Posted in: Adult Swim, TV, Warner Animation Group | Tagged: Alice Lee, Brendan Clogher, Dragon Ball Z, Ishmel Sahid, Jack Quaid, Jake Wyatt, Josie Campbell, my adventures with superman, Warner Bros, warner bros. animation

My Adventures With Superman Producers on Season 2 Expanding Dynamics

My Adventures With Superman EPs Jake Wyatt & Brendan Clogher and Producer Josie Campbell spoke with Bleeding Cool about Season 2 & more.

The story of Superman is one of the oldest in pop culture, and with every adaptation, the formula remains largely unaltered. Sometimes, it's all in the execution as executive producers Jake Wyatt and Brendan Clogher and producer Josie Campbell blended their love for the DC comic, the Richard Donner 1978 theatrical adaptation, and anime in their version of Adult Swim's My Adventures With Superman. The series follows Clark Kent (Jack Quaid), Lois Lane (Alice Lee), and Jimmy Olsen (Ishmel Sahid) as young adults working their way into the Daily Planet while Clark tries to discover his Kryptonian roots and embrace his destiny as Superman. Season two picks up where season one left off as our heroes are trying to stay on top of trying to protect Metropolis from those who would abuse Kryptonian technology and other threats. Wyatt, Clogher, and Campbell spoke to Bleeding Cool about their influences on the series, casting the animated series, how season two will be more dynamic, and if we'll get a translation of Jor'El's Kryptonian from season one.

My Adventures With Superman Producers on Blending DC Lore with Anime

Bleeding Cool: When you originally conceived the series, what existing Superman lore from the comics, TV, and film were your biggest inspirations?

Wyatt: The foundational one was the [Richard] Donner film. That was spiritually the center where we wanted to go and from there, everybody had a different comic book that they were like, "This is my comic book." Josie, if I remember correctly, yours was 'Byrne?'

Campbell: Yeah. John Byrne. That was the comic that got me into Superman, and then I got to 'The Death of Superman' when that was coming out. I was like, "We got to do the 90s, guys. Best Superman time!"

Wyatt: We love the 90s. Brendan?

Campbell: I almost said 'Dragon Ball.' Also, 'All-Star Superman' is my favorite story for him, but the Donner stuff is always spiritually where I go.

Wyatt: This is going to sound weird, man, but because we're doing the Superman at the opposite pole. I love 'Kingdom Come' Superman so much, like I love his ethos, even though our Clark is about as far from that guy as you can get on the timeline. I loved him, and I love Superman for all seasons and then all of us love the Silver Age stuff, like any comic with a gorilla on it or Jimmy Olsen getting turned into stuff.

Campbell: Yeah. Perfect.

Wyatt: Yeah, we love that stuff.

Were there particular animation styles that influenced the series?

Wyatt: Anime.

Campbell: [Laughs].

Clogher: Particularly, like 90s anime, late 90s.

Wyatt: Anime gets name-checked a lot as like the story's visual style, but Josie can tell you, that anime is also like a form of storytelling and story structure and that was part of the beat as well.

Campbell: There are even little things like changing a little bit of how Superman functions when we were writing the pilot. I was like, "Hey, could we make his power up like Goku? Can we do a Super Saiyan?" We're like, "Let's try, let's go for it." It's all blended in there.

Wyatt: Yeah, like the shonen visual cues of like, "This is when he gets stronger," but then also like, if you've ever watched 'Ranma' or 'Sailor Moon,' like the kind of rom-com hijinx of the anime.

Campbell: I was going to say this exact same thing you're saying, Jacob. Just like one of the biggest strengths of anime storytelling is you can go from it's a rom-com comedy to it's a drama where everybody's crying, there's blood on the ground within seconds of each other, and everybody accepts it, which is harder to do with a lot of Western animation. I like it is that breath of going from one extreme to the other that makes a story for me.

Wyatt: It turns on a dime so things can get super silly, and then they can be super intense the next moment. Even the shonen stuff, like Goku, the dumbest man and the strongest man on Earth. We wanted to borrow that emotional breadth, and emotional agility from anime, and storytelling, and to have all those multiplicitous threads to do comedy, action, romance, and all of it in one package.

Can you break down how Jack, Alice, and Ishmel work so well together? On the other side, why do Joel [de la Fuente] and Debra [Wilson] work well together?

Wyatt: So Jack, Alice, and Ishmel are all hilarious, charming, and talented. That's a huge part of it and then the other thing is when we were coming up with the Clark and Lois and re-imagining them as characters and trying to sharpen them, Jack got cast as Clark because Jack is in real life and as a character like this sweetest and most unassuming man in the world. Alice manages to walk that line like she is entitled enough to stay likable.

Campbell: Yes, she's got a little mania to her that endears her to you. Yeah.

Wyatt: Lois has a bigger personality than Superman, right? Superman is a big man, and Lois has a big personality, but you need enough charm to keep that sympathetic so that she doesn't come off as like "Bullying her friends or whatever." Alice has that, and then Ishmael has the X factor.

Campbell: He can switch between being the silliest, goofiest guy on screen to being the straight man in an instant and that's Jimmy. He's goofy and like, "No, but I have more emotional intelligence than all of you combined."

Wyatt: Right? You can see the range when Ishmel plays Lonnie on 'Jury Duty,' which was out this last summer. I had, like so many people, did not believe me when I told them that. They're like, "That's not Jimmy Olsen" but Ishmel has that emotional range because we needed Jimmy to be an absolute clown and then also to Josie's point, like everyone's therapist.

Campbell: I would say Debra and Joel's chemistry was a shock and a surprise because we both cast them because we're like, "We love their voice acting. We love their work." Both embody their characters, especially in season two, I didn't realize how much chemistry those two characters General [Lane] and [Amanda] Waller would have together until we heard the recording and saw it on screen, we're like, "Oh, hold on!"

Wyatt: To their credit, none of these people were ever in the booth together, right? They all recorded individually and they're that talented. Debra Wilson is terrifying, which helped her bring a lot of to Amanda Waller's gravity.

Campbell: She's played Amanda Waller in almost literally everything. It's truly like what she does.

Clogher: She is Amanda Waller.

Wyatt: And this is a sticking point for her, like a point of professional pride. Every one of them is different. Every one of her Amanda Wallers is keyed differently with different personalities and backstories for all of them and it is awesome to see her. She can shuffle through them, and it's amazing.

Were separate goals you wanted to establish for season two, or was it to resume what season one was already doing? Will there be a subtitle translation for what Jor'El said in the home release?

Wyatt: I'll take A, so it's both, right? We said in an earlier interview the season one concept was pretty fleshed out in pitch. We knew what we were making and what beats we were going to hit: The League of Lois Lane's was in there, Monsieur Mallah and The Brain was in there, Missy [Mister Mxyzptlk] was in there, and the finale was in there. Season two was a lot more open, so we've had you both continue honestly, like the thread of our characters and then be like, "Okay, what have we done?" We're continuing the thread from season one, and we're also beating it with a hammer. We are going to challenge the relationships and characters we've established in season one in ways that we never did. We're not just going to challenge Clark, we're going to hit everyone with a hammer and everyone takes a beating.

Campbell: Yeah, but the goal was to put the characters emotionally through the wringer, every single one of them. Not just Clark and so it's a season of laughs and tears.

Wyatt: [Sings] It's a season of laughter and…Okay, sorry. It's a small world after; it's a small Krypton.

Campbell: It's like Krypton, after all.

Clogher: Universe, after all. Jor-El, all his lines were originally written in English, so that is possible.

Wyatt: Josie had to translate his lines out of English into her own homebrew Kryptonian.

Campbell: Yeah, just messed up Esperanto with smatterings of like a German, Chinese, and whatever else I could throw in. It's all up here [points to her head].

Wyatt: It's unreproducible.

Season two of My Adventures With Superman, which also stars Darrell Brown, Kari Wahlgren, Reid Scott, and Jason Marnocha, premieres May 26 on Adult Swim.

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