Episode Summary
NERDS!! We’re diving deep into the Batcave of animation history with none other than Frank Paur — the director, producer, and storyboard artist who helped shape Batman: The Animated Series, Gargoyles, Spawn, X-Men Evolution, and Hulk vs. Wolverine!
From his early days geeking out over The Mighty Thor comics and Frank Frazetta artwork, to accidentally turning a “summer job” on Thundarr the Barbarian into a lifelong career, Frank has been at the center of some of the most influential animated projects ever. We talk Batman’s cinematic style, Gargoyles’ cult following, Marvel’s animated B-listers, his Emmy-winning work on Spawn, and even his dream project that got away (Hex Girls spin-off, anyone?).
This episode is packed with animation insights, behind-the-scenes stories, and even a few nerd debates (like who wins: Violator vs. Xanatos vs. Bane?). Buckle up, nerd fam — it’s storytime with a legend!
⸻
⏰ Timestamps & Topics
• 00:00 – 02:30 | Growing Up Geeky: Frank’s early inspirations (The Ten Commandments, The Mighty Thor, Conan covers, and more).
• 05:00 – 06:30 | The “summer job” that never ended: How Thundarr the Barbarian kicked off Frank’s animation career.
• 06:30 – 10:30 | Shaping superhero storytelling: Batman: The Animated Series, Gargoyles, and defining an era.
• 10:30 – 14:30 | Hulk vs. Wolverine & the Marvel direct-to-video era — when “B-list heroes” became heavy hitters.
• 14:30 – 18:00 | Cinematic storytelling, Gargoyles’ legacy, and balancing drama with comedy.
• 22:00 – 24:00 | Switching gears: From Shakespearean tragedy to Scooby-Doo shenanigans.
• 25:00 – 27:00 | Emmy-winning work on Spawn and the hidden gems of Marvel/Lionsgate films.
• 28:00 – 33:00 | The one that got away: Frank’s lost Hex Girls series pitch (and how Netflix’s K-Pop Demon Hunters hit close to home).
• 35:00 – 37:00 | Nerd Debate! Violator vs. Xanatos vs. Bane — who really wins?
• 38:00 – 41:00 | What’s next: Frank’s work on the Gargoyles: Demona comic series.
• 41:30 – End | Favorite tacos, industry advice, and where to follow Frank.
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💡 Key Takeaways
• Frank Paur’s love for fantasy art and comics inspired his legendary animation career.
• Batman: The Animated Series and Gargoyles succeeded by being cinematic, intelligent, and not “just toy commercials.”
• Hulk vs. Wolverine gave animators the rare chance to cut loose and lean into comic book authenticity.
• Spawn showcased the darker side of animation — and earned Frank an Emmy.
• Frank nearly created a Hex Girls spin-off series, proving fans weren’t wrong to stan that Scooby-Doo band.
• Gargoyles: Demona is expanding the mythos with a 1,000-year history of everyone’s favorite anti-hero.
• Xanatos > Violator & Bane. Don’t @ us.
⸻
📢 Call to Action
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🔗 Links & Resources
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❓ Listener Questions
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Apple Podcast Tags
Frank Paur, Batman The Animated Series, Gargoyles, Spawn HBO, X-Men Evolution, Hulk vs Wolverine, Marvel Animation, Animation History, Voice Acting, Comic Con Interviews,
00:00:00
Nerds, sharpen your batarangs, unfurl your wings, and cue the
00:00:03
orchestral score, because today's guest is a legend in the
00:00:07
world of animation. We're talking about the man who
00:00:09
helped define a generation of superheroes and fantasy with the
00:00:12
cinematic vision, the incredible Frank Power.
00:00:15
From shaping the iconic look and feel of Batman the Animated
00:00:18
Series, to bringing stone protectors to life and
00:00:20
Gargoyles, to unleashing the claws and Hulk versus Wolverine,
00:00:24
Frank's fingerprints are all over the shows and films that
00:00:27
made us fall in love with heroes, villains, and everything
00:00:29
in between. He's even tackled darker worlds
00:00:31
like Spawn, earning an Emmy for his work, and continues to
00:00:34
expand the legacy with Gargoyle's Damona.
00:00:37
We dive into his journey with geeking out on Jack Kirby and
00:00:39
Frank Frazetta art to turning a summer job on Thunder the
00:00:43
Barbarian into a legendary career in animation.
00:00:46
So grab your grappling hook, glide across Manhattan
00:00:48
skyscrapers, maybe keep an eye out for Deadpool cracking jokes
00:00:51
in the corner. It's time for another a comic
00:00:55
conversation. Well, ladies and gentlemen, we
00:01:00
are in for another treat here on Comic CONVERSATION.
00:01:03
Today's guest here, LA Comic Con.
00:01:05
We have an American animation director, storyboard artist,
00:01:09
producer and supervisor in animated television and films.
00:01:12
He is legendary in the industry. Ladies and gentlemen, please
00:01:15
welcome Frank Power. Hello.
00:01:19
How's it going, Frank? How's your how's your con been
00:01:21
going so far? It's it's been going pretty
00:01:24
good. Friday was much more intense
00:01:29
than I thought it would be, and today it's really even more
00:01:32
intense, being that it's a Saturday, right?
00:01:35
Which are always. Crazy, right?
00:01:37
It was, it was a pretty busy Friday.
00:01:38
It's usually not that that busy on Fridays.
00:01:40
Yeah, yeah, it's pretty, pretty crazy.
00:01:42
So before we jump into your career and everything else, we
00:01:45
have a, a segment on our show called Growing Up Geeky.
00:01:48
What did you geek out on when you were a kid?
00:01:50
When I was a kid, yeah. Oh, I was a kind of an Escalade
00:01:55
or de escalation. Depends on how you look at it.
00:02:01
I can't became acquainted with art.
00:02:05
It was through and back then they had these booklets for
00:02:10
movies, movie booklets. And there is one called from
00:02:15
Cecil B De Mills, The 10 Commandments by Arnold Freiburg,
00:02:19
which was just, you know, an American illustration master.
00:02:26
And I was so captured by his images, even as a kid, you know,
00:02:31
I would stop, start to copy them and paint them and everything.
00:02:39
And then one day I found a a coverless copy of The Mighty
00:02:44
Thor. Nice.
00:02:47
And the two of them things just kind of work together.
00:02:50
And I was kind of hooked on the whole fantasy thing.
00:02:52
And then later on, of course, Frank Frazetta's covers for
00:02:56
Lancer books on the Conan and, you know, I saw my.
00:03:02
Introduction. To sword and sorcery and all
00:03:04
that sort of thing was was through the Conan covers that
00:03:08
kind of led into more of the science fiction, the Ray
00:03:12
Bradbury's, the Frank Herbert and all that stuff I got more
00:03:17
acquainted to in high school. And then it just kind of spread
00:03:21
out. And all that time I was still
00:03:23
drawing, not very good, but I was, I was still doing it so.
00:03:28
But you took up art at a young age, like you.
00:03:30
Oh, yeah, yeah, I, I, I became, I was always very interested.
00:03:33
My, my folks were always very supportive of they made sure I
00:03:38
was always supplied with paper and pens.
00:03:40
Nice. You know, So I was cool with
00:03:42
them. I always like to ask this
00:03:44
question with any artist that I talked to.
00:03:46
Do you remember what your first drawing was, or one of your
00:03:50
first drawings? I remember one time we saw,
00:03:54
well, I, I there's some instances, but there's one
00:03:57
that's a little bit prophetic in a way.
00:04:00
I remember watching a science fiction film called Fantastic
00:04:04
Boy, Stephen Boyd, Raquel Welch and I remember coming home.
00:04:11
I, the visuals are, you know, I, I'd sit down with a ream of
00:04:15
paper and wound up drawing the images from my mind and onto the
00:04:20
paper. I'm sure they are terrible.
00:04:21
But the idea that I would just do that is, you know, because
00:04:25
the show left such an impression on, on me at that time that I
00:04:32
had a, you know, we, we didn't have VHS or any of that stuff
00:04:36
back then, so. Pre pre Betamax pre.
00:04:39
Oh yeah, yeah. It was.
00:04:42
It was whatever was in syndication on TV, and
00:04:44
syndication was still new. Yeah, well, in my case, you
00:04:47
know, I mean, I come from the age where it was rare to have a
00:04:51
color TV and you, you still had those, those Ghost Channel.
00:04:57
After 12:00 midnight, everything would go off and they put that
00:05:01
little tea. Right.
00:05:04
You know, 6:00 in the morning and you know they'd have the
00:05:07
flag and they'd play the national anthem and the day
00:05:11
would begin again, right? Right, so transitioning from
00:05:16
from kind of like the the we age and getting into art.
00:05:20
When did you get into animation and and what did you get?
00:05:22
What was your first? I was I was I was a attending
00:05:27
college at Brigham Young University, OK, in Provo, UT and
00:05:36
I was studying art and illustration and you know, I was
00:05:44
paying for, you know, the school.
00:05:46
So you look all these different types of jobs and somebody was
00:05:51
doing had set up an animation shop in in Provo.
00:05:57
West Wind Productions is the name of it, and you're looking
00:06:03
for layout artists, and in this case, one of the layout with the
00:06:08
show that they wanted me to work on was Thundar the Barbarian.
00:06:14
Thundar. And so I wound up doing a lot of
00:06:18
background and designs and basically character layouts for
00:06:25
Thundar because, yeah, at that time I was already a big Jack
00:06:30
Kirby fan and all that. So.
00:06:33
A lot of influence from from Jack there.
00:06:34
Was a lot of fantastic and it was, you know, I mean it was a
00:06:37
summer job and I continued with my school and eventually the
00:06:40
summer job, I came out here to work and it just became a very
00:06:43
long, long, long summer job. So to this day, still still
00:06:49
working on that summer job. So you you shaped a whole
00:06:53
generation for 90s kids and and what we grew up on.
00:06:56
What's it like having such a big kind of part in shaping and
00:07:01
defining the superhero genre with, with things like Batman
00:07:04
the animated series and, and gargoyles and, and kind of the,
00:07:08
the, the, the properties that you've been a part of have been
00:07:11
groundbreaking in in many senses, but also have had a
00:07:14
lasting take on on society. Like what?
00:07:20
Honestly, I I never gave it that much thought.
00:07:24
You remember, And it's like to, to people in the animation
00:07:29
industry, it's, it's a job and it, it, it pays well and you
00:07:34
meet fun people and sometimes you travel a lot, depending on
00:07:40
if you know your position with within the hierarchy, but you
00:07:49
never really think about what other people think of your work.
00:07:57
You know, I now remember when I was a kid, I used to watch
00:07:59
Hanna, lot of Hanna Barbera stuff and these others.
00:08:02
And so, you know, the Warner Brothers cartoons, obviously.
00:08:06
And so I, I knew, you know, Chris Freeling and as I didn't
00:08:12
know, I was aware of all these guys and everything.
00:08:14
I never really equated myself with any of, of these stalwarts
00:08:20
at a time. You know, I that's something
00:08:22
that's earned over time, I guess, as if you're if your
00:08:26
stuff survives. Because remember, as much as you
00:08:31
remember a lot of shows, many other, there's a lot of shows
00:08:36
that nobody ever remembers that we work on.
00:08:39
You know, I mean, a lot of, you know, you know, Spiral Zone or,
00:08:44
or just in humanoids, things like this, you know, you know,
00:08:56
Galaxy Rangers, which, you know, some people think to them
00:09:00
fondly, but they're not Batman. They're not gargoyles.
00:09:04
They they're, they're fondly remembered for what they are,
00:09:08
but they're not the ones that stood the test of time.
00:09:13
Yeah. What's what's crazy is a lot of
00:09:16
those still though had influences on the people who who
00:09:20
ended up coming up with those properties which they still have
00:09:23
like a lasting. They most of that stuff does,
00:09:26
but again, that's that's almost a different category that you
00:09:30
would have for some of these things.
00:09:32
I mean, you know, I to be involved in something like
00:09:37
Batman was you were at that at the time.
00:09:42
It was, you know, everybody wanted to work on it.
00:09:45
Obviously, I don't think we, I, I think after we finished our
00:09:50
first episodes and we saw the response, we knew we had
00:09:54
something special. But while we were making it,
00:09:57
there were dreams of something special.
00:09:59
But until it actually is grounded in reality, that's all
00:10:03
they are. Because everybody has dreams of
00:10:06
these shows and and then to go on and do something like
00:10:08
Gargoyles and it's, you know, and then have that become this
00:10:14
huge cult following on it. I mean, even today, I'm, you
00:10:19
know, I'm working on this comic book called, you know, gargoyles
00:10:23
Damona, where we've taken the lead protagonist, you know, the
00:10:26
protect the the antagonist. And we're we're doing a very
00:10:32
small portion of her thousand year history.
00:10:37
And it's still that, you know, again, we created this thing 30
00:10:39
years ago, 30 years or or so ago, and we're doing that.
00:10:43
And then there's all the Marvel stuff we did.
00:10:46
Right. Like that I was able to do with
00:10:48
with the X-Men, X-Men, Evolution, Avengers, Earth's
00:10:51
Mightiest Heroes, Hulk versus Wolverine versus.
00:10:57
What's funny is one of my favorite scenes in all of the
00:11:01
X-Men animated films is, is from Hulk versus Wolverine.
00:11:05
You know, I'm a massive Deadpool fan.
00:11:07
So like, you know when Deadpool comes in and I literally wrote a
00:11:11
joke that came from that movie about when Hulk steps on him and
00:11:15
I make this joke about how Deadpool seen the bottom of the
00:11:18
Hulk's foot. Some other people did too,
00:11:22
because I noticed there's this very similar scene in the first
00:11:25
Deadpool movie. Yeah, You know, But yeah, I
00:11:30
mean, you know, it's like when we did that, for instance, it's
00:11:33
like they they said you don't have to worry about everybody
00:11:38
being robots for Wolverine. Yeah.
00:11:41
And so we just kind of looked around at each other and smiled,
00:11:45
OK, we're not going to get this chance again, so probably never
00:11:50
get this chance again. So we're going to go for broke.
00:11:52
And we brought in the talent to do it.
00:11:53
Yeah, especially in that time because like it was when they
00:11:57
were starting to kind of like rain back a little bit on the
00:11:59
hey, everything's got to be, you know, super friendly.
00:12:02
It's like, hey, well, this. Is direct, this is direct to
00:12:04
video stuff. I mean, it wasn't for broadcast,
00:12:08
you know, this is, this is you purchase it through, you know,
00:12:14
your, your home video department.
00:12:17
So we could yeah. And in part of the advertisement
00:12:20
is that this stuff is more adult oriented.
00:12:23
And, and one of the reasons that we are doing it that way is that
00:12:27
they wanted us to take these lesser characters because Marvel
00:12:32
had at least, you know, sold out, you know, Spider Man and
00:12:35
X-Men and Fantastic Four and all these other great properties.
00:12:38
And so they were left with The Avengers and Doctor Strange and
00:12:41
Iron Man, which are considered, you know, BC level characters.
00:12:45
And so they wanted us at MLG, Marvel, Lionsgate to create an
00:12:54
awareness of who these guys were, who these, you know, super
00:12:59
powers of all this stuff. And that's one of the reasons we
00:13:03
were kind of unfettered is they wanted to see what we could do
00:13:07
with it and also what they could do with it, because there's a
00:13:12
number of things that they were able to utilize from what we did
00:13:17
that man that manifested themselves into the movies
00:13:21
eventually, which was the idea. You know, I mean it's kind of
00:13:24
like pre pre production development.
00:13:30
Right 'cause I mean so many people are used to thinking that
00:13:32
like Marvel was always like this.
00:13:33
But like you just mentioned, a lot of these characters were BC
00:13:36
list characters. Doctor Strange and especially
00:13:39
Iron Man Iron Man was not an A list character until the MCU
00:13:43
made him that and it's like I I saw.
00:13:45
Well, it wasn't in the MCU that made him that.
00:13:48
That was Robert Downey Junior that made him that a list
00:13:51
character, right, Right. Not underestimate Robert.
00:13:54
He's fantastic right in that thing.
00:13:56
He. He took a character that, I
00:13:58
mean, I'm going to go off on a tangent that I don't need to go
00:14:00
on because I want to keep it focused on you.
00:14:01
But I mean, yeah, yeah, you guys were able to play with that and
00:14:05
and do something that made it something that everyone was
00:14:10
interested in and everybody wanted to look at.
00:14:12
And and again, that's that's another.
00:14:14
That was well, one thing that the, the MCU did, you know,
00:14:17
under, under Kevin and Avi was they're able to bring together
00:14:24
these amazing crews and to give them creative license.
00:14:29
You know, and Jon Favreau, you know, it was it was a stroke of
00:14:32
genius bringing him in because he is a he's he's he knows
00:14:39
actors and he knows character and Marvel as a comic book.
00:14:43
Why everybody was always attracted to Marvel over DC was
00:14:48
that Marvel had characters that you could empathize with, right?
00:14:53
More relatable. Characters, yeah, they were very
00:14:55
more relatable. And so that was, that was, you
00:14:57
know, that was genius bringing him in to do this stuff.
00:15:03
Right. You know, 'cause he, he
00:15:05
understands it. I mean, you know, the story
00:15:07
structure and everything else, you know, And again, everybody
00:15:10
was finding their way at first, really.
00:15:13
And they eventually, you know, it ended with, you know, with
00:15:18
Avengers End Game. And that was the highlight, I
00:15:22
guess. You know, I mean, they've had
00:15:24
other stuff which has been really good, but there's nothing
00:15:28
like End Game. But oh, absolutely not.
00:15:30
It was such a culmination. Civil war and all.
00:15:32
It was all just a big lead up to you.
00:15:34
In it was it was it was a giant size issue yeah, it's really
00:15:37
what it ended up being yeah, it was awesome so with gargoyles,
00:15:40
you had a lot of influence beyond direction, you know was
00:15:45
was your vision always the look and the feel that that that it
00:15:48
ended up being was that kind of like always something that.
00:15:50
It was with Gargoyles because there's there's a lot of people
00:15:55
that developed that show before I came on.
00:15:58
They, they had a lot of art. My job is they wanted me, you
00:16:04
know, I, I won't say Batman eyes it because we didn't, but I gave
00:16:10
it a cinematic approach is what I brought to it.
00:16:14
You know, so it was, I'm a big fan of like 50s adventure
00:16:17
movies, you know, the cinema scope and this division and
00:16:22
Cinerama, you know, all that kind of stuff.
00:16:25
So. And it comes across in the work
00:16:27
100%. And when you look at that, yeah.
00:16:29
And then, you know, when you look at that stuff, I mean,
00:16:33
gargoyles fit any genre we wanted.
00:16:39
You know, we would go with these wild Shakespearean things, which
00:16:42
is Greg Wiseman's expertise, and to horror stories, to just silly
00:16:50
comedies, I mean, science fiction, everything they could
00:16:58
fit within what we were able to accomplish, which is what made
00:17:04
it special. It wasn't a stupid show.
00:17:06
It was very well thought out. It wasn't a toy commercial.
00:17:10
Absolutely not, right? You know, And that's why I think
00:17:12
people are fond of that today. Is that it?
00:17:17
It tried to be an intelligent show.
00:17:20
It took itself seriously, but not like in a way where it was
00:17:23
like too serious. It was just.
00:17:24
It was it. Was it was still a dizzy thing,
00:17:28
You still had to. There's more serious a show that
00:17:33
you do, you always have to leaven it with.
00:17:37
You know, you always have to even it with comedy, right?
00:17:41
Otherwise it just gets well. It's it's like spawn.
00:17:44
Spawn is one of these great show I worked on, but it was it was
00:17:49
so intense. There's very little to Levin it
00:17:55
with with comedy. So it's like it's pure horror
00:17:59
and detective drama, but with guard.
00:18:03
You know that. And that works great for an HBO
00:18:06
audience, which is late night, but not so much when you're
00:18:11
trying to get the whole family involved in the show.
00:18:14
And you do that and you have all this heavy adventure, you have
00:18:18
to leaven it with comedy. And that's why you've got all
00:18:21
these different side characters, because a show just with Goliath
00:18:25
himself isn't going to succeed because he's too serious.
00:18:30
On the other hand, if you give him these goofy sidekicks like
00:18:34
Lexington and Brooklyn, Hudson and the dog Bronx.
00:18:39
Right. He has things to work off of.
00:18:43
Right. So you will get these comedic
00:18:45
takes from Goliath because he's dealing with Bronx being a dog.
00:18:51
Right. You know, I mean, I mean stuff
00:18:53
like that and it, it's all designed that way in the writing
00:18:57
and within the designs and everything.
00:19:00
It's like I said before, when we did all these designs, you know,
00:19:03
they had at the time it's Walt Disney Japan.
00:19:06
It's called, I think it's called Answer Studios now.
00:19:09
But at the time it was, you know, it was Disney had reached
00:19:14
out and hired a lot of great artists from a lot of different
00:19:18
Japanese studios. And they, they had their own
00:19:20
studio and I worked very closely with them during the Gargoyles
00:19:26
run. And, and they're responsible for
00:19:30
a great deal of the look of the show overall.
00:19:34
And I came in, I kind of simplified things a little bit
00:19:37
because we had to animate this stuff.
00:19:39
Right, right, right. You know, one of the things I,
00:19:41
I, I did, you know, I came in, they had a full seat of model
00:19:45
sheets and they were just very, you know, they're beautiful, but
00:19:49
they're very complex. And so I went in and I
00:19:54
streamlined a lot of the drawing and, you know, from straights
00:19:57
and curves, kind of the milk call type of, of, of stuff that,
00:20:01
you know, Disney would do. I tried to keep Disney and
00:20:04
Batman did excellent. Right, right, right, right.
00:20:06
But it's still, I didn't want it to look like Batman.
00:20:08
So we, you know, we, we, we made a little less cartoony, but with
00:20:12
the same idea of simplification. Right.
00:20:17
Doesn't mean Batman was very art Deco in the way that it kind of
00:20:19
ran. And there's a little more of A
00:20:21
and. Our show is more of a realistic.
00:20:22
Type of thing and very. Warm water and when you know
00:20:24
when when I presented you know my drawings to overseas, they
00:20:30
opted to redo all the stuff that they did because they knew that
00:20:34
this would be easier to animate. And the easier it is to animate,
00:20:38
the better it looks. And my own theory of of
00:20:44
superhero type shows, you know, the the more realistic you be,
00:20:48
you take a show, the less quality you're going to get out
00:20:52
of the animation unless you have a huge budget and time limit
00:20:56
because there's just not that many artists that can draw that
00:20:59
well. However, if you simplify a
00:21:03
design and keep quality on story, and if the design comes
00:21:10
in, it's not quite there. I mean, Batman, there's a lot of
00:21:13
really weird looking episodes, but nobody cares because the
00:21:17
story is so good and it moves and it's supposed to look
00:21:20
different, so they miss a lot of that.
00:21:22
But the moment you go back, it's like Avenger, Earth's Mightiest
00:21:26
Heroes. You look at Earth's Mightiest
00:21:27
Heroes, there's a lot of mistakes.
00:21:29
Nobody cares about it, but you look at its follow up, The
00:21:33
Avengers, and they went more with a realistic approach.
00:21:37
The mistakes are just all over the place and they're
00:21:39
noticeable. And it's not that there's any
00:21:41
less than what we had, it's just that because they tried doing
00:21:43
them so real that you notice them more.
00:21:47
Right. And you're not.
00:21:47
You're not covering it with a, with a, with a.
00:21:49
Story, you know, so I mean there's there's trickery
00:21:54
involved in a lot of this sort of thing but.
00:22:03
Was this is so with that, like did Disney give you kind of more
00:22:07
room to take risks because. Oh yes, absolutely, absolutely.
00:22:10
They they used to when I was there, they they supported me
00:22:12
full. Yeah, 'cause it's like they saw
00:22:14
what you did at Fox, so they're just like, hey, you know what?
00:22:16
Well, they went through they went through a a process of
00:22:21
finding the people they wanted and they they settled with me
00:22:23
and with Michael Reeves, you know, from also from Batman.
00:22:28
And we kind of worked together with closely with Greg Wiseman,
00:22:31
who was the executive in charge at the time.
00:22:34
Later on, he became a Co producer of the series.
00:22:38
And you know, because he was still even as an executive, he
00:22:41
was still kind of in control of the overall arch that he wanted
00:22:45
to go to on the series. And he just more officially took
00:22:50
those duties up later on. OK.
00:22:54
That's, again, it's all fascinating, like every,
00:22:57
everything on this. We're going to move just
00:22:59
specifically to this because I have somebody who who sent us,
00:23:02
sent us a question in specifically on this.
00:23:05
So friend of our friend of the show, Brandon McKinney says
00:23:09
hello. Oh, OK.
00:23:11
And he wanted to ask specifically about Batman Mask
00:23:14
of the Phantasm. Phantasm.
00:23:16
He says what, what was it like working on Mask of the Phantasm?
00:23:19
Most importantly, who's your favorite storyboard artist to
00:23:22
work with on Scooby-doo and guess Who?
00:23:30
Well. Brandon, you might be
00:23:35
disappointed, man. Anytime you can get Brandon
00:23:40
working on one of your shows, it's always a pleasure.
00:23:43
You know, it's always a pleasure because he's just his attitude
00:23:47
is so cool to deal with and his work is always, you know,
00:23:53
there's nothing hurried about it, you know, and it's always,
00:23:57
you know, he always puts out, you know, puts things out there.
00:24:00
So anytime you can work with someone like Brandon, it, it's
00:24:04
great. But I, I, there's a lot of
00:24:05
storyboard people that we utilized on it on that, You
00:24:10
know, I had a great in house team as well.
00:24:14
I used a lot of freelancers and they were all like Scooby
00:24:17
experts in their own right. So in a way, as a director on
00:24:21
Scooby, it was, you know, the only the only person you know, I
00:24:26
had to deal with was was our fearless leader.
00:24:32
You know, Chris Bailey, you know, he'd come from features
00:24:35
and you know, he's just this this freaking genius when it
00:24:39
comes to comedy and things is like, how do I keep up with this
00:24:42
bad man? Right.
00:24:44
You know so. It's such a different dynamic
00:24:47
going from something that is almost Shakespearean and like,
00:24:51
you know, those the properties we were talking about before to
00:24:54
doing fun things like scooby-doo and, and I was lifting up your
00:24:59
resume and there's, there's, there's so much just fun things
00:25:03
that you've done where again, it's just, there's a different
00:25:06
dynamic in it. So just it's, it's always
00:25:08
interesting to see the work that you've that that that directors
00:25:11
and and and, and writers and artists have done just because
00:25:15
of just just the range that goes into the work that you.
00:25:20
Oh, yeah, yeah. And then again, there's, there's
00:25:22
a, you know, there are people with a lot far more range than I
00:25:26
have. Because once you get into
00:25:28
producing, people have a executives have a way of
00:25:30
pigeonholing you into a certain style or, or type, you know, So
00:25:37
you know, the, the, the pure comedy shows, you know, I never
00:25:41
really did, you know, I, I can do them, but it's, it's harder
00:25:46
for me to do because I do the, once you start doing the other
00:25:49
stuff full time, your connections start become afraid,
00:25:54
you know, just a bit frayed. But there are guys that, that,
00:25:58
that hop that I know that hop back and forth.
00:26:00
It's like Gary Hartle, you know, he'll do be doing Masters of the
00:26:03
Universe and then he'll turn around and he'll do Johnny
00:26:06
Bravo. Yeah.
00:26:07
And it's just amazing stuff, you know, And, you know, Nick
00:26:11
showers another one that can kind of and do that sort of
00:26:14
thing. Angry Beavers, you know, to, you
00:26:19
know, you did that. You didn't did work for me on
00:26:21
scooby-doo. And, you know, he's done a lot
00:26:25
of comics and things, you know, that that are superhero type
00:26:28
stuff. So there's all I said.
00:26:30
There's just so much amazing talent in the animation
00:26:33
industry, you know, most of these guys can do just about
00:26:37
anything. That's awesome.
00:26:38
So I'm going to start wrapping up here just because I have
00:26:42
plenty more questions that I have, but I also want to respect
00:26:44
your time. So, so 2 questions that I'm
00:26:47
going to kind of jump into here. Is there a particular property
00:26:52
that you wish had more visibility that that you feel
00:26:55
felt didn't get It's kind of due.
00:27:01
I think the MLG films, we had tremendous development on each
00:27:09
of those things. And because of its range that
00:27:14
was only limited to video that we never, you know, we never had
00:27:25
a chance to file anything for actual, you know, go in for any
00:27:29
kind of awards or any of that, which I think basically many of
00:27:33
them deserve to have that right. But because of the rules, we we
00:27:37
didn't qualify for much of that. Right, because I kind of skipped
00:27:40
over, but you got an Emmy for spawn, so I mean.
00:27:42
Yeah, yeah. And you know, and like I said,
00:27:49
like there, there's so much, you know, you look at a lot if you
00:27:53
haven't, you ever have a chance to look at any of the actual
00:27:55
artwork from any of those shows that we did on MLGI Challenge.
00:28:00
Anybody the chat, you know, to to equal a lot of what we did.
00:28:04
You know, unless they have a huge budget behind them, you
00:28:08
will not find it. And it's buried.
00:28:13
It's just all buried because it's Lionsgate and it's Marvel,
00:28:17
it's not Disney. It's, you know, it's got the
00:28:21
Lionsgate logo in there and nobody knows what to do with it
00:28:24
because they own the Marvel, but they don't own Lionsgate.
00:28:28
And it's just one of those little weird things that just
00:28:30
kind of slips past everyone. It's like I said, Hulk versus,
00:28:34
you know, Hulk versus Wolverine, Hulk versus story and, you know.
00:28:39
And those stories were great planet.
00:28:41
Hulk. Oh God.
00:28:43
OK, Planet Hulk, I'm not going to jump too much into this, but
00:28:46
I, I, I compared Ragnarok and like a lot of that to that movie
00:28:51
so much this Planet Hulk was one of my favorite animated movies
00:28:55
for the longest time as it was so well done.
00:28:57
It's like there's a couple things that weren't that that
00:29:00
that happened in the comic that didn't happen in the movie, but
00:29:02
there were. It was a long comic book.
00:29:04
Yeah, there's a lot we left out. Yeah, but like, I, I, I honestly
00:29:07
was sitting there waiting. I was like, OK, Planet Hulk was
00:29:10
done so well and it almost leads at the end, almost leads into
00:29:13
World War Hulk. And I was like, I was waiting
00:29:15
for that. Well, like, so were we.
00:29:16
Yeah, that would have been on the next slate of things.
00:29:18
And then Disney bought Marvel and all that went away.
00:29:21
Yeah, unfortunately, man, it was.
00:29:23
It was. I was hoping that Disney would
00:29:24
have taken on the mantle, but Disney, you know, I it's Disney.
00:29:31
Yeah. What can I tell you?
00:29:33
Right. Is there is there a project
00:29:35
aside from the one we just mentioned right now?
00:29:37
But is there a project like a project that got away?
00:29:39
Something that you kind of still dream now?
00:29:41
Man, I I want to work on this property.
00:29:43
You know, I do have one and it is, it's a very bittersweet.
00:29:48
I was working on scooby-doo. We're finishing scooby-doo up.
00:29:52
I did an episode with the Hex Girls.
00:29:54
OK, OK. And, you know, I'm doing this
00:30:00
and it's like I'm looking into it and I'm looking into the
00:30:03
music and looking at all these different types of things.
00:30:06
Find out they have this huge fan, I mean, just enormous fan
00:30:09
base, as big as Superman or Batman.
00:30:11
And it's the Hex girls. Nobody knows who the Hex girls
00:30:13
are, but they do just not much publicity with them.
00:30:17
So I went in, I, I talked to one of our executives and, and I
00:30:21
said, hey, why we should be thinking about developing this
00:30:25
as a series, You know this. No, I don't know.
00:30:28
You know, I don't want to deal with that.
00:30:30
It's like they're very popular among the fans.
00:30:33
You know, they have like Batman based fans.
00:30:35
Yeah. Oh, really?
00:30:36
Yes. And there's no story with them.
00:30:40
We just see these goofy girls in their music occasionally on
00:30:45
scooby-doo. We should have give them their
00:30:48
own series. Yeah.
00:30:50
And he's like, so we could create the he goes, oh, we could
00:30:54
create their origins. Yes, yes, yes, yes.
00:30:58
And so I put together this this whole thing and he said that,
00:31:03
you know, we, I, I was given a list of rules.
00:31:06
Don't we can't use scooby-doo. We can't use the mystery
00:31:10
incorporated, you know, any of the Scooby characters.
00:31:13
We can't go into any of that love graphic and type stuff.
00:31:17
You know that they did. So it was basically just a girl.
00:31:21
So I idea came to the idea. Well, we do this.
00:31:24
We use the idea of magic because we have, you know, it's like,
00:31:30
how does magic work? And it works through sound.
00:31:34
So sound equals music and music. It's like, you know, why do they
00:31:39
always use Latin to call up the, you know, some kind of devil?
00:31:45
It's because it's this sound that it makes is my idea.
00:31:51
And, you know, you have Ley lines throughout the world.
00:31:54
And it's like these things are are are areas of power.
00:31:58
So if you have right concert in these lines and you have these,
00:32:02
you know, they can call up stuff they don't even know calling up.
00:32:07
And you know, so we get this whole thing starting up and we
00:32:10
get into their powers and, you know, all this stuff and they
00:32:13
wind it. So it, it, it's kind of the idea
00:32:16
is, is that, you know, we, we have kind of an Izikate type of
00:32:19
situation now where you have both worlds and they're part of
00:32:23
both worlds at this point. And it's the sound and it's the
00:32:26
music and they're the, they're the arch wizard Wizards and
00:32:29
things. And they're fighting the wind up
00:32:31
fighting demons and Dragons and everything.
00:32:34
And then discovery bought Bart bought Warner Brothers and it
00:32:38
all just disappeared. Everything disappeared.
00:32:40
And then, and then COVID hit and that just amplified everything
00:32:44
and it disappeared. And four years later, they
00:32:47
Netflix comes up with K pop Demon Hunters, which is
00:32:50
basically the same thing that I had pitched right to Warner
00:32:54
Brothers, that they already have a property.
00:32:56
And even if they sell did it today, if if they didn't cheap
00:32:59
out on the music. Yeah, you know, it's, it's all
00:33:03
there for anybody who want who, anybody brave enough to do it.
00:33:08
It's it's funny because, because when you said that.
00:33:10
K Pop has shown that, you know, if you sit on a great idea,
00:33:14
somebody will eventually. Do it immediately when you
00:33:18
started describing the story. I'm just sitting like, who from
00:33:21
Sony sat in, sat in on this pitch meeting because it's like
00:33:24
somebody had Sony wrote this, like, like rewrote this story.
00:33:27
Well, again, it's, it's, it's not, it's, you know, I mean, I
00:33:30
got the idea. Well, not to say they stole it,
00:33:32
but I mean like, you know. No, no.
00:33:33
Yeah. But I got the idea from Jim for
00:33:35
1980. OK, which?
00:33:36
Was like the most popular cartoon #1 cartoon at the time,
00:33:42
which is about a bunch of girls and they travel the world and
00:33:44
just singing songs and shit and they're going through
00:33:46
adventures. It's the same idea, except
00:33:48
you're adding, you know, the characters are a bit more goth
00:33:52
and they're a bit more interesting Goths and, you know,
00:33:56
and the music and all this stuff.
00:33:59
I mean, I mean, it ultimately would sell itself and
00:34:03
everybody's trying to get the girl audiences in and you can't
00:34:08
think of a better way to do it. Yeah, if you do it well enough,
00:34:10
you can get the boy audiences too.
00:34:12
Like it's it's it's it's proven that My Little Pony is like a
00:34:15
proof that you can get male audience with with a girl
00:34:17
property if you do it right. Yeah, you know, so.
00:34:20
But again, Sony did. I mean, I looked at that.
00:34:23
It was it was a great show. And you know, it was like it
00:34:25
works. It's really good.
00:34:27
That's that's you know, I'm glad to know my ideas work it, even
00:34:30
if nobody else believes they do. It's not like my, you know, I've
00:34:35
done any successful shows or not.
00:34:38
Never. Right.
00:34:39
Oh, man. OK, so I'm gonna, I'm gonna jump
00:34:42
into the to to the wrap up kind of like quick fire questions
00:34:44
here. So I'm gonna ask you the hardest
00:34:47
question you've ever been asked in your life.
00:34:48
Are you ready for this? All right, all right.
00:34:50
What is your favorite kind of Taco?
00:34:53
My favorite kind of Taco, the kind my mom used to make.
00:34:57
Oh, that's the kind that's my favorite Taco.
00:35:00
That's good. So she was, you know, she was
00:35:03
quite the cook in, in Mexican cuisine.
00:35:07
Nice. So.
00:35:09
That's pretty cool. What what was your favorite
00:35:12
feeling like? What was the kind that she would
00:35:13
do that that was your favorite the most?
00:35:14
Well, it's the meat. You know how she how she handled
00:35:16
the meat you. Know like it didn't matter.
00:35:18
What kind of the difference? Well, I mean, she, you know, you
00:35:22
know, she had a lot. We had a large family.
00:35:23
So, you know, she had to think in ways that, you know, she was,
00:35:28
you know, she was a chef at, you know, at a restaurant and, you
00:35:35
know, so she understood how to cook a lot of different kinds of
00:35:38
food and said that my favorite, you know, with tacos is always
00:35:41
grand because we need to have the ingredients who would make
00:35:44
them all ourselves. And they would chop.
00:35:45
She'd chop it and you'd work and saute and get everything just
00:35:49
the way it was we needed it and put it out there.
00:35:52
We would assemble the stuff ourselves.
00:35:54
It was great fun. Great food.
00:35:57
What's some advice like like quick advice you might have for
00:36:00
someone trying to get into the industry?
00:36:02
Oh well, the industry right now is very difficult because
00:36:09
streaming, I'm not, it's just, I think it was badly handled by
00:36:15
various studios. You don't get too far into it,
00:36:21
but really it's just about drawing, coming up with your
00:36:29
ideas. Right.
00:36:31
Drawing them down, writing them down, drawing them, designing
00:36:34
them. It's about love of drawing,
00:36:36
right? And, and just conquering your
00:36:43
fears and putting everything on paper and, you know,
00:36:47
understanding all these things, you know, I mean, if you have an
00:36:50
interest in it, you know, if you're, if you want to be a
00:36:52
mechanic, you'll learn all about putting cars together.
00:36:55
And it's the same thing. The same rules apply.
00:36:58
The more you know, the better you become.
00:37:01
I like that. That's good.
00:37:03
Another hard question for you here.
00:37:05
Violator versus Xanatos versus somebody erased the other one
00:37:10
that I had on here. Let's just go with that.
00:37:11
Violator versus Xanatos, who wins in a fight?
00:37:14
Xanatos Xanatos in the. Past that's not even a question,
00:37:17
so I'm so sorry. He knows that the guy's going to
00:37:19
come after him. He's got 20 different ideas, you
00:37:22
know, before he even knows what hits him.
00:37:23
He's he's got, he doesn't even have to fight the guy.
00:37:27
Oh, you know, I remember who it was.
00:37:29
Violator versus Zanatos and we're throwing comic book
00:37:32
accurate Bane into the into the mix.
00:37:36
Probably say that, yes. Zanatos already knows that shit.
00:37:40
Yeah, You know, he ain't gonna get anything over on Zanatos.
00:37:45
You know, Bane is Bane is just, you know, he's, he's WD.
00:37:48
You know, he's a, he's a wrestler.
00:37:49
He's not, he's not all that bright.
00:37:51
He's all muscle. And you know, it's not even a
00:37:55
contest. Well.
00:37:57
What if we did Xanatos versus versus Batman?
00:38:00
You get more than you get into a more interesting character in a
00:38:04
more interesting match like. Who?
00:38:06
Who out thinks each other? Who out thinks I?
00:38:08
I think you're getting into because everything Xanatos does
00:38:13
is legal. He's just, he's just, it's
00:38:16
questionable. Yeah.
00:38:18
You know, I would, I would, I would.
00:38:21
I would think that in a, in a situation that Xanatos would
00:38:25
think, do I really want to go up against Batman and he would
00:38:28
steer clear of him. That's the smartest play against
00:38:32
Batman. Stay away from him.
00:38:34
Stay away from the city. I agree, just don't go to Gotham
00:38:37
at all. You know, just, you know, that's
00:38:41
the best way to beat Batman is never having to have to fight
00:38:44
him. Right.
00:38:45
So there you go. What's next for you?
00:38:47
Is there any any any other shows that you want to promote or any
00:38:51
any projects? Well, I'm right now I'm work.
00:38:53
As I said earlier, I'm working with Greg Wiseman on a Damona
00:39:01
spin off series comic book series about her her life pre
00:39:09
1990s which is includes about 1000 years of history.
00:39:15
Yeah, I'm, I'm, it's going to go on my watch list now.
00:39:17
I'm going. To be the we've got we've got
00:39:19
the the third one, there's five issues.
00:39:21
Actually, there is there's six issues.
00:39:23
The first one was Free Comic Book Day, which actually takes
00:39:26
place in modern day, not modern, but it takes place in Manhattan
00:39:31
in 1996. And it which which sets up this
00:39:36
mystery of this, you know, she's after this device, this, these
00:39:40
supposedly magical items in the other gargoyles tried to stop
00:39:44
her. And she, you know, they stop her
00:39:46
and they, they, they take the shield, this magical shield of
00:39:49
Odin that, you know, they knew she was going to cause some kind
00:39:52
of issue with. And then what we find out is
00:39:55
that it was this little Locket. And inside the Locket is a braid
00:39:59
of hair of red and yellow gold. So who is the yellow gold hair
00:40:07
belong to? And that's takes us into issue
00:40:10
1, where we find out. Oh yeah.
00:40:14
No, I'm. I'm probably.
00:40:15
Going to go and buy that then I see all of what happens
00:40:18
afterwards. There's a 200 year history that
00:40:20
we put into this so so. I, I love the idea of that.
00:40:24
I love, I love telling that story.
00:40:27
And I'm I'm not always somebody who, you know, I want to know
00:40:31
the origin of every villain or things like that.
00:40:32
Sometimes I want certain villains to be monsters.
00:40:34
I want them like I want Joker to be a monster to, you know, not
00:40:38
humanize him in some of those ways that people have.
00:40:41
But with Damona, she has such a push and a pull when it comes to
00:40:46
the rest of the characters. Well, you have to look.
00:40:48
I mean, you know, maybe Greg has different ideas on some of.
00:40:52
I think we're pretty close on a lot of things.
00:40:53
Damona absolutely hates humans. Yeah, she.
00:40:57
Hates them, but she has her reasons and it's it's not all
00:41:02
rooted to what you saw on the TV show.
00:41:04
Yeah, yeah. I mean, that's because she
00:41:07
doesn't consider herself a villain.
00:41:09
She is a she's much like Doctor Doom, right?
00:41:12
Except Doctor Doom is a much smarter than Timona.
00:41:16
She and you have to understand also that a very young age, she
00:41:21
got into dark magic, which will mess you up.
00:41:26
And so there's I think there's there's in her soul.
00:41:30
She has light in her soul, but there's so much darkness there.
00:41:38
It's getting through to that, to the good in her and then, but
00:41:44
she's been alone for most of that 200 that 1000 years.
00:41:48
Because they're sad in the show. That, that there's, you know,
00:41:52
it's like, how does she keep losing all the time to people
00:41:55
who are basically inferior to her?
00:41:57
You know, she's I mean, nobody's a match for her physically.
00:42:01
I mean, her fighting skills, even Goliath, it's like, but
00:42:07
they managed to beat her, right? Mainly because she lets them,
00:42:11
right? Or it appears that she lets
00:42:13
them. She's always messing things up.
00:42:16
So there's to me, there's a lot of psychological scars that with
00:42:21
her that causes a lot of this and that makes that makes her an
00:42:26
interesting character. Absolutely.
00:42:28
Is that the more flawed you are, the more interesting the story's
00:42:32
become, right? No, that's awesome.
00:42:35
I again, I'm I'm excited to go and read it because I'm not.
00:42:38
That's definitely something I'm interested in.
00:42:40
I'm sure our audience is interested in things like that
00:42:42
as well. So where can we, where can we
00:42:45
follow you if we want to learn more about the things you're
00:42:48
doing, projects that are coming out, social media, anything?
00:42:50
Well, I usually, you know, I usually, you know, I just kind
00:42:53
of stay on on. I need to update my website.
00:42:58
I I haven't dealt with that in a while since, but usually you can
00:43:03
find me on Facebook. Frank Parr You know PAUR.
00:43:10
See what I'm up to? I'll post art and things
00:43:13
occasionally in there. You let people know some of the
00:43:15
things I'm doing. Awesome.
00:43:17
Well, Frank, I'd like to thank you for your time.
00:43:19
Thank you for coming and talking with me for this this, this
00:43:22
amount of time that we did. I appreciate you.
00:43:24
And for everyone else out there, thanks and keep nerding
00:43:26
together. We'll see you guys on the next
00:43:27
one. Well, we hope you enjoyed this
00:43:29
week's comic conversation. This was the production of the
00:43:35
Distance Nerding podcast and Time for Tacos Media.
00:43:38
For more content, follow us on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter,
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00:43:43
If you enjoy our content, please leave us a review on Apple
00:43:46
Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts.
00:43:49
Thanks and keep nerding together.