Martz, who I've known
for since I was in college when I was his intern,

(01:11:57):
we had lunch a few years back at sante A
comic con and we were talking about things to do
after Double Ware's My Face, and I slid my phone
over the table and I showed him or Noelle's artwork
for Terror, and he was like, you know, how would
you feel about working with paper Cuts on this? And
so they've been wonderful. You know, this is a big

(01:12:18):
action pack, larger than life standalone graphic novel. It's one
hundred and fifty pages. We really wanted to make sure that,
like the action felt big and titanic, and yeah, paper
Cuts has just been wonderful to work with. And so yeah,
this book, it's been a long time coming and I
cannot wait for people to see if it's gonna be

(01:12:39):
hitt in the light of day October seventh, I will
hopefully have copies available in your comic con, but you
can also get at your local comic shop as well.

Speaker 1 (01:12:48):
Beautiful man, that's excellent. Here a couple of comments from
the Peanut Gallery. Here, Adrian says made it. I have
to watch the video on demand. Absolutely loving Speed Racer
and Racer Esques comics, really looking forward to where the
first s darc is going. And then Dannis is a
fan of yours. He loved the first two issues of

(01:13:09):
Speed and still a big fan of Savage Avengers and
Deathlock Miles. Amazing idea, Yeah, crazy idea. I loved your
take on wepon H big fan, So you're.

Speaker 2 (01:13:21):
The weapon H fan, got it? Well? Thank you for reading, No,
I cant. I do hold that crown as the last
person to write Weapon Age, so yes, and you better
believe I'm very jealous of that crown. But thank you
for reading. Savage Avengers was such a fun book. Looking
back at my Marvel work, it's one of my favorite

(01:13:41):
things I've written besides Avengers Unlimited and Fantastic Four. But
Savage Avengers really was sort of just such a fun experience,
and Carlos Magno did such a wonderful job on the
artwork with that, And I feel like I grew up
so much as a writer working on that book. All
the stuff that you're reading from me now, it would

(01:14:03):
not it couldn't have existed without what I learned in
Savage Avengers. So I always hold that book in a
very important place in my heart and in my career.
So thank you for reading.

Speaker 1 (01:14:13):
You know, I don't know if you or even people
watching or listening. I'm sure we all get especially if
we look at Facebook video, you know, the short videos
where they are capsualizing stories. And even in the last
day or two, I saw somebody capsualizing your Savage Adventures.

Speaker 2 (01:14:31):
That's cool.

Speaker 1 (01:14:33):
Yeah, Conan King one of their scenes and stuff. Yeah,
it was pretty cool.

Speaker 2 (01:14:38):
Thank you. That's neat. I'll have to check that out.
I yeah, that that that book. Yeah, it was such
a fun book, just sort of this team of misfits.
And I'm a big believer that there's no such thing
as a bad character, only bad execution. And I think
that team was so fun to put together. And I

(01:14:59):
think if you like what I did on Savage Avengers,
you'll really love what I did on Captain Planet. I
think they those books share a lot of similar DNA
DNA cool.

Speaker 1 (01:15:07):
That's great man. Well you're doing great, David, and good
for you. Good for you, as one of my aunts
would say, I think that's true. But yeah, big week
next week with speed Racer three and Space Coast is
already out there. But You're also going to have Captain
Captain Planet well.

Speaker 2 (01:15:27):
Yeah on speed Racer three and Captain Planet six will
be out this coming Wednesday. Anybody in the Los Angeles area,
you can find me all weekend at Los Angeles Comic Con,
which is kicking off.

Speaker 1 (01:15:37):
There you go.

Speaker 2 (01:15:38):
So I'll be there Friday, Saturday, Sunday. Feel free to
my table, bring some books. I'll gladly sign them, and
then I will also be at New York Comic Con.
I'll be a speed Racer has a panel on Thursday
from I believe it's two thirty to three thirty, and
then we'll be doing a speed Racer signing at the
mad Give Studios booth from four to five o'clock. And

(01:16:00):
then I do believe we'll also have a signing for
speed Racer Tails from the Road on Saturday, interior signing
on Sunday as well. So I'll spait by anytime and
I will gladly sign your books for you.

Speaker 1 (01:16:14):
Sounds good man, well well done, and I'm very curious
to hear how the AI stan Lee at LA Comic
Con does. Oh Man, Yeah, you know, hey, listen. AI
is a tool. I use AI to a degree, but
a very small degree, and I understand the frustrations with

(01:16:35):
it from the creator side. I forget which recent convention
and I'll call them out At and T had something
where they would generate maybe a comic image of you,
you post for a photo and it would generate, and
it was like right by our to Sally. So I'm
really wondering where they're going to position that, stan Lee think.

Speaker 2 (01:16:53):
Well, I will say I will say that John, you
are the only one that I will allow to do
like a digital up at show AI puppet show of
my of me posthumously, so you know, like my when
I kick it, Okay, you can do word balloon episodes
with me in perpetuity.

Speaker 1 (01:17:12):
Yeah, yeah, I don't know, man, get.

Speaker 2 (01:17:14):
This Gabbler to Waldorf. But uh yeah, you know, I yeah,
I uh, I have thoughts about it, none of them great,
but you know, uh it's certainly certainly feels very stan
Lee Codd. I guess, no pun intended.

Speaker 1 (01:17:38):
Yeah, I don't know, man, I think he would. I
honestly think he'd object. I mean, you know, and and
and truly it's like, I don't know, it just seems
kind of tone deaf.

Speaker 2 (01:17:46):
And again it's a little ghoulish, you know, like, and
I just I think the thing not to get too
deep into the weeds about AI in general, is I
think I think there's a lot of people who is
sort of this idea that, oh, this thing is real.
And I think if you can't sort of like immediately
embrace this idea that this is not real, this is

(01:18:07):
not actual intelligence, This isn't we like to anthropomorphize things.
It's it's just human nature. But I think if you
can't operate the tool without knowing instinctively like, hey, this
is just it. It's no different than my auto correct
on my phone. It's just well put yes, you know,

(01:18:28):
then you shouldn't be using it at all. So we're
going to be in for an interesting time as a
society thanks to all that. But I will not be
at the Stanley AI Puppy show at La Comic Con.
But you can find me at the Comic Sketch Art
Cluster and I will gladly sign anything you bring.

Speaker 1 (01:18:49):
Had a boy there you go, very good, No man,
I hear you. And and again, you know, honestly, even
as random things. You know, I'm an old Hollywood nerd obviously,
and I was looking up a character actor that was
in the Hitchcock movie north By Northwest and he's an
old face of seeing a million times and I knew
his first name was Ned, so I asked chat GPT

(01:19:09):
and I'm like, so, who played the ticket taker in
north By Northwest? And it's like, oh, that was Gene
you know whatever Schmid And it's like, no, it wasn't No.
And in fact, a good friend of mine, who is
in library sciences that is his main vocation, is like,
this is what you have to do with AI. Here's
here's a little tip for you youngsters. You got to

(01:19:30):
ask are you sure? Because more times than not, it
isn't sure and the bots get it wrong. And it's
like and of course in a very friendly oh, you're
right to ask me that. No, no, no, you're right.
It was Ned Pines. I'm like, here you go, that's
who it was.

Speaker 2 (01:19:44):
It was. Yeah, it's yeah, it's tough. I don't envy
any school teachers. Let me tell you right now.

Speaker 1 (01:19:51):
Well, you know, smart ones are using it to explain
to students that it's not the final answer. And I mean,
I New York Times podcast and I wish I could
remember specifically what this teacher is doing to use AI
and say, hey, listen, we know it's here. It's you know,
it's that that title wave from the media movie Deep Impact,

(01:20:14):
and we're all Taileoni standing on the shore watching wating.
I mean, hey man, it's.

Speaker 2 (01:20:20):
Just a real impact. So you're really you are really
singing my song with this, with this metaphor.

Speaker 1 (01:20:26):
But yeah, you know, I mean it's coming whether we
like it or not. So again, treat it as a
tool and find the proper ways and the beneficial ways
to use it without hurting people. I mean, hell man, hey,
voiceover guy uh playing narration out there? That is uh
right now AI generated. So it's hitting my world just
as much as it is the writers and the artists

(01:20:49):
out there.

Speaker 2 (01:20:49):
Yeah, it's a it's a it's a strange future that
we have that we have coming. Oh yeah, but knock
on what I might be uh tackling this very subject
in an upcoming book, So stay tuned. We might be
able to talk about that in twenty twenty six.

Speaker 1 (01:21:06):
Beautiful man. No, I don't belie, you know, there was
again I can't help but I'm an old man. Nineteen
seventy there was a great movie about AI called Colossus.
The Foreben Project, and it's about a supercomputer that America
uses for defensive purposes and it keeps getting smarter and smarter,
and spoiler, it takes over the world. And I'm like,

(01:21:28):
you know, I forget what studio owns it. I think
it's MGM. But I'm like, where the hell are you guys?
My god, I mean this movie should have I mean,
I know we got sky Nett and Terminator and everything,
but yeah, I mean, I'm like, this is even crazier,
you know.

Speaker 2 (01:21:44):
I mean we did that in Space Coast with with
Ultimate as sort of this mind controlling AI that was
taking over the galaxy. So yes, I have the feeling
that's going to be interesting stuff to be exploring in
the to come. I'm curious. I feel like the Vision
is a character that could really be an interesting, interesting

(01:22:07):
character to explore, and and now that we all have
a better sense of what a I really is interesting,
I would be cool. I know, Steve Orlando, Yeah, yeah,
if you're listening, Marvel, give me a shot. Yeah, Vision
could be fun. But no, I like, I just want

(01:22:27):
to thank you John for for having me on the
show and for everybody listening, Just for anybody who's like
buying my books. I know that you have a lot
to choose from, and I've really been trying to go
to the mat to make sure that you're getting your
money's worth each and every issue. And just working with
such amazing talents like Jonathan Wowe on Space Ghost and
Amn Caslo some Captain Planet and to Vid Tinto and

(01:22:49):
speed Racer and Ornella Greco on ten Ton Titan Terrier,
and just it means a lot. I mean, not only
does this sort of allow me to keep doing my
astronaut job, you know, this job that even as a kid,
I never knew that I could ever hope to have
a job like this. It's it's the best job I've
ever had. But also, you know, you keep my puppy

(01:23:12):
fed and kibble, so thank you for that. You let
me pay my rent with all this, and just yeah,
you know, I think for me, that's what gets me
up every day is I want to make sure that
I'm doing right by our readers, by our retailers, by
everybody reading these books, doing right by my collaborators. And yeah,

(01:23:33):
it takes a village to make a comic succeed, and
so to be able to have a quartet of books
that have worked as well as these four. It really
is a group efforts. So thank you to everyone listening,
everyone who's the bought the books, all my collaborators on
my editors. Yeah. Without you, I wouldn't be able to
do what I do, So thank you so much, and

(01:23:53):
thank you John for giving me a platform to talk
about all these books.

Speaker 1 (01:23:57):
My pleasure. David, David pepos everybody word. Balloon will not
be live tomorrow, but I am recording with Nunzio, Dave Philippus,
and Christina Ware, who certainly have a career in comics.
They are making an audio sci fi drama, a time
traveling thing, and I'm very excited to be talking to them.
That will be posting over the weekend, so I hope

(01:24:19):
you'll check it out, either in video or in audio.
I also, if you don't mind, David, I'm cleaning house.
I also just posted our chake In panel that I
did a terrific on my good friends at the splash
Page podcast videotaped it, so that video is up, and
once I'm done talking to David, I'll also be posting
a great fantastic four panel we did with CB Sebalski

(01:24:42):
and Omberto Ramos and Steve Engelhardt and Chris Claremont and
Walt Simonson, and I'm trying to think if Well left
anybody off. I don't think I did, but it was
a great discussion and yeah, so all that coming from
Word Balloon in the hours ahead, So I hope you'll
join me for all. But until next time, thank you, everybody.
Stay safe, stay happy, stay healthy.

Speaker 2 (01:25:10):
M

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Cardiac Cowboys

All Episodes

Go Speed Racer With David Pepose

On Purpose with Jay Shetty