Jim R. writes...

In one the first series episodes, (i forgot the name), where Xanatos donated the eye of Oden and then had it stolen again for himself, there in the museum scene there was night watchman who was walking down a corridor, and he stopped to look at a painting. He said "Yeh, you and me both, pal." Was that painting any famous one in particular? I almost thought it looked like Edward Munch's "Scream" but then I thought why would the night watchmen associate what he was feeling with "Scream"(not the movie)?

Todd Jensen writes...

A couple of "Future Tense" questions:

1. What inspired you to do the "Future Tense" story (aside from the fact that it provided an effective motivation for Goliath to get rid of the Phoenix Gate)?

2. Were there any particular "dystopia/bleak future" stories that had a noticeable influence upon this episode? If so, which ones? (Well, actually, I noted that you mentioned an "X-Men" story about Sentinels in the future as one of the influences).

Laura 'ad_astra' Ackerman writes...

I've been meaning to post this for a while.. well a month or so-

On Friday, November 17, 2000 05:54:50 PM Revel writes...

"Regarding your "Vows" ramble

I think More's the pitty is kind of like Ignorance is bliss. You've just heard it so many times no one knows who originally said it. (my opinion of course) "

- I don't have my worn out favorit poetry collection with me, (where did I put that this I have been desperately searching for it for a year now …!) But I believe your example comes from a Thomas Gray poem entitled either, "Elegy in a Churchyard" or "Ode Upon Distant Prospects at Eton (or was that Oxford? Or Canbridge)" I might be mangeling any part of it. It is the last line of the poem, "In a place where ignorance is bliss, 'tis folly to be wise."

Revenge of the English major:)

Todd Jensen writes...

This is a related comment to the Mystic shop in London question that I asked a bit ago (perhaps assisted by the fact that I was watching a PBS documentary on Napoleon earlier today). Napoleon once made a famous dismissal of the English as a "nation of shopkeepers" (presumably before those same "shopkeepers" defeated his fleet at Trafalgar and his army at Waterloo). In light of this remark of his, I find it rather amusing that the gargoyles in England are shopkeepers as well as the humans. I don't know if that quote of his ever came to anybody's thought when you were working on "M.I.A.", but I thought that you might be interested.

Aris Katsaris writes...

You said: <<O.K. Thanks. So death was NEVER personified?
Certainly Uranos was personified in the mythology, right? And Eros, of course. >>

Umm, I'm not certain what exactly it is you mean by "personification", so let me be a bit more elaborate.

Pretty much *everything* was personified as a deity, including abstractions like "Victory"-Nike, "Peace"-Eirene, "Justice"-Dike, "Violence"-Bia, "Night"-Nyx, "Sleep"-Hypnos, etc. The name is the concept is the deity...

However most of these deities never seemed to have a solid existence in stories besides their very function - unlike gods and goddesses like Athena, Hades, Hermes, Thetis, Callisto, etc, who very clearly were "persons" with a history and personalities that was separate from their specific roles...

Uranus was ofcourse personified - he was a person who was defeated and castrated by Cronos, etc, etc. And in fact he was probably personified so much that the meaning of his name being "sky" was probably almost forgotten, and Zeus was considered the god whose province was the sky, etc.

Eros is a weird case: The story which "personified" him as the son of Aphrodite and the lover of Psyche, was written very late, 2nd century AD I think, by a Roman writer. In that one he was obviously a seperate person, "personified" with any definition one can come up with.

But before that, Eros seems to have been much more of an abstraction, one of the very first gods who was birthed by Chaos: For if there had been no Eros (no love) later gods (like Gaia and Uranus, or Cronos and Rhea, or Zeus and Hera) could not have loved each other. More of a force, less of a person.

Now Death-"Thanatos" was ofcourse personified like anything else: he's supposed to be the son of Night, and the older brother of Sleep (Hypnos). But besides that, he seems to me to be much more of an abstraction like Nike, and less of a person like Athena. He's referred to as a person occasionally (Zeus sends Hypnos and Thanatos to carry the body of Sarpedon with honour away from Troy, I think that Hercules is supposed to have wrestled with Thanatos in one case) but those two are pretty much the only occasions I remember him be a person...

I don't know if the above helped clarify or confuse...

LSZ writes...

This is a weird question, but were there any plans to use more recent fictional works in the Gargoyles universe, particularly:

1) HG Wells
2) Jules Verne
3) C.S Lewis
4) H.P Lovecraft

Anonymous writes...

there seemed to be many similarities between the star wars universe and the gargoyles universe is this coincidence?

Aris Katsaris writes...

Regarding Xanatos's name you said: <<First it's a slight change on Thanatos, the Greek god of death.>>

A small tidbit: "Thanatos" is not just the ancient Greek god of death, it's the Greek *word* for death (in both ancient and modern Greek).

It means death the same way that in Greek "Uranus" means sky and "Oceanus" means ocean and "Eros" means love (both romantic and physical), etc...

Aris Katsaris writes...

A more normal but somewhat silly question (the answer is almost certainly "no"):

Have you ever read Don Rosa's "Return to Xanadu"? I'm not entirely certain but I think that was one of the first mentions of Xanadu that I ever saw - and which lead me to read Coleridge's poem.

RPG [rpg7@poczta.fm] writes...

Hi!

I'd like to ask You for a Carl Johnson, editor of the such wonderful music sound track to the Gargoyles. Yes, I know there's nothing like a original motion picture soundtrack from the series (however, I know about a fan-made one), but what I want to know if something about this guy, especially what other movies he illustrated with music (I've asked many people, on cr too, but nobody know really nothing).

Another question: how You probably know, there was a TV horror movie Gargoyles (which I haven't seen, btw). I'm curious if You saw this movie and if it inspired You even a little.

Sorry for my english (I'm a polish fan), and thank You in advance for answering my questions and doing it for fans - You are great! ^_^

[Btw: I noticed there was a question about a possibility of releasing a Gargoyles role-playing game. If You are interested to see a fan-made amatour rp conversions of series, I've got some (there's much more of this stuff on the web) of them at following adress ftp://vortex.efekt.pl/people/gargoyle%5E/gargoyle_gamez/]