B writes...

In "Misplaced", was Roanoke Island chosen as the location of Klarion's spell because people (the whole Roanoke Colony) had disappeared there before? And if so, was it necessary for the spellcasters, or just a fun reference on your part?

Tia writes...

Was the little girl in the episode Insecurities of Young Justice Cissie Jones or Arrowette?
By the way, amazing show.

Laura 'ad astra' Sack writes...

I think the deluge has slowed, I'm still managing to keep up and post questions!

Image:
1- Young Justice really excels at showing people being people- the roleplaying, the humor in the reaction, the awkwardness talking with M'gann. Similarly the later line “He’s 8, he doesn’t do orders.”
2- So Kid Flash knows Bruce is Batman... This is the beginning of a string of hitting the questions that were being asked all the time on this site. (Asked over and over...) This episode answers that and the White Martian question. Wonder Woman gets a significant role ~and~ the dearth of female roles both get hit in the next ep, along with if the JLA knew Billy Batson was a kid. Other stuff I’ll mention in my comments on Agenda. Did you get a good chuckle knowing it was coming up?
3- Is it just me, or does Queen Bee looks like Marina Stirtis?
4- Loved the Hello Megan clips. But who are these Greg Vietti & Brandon Weisman folks..? Seriously, I googled everyone, that show is like a nexus of DC happenings.
5- White Martians are even uglier than in the comics. Nice design! I’ve wondered for a while if M’gann was her real name or not. She says she was attracted to the similarity in the names and some coincidences do happen. On the other hand....
6- Beast Boy... green eyes... Interesting how Martians can change on a molecular level. It seems that that transfusion plays a role in him becoming Beast Boy and green, yet she’s a White a Martian. Has she so internalized her role that she held on to the Green cells more than the White ones? Similarly, the ‘real form’ she showed was still more human than J’onn’s. She really is still in deep denile. (Nice little twist of the knife when Robin apologizes for making her lie and impersonate Queen Bee.)
7- The mole didn’t know it when the charge was first made. Brilliant. Everyone was looking for something that didn’t exist yet, so know they think it was a ruse to begin with and miss the threat, I know folks are saying the mole could still be Conner or Artimas, but I’m really reading it as M’Gann since she is actually being blackmailed, while the others are being emotionally manipulated. They haven’t done anything particularly egregious yet. Letting your sister go, even using the drug is not the same as brain blasting a bad guy to vegetable status simply to keep a secret-blasting your friends too. Of course I could be wrong.
8- Why do I feel the urge to say, "And the plot thickens..."?

Laura 'ad astra' Sack writes...

Hi again,

Please pretend I spelled Klarion correctly at least once on my Missing questions. Not the worst mistake I've mistyped, but I kept repeating it. In case there is any doubt a mean "...the Witch Boy" and not a trumpet. :}

Laura 'ad astra' Sack writes...

Coldhearted- I don’t have a lot of comments, but I did enjoy the episode a lot. Some highlights:
i) 7:15…6 I loved the touch of the text in front of the scene changing with the time.
Great little human moment; while fighting atop on of the blizzard ships, Aqualad vaults over Aquaman by putting a foot on his king’s shoulder. Arthur’s face looks startled and annoyed. That and at the end when Wally crashing through the glass doors as they start opening were my two favorite visual bits.
ii) I figured out that the heart was the main objective pretty early, pretty much as soon as Vandal Savage showed, but I still liked it. (It was obvious based on story form and not something the characters should have picked up, so it was fine.)
iii) Wally’s points ‘A’ & ‘2’…. Loved it!
iv) Once again his choice of souvenir shows growth.
Thanks!

Laura 'ad astra' Sack writes...

Kevin asked “Are the three martian races a nod to Edgar Rice Burroughs Barsoom Series or is it just a coincidence?” (and you responded “ <Ahem> No comment.” ;). I feel silly for not thinking of that myself- especially with M’gann’s habit of being green and growing extra arms. It bring a few questions to mind:

1- Do the Red Martians appear in the comic books or are they new to the show?
2- Are the Martian races different species or just literally different races as in the scientific term? When I first thought of the question I only saw the three groups in the comic book. Now we have a very different image of the white Martians. Ordinarily such great physical difference would imply different species, but M’gann said her shape- shifting works at the molecular level. I wonder what remains static to indicate their speciehood? It may mean that physical appearance is less important to the genetics of the races of Mars.

Laura 'ad astra' Sack writes...

Wow! Is it hard to keep up with even the questions to post new ones. Thanks for reopening the queue!

Condolences on the lose of your Grandmother. I remember the months before my grandmother died how she had retreated into herself and was all but unrecognizable, than all of a sudden came back to herself for a week or two at the end. I still treasure it as a great gift that we were reminded who she was before the end. She was a good deal younger than 100 so we were not quite expecting the end, but I can understand what you mean by feeling that the person you love is already on the way somewhere else. I am glad you have so many years and so many wonderful memories to look back on.

1- I see someone already asked if you can explain some of the terms you used when you broke down the stages the of episodes in progress. He mentioned ‘online’ in particular. If you didn’t already do so, can you also define ‘slug’?

2- I know you prefer to record the voice actors together in conversation, unlike many other cartoons that record the voices in isolation. In live action tv and movies are recorded out of order, that’s the most efficient way to use the sets and actors. Since there aren’t sets for cartoons, and you prefer to have all the actors together anyway, are the scenes more or less recorded in order?

3- You mentioned in the past moments when stories just come together and surprise you- when the next event seems to announce herself, unplanned but seemingly totally organic to the story. Like when “Owen is Puck!” announced itself. Or when you kept hearing “Thailog” when the video was being rewound. Did you have any such moments for Spectacular Spiderman and the other shows you worked on? Have you had any with Young Justice yet? Can you share any if they’ve already happened?

4-One last question for this catch-all batch... what do you think of the new DC Nation shorts? I’m not crazy about loosing the opening credits, but I love shorts and think it is an easy trade. I love that they are all different and playful and yet often also a series. My favorite so far is the one with Batgirl and Supergirl trying to convince Wonder Girl to ‘borrow’ Wonder Woman’s invisible jet. (Oddly I have become used to (and approve) on Dianna being portrayed as someone from another country, with a light to strong intonation of something foreign, but it never occurred to me the same would apply to Donna.)

Begin pontification: I’ve never loved the Teen Titan cartoon, (plenty to like, but never loved), but I love the fact it is turning up in the shorts. Back when Disney XD was Toon Disney I wondered why they didn’t run shorts. (To be fair I didn’t have a TiVO at the time and it was possible they were already running the “Have a Laugh” abridged classic shorts as well as Shaun the Sheep. But they weren’t running any new material.) It seemed odd to me they were trying to compete with the Cartoon Network’s reach into the older demographic and didn’t, for instance, declare one night a week the 10 o’clock older folks movie night, (say a Miyazaki flik), and intersperse it with shorts- gorgeous, varied, counter expectation shorts like they gleefully did for Fantasia 2000. (I had the idea a long time ago.) If some of those shorts were back door pilots...great. It worked for the Simpsons They could have led to another late evening night of new programming of new shows. They couldn’t compete with cheap nostalgic cartoons or crude adult ones because that just isn’t Disney. Disney can never put out a Family Guy type show under the Disney label. Maybe they could do it on ABC, but not something with Disney in the name. (Even Miyazaki’s Princess Monenoke had to be released in the US under the Miramax label because a PG-13 cartoon would be problematic under the Disney label.) It a rather obvious route for a high end cartoon station to go and might have netted a few Oscars away from Pixar. Or perhaps more for Pixar. End pontification.

Of course it would have been an ideal place to run a little Gargoyle related short. :)

JayBe writes...

Hi Greg, first off I just wanted to say you're awesome. Spectacular Spider-man was THE best Spider-man cartoon/interpretation of all time and IMO the best superhero cartoon of all time (although YJ is now a close second for me). It still pains my heart that it didn't reach past a 2nd season. And despite not being interested when I originally heard about Young Justice, it's quickly become one of my favorites due to the awesome character development/continuity that seems to be your trademark. Having just seen the new Ultimate Spider-man (which I read you won't be watching), I can safely tell you that although it's not the complete crap-fest I thought it would be, it's nowhere near the level of greatness of Spectacular Spider-man.

So anyway, my question is actually about SpecSpider-man (and sorry if it was asked already, I went through as much of the 600+ search results as I could). Could you possibly go into the general idea of what we were going to get out of the next few seasons if it hadn't been cancelled? I know there's probably a thousand details you could give (which would be awesome), but was there any overall story concepts you had that were going to blow our minds? For instance, were we actually going to see Gwen Stacy die?

Thanks for reading even if you can't/don't want to answer.

El Kid writes...

Does each city-state in Atlantis have their own Royal Family, or do some people just add "King" to their names as an honorific? Furthermore, if Atlantis is a conglomeration of city-states, how/why does it have a central capital and a ruling monarch?