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. :)

Anonymous writes...

Hello Mr. Weisman,
I am a teenage aspiring writer and I love to think of story ideas to write about. But whenever I actually sit down and try writing, I don't know how to start or I have second thoughts about my characters, plot, etc. So, I was just wondering if you could give me any tips on writing a story. Thanks!

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.

Anonymous writes...

Hello Greg,

I ask a question before about Superman and Superboy from Young Justice before, but now I have a personal question about Gargoyles that I have wondered about off and on, for a while now.

Much of Gargoyles was inspired by Shakespheare, whose works I became familiar with from Patrick Stewart, and really enjoy myself.

My question is: What Princess Kathrine in some way named for the character from 'The Taming of the Shrew,' because when we first meet her she certainly acted like a shrew and then later on she becomes 'tamed' in a way?

Thanks.

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?

Alex Weitzman writes...

Mr. Weisman, while you will undoubtedly get to this message months afterwards at best, given the backlog of questions thus far, I wanted to give my condolences for you and your family's loss in Sue Weisman. I also wanted to thank you for the honest and touching small commentary you made on the subject, highlighting the complex emotional situation of watching an older loved one lose themselves to either Alzheimer's, senility, or just age itself (I would not want to make a definite assumption, based on what you described). It sounds to me like she lived a long, fascinating life populated by people she loved, and nobody could ask for more than that. I send my sorrow regarding her passing, and my hope that your upcoming family gathering will provide you some emotional closure or insight to help you through this time.

Thank you for the many years of excellent entertainment, as well. I look forward to many more.

B writes...

When Artemis said in "Misplaced" that she wasn't a cat person, was that a reference to Cheshire?

Martin Muse-Amiel writes...

Hi Mr. Weisman
How are you?

I hope everything goes well for you and your family. Sorry about your grandmother's passing. She be miss but not forgotten.

SpideyFan writes...

I've just gotten a chance to sit down and watch Spectacular Spidey, and it was absolutely mind-blowing. Between it and YJ, I am totally sold on your work. I love the way you structure your stories (on an episode-by-episode basis, and the way you build up longer arcs), and how you manage to present only the most pertinent/interesting information, and trim the narrative fat. It makes your shows a total joy to watch; the stories have such a deliberate sense of movement, everything seems to have purpose. Watching your work inspires me!

Here's the "Ask" part:
In the series finale (S2E13 "The Final Curtain"), Spidey's big confrontation sees him fighting pumpkin-headed grunts in little flying goop-shooting ships. Was this something the creative team was gung-ho about putting in the series, or was it more related to pressures from the powers-that-be about opportunities to sell toys?
Also, how often is marketing, or promoting the DC/Marvel/what-have-you brand a consideration for you when you're creating a show?
Finally: how did you start writing? I don't mean on the level of occupation (i.e. what jobs got you started), but how did you establish for yourself the discipline and confidence in your skills necessary to write professionally?

And I'm sorry to hear about your grandmother. It sounds like it was her time. My own great-grandmother just passed on, and I can tell you she was as ready for it as we were resistant to it. It certainly made the mourning process a lot harder to initiate, since there was this enormous sense of relief that she wasn't in any more pain, or so lonely anymore. I think a sort of hollow initial response is natural. Hope this is some condolences.

Thank you and adieu,

SpideyFan