Minor Threats Team dives into the family dynamics of the brood

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Minor Threats Team dives into the family dynamics of the brood

For the past two years, Dark Horse Comics is delivering a brand new comic book universe that shows a different side of superhero storytelling. The Minor threats Franchise has taken readers into a dangerous, experimental and incredibly strange world that focuses less on the heroes and more on the underdogs.

Co-creators Patton Oswalt and Jordan Blum have worked with a number of talented writers and artists to expand their universe with spin-offs such as The alternatives And the current ongoing Barfly. with Minor threats next spin off, The broodJust weeks away, Oswalt and Blum, along with writer Heath Corson and artist Ian Culbard sat down to discuss their project and what fans can expect.


Minor Threats Major Cover

Minor threats First debuted 2 years ago, it has blossomed into a full universe with multiple volumes and spin-offs. Talk a little bit about how the world came together and how it’s evolved since the first volume.

Patton Oswalt: If you want the elevator version of this, Jordan and I have a deep love for comics, and we also have a very deep love for C- and D-level villains and heroes. We love the idea of ​​it being the elite doing the “I’m pushing Earth out of the way of a meteor” and then people, yes, they have powers, but “I just want to use it to make my life a little better , I just want to make a little money. So it started there and then because of people like Tim Seeley and now Heath Corson, which is now expanding. It’s very flattering that stuff that we wrote inspiring other writers that We’re a fan of doing really cool stuff.

Jordan Blum: And I think when we’re looking at expanding it, the only two parameters are like, my threats are about the C and D, like Pat said, the C list, villains that we never really get to see, show us Another perspective that we rarely get to see in superhero comics. And you know, something that’s very character focused, and those are really the only two things that we look for. So, you know, Sealy brought us the Vertigo characters from the Minor Threats universe, and what it’s like to be rebooted for mature audiences, and then rebooted back to being these kind of simple heroes. And that felt very unique, in the same way that Heath had pitched The Broad, which was, you know, what it’s like to be the child of a Lex Luthor and try to live up to those standards and be pulled into the Company business?

Heath: I’ll just say it was an incredible honor to get a chance to play in the sandbox with Jordan and Pat, and I think I speak for Ian and the entire Broad creative team, that these guys are so generous and so lovely. With what they give you, and just say, “Come play, come make stuff, come stand on the shoulders of what we’ve done.” And like Patton said, like, just deepen the mythology and make it different. And when I was like “hey, I’ve got a crazy pitch, I’m gonna tell the searcher’s origin story. Is that cool?”. And they were like “yeah, why not?”. So they were so amazing to just say I can cherry-pick this and the world they’ve set up and the really detailed way they tell the story, which shifts from character to character. The super dense narrative in each page just opens it up. And it’s a dream of mine to be able to tell such a layered story about these really interesting characters from issue to issue,

Patton Oswalt: And again, I’m not trying to argue with Heath, but it’s very reductive to say that he came and played in our sandbox. He came and he expanded it. He added a jungle. Like, there are things that the sandbox looks different when he’s done with it. The same way it looked different after Tim Seeley was done. We invite people who aren’t afraid to go, “Oh, I’m going to offer something that’s never been in any of your books. And it’s going to change the books going forward.” And it’s always so bold and so original that it’s just you can never say no to it. And we’ve been very, very lucky with collaborators so far. It’s just the latter to make the world we work in even more fun for us to work in as we continue the main story. It’s crazy. I love it.

Jordan Blum: Yeah, it’s like bringing us the stories that would break Batman or Superman you can’t tell anywhere else, which are really cool ways to explore and play with superheroes.

This is actually a good point to my next question, with Jordan talking about The brood And the Lex Luthor aspect of it. I’m a huge DC fan, so I have to ask about the inspiration of your characters, the continuum, the alternates, the characters that really are, I don’t want to say pastiches, but very, very similar figures to Justice League and others. When you come up with the characters, how does that work in what you’re trying to do with Minor threats And the overall universe?

Jordan Bloom: I think with characters like The Continuum, we needed a statement, because we’re not telling the story of The Continuum, right? We tell the story of the minor threats. So to get into the story quickly, you kind of recognize “Oh, this is a Green Lantern archetype.” Like, we don’t need to go into this guy’s past. You know how he is, because it’s framing the other story that we’re telling because we’re playing on your knowledge, in your history of ​​reading Marvel and DC, for years, we wanted the world to feel lived in.

Patton Oswalt: Much like Heath, Kyle Starks went in the beginning of our Green Lantern. And it was so crazy and brilliant and not so different. If people forget how truly insane and psychedelic early Silver Age DC stories were, long before they had the idea of ​​drugs or LSD or other dimensions. They were freaking nuts with this. And the fact that he went as crazy with Sunburst as Heath went with the searchers, it just captures that feeling, and it also captures what Jordan and I were trying to do. There was a silver age, and now we’re moving into the dark and gritty age, and things are changing. And it’s, it’s fabulous.

Jordan Blum: Yeah, it’s like a frame. You can use it to frame your story so it’s like we’re twisting the kind of concept that the art types are familiar with. And I think it’s a good place to start. So you can diverge away from it.

When you look at the main Minor threats We’ve seen this great story build around Frankie Follis and her daughter, while spin-offs, viz Barfly, The alternatives, The brood are all helping flesh out the rest of the world. It was kind of a back and forth. As we get some of Frankie’s story, and then it’s “Oh, here’s what the alternatives are up to. Here’s what’s going on with S***eter right now.“Is it part of a grand plan, or is it more doing what you feel is the most fun as it comes to you?

Jordan Bloom: We want to allow creators to have the most freedom to tell their story the way they want to tell it. I think the idea of ​​”you have to set this up for the crossover” just feels like it hinders this. These are great high-concept ideas, very character-driven stories. And any way we can find connective tissue is fun, but it should never be like the directive to make this book,

Patton Oswalt: I mean, it ties back to Jordan, and my philosophy when we write the series we write every volume, we never try to write so that something is left hanging like “come back for the sequel.” But we want each thing to be its own, self-contained, leave it all there. I think you can tell when stuff is written with the franchise in mind, because some things are held back. That, to me, is never satisfying. Make the most amazing story that you can and that is what will lead the people who want to look at more in the world.


Barfly Main Cover 1

Let’s dig into some of the spin-offs, especially the ones you already have. I believe Barfly Its third issue just came out, and I have to say, I think it’s my favorite, just because of how gross and weird it is. I’m a huge fan of Kyle Starks because he wrote these peace maker Book last year, which I just loved. But I also love how the main character, S***eater, appears in the background of, I think, the first issue of Minor threats. Talk about the process of getting a book.

Patton Oswalt: We have an artist, Scott Hepburn, who we’re like, “Feel in the details. This is a super villain bar, okay?”. Like he drew that guy at the bar, and it sparked someone else’s interest, and it became “Oh, there’s a whole story.” It’s kind of interesting, when you read the broad, because now we’re in the higher echelons of Meteor Falls in Twilight City, it’s a very sterile, austere, clean background. There is almost a lack of detail, because this is the rich. The rich can afford to have space and silence and a beautiful art design. People who are struggling, you just end up where you land. And that difference. I mean, we’ll talk to the artist more about that, but it was such a brilliant stylistic choice. You immediately realize that these are different worlds.

Jordan Blum: I think it just comes out when we talked to Ryan Brown, the artist on it and Kyle is like “How much do you want to match what you guys were like?”. We don’t. We want you to do what you like. We are so excited to see the Ryan Brown take on Twilight City. You know, we’re so excited to see what Kyle’s planning to do, and his sense of humor woven into that and sense of tragedy and all that. Like, I think that’s, for us, the fun thing. Like, we have no interest in trying to control and move all the chess pieces. We’re fans of all the people we work with, we’ll also be able to read the comics and be like, “Holy crap.” This was a great comment I got to read from the people whose work I love. And that’s really how we build the universe is just like fans.

Heath Corson: I will say that in turning in material, there is no one more enthusiastic than Jordan and Pat when they get to see, they are like, “This is great. I love this issue of this art. Oh my God, I Can’t wait.” And so it’s so much fun to get to turn stuff at them and just have them react to it.

Jordan Blum: This is a comic fan, right? Like you have a million interpretations of Batman and how to do Batman. And I want to see that artist name Batman, or that one, right? And I think it’s the same way in our universe, where it’s like, I don’t want someone to be nice, to start where we left off. We try to create the corners for people to play.

Patton, you touched on this a bit, talking about the difference between the upper classes of Twilight City and the lower classes. It’s a bit more of a DC thing, with them doing more fictional cities, like Gotham or Metropolis, Central City. Talk a little about building a new city environment. Because you could have easily made it feel just like Gotham or Metropolis. Talk about building a fully fleshed out world with a story.

Patton Oswalt: Well, realistic cities have their highs and lows. You know, that’s the one thing about Gotham and Metropolis is that they split it, even though I think most of them have it in the same thing. What we really wanted, and this, Jordan has it so well, is a city that has 60 years of comic book continuity. It’s all in the background. So we want anybody who comes into it to feel like they’re in the city for the first time, and they’re discovering it, along with, you know, in their real time, as other characters around them who are very much living there. . Live and know the city, but they are, they are visiting for the first time, and they get the thrill.

Jordan Blum: And Ian, you have to design an entire city. Do you want to talk about it?

Ian Culberd: When you were talking about different artists, different names and stuff, I think my first question was “why me?”. Because I haven’t done a superhero book before, and I’m not doing a superhero book, we’re doing a super villain book. But I think it was when we sat down to do that, that’s another good point that was brought up earlier, was about the fact that we didn’t have a resolution because we had the searchers out in our not having to Ask what they are doing or if they are going to be used somewhere else, in some other thing that we can borrow this, you can only use it because it is there. There’s a lot of history to draw on and to sort of transplant to a new location, assuming all that stuff is still running. One of my favorite things is world building. And so that’s sort of making it from there and just adding in little things, like “Oh yeah, it’s always like this, because they have this system here.” And, you know, there’s a lot of conversations with Heath just going over how we can make this place feel like you could live there, and that’s kind of the deal. But also creating the city. I mean, it’s called the Punch Bowl. We talked about the neighborhoods and what they were actually called. We talked about mapping it so that we know very roughly mapping it, so we know where things are in relation to other things.

Heath Corson: I mean, Ian says roughly, but he sent me a full breakdown of the whole town, because the town was literally built in an impact crater from a meteor that hit in the late 1800s so that’s what the town is called. Meteor falls. And so we would build the neighborhoods around and we would talk about how the middle is called the Armored Bowl, and then it’s called the Crater Rim, and that’s where the really rich people live, and that’s the Copper Coast, because it exposes the line of copper, and we went deep into all that stuff. And he sent me a full map of the whole place. And I was like, “This is crazy, and I love it so much.”

Ian Culberd: It was a lot of fun to do, but it was also not to do it. The other thing that was talked about earlier was that we just get to do it in our own way. And so I really appreciate that, because you know, not having to do it like what I kind of imagine superhero comics is like. Rather, it’s more like, it’s not ready to in my head. It’s not a superhero comic or a super villain comic. It’s a family comedy. So it’s about family dynamics. So this is something that comes up often in the conversation, just in small things and being able to feed that back. And we had a long conversation at the beginning about family, and we talked about the way people annoy each other in families. So we could just build all of this into the thing as we go. But, yeah, it’s good, and it really is, I love all the little factions that pop up in it. There’s tons of that kind of stuff in there, it’s good fun. It’s really good fun.

Heath Corson: We wanted to choose where Jordan and Patton gave us that kind of live-in feeling. So we’re not stopping and like, explaining this and that. We just went, like, yeah, “These guys know each other. They’ve known each other for 30 years.” .as we run, just keep up.

Ian Culberd: And I guess readers have a kind of shorthand, but it’s a meta understanding of what superheroes are. Now, you know, you don’t need to go into that. So you get to tell the story from a slightly different perspective. In this case, yes, it’s good fun.

With what I like The brood Is that you have that search in almost every book, but now we really get to see more of her life. Especially through the relationship she has with her Lex Luthor, Napoleon Archimedes. And what I like is that you could have just done straightforward Lex Luthor. But it is lex with kids. Hey, I definitely want to hear more about what you think of Napoleon.

Heath Corson: The elevator pitch for The Broad was when I was watching The Royal Tenenbaums, and it was when I realized that this was the continuing story of Gene Hackman’s Lex Luthor, who married Miss Tessmacher and had children. And I was like “put them in the family business.” So I started, and I’m the oldest of four, so I have a lot of sibling drama in my life. My father was a very strange, emotionally distant man, and I’m sorry, we didn’t know what he did when we were growing up. He would go on business trips, and then he would come back, and we would “What are you doing?” And he’s like “I was working.” So there was a lot to draw from, and a lot of personal stuff in here, as well as Ian would tell you too, he’s a member of a big family with a lot of siblings. So we wanted to mine the idea of ​​what it’s like in this sort of Royal Tenenbaums meets succession world with this very powerful, domineering man who still comes home and wants to interact with his family, but it’s like “Don’t dirty house With daddy” , the seeker took out his cornea and broke his shoulder.” And it’s like, what would that be like and what’s the day you realize like “Oh, my dad is the most powerful super villain on the planet.” .” How does that feel? And what’s great is that all three of them have very different reactions, and we’re going to get to see the story told three times. And what’s great with Ian is that Ian pulls it three different ways, so we Really draw out completely different details, because you are in a different character’s point of view, because as we would always say, grown siblings are like you. ‘ve gone through the same thing, but you have a completely different take on it I thought that was such an interesting point of view to have the three characters all have different outlooks on what it’s like growing up in a hollow volcano, and then you move to the lair in the summer and then you move to Meteor Falls.

Patton Oswalt: Yes. “The last time I was happy was in the volcano!”.

Jordan Blum: And to pick up on what Heath said, it’s not traditional, it’s not a superhero style. It has an indie comics vibe like talking to Wes Anderson, the way you frame things, you find patterns and all those things. And I think that’s so important to us that this book has its own identity, and I think that’s the key to this book.

Patton Oswalt: But it’s such a key to the character in a strange way, like Archimedes’ worldview, literally infected the look of the world. He wants clean, spare, simple lines, because he is a scientist and mathematician at heart and that has affected his kids, how the heart is and how the world is. I mean, it’s, it’s amazing. You understand the characters the minute you look at the art.

Heath Corson: I want Ian to single out one thing, because he brought me the concept of Napoleon Archimedes’ hexagons. But I want to give the opportunity to sort of talk about where they came from.

Ian Culberd: My world building comes from overthinking stuff. Here’s the hexagon helmet because he’s like a science guy. And essentially the hexagon you can’t actually make a hexagon out of sphere with just hexagons, you have to have a pentagon at some point. We talked about the fact that the hexagon is nature and science, because that’s the thing you’re dealing with when you’re showing chemical formulas and things like that. But when we talk about pentagons, it can mean family, but it’s also the fact that it’s magic. So it all ties back to the youngest son. So we have, like the whole thing, the science of it is all held together with family, but also possibly magic. So that’s where that came from. Classic example would be massive overeating.

You guys answered like, three questions that I had all in that one little conversation.

Ian Culberd: Heath asked me at the beginning “What do you like to draw?”. And rather than say, a horse riding a bicycle up a spiral staircase, I would describe time travel and how basically, everyone disagrees on the same thing and stuff like that, right? You know, it’s not possible because nobody agrees on the same thing. I tend to think in abstracts more than anything, so it tends to work that way. But, yeah, it was a hell of an experience. You know, superhero comics is so different in terms of the other stuff that I do, in terms of pacing and things like that. And I really enjoy the way the structure of this works, because it has a really nice pattern in the way it works. But, yeah, it was good fun.

Heath Corson: There is no aspect of the book that is not all Ian. He does the pencils, he does the ink, and he does the colors. Can I just say he blows me away every time I get to see him. It’s just a completely different look from anything else you’ve seen in the Minor Threats universe.

Ian Culberd: That’s the thing I quite like about it, because things like Barfly and going back to earlier discussions, about how it can be something, it can go away and try something new in this universe, it’s great. I really like the idea of ​​that.


Minor threats broad preview page fixed

I find it funny that Heath references SuccessionBecause when I read it, I literally thought, Succession Meets Venture BrothersAnd this is such a strange combination for me. Because I love, love superhero universes, and there are so many that pop up now and I feel like it’s getting harder and harder for creatives to find new ways to do superheroes. Is that on your guy’s mind when you build the stories, like “What is the angle that hasn’t been done yet?“?

Ian Culberd: I worry when I plan something, because I ask myself when I’ve done, say “Okay, this must have been done before.” Like the helmet, agony over it, because it’s such a populated genre, in terms of many years, but the fact that it’s used as a strengthening instead, so it’s not debilitating, really, that’s the thing I learned to do This. Because in the beginning I was like “How do you do that? How hasn’t this been done before?”. You can find your way through it because it’s just a shorthand. That’s all it is, really, to a story about a family or whatever, really, you know, I think that’s, that’s the key thing,

Heath Corson: I think for us, for the brood, it was all about, what are the family moments that are universal, that we’re all going to see ourselves in? And how do we see them through a superhero prism? So it’s like, yeah, we’ve all avoided our father’s call, but on the third try, he doesn’t take the UN. hostage and insist that we are the only people he will talk to. But, like, that’s what happens in this universe, right? Or, like, when you go talk to your baby brother, but you have to find him on the rooftops because he’s, you know, committed a supernatural murder at the time, but you brought his favorite snack that you used to coax him. Out of his pillow goes with.. So she has a conversation. The older sister had a conversation with his baby brother. But they’re all really rooted in reality, in terms of, like, just family. And the kind of conversations, which I thought were something different and interesting and in the minor threats of the universe, the family is the cornerstone of many of these things. And so to pull back the curtain on some of the archetypes and go, “It’s because of my daughter” or “I’m doing this because I’m taking care of my mom,” makes you go “I’m fine. Rooting for them I don’t know if I’m supposed to be, but I’m kind of rooting for them. And it’s such a big magic trick that they pulled off. So it’s great to do that.

Jordan Blum: With The Brood, it’s about the in-between moments that wouldn’t be in a Marvel for DC Comic. Like the DC comic would be about the big fight between Superman and Lex Luthor, not the moment with Luthor coming home and having a quiet moment with his kid who discovers, you know. I think that’s the exciting thing is that a lot of the stuff that would be in the Big Two that’s off-board and it’s the little moments in between that create a whole new story that we’ve never seen before.

Heath Corson: Yeah, as we would say, it’s about the concussions and repercussions after the big moments.

Ian and Heath, is there anything you want to tell fans about what they can expect from your particular miniseries. And Jordan and Patton, is there anything you want to tell fans about the future of these? Minor threats universe?

Heath Corson: Sure we can go first. I would just say that this is a book about the concussions and repercussions of living with the world’s greatest super villain and being a member of the first family of super villains and trying to keep it together. Napoleon receives a terrible discovery in our first issue that he is dying. And this is the year after his diagnosis and how the family comes together and falls apart trying to figure out how they’re going to deal with it. And that’s something that’s super unique to the superhero world. I don’t think we’ve seen anything like that since the death of Captain Marvel, probably. Ian, anything to add?

Ian Culberd: You’ll put me this place?

Heath Corson: And we got to do that through Ian’s incredible art, character design, all of it, I’m such a huge slobbering fan of all of it. It’s so good. It’s so much fun. He just brought the whole thing to life.

Jordan Blum: And character designs. The Legion of Doom Archimedes belongs to is so unique and crazy, I’m very excited for people to see it.

Patton Oswalt: As far as the Minor Threats Universe, there’s actually a lot of stuff we can’t really talk about right now. We are working with a lot of other writers and artists on a very interesting. Take to further deepen the world and I also feel not only Archimedes, but his family members, because they are so wonderfully drawn and so wonderfully fleshed out. They will definitely make appearances in Meteor Falls and Twilight City. This is not just a one-off, they will be shown again.

From the World of Minor Threats: The Brood #1 On sale December 11, 2024 from Dark Horse Comics.

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