Interview conducted by and copyright Edward Gross
SUPERHERO TOONIVERSE: I didn’t see the Avengers presentation at Comic Con – what kind of response did you get from people?
JOSH FINE: We’ve gotten a great response out of Comic-Con. It was a really great show for us, there’s been a lot of buzz and I think everyone who saw the trailer has been buzzing about it. But then everybody who actually got into the panel discussion to see the two episodes has just been raving, so it’s been really good for us. We’ve been working on the show for over two years, so I’ve been very eager to get it in front of fans, and to hear not only the response in the room, but then to hear people talking about it afterwards. It was not only a huge validation, but a big relief, too. It’s good to know we did good.
SUPERHERO TOONIVERSE: You haven’t finished all 52 episodes, have you?
JOSH FINE: We’re closing in on the end of the scripting phase of the second season, so we’ve got a couple more episodes to finish up on the writing side of the second season. First season wise, we’re closing in on the end of post-production. It’s a rare opportunity to have a bunch of episodes in the can, and be able to get them out there in a coherent fashion.
SUPERHERO TOONIVERSE: When the show begins airing, will that give you an opportunity to look to the next show to produce, whatever it may be?
JOSH FINE: I think we’re always looking to figure out what the next projects are going to be for us. Regardless of when shows are coming out, we’re always talking about when’s the right time to get something new started, so I think those conversations are always happening.
SUPERHERO TOONIVERSE: What was the genesis of this particular Avengers series?
JOSH FINE: Basically, a couple of years ago we sat down to discuss what shows we should get into production, and we weren’t quite sure of what the timing of this series coming out would be, but we knew ultimately we wanted to do an Avengers animated series. It’s kind of a no-brainer when you think about the work we’ve been doing on the theatrical side, and keying up the entire Marvel universe to really focus on Avengers. It seemed like an obvious fit for us to try to do the same in TV, and so we just set out to make the best possible Avengers we could, taking cues not only from the theatrical guys, but also from classic comics. And every run of the comics, and every place that it seemed worthy of pulling inspiration from, to try to create the best Avengers experience possible for our fan base.
SUPERHERO TOONIVERSE: When you look at the films and the approach that’s been taken in them, what impact do the films have on a series like this?
JOSH FINE: What we usually aim for is not necessarily continuity with the films, which can be somewhat impossible to obtain, because they’re sort of a moving target all the time going through their development process as we go through ours. Obviously as they create their films, they’re not going to be basing their continuity on what we create, but we go for consistency over continuity – we try to make it feel like it’s a similar experience to what you would be getting from the movies, so we try to aim for character portrayals that line up with what they’re doing, and we try to incorporate as many different universe interpretations, you know, locations and things like that, that feel like they’re theatrically inspired.
SUPERHERO TOONIVERSE: I’m a fan of the team-up idea and the notion that if you put any two of these guys into a room together, there’s going to be a different conversation or dynamic. I assume that’s true of the Avengers as well.
JOSH FINE: Absolutely. One of the things that was always really cool for me, as far as the Avengers go, and the thing that I think defines the team as being something unique and cool not only for Marvel but with comics in general, is this idea that these guys were all individual characters with their own stories, their own comic book runs, their own heroics before the team was ever formed. They had made names for themselves already before there was ever a need for them to come together to face the foes that no single superhero could defeat. And to try to get that across, we actually do something in this series that is kind of a new territory for us and for these animated series in general, which is that we open our series with a micro-series of short episodes. They’re all about five and half minutes long, and they focus on the characters before they come together as The Avengers, so we actually get a big chunk of time to set up Ironman and Captain America and Hulk and Thor and the rest before the cataclysmic event that brings them together. Because of that, we try to capture that sensibility, that while these guys existed and were heroes in their own right, the threats has escalated to the point where there’s actually a need for all these guys to be on the same team. And one of our mandates going into the series was always that the threats had to be so huge and so profound, that no individual member of this team could deal with them, and that means that Thor couldn’t take it down by himself, Hulk couldn’t take it down by himself, Iron Man with all his ingenuity couldn’t take it down by himself -- so we were always reaching for the biggest, most insane action that we could to really involve every member of the team.
SUPERHERO TOONIVERSE: Is that hard to do? Is the show standalone or serialized?
JOSH FINE: It’s sort of a combination of the two. We aim to create self-contained A stories so anyone that’s tuning in for a single episode will feel like they got a full experience from an episode. But then we have subplots and character development that go across episodes, so that rewards continuous viewers for tuning in and following their favorite characters to see what happens to them over the course of a season. So there’s definitely some serial elements to it, but we also go for those stand-alone experiences.
SUPERHERO TOONIVERSE: When you’re going for stand-alone, is it hard to craft story lines in which it’s big enough to bring all these guys together again?
JOSH FINE: Well, we’ve been blessed in that our story editor for the series, Chris Yost, knows and loves these characters, and has done an amazing job of creating these episodes. Really, the aim I think for us in telling the stories was to not only tell big individual stories, but then to let sub-stories percolate in the background, so while you get big epic stories week to week, you’re getting an even bigger build to something huge that’s down the line, so you get those multi-part story lines, and you’re getting the big payoff you’re waiting for.
SUPERHERO TOONIVERSE: What cool about this show is that you have many eyes coming to you because of the movies.
JOSH FINE: As a kid growing up I was a big Spider-Man and X-Men reader. Those were kind of my guys and I was always aware of the Avengers, mostly by way of crossovers. But my respect and love for the characters has increased a million fold since working on the series – they’ve come to take up a special place in my heart, just because of who they are, and I think the rest of the world kind of feels the same way at this point. Nobody knew who Iron Man was a few years ago, and when that movie hit, he’s front and center everywhere; it’s like you can’t get him out of the public eye. And I think the same thing has happened with Hulk and, give it another year, and it will happen with Thor and Captain America. So we’re in a unique situation where we’re actually coming out with this series in front of a theatrical for a new generation of fans.
SUPERHERO TOONIVERSE: You’ve got the chance to bring in viewers because of Hulk and Iron Man, while sort of whetting the appetite for movie audiences for Thor and Captain America.
JOSH FINE: And that’s really the goal, to try to get these characters out there and to tell exciting stories about them. We want to get people really amped up to see their theatrical incarnations, because we just want to build as much excitement for those movies as possible. I think you hit some other good points though, because within the Marvel universe, as obscure as some of these guys may seem at the moment, there’s an incredible depth of character and personality. It’s not just superhero archetypes – the reason Ironman has exploded in popularity isn’t just because his armor is cool, it’s because Tony Stark is an amazing, interesting and compelling character that people want to see. And one of the great things about this series is that while you do get epic action, you also get these incredible character moments over the course of the series, where you get to see not only interesting interactions that happen between the teammates, but then also get to see these guys change and change each other over each of the 52 episodes.
SUPERHERO TOONIVERSE: If you can see an evolution in character in this type of show, that’s really cool.
JOSH FINE: You will, and not only of character but of the team itself. We start with the original team that Stan and Jack set up, but we also amend that team, as they did in the early days, with people coming in and leaving, so it’s an ever changing line-up.
SUPERHERO TOONIVERSE: Do you have an opinion of what each of those main characters is bringing to the team?
JOSH FINE: When we sat down to come up with who was going to be on the team, we had a long debate about who the best and most iconic Avengers were. And there was definitely a push to get the top four in there because they are the most iconic and memorable members of the team, and thanks to our theatrical counterparts, are going to be the most well-known. But what we very quickly realized was that the original team, including Antman and Wasp and Hulk, just had a really good balance of character, of power set, of interaction – they just played really well together, and they balanced each other out in a pretty cool way. So as much as we experimented putting other people in that line-up, the original team kind of appealed to us in a way that no other line-up did.