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THE SPECTACULAR SPIDER-MAN- Electro
Television:
Exclusive Interview: STILL SWINGING WITH 'SPECTACULAR SPIDER-MAN'S' GREG WEISMAN - PART 2
The producer explains why villains get updated costumes and who the best bad guy for the web head is
By SEAN ELLIOTT, Senior Editor
Published 3/14/2008
THE SPECTACULAR SPIDER-MAN is back in a big way Saturday mornings on Kids WB at 10:00am PST. Greg Weisman, one of Spidey’s biggest fans is bringing the webbed wonder back by producing and writing the series with producer Victor Cook.
This new version of the webbed wonder is a cherry picked amalgam of all of the best that comics have had to offer over the last 40 years and starts with Peter Parker as a teenager again experiencing the wonder and fun of being Spider-man within his first years. iF MAGAZINE interviewed Weisman and got the inside swing on how you make a classic comic book into a modern multi-layered cartoon to appeal to all ages and ranges of Spider fan.
iF MAGAZINE: The designs on the villains have been updated any particular reason?
GREG WEISMAN: We wanted to make everything more modern, but still have the feel of the classic costumes. Like the Vulture is in dark greens, but he also has the touches of blood red on his costume, and he’s got a little more metal. He has the cybernetic headgear that allows him to control his tech flight system. The wings are for steering, right out of the comic, they don’t keep him air born. Something that Vic [Cook] discovered was because color in those comics was more primitive than today’s comics, since Spider-man is blue and red a lot of his villains ended up being green. I mean a lot. What that meant for us was that we wanted them to look recognizable, but we didn’t want them to look too homogenous in today’s cartoon market. Thematically for us green is the color of evil in the Spider-man universe. [Laughs] It’s not easy being green.
iF: So since you have Mr. Warren as the science teacher does that mean there will someday be Miles Warren and The Jackal?
WEISMAN: Well, we’re hinting at Miles since we have his brother in there. We’ve got Marco and Otto and Adrian and Eddie and I think we set up ninety percent of our first season villains in the very first episode.
iF: This cartoon has several layers for so many different types of fans from kids to adults, which is nice.
WEISMAN: Yeah we know it’s a cartoon and it’s on Saturday mornings, so we certainly didn’t want to alienate kids, I was a kid, I’m still a big kid, and it’s very, very important for us to be reaching the kids. But, this show was written on multiple levels so that kids, teens, tweens, college students, adults, people that have never seen Spider-man before so that everyone can experience the first thrills of seeing Spider-man that I first had when I read him in 1969. We also wanted to appeal to the hardcore Spider fans like me now.
iF: Since SPIDER-MAN 3 underwent some mutations to get to a combined story with the Sandman and the black costume and Venom, was there any pressure from Sony to include the black costume and Venom is this first season?
WEISMAN: We have the virtue of 20/20 hindsightand to a large extent we can cherry pick from any of the Spider-man stories that have been told. While our major influences are Stan Lee and Steve Ditko or Stan Lee and John Romita Sr., I have no problem grabbing ideas form any era. That could include ULTIMATE SPIDER-MAN, or the movies, or UNTOLD TALES -- I’m a pretty equal opportunity thief, which is distinct from a plagiarist because I am citing my source material. [Laughs] But including Eddie Brock made sense to us. We wanted to build an Eddie Brock that had a real strong relationship with Peter. Our Eddie and Peter go back; Eddie’s a couple of years older, but he’s known Peter since they were little kids. They call each other ‘bro’ and for all intensive purposes Eddie is Peter’s older brother in our series. That dynamic was very interesting to explore for us, and without being too cagey we know where it’s going. I don’t feel any particular compunction about adding in things that came later in the comic or we wouldn’t have had Harry Osborn in episode one. It just seemed to work for us to bring Eddie in sooner.
iF: You are working on Season 2 already?
WEISMAN: We’re in post-production on Season One and we’re mixing sound on the first set of episodes for season one. We’re also in pre-production for the back thirteen of Season Two. Scheduling wise it’s brutal. If I’m lucky I’ll get out of the studio at eleven or twelve at night. It’s the greatest job in world, and I’d love it if it were a little more nine to five, I’ll admit, but I wouldn’t trade it for anything in the world.
iF: So what are your favorite villains?
WEISMAN: I think going into the show my all time favorite Spider-man villain was Doc Ock, but now I can’t say that anymore, which is not to say that I don’t still love Doc Ock, but I have worked intimately with so many villains that I kind of love them all. That might sound kind of silly, but now if you ask me who my favorite villain is; it’s like choosing between my children. Even characters that I wasn’t that in love with, I really like because of the approached we’ve used with them.
We’re starting from scratch trying to create something that is cohesive and coherent. In the 1960’s, if Stan wanted to create a new villain, radiation was always convenient. That doesn’t really fly today, but we didn’t want anyone tripping down the street to be able to become Electro, so we wanted to create a little more coherent way that superpowers could come into existence. We wanted to introduce these characters in ways that they are connected, instead of boom, boom, boom each character is introduced in one single story. They’re all variations on the original origins, and none of them are too far afield. Given that fact, it sort of defined for what villains would come in what order. So, Kraven the Hunter and Mysterio show up in Season Two, although Mysterio’s secret identity makes a cameo in Season One. There are characters and villains that we are saving specifically for Season Three. We don’t have a pick up for that yet, but I am very hopefully that we will be picked up.
We’re starting from scratch trying to create something that is cohesive and coherent. In the 1960’s, if Stan wanted to create a new villain, radiation was always convenient. That doesn’t really fly today, but we didn’t want anyone tripping down the street to be able to become Electro, so we wanted to create a little more coherent way that superpowers could come into existence. We wanted to introduce these characters in ways that they are connected, instead of boom, boom, boom each character is introduced in one single story. They’re all variations on the original origins, and none of them are too far afield. Given that fact, it sort of defined for what villains would come in what order. So, Kraven the Hunter and Mysterio show up in Season Two, although Mysterio’s secret identity makes a cameo in Season One. There are characters and villains that we are saving specifically for Season Three. We don’t have a pick up for that yet, but I am very hopefully that we will be picked up.
Reader Comments
Peter LeBrun from lebrundr@aol.com sez....
Question:I read in season 2 there will be some CARNAGE is that correct?
11/27/2008 10:14:48 PM
