Farewell to 2158...

Say good-bye, finally, to GARGOYLES 2158.

The proposed GARGOYLES spin-off series originally known as "GARGOYLES: FUTURE TENSE" and later retitled "GARGOYELES 2158" has been redeveloped.

For more information, check out the "GARGOYLES 2198" ASK GREG archive.

MUSINGS

Had a good time at the Gargoyles Adult Chatroom the other day, and it got me thinking. Someone named VP (or VJ?) made the point that everything I've done after, well, "The Journey" I guess, is fanfiction. At first, I misunderstood him. For example, I thought he was confusing Katana with Sata. But he made it clear, that he meant the quote-unquote Master Plan. My initial reaction was to balk.

But I think he's got a point.

Some of this stuff was completed while I was still on the Disney Payroll in late '95, early '96, but none of it's canon in my mind. Canon, as far as I'm concerned only includes the 66 episodes running from "Awakening, Part One" through "The Journey". The other 12 Goliath Chronicles are debatable. Because the show ISN'T on the air, I think I personally am free NOT to regard them as canon. If and/or when the show does get going again in some shape or form, then a more definitive decision will have to be made at that point about those additional 12 stories.

But putting Goliath Chronicles (and Marvel Comics and Disney Adventures, etc.) aside for the moment, that still leaves us with what to do about things like:

--"Once Upon a Time There Were Three Brothers..."
--Various ASK GREG and other revelations.
--The Spin-Offs: DARK AGES, GARGOYLES 2158, TIMEDANCER, PENDRAGON, THE NEW OLYMPIANS, BAD GUYS
--My further plans for the GARGOYLES main series itself.

Calling the work I've done on any of the above "fanfic" rankles at first, but that's largely a problem of semantics. It certainly isn't canon. At this point, legally, I have no more connection to the GARGOYLES property than any of you do. Plus, as I've said many times before, I won't be held to any of it. Hell, for all you know everything I've revealed is just one big snow-job to keep you from guessing my real plans. (It's not, but it might have been smarter of me if it was.)

I do think I'm something of an authority on the subject of Gargoyles. And I also think that if the show is ever brought back, the PTB at Disney would be likely (at least given current management) to come to me first to try and revive it. Plus I'm actively working on getting the show revived, again "in some shape or form".

But that doesn't change anything regarding the question of canon.

As many of you know, I've been working on a major revision of 2158. This is taking me longer than I thought, because -- and I shouldn't have been surprised by this, but -- it's effecting the ENTIRE chronology of the series. In addition to changing the year (and thus the title) of GARGOYLES 2158, I've already been forced to go back and make adjustments to both DARK AGES and "Once Upon A Time...Three Brothers". I now know that the last posted chapter of three brothers wound up being the last chapter of that little story period. Because "3Bros" really wound up being just a prologue to DARK AGES. And where "3Bros" leaves off is in fact right at the beginning of where DARK AGES begins.

The 2158 revamp has also necessitated minor changes in TimeDancer. And has clarified my thinking on Pendragon and Bad Guys as well.

[Thankfully, none of it has effected the Clan Contest. We should still be able to put that monster to bed soon.]

All this flux has made it difficult for me to keep certain details clear in my head. For example, at that Friday 9/1/00 chat, I revealed that Hudson had two biological children, Hyppolyta and Broadway. That was an error. Hudson had THREE biological children. (I got my dates mixed up.)

I'm hoping that the work I'm doing now will clean a lot of stuff up. I'm hoping that clarity (and my personal certainty) will return. But this flux isn't necessarily a bad thing. I know I screwed up at least a few times (Garg Universe-wise) within the 66 episodes. I tried to keep those mistakes to a minimum, but they happened. I'd like to avoid making more mistakes, even here at ASK GREG. I definitely feel like I'm getting closer to the "true" Gargoyles Universe, if that's possible and/or makes any sense.

Updates on all this should come over the next ten months. But I'm targeting Gathering 2001 for completion. I'm hoping to be able to make some big announcements there. So bear with me.

But to be fair to VP, he was right. I wouldn't call what I do "fanfiction". For starters, none of it is in the form of fiction. And so calling it that may be giving it TOO MUCH credit. But at the moment, I have no more claim to canon than anyone.

Rather, I'd say that if you like the stories I did come up with on the original 66, and think you might enjoy what I'd do next -- the way you might enjoy what Christine Morgan or Christi Smith Hayden or TGS does next -- than stay tuned. I've got more to tell you and more to reveal by and by.

The typical and the SHOCKING!!!

Again, I gave myself hours to try and get through April. And I failed. Now, I'm beat. I'll try and finish off that month soon.

And now the big SHOCKING announcement. I've been giving a lot of thought lately to GARGOYLES 2158. And I may be doing a significant reworking of the idea. For starters, I'm no longer sure I want to set the events I have in mind for the series in 2158. So the first thing that may change is the title. More info to come, once I nail some thoughts down. (And since I don't have any kind of deadline, it could take me a while.)

Miscellaneous...

My DC Comics editor finally sent me a few copies of that Justice League comic with the Captain Atom/Gargoyles story. I had forgotten just how many Gargoyle in-jokes I put in that story. There's much more there for a Gargoyle fan then for a Captain Atom fan. Though I think the scenes of Cap kissing Bette (and the mention of Las Vegas) would make a couple people (Simon Del Monte, Melissa Page, for example) a bit nostalgic. I think the story turned out pretty well. Anyway, I'm happy. My editor made a couple small changes. He removed the two references to the year the story took place (1991). And he changed the title. It was called something like: "An Exercise in Self-Indulgence". Now it's called "The Flashback of Notre Dame". Both are accurate, but his is much more clever.

Lately, I've been giving away a lot of ASK GREG tidbits for some reason. Not sure why. I'm just in the mood, I guess. But it suddenly occured to me to register this caveat.

There's canon and there's canon.

As far as I'm concerned the only true canon is the 66 episodes of the series running from "Awakening, Part One" through "The Journey". As many of you know, I don't like to consider the other twelve episodes of Goliath Chronicles to be canon, let alone whatever other stories got published by Marvel or Disney Adventures Digest or whatever.

But to be honest, even some of my ASK GREG answers cannot truly be considered canon. They're closer. But I won't be held to them in any absolute sense. Part of the wonder of producing the first two seasons of Gargoyles involved things discovered along the way. I won't etch things in stone (pun intended) just for the sake of making these ramblings and off-the-cuff answers sacrosanct. If I got the chance to produce the show (or one of its spin-offs) again, I'd ABSOLUTELY incorporate much of what's here. But I'd be a fool not to hold everything up to a microscope and decide with consideration what would and wouldn't be best for the new series.

Having said that, I've been giving some particular thought to G2158 recently, studying timelines for example. And I've changed a few things in my head. Nothing major. But certain things have changed that would in turn effect things in TimeDancer and present-day Gargoyles. Maybe even New Olympians and Pendragon. (So far nothing that would alter Bad Guys or Dark Ages.)

The good news is that none of these changes effect our three current contests. (Wouldn't that be an ASK GREG disaster?)

And all this thought has gotten me thinking about how I might handle a couple of thorny problems in any revival of the original series, specifically the time gap between 1996 and whenever the new show hit the air, and/or the existence of those 12 non-canon Chronicle episodes.

And frankly, I think the internet is the answer.

Goliath Chronicles exists. I can't change that. But I think I can ignore it. For example, if I wanted to do my version of the trial of Goliath -- the one where the question before the court is his very sentience -- couldn't I just do it?

New fans wouldn't know about the Chronicles trial and thus wouldn't be upset about it. Old fans could check here and find out why it was being ignored.

That only leaves a small percentage of people, who, for example, see the Chronicles episode on Toon Disney and wonder about it, but don't have the resources or whatever to find a site like this and learn the rationale. Would they be very put off? Is that too selfish an approach for me to take?

Likewise, the time gap. What if in the fist season, I did that Halloween story I've mentioned before. I wouldn't mention what year it was. For a new audience, they'd just assume that the story took place in say, October 2002. No harm done. But I could post here and tell people it took place in 1996. Then, by the end of the first season, I could have the series caught up to 2002, but still have gotten to do the stories that would have depended (continuity-wise) on proximity to the events in Hunter's Moon and The Journey.

What about that?

I'm very interested in all of your opinions on these notions. Please post them here.