Silver Bullet Review
December 6th, 2004
From Silver Bullet Comic Books (read the
entire review, with pictures, here)
Defenders
of the Night
In 1994, Disney released Gargoyles, their first (and only to date)
animated action/drama series. Gargoyles was one of the few shows that
rivaled the Batman/Superman Animated Series in terms of quality storytelling
and animation. Additionally it has built a large and dedicated fanbase over the last few years. Now, for the tenth
anniversary and eight long years after the last episode, Gargoyles is
finally coming to DVD later this week, when the complete first season will be
released. Earlier this week, Gargoyles creator Greg Weisman took the
time to answer a few questions about the DVDs and the future of Gargoyles:
Blair Marnell: For some of our readers who may not be familiar with Gargoyles,
can you describe the series?
Greg Weisman: Sure. Gargoyles is basically about a small group of
tenth century, medieval gargoyles who had a spell cast on them a thousand years
ago, putting them to sleep. But gargoyles sleep as stone statues. So by
definition, they were frozen in stone. The terms of the spell were that the
gargoyles would sleep “until the castle rises above the clouds.” Now, from the
standpoint of the mage that cast the spell, that was like saying “until kingdom
come”. But he didn’t count on modern technology and a very, very wealthy man
who could literally move the castle up above the clouds. Having done that, our
six gargoyles burst forth from stone and awake from a thousand years of sleep.
They wake up in Manhattan in 1994 and it’s a brave new world. And they’ve got
to make massive adjustments, make new friends and they make a bunch of new
enemies and they’ve got a few old enemies hanging around too. It’s an
action/drama, so it’s heavy on that, but it’s got humor, romance, pathos and
just a little bit of social concern in there as well.
The
main character is Goliath, who’s the leader of the gargoyles. He’s a strong,
optimistic character who’s been through some tough stuff in his life but
basically believes that someday gargoyles and humans will be able to live in
peace together. He believes strongly in the gargoyle way of life, which is to
protect those weaker than you and to protect each other. With him are four other
gargoyles and a gargoyle beast. The other four gargoyles are: Hudson, who is an
elder statesman and was the leader before Goliath. Goliath looks to him as
something like a mentor. Then there are three younger, teenage gargoyles:
Brooklyn, Lexington and Broadway… they picked their own names. Finally there’s
a gargoyle beast named Bronx. Later in the second season, we introduced another
regular gargoyle, Angela, who is Goliath’s daughter.
Our other major characters are: Elisa Maza, a New
York City police detective who befriends the gargoyles in the pilot and becomes
their main human ally. Then we’ve got a number of great villains, but two in
particular are recurring: David Xanatos, who is a
billionaire industrialist who owns the world’s tallest building in Manhattan,
the Erie Building. He’s the one who moved the gargoyles and their castle to
Manhattan from Scotland. Finally, last but not least, Demona,
who was once Goliath’s mate. They once loved each other but Demona
has intense hatred for humans and is determined to destroy humanity. So Goliath
and Demona, once in love are now completely at odds.
In fact, by the end of the second season, it was clear that Goliath and Elisa,
the human cop had fallen for each other.
BM: Can you talk about how the fans have kept the show alive
eight years after it went off the air?
GW: Almost from the beginning we had a great fan following for this
series. I did two seasons of the show and after I left the show they did a
third season for ABC called The Goliath Chronicles without me. But the
fans have been there from day one and the show has never been off the air. If
it wasn’t making new episodes, it’s been in reruns, first on the USA network
and more recently on Toon Disney. So we always get
new fans as well, but these dedicated fans, starting in 1997 began holding
annual Gargoyles conventions called The Gathering of The Gargoyles
(which can be checked out at http://www.gatheringofthegargoyles.com). These
annual conventions have just been a load of fun. I’ve gone to every single one.
And there have been other guests as well: voice actors, artists, writers… we’ve
had huge turnout of cast and crew at various times at these conventions. These
fans have just been truly faithful and have always kept the flame alive,
largely on the internet, at these conventions and in other ways as well. That’s
helped me keep my passion for the project alive. And I am passionate about the
project. Always was and always will be, I think. But it makes it a lot easier
to stay passionate when you know people want to see more. These fans have
worked hard and fought hard to get the DVD set, which is being released December
7th, 2004, a few short days from now. It’s the complete first season and it’s
the direct result of the fans pushing for it and because of their desire I have
also pushed for it. Disney sort of turned around after a few years and said
“you know, maybe this would be a good idea”. These fans are the reason this
property is still in Disney’s consciousness.
BM: What are some of the features of the DVD set?
GW: The main thing it has is the first season, all thirteen episodes
uncut. There have been previous VHS releases where the pilot episodes were cut
down into a single movie. This will have all five episodes of the pilot uncut
plus the remaining eight episodes of the first season, also uncut. The first
five episodes have a commentary track by myself and my fellow producer, Frank Paur and Keith David, the voice actor who played Goliath.
There are also a couple of mini-features, one is the original series pitch from
1993 that we used to successfully sell the show, both internally at Disney and
to stations across the United States. So, you’ll get to see me looking a lot
younger. [laughs] The second feature is a mini-documentary on The Gathering
of The Gargoyles most recent convention in Montreal, Canada. Our convention
moves to a different location every year. We’ve been in New York three times,
Dallas, Williamsburg, Orlando, Los Angeles and in this past year we were in
Montreal. Disney sent a camera crew up there and shot a whole load of footage
and edited it down to a pretty cool little documentary where the fans, myself
and Keith David all talk about the show and what it meant to us.
It’s a nice little package and I hope it does really well. Because I think if
it does really well it means we’ve got a good shot at getting the second season
out on DVD and maybe even original material down the line. I also think this
may pave the way for other Disney Television Animated shows to go out on DVD,
because there are a lot of great shows that are still unreleased, like Gummi Bears, DuckTales,
Darkwing Duck, Talespin,
and Aladdin.
BM: What do the DVDs mean to the future of the Gargoyles
franchise?
GW: To some extent, I think this is a make or break opportunity for the
fans of Gargoyles. If this DVD sells well, REALLY well, then Disney is
going to see that they can make money on this property. And if they can do
that, they’ll want to continue making money from this property. They’ll release
more DVDs and potentially other things as well. There’s nothing I’d like more
than to come back and do an original direct to DVD animated Gargoyles
movie, or a series or one of the six spin-off sequel or prequel series we
developed. I’d also love to do a lot of ideas and material that I’ve got in my
head and on paper that we didn’t get to cover in the 66 episodes I worked on.
I’d love to do Gargoyles novels or comic books. My background is
actually in comic books, I worked for DC for years and years. I’d really enjoy
doing a Gargoyles comic book. If this DVD demonstrates that there is
money to be made here then I think that stuff has a good chance of all
happening. Touchstone even has a live action movie in development, which is on
hold at the moment, but again it depends on the DVD. This is a chance for the
fans to prove to Disney in an objective way that they are ready, willing and
eager to support Gargoyles.
The flip side of this, of course, is a little scary. Which is if the DVD
doesn’t sell that well then Disney is going to shrug and sort of walk away from
it. And it will be more difficult to get people interested in pursuing more
stuff in the Gargoyles universe. I’m very excited about the DVD release
and I’m crossing my fingers. I’m extremely hopeful but also a little nervous.
If it does sell well, then the sky’s the limit.
This Has A “Stone by Day, Warriors by Night” Factor of Ten Out of Ten