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COMEBACKS 2007-03 (Mar)

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Vaevictis Asmadi writes...

Hello Greg!
I haven't got the newest issues of the comic yet, I have to wait until they are available on Amazon. But in the meantime I wanted to write while the queue is open.
I watched Gargoyles when I was a kid and I really liked it, especially the mythology and medieval history episodes such as City of Stone. At the time, although I enjoyed City of Stone (and it is still my favorite episode) I thought it was peculiar to depict Macbeth as the hero. Of course, now I know that City of Stone is actually more historically accurate than Shakespeare's play.
Unfortunately I only saw a few episodes before it was cancelled/moved, and I didn't remember much of it. I'd pretty much forgotten about the show years ago, until I went to the Gargoyles panel at Convergence last year and was reminded about it. That panel was a good idea to tell people about the DVDs and comic, and to encourage old fans to get back into the show. But unfortunately for me, I hadn't known yet about things like Owen/Puck which you revealed at the panel.
I've gotten the two DVD sets so far (with some help from my parents) and having watched all the episodes so far, plus the rest on Toon Disney, I have to say how great a show Gargoyles is/was. It's like the old Batman and X-Men shows in being much more than just a cartoon. Of course the major draw for me is the gargoyles themselves which are a very interesting and appealing race, and visually pretty awesome. I've always loved the way gargoyles look, physically. I especially like their feet and talons, for some reason. Wings are also good. I also remember how I was very happy when Goliath came to Avalon and discovered that the species was not extinct after all. I love that the gargoyles from different parts of the world are the sources of various mythical creatures, and I'm very curious what the Chinese, Korean, New Olympian, and Loch Ness gargoyles look like.
I'm looking forward to getting a hold of issues 2 and 3 so I can get up to date but I also have some questions about the Gargoyles universe that are not answered in the archives. The setting is a pretty interesting one and I'm curious about some things. I don't want to flood the queue all of a sudden so I'm only starting with a single question:

Why did you choose to make the gargoyles an entirely "natural" species instead of being inherently magical like the Third Race? (natural is in quotes because, I suppose magic is a natural part of the Garg universe) What I mean is, why did you choose to have biological explanations for their evolution, wings, stone sleep, and great strength, instead of using magical explanations? Was it just more to your taste or was there a more specific reason, thematically or within-the-setting, that you didn't want them to be a magical species?
(I'm not trying to say your biological explanations don't work, I'm just curious about your choice from a thematic point of view)

Greg responds...

We didn't want to make them inherently magical for a number of reasons. We didn't want them to be a "created" race. Creatures that could be woven and unwoven by magic. Or brought to life from stone and returned to unlife from stone. You get the idea. We wanted, in essence, to put them on equal footing with humans in terms of inheriting the Earth, so to speak. Creationists or Evolutionists or IntelligentDesignists or whateverelseists should see Gargoyles and Humans as equivalent. Whatever method was used to create humans (choose your poison) is the same method that was used to create Gargoyles.

There's an essay by Stephen J. Gould called something like "Equality is a contingent fact of human history". It's just worked out biologically that all sentient creatures are the same species Homo Sapiens Sapiens. But how would we deal if there were another species...? Gould probably influenced me more than I realized, come to think of it.

Response recorded on March 30, 2007


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