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Following the Marvel Animation panel showcasing some excellent looking upcoming animated projects from the House of Ideas, Toon Zone was able to catch up with superstar voice actor, Steven Blum, and Marvel Animation writer, Chris Yost. Steven Blum currently voices Wolverine in just about every Marvel animation or video game project. Chris Yost is one of the staff writers for Wolverine And The X-men and his experience with both the comic book world and animation world is impeccable as he currently co-writes X-Force for Marvel Comics with Craig Kyle. Chris' previous animation credits also include the new Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles series, Hulk Vs., X-men Evolution, Next Avengers, and The Batman. Please note that all questions asked by Toon Zone in this session are marked by either Toon Zone or TZ.
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Steven Blum and Chris Yost
Chris Yost
Toon Zone: Steven, I don't know if you've seen the teaser/test for the Studio Madhouse Wolverine animation, but would you want to do it?
Steven Blum: Yes, of course. I don't know if they are going to consider me correct for the part. We'll see. It's a completely different take on him obviously. But you know how I feel about anime in general and put that together with Marvel, it’s like the Golden Compass.
For Chris, what's the thinking of bringing new characters in on the Wolverine And The X-Men series, what's the balance?
Chris Yost: Well, I think with a property like X-Men it’s such a rich, big universe. You're always going to focus on the core: Wolverine, Cyclops, Beast, the group that we know and love. And then to see familiar faces like Psylocke or Scarlet Witch, all these characters come in and interact with them. You know the characters we know and love are kind of like the gateway to meet new people. So as a fan, the more people that we can get in there the better, but we are always going to keep our focus on the main characters.
SB: I'm happy about that.
TZ: Chris, I think the Super Hero Hype Forum fans will be happy to know about Colossus coming back. Early on in the first season, we saw a little bit of Colossus before he went away. Was that a very deliberate choice to put him away for a while and put him back later?
CY: Yeah because I think with Wolverine And The X-Men we had an opportunity to show you the X-Men in the world as we know it. We know the X-Men. We know the Danger Room, ran around and did all this stuff, and then immediately the show turned on its head by the events of the first episode, like everything blows up and everybody's different. Wolverine's is now in charge. Scott's all brooding. Jean and Xavier are gone so I think it was a very conscious decision to show normal and then get in to what the show is going to be.
TZ: Can you talk about what Josh mentioned at all with the re-introductory story for Colossus in the second season?
CY: It's pretty early. I think it’s definitely going to be a surprising and great part of the second season, but its pretty early.
Steve, I know this probably isn't a decision you'd make, but reading "Old Man Logan," that would be a great direct to DVD movie. Is that something you've read, or is there something you've read that if they'd ask you, I'd love to voice Wolverine in this type of DVD.
SB: I'll voice Wolverine in any incarnation they create. I'm a voice whore, rule 1. And secondly, I love just everything X-Men and pretty much everything Marvel, and just to have the opportunity to explore different versions of this character is just great for me. I hope the fans can digest it, that's always my hope, that they'll buy it. As long as its believable and works for the character, I'm good.
CY: Yeah. "Old Man Logan" is great. I mean essentially Unforgiven with Wolverine. Its so rich. I'd love to see it animated.
SB: It works for my age. *Laughs* Finally, something age appropriate.
TZ: Chris, I freak out every month when I read X-Force, and I'm very excited about this Wolverine/Domino story. Can you talk about that at all?
CY: Yeah. It’s a three issue limited series called X-Force: Sex and Violence --
SB: Nice.
CY: -- And it delivers on that promise. So, Domino is originally a mercenary and she's got some stuff in her life that kind of comes back to bite her. And Wolverine gets pulled into it, and its kind of like the two of them kind of like bickering and fighting for like three issues.
TZ: Anything else besides bickering and fighting?
CY: . . . A little bit. Issue 1 is violence. Issue 2 is sex. And then Issue 3 is a magic combination of the two. In all seriousness, those two characters have a history together you know in that they've gotten physical before in more ways than one and in the normal X-Force book, you know we've got a lot of big stories and we don't have a lot of time for the character work, you know? But in Sex and Violence, it’s just those two characters for the most part, we really get to see their relationship.
TZ: I'm really excited because I think that's a great relationship to look at. And I think Wolverine and Domino getting together is awesome. And why not see it in the animated series as well because Domino is also in the show? We can see Steven having something with Domino.
SB: I'm available *laughs*.
CY: You never know. In animation, usually our motto is, "There's no time for love, Dr. Jones," but I think fans love to see that stuff so you never know.
Obviously, Wolverine is a character that can go pretty extreme like in Hulk Vs., but obviously you're doing a show aimed at ages 6-11 on Wolverine And The X-Men. Is that something you're doing in the variations? Are you toning it back, are you worried about scaring anybody? And same thing for the writing, do you think about it differently or is it just positioned a different way?
SB: I have to trust these guys. Honestly, I'm just the actor. I'm just interpreting their child basically. I'm always mindful of that, but my opinion doesn't always -- barely mean that much in the grander scale of things. Marvel Super Hero Squad obviously is very much for younger kids. Wolverine And The X-Men we got to take a little bit further and deeper and nastier then on previous animations, so a lot of that has to do with the writing and where their directing is.
CY: Yeah. The great thing about Wolverine is that he can be in Super Hero Squad and be for young kids, and he can be in Wolverine And The X-Men and be like in the middle range, and then he can be in Hulk Vs. Wolverine . . . and you immediately think this guy's got knives on his hands, he's really inappropriate for children. But you know, children respond to it. Children love Wolverine, and there's a good reason for that. He's a hero. There's more to him than just violence.
Steven Blum
TZ: Steven, you are famous for a lot of the work in anime that you've done, and recently the industry has gone through a big contraction. Right now we see you doing a lot more original animation and pre-lay animation. Have you lately maybe had to do some less anime work and focus more on the pre-lay work?
SB: Well, not necessarily by choice. A lot of it is going away for us in the acting community. A lot of it is going to Canada or non-union areas, and so I'm not allowed to work on it. I love doing anime, that's where I was born and bred. And its certainly not for the money, and it's great to be doing a lot of original animation now . . . I can pay the bills a little bit better working on that, but I do miss working on anime as much as I did before. It's my first love, and it makes me sad that there isn't as big a financial market for it.
TZ: Now that you've played Wolverine for over 5-6 years, do you really feel like you know the character and maybe know something about Wolverine no one else does?
SB: I don't know if I know more about anything more than anyone else does. Especially when I come to conventions like this, I feel like everybody knows my own life better than I do. But with Wolverine in particular, there's so many elements that I resonate with personally that just makes it an incredibly satisfying character for me to play. I just love you know the complete dichotomy of a guy who can heal from anything but emotion he can never heal. That alone is enough to work on besides everything else that he goes through . . . so its hard for me to say because I don't know what everybody else feels and knows about him but personally I'm very connected to him more so than any other character I've ever been involved with.
TZ: And you both have really cool voices.
SB: *Laughs* Fortunately *laughs*.
TZ: Chris, I know you can't get into it much, but are you working on the new Avengers: Earth's Mightiest Heroes series?
CY: Yes.
TZ: Are you confident you can undo all the damage and bad memories done from the 1990's Avengers: United They Stand series?
CY: From minute 1, I will say yes. I love the show with all my heart, and I am fully confident that the tainting of the 90's series will be fully erased.
TZ: Steve, do you have a favorite X-babe on Wolverine And The X-Men while working on the show? I like Emma, I'm just going to say right now. I like Emma the best.
SB: *laughs*
CY: I like Jean.
SB: Well, Jean is probably the most interesting all the way around. It's hard for me to say without getting in trouble honestly *laughs*.
TZ: Kari [Wahlgren, the voice of Emma Frost] told me she likes Wolverine.
SB: She does?
TZ: Yeah.
SB: Kari did an amazing job, actually. I never heard her do that accent before, and we were all blown away by what she came up with for Emma Frost, amazing. Everybody's so great on the show.
TZ: Chris, how did you like your time working on the new Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles animated series?
CY: I loved it. It was great. It was crazy. I did 17 episodes of Turtles and it was tremendous fun. Oddly, like Wolverine And The X-Men, they really kind of cut loose. It was more in tone with the original comic books. It wasn't all cowabunga and pizza.
TZ: Even though it was still appropriate for kids, it felt much more mature.
CY: Yeah, you know its just like with Wolverine. Leonardo's got katanas and he can take people's heads off, but you know he just didn't.
TZ: At Marvel, you guys do such great job with these animated shows and the DVD movies, and now Cartoon Network feels like they don't even want to show cartoons as much anymore. With all of that, has it been harder to get these shows on the air, and has Nicktoons been a good partner for Marvel?
CY: Nicktoons has been incredible. They really believe in Marvel as a brand and Wolverine And The X-Men has been incredibly successful for them. They're now putting out Fantastic Four: World's Greatest Heroes. We expect the same kind of success about that.
TZ: We finally get to see all of it.
CY: All of it including the Terminus episode which is my favorite of all of them for that show. They've been a tremendous partner. Personally, I believe in animation. I think they're things you can do in animation like Wolverine And The X-Men, the scope and epic scale of that story, you're never going to see that in a movie ever. And animation is the place where the imagination of the comics books--
TZ: You can see real Deadpool.
CY: You can see real Deadpool. He talks and everything. You can see these things in animation you can't see in live action.
TZ: Chris do you ever look at the message boards and feedback for X-Force or the cartoons?
CY: Absolutely.
TZ: Do you see ever see sometimes they overreact because in X-Force they think you are killing all the characters and they don't want to wait and read the whole story?
CY: You know the thing about the internet is that its anonymous, it’s faceless, and people say such outrageous things just because they can. And you get a little down on it and go like, ohhh, but when you come to something like this convention and you meet the people like face to face and they love it. Everyone here is here because they love it, and they're so excited. It’s so great to meet the fans and talk to people. I've had people -- I got a death threat because of something I did, and I come here and I've never had one negative word to me. So it’s like I go on the internet and check things out. It’s nice to get feedback, but you can only put so much stock in it because it’s such a different venue.
TZ: Thank you so much for your time.
Posted by TheVileOne at
11:10 AM |
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