When Mark Edens wrote the pilot script for me for X-MEN:TAS, there was an X-Man in it that never ended up apprearing on screen as an X-Man. It was the Native …
THANKSGIVING THOUGHTS: THUNDERBIRD, The X-Man We Tried to Use but Couldn’t Read More »
The first season of X-MEN:TAS we got away with something rarely seen in American animated television: we showed a continuing story set over 13 episodes. For us to be allowed …
WE CHEATED: Making Connections in the Savage Land Read More »
Hank McCoy is the most thoughtful superhero character I know, anywhere. He didn’t start out that way. In the first dozen books in 1963, he’s just one of the the …
OUR WISEST, KINDEST SOUL: The Beauty of the Beast Read More »
When I mentioned yesterday how we had written out four team members from X-MEN:TAS and written in four new ones in what was to have been the series finale, I …
THE NEW TEAM THAT NEVER WAS: The Book Will Tell the Story Read More »
Stan Lee liked his villains straight and simple: evil characters to be defeated by heroes. Mark Edens and I once got in trouble during a “Thor” development meeting (the series …
Without Mark Edens, there would be no X-MEN:TAS as we all know and love it. We would have stumbled through somehow, but Mark’s presence was critical to the storytelling. Mark …
How do you show compelling evil in a kids animated TV series? We needed some big stakes to make it believeable that these super-powerful people, our hereos, would need to …
Sacrifice is central to being a hero, super or otherwise. Sadly, much of Hollywood has given up on this. All endings, it seems, must be happy. In classic storytelling, the …
Think about it. You work on a series for five years — even one as fun as X-MEN:TAS — and drawing the same look for the same characters could get …
Below is the brilliant early poster for the movie “Logan” that will premiere four-and-a-half months from now. The simple image of Wolverine’s battered, clawed hand holding that of an unseen …
I have been asked this question one way or another by TV executives for 30 years: “Why can’t you write younger?” I don’t know why. It could be that I …
You MUST believe in the details of characters’ superpowers. If we were ever to play fast and loose with heroes’ or villains’ powers, fans would call us on it. It …