Jordan Blum isn’t your average Hollywood big shot. For one, he’s worked on funny and subversive shows like Community, American Dad and the upcoming MODOK series for Hulu. For two, he’s a big old X-Men nerd. And for three, he’s also co-writing MODOK: Head Games. Jordan sat down for a chat with us about the series and what to expect. And maybe he dropped some design art for an X-Character showing up in MODOK…
Also, Marvel provided some X-Clusive art for #3 from Scott Hepburn and Carlos Lopez, which comes out next Wednesday.
Zachary Jenkins: Jordan, you’re doing a MODOK book ahead of a MODOK TV show that people haven’t seen and the book surprisingly ties into the TV show. What’s up with that?
Jordan Blum: When they came to us and asked us if we wanted to do a MODOK book, we had this idea. Our show is different enough from the 616 MODOK, it’s our take, it’s set in a much more kind of comedic world. We were really excited about writing the 616 MODOK and not just doing an adaptation of our show and just kind of taking our scripts and turning them into comics. We had written that MODOK and we loved writing that MODOK, but we were really excited to dig into the comic book version.
So we started kind of talking about the differences of the show and decided to make that meta-textual and make that the story. Suddenly MODOK has memories of this life that is, resembling the one in our show, and it doesn’t make sense to him. It doesn’t compute. It doesn’t make sense with him wanting to take over the world and the things that drive him and it’s kind of driving him insane. We thought that would be a great mystery to start our comic book off with, and then also have it have connections to the show without being a literal adaptation.
ZJ: Now you’re saying plurals and we’s and they’s for the, for the record, you’re talking about yourself and the rat from Ratatouille, correct?
JB: Yeah. That rat guy. [co-writer of MODOK: Head Games & the voice of Hulu’s MODOK] Patton [Oswalt] is one of the greatest collaborators I’ve ever worked with, like he is, he is what you want him to be. You know, I was a fan, like, I think a lot of people were before I met him and it was absolutely one of those meet your heroes and then go create content with them.
ZJ: Tying into what you were saying about the book you’ve been talking about reconciling different eras of the character, and this is, this is a pretty wide ranging character. I remember specifically tying into like the Gwenpool stuff that we’ll get to in a second, but there’s, there’s a part where [Unbeatable Gwenpool writer Christopher] Hastings explicitly says, “yeah, I was doing some other stuff before then, but I can do whatever I want. I’m MODOK I can change like my entire perspective on life pretty easily.”
Why was that such a fertile ground to tie into? Was it just because you had those differences with the TV series or was there something enticing about looking at like 50 years of continuity and be like, “hold on, we can do something here”?
JB: We talked about kind of taking that Grant Morrison Batman approach, because MODOK is a versatile character. The core of him is there in every incarnation, you know? He can be this menacing arch kind of big, bad of Marvel, or he can be a little more comedic, like he is in Gwenpool and our show or he can be like a sidekick on a kid’s cartoon, but, you know, you don’t break him. He works he’s flexible in that way.
We liked the idea that he’s a computer brain. So he is constantly rebooting himself and he’s been killed multiple times. Wwe tried to come up with a kind of an in canon response to why there are so many versions. Every time he’s been rebuilt, there’s something a little off or something different. And that fed into the story we were telling of, well, here’s a version that doesn’t make sense at all to him and that he has to kind of go on this journey through his own history to put the pieces together to figure out why this is happening to him.
ZJ: Now your background is in animation, stop motion, writing, script, show, running, things like that. How do you translate those skills into comics, which has a very different production stream?
JB: I’ve been a comic fan for my entire life, and I feel like I’ve read a ton. I didn’t want to come in here and just be the, the TV asshole who does his own thing then walks away having broken all the toys and written a shitty comic. I’m not pointing fingers at anyone in particular. I think it’s just kind of a thing people expect when people jump into the world of comics. The biggest thing I knew going into this is that it is an artist’s medium. You’re there to tell the story, but you’re there to kind of help the artist be their best and work with them to create things that they want to draw and that excite them.
TV is a much more writer driven, medium. You’re there kind of overseeing your episode from beginning to end. Here you’re kind of just making suggestions that an artist can take and hopefully inspiring them to get excited and see things the way you see them, but take them in a different direction and build on them and make them better. And that’s exactly what I think [artist] Scott Hepburn has done with our script. So to me, I just love the collaborative nature of it and trying to, to build something with the artists and just let them go.
ZJ: There’s been a lot of interesting things in the issues that have come out, big crowd scenes, classic Marvel, cutaways references to old famous panels. How much of that is you saying, “Hey, I really want this thing in here.” And how much of that is Scott taking an idea and saying, “I want to do something cool with it” and really blowing it up and making it the best it can be.
JB: It’s really collaborative. Scott loves these references as much as we are. He’s a comic fan like us. The example I think of that we did in, um, issue one where we sort of gave him the reference of Wolverine and the Hellfire Club falling through all the floors. You know, “now it’s my turn”. We gave him that and then he just kind of built on it. I think he, did his own thing while still kind of paying tribute to that. In the same way we gave him the cover to the Weapon X trade to do that MODOK panel where he’s kind of tearing through the AIM agents and he put a bunch of his own ideas in, and it wasn’t a one for one. I think those are the best kinds of odes to, to previous work. It’s recognizable that it’s kind of influenced by that, but again, it’s, Scott’s own thing.
ZJ: MODOK: Head Games #3 comes out February 17th and this is your first real chance of doing some stuff with the X-Men, Krakoa and specifically Gwenpool. All of which I know you are a big fan of. What can folks expect from this?
JB: I mean, nothing in the X-Books will ever be the same. If you don’t read this comic, you’ll be completely lost. All the Hickman saga will just collapse under your ignorance of having not read it. [giggles]
No, it’s two pages that we got to play with some X-Characters and I was ecstatic. We got to do a little scene on Krakoa. I got to write my favorite boy Scotty Summers, I think he says one word. We got to bring in a slightly forgotten character and give her a new purpose in, new world of Krakoa. It was incredible to even dip a toe in on the beach of Krakoa.
ZJ: Gwenpool was teased at the end of the last issue and on the cover of #3. That’s a very recent character that I know there are writers who have done very well with her and writers who have very much struggled because she is different than just about any other character you can write in most mediums period, and especially comics. Were there any unique challenges trying to figure out her role in this book?
JB: We chose her for two reasons. One was that she has a history with MODOK and like we said, this is MODOK kind of making his way through his own past in the Marvel universe. Two, we were exploring these ideas of identity and about MODOK believing that he knows his core attributes that make him who he is. There’s this thing challenging it, and the idea that there have been all these versions of him and trying to make sense of all of these. And I thought, you know, what better character to kind of explore the meta history of a fictional comic character than Gwenpool. We found two really good purposes of using the character and I was terrified of it.
I love the books that have come before ours and specifically the writers that have, have written her previously. The fandom is very aggressive and very protective. I hope I have convinced them that she’s in good hands and that we won’t let them down, but I’m sure they’ll let me know.
ZJ: I have no doubt that a Gwenpool Twitter account will have feelings about this. Yes.
JB: I’ve talked to Gwenpool, tweet to tweet, and she has let me know that I better not fuck this up.
ZJ: You got a couple issues left of this, and then it’s looking like it’s coming right into the TV show. What would you say to folks to get them pumped up for the upcoming MODOK show?
JB: Getting to see a version of the Marvel universe we haven’t really seen yet in a lot of their media. We get to kind of taka slightly satirical eye to it while still honoring it and getting to play with all the big toys. We didn’t break MODOK, we adapted him and I think all the things that you love about MODOK are in there while still we were able to build this really fun world around him and explore that corner of the Marvel universe of AIM and kind of some of the more mundane aspects of running an evil organization. We worked in some, some fun kind of family stories as well, but it is still giant, explosive adventures through the Marvel universe where he’s dealing with these very relatable problems, but on a Marvel scale. That’s really the fun of the show.
Zachary Jenkins co-hosts the podcast Battle of the Atom and is the former editor-in-chief of ComicsXF. Shocking everyone, he has a full and vibrant life outside all this.
