David Pepose talks more about his Captain Planet comic
Superhero Hype interviewed writer David Pepose about his new comic based on Capt. Planet and the Planeteers, and here's why he thought it such a big deal to adapt it into comicdom:
Matt Morrison: I presume you were a fan of the original cartoon from the 90s. What was it about the concept that resonated with you?Well the earlier reports did note nationalities will be emphasized, but the reasoning for why this story is so important from an ideological perspective is laughable in an era where Islamic terrorism dwarfs concerns like environment. All Pepose is doing suggests he doesn't have the courage needed to tackle more challenging issues.
David Pepose: I grew up watching Captain Planet, but it wasn’t until I looked back at the series as an adult that I saw the incredible potential behind the concept. It is a concept that’s inherently multicultural and diverse, in a way that hasn’t been this organic since the days of Giant-Sized X-Men. It deals with the pressing issues of today, in terms of both environmental disasters and the human greed that helps fuel them.
In the first series summary, Gaia is described as a priestess rather than the spirit of the Earth. Is that accurate? Is she no longer the actual Greek goddess? If so, why the change?It sounds more like some lefty is taking awkward liberties and discarding Greek mythology in a silly way that only suggests lack of confidence in the original premise. Not that the TV cartoon was anything great to speak of, considering it was environmental propaganda to begin with. But, if human components are important, I though that's what the human cast members served in the cartoon, not Gaia herself or even Capt. Planet. So it's funny how somebody doesn't have what it takes to at least create new characters who could serve the purpose Pepose allegedly emphasizes.
For me, whenever I’m working on a relaunch like Captain Planet, I need to establish what are the ground rules and limitations for these characters. In other words, how do I effectively challenge them and keep them from being overpowered? And in particular, for a book like this, how do I keep our all-too-human Planeteers on the backfoot, rather than giving them any easy options to escape being the underdog?
With those considerations in mind, one of the first things I pitched was giving the Planeteers’ mentor Gaia a new kind of context. Rather than her being an all-powerful demigoddess who might double up on Captain Planet’s role of helping the Planeteers out of a jam, I wanted to reframe her as a human being in the vein of the Dalai Lama. Gaia is now a generational figure who acts as the vessel for the planet’s life-giving energies.
To me, that served as a win-win on a number of levels. For starters, it puts Gaia more on the same level as the Planeteers, which can allow for some really interesting character dynamics down the line. But even more importantly (and we’ll dig into this a bit more in Issue #2) it really reinforces the central mantra of Captain Planet – “the power is yours.” You ultimately can’t summon a genie and magically make your problems go away. There has to be a human component to all this and Gaia serves as an effective starting point and go-between.
The original Planeteers are back, but you indicated there would be greater depth to them?Here, more of the leftist bent shows up, along with weird double-standard on pacifism. If that's what the character is, doesn't wrecking contradict that? Also, I wonder if the premise for Ma-Ti is supposed to be a stealth attack on former Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro, ousted as he was by Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, whose government has since taken up communist tactics, including banning the X social network in Brazil? This article appears to imply right-wing governments in south America are behind the lithium mining projects, since it has an attack on Argentina's president, Javier Milei. If these leftists believe it's wrong for right-wingers to mine lithium, that's ludicrous, considering plenty of left-wingers have too, regardless of whether anybody was living on that land.
Even more than my run on Space Ghost, I consider Captain Planet to be fully an ensemble-led series. For starters, we’ve got Kwame, a former soccer star from Ghana who became a farmer after his career was derailed by a knee injury. I pitched him as Cyclops meets Sam from Ted Lasso.
Meanwhile, we’ve recast Wheeler as a hotheaded auto worker from Detroit. Beyond his complicated feelings about the environmental movement vis-a-vis his career, Wheeler’s our point-of-view character for much of this series.
Linka is one of our biggest shifts from the original cartoon, given how much has changed since her debut in 1990 from “the Soviet Union.” She’s by far the most liberal of the group, headlining her own underground eco-activist punk band in Russia in the vein of Pussy Riot. She’s our team scrapper, not unlike Wolverine or Illyana Rasputin.
With Gi, who hails from South Korea, we’ve leaned into her background as a marine scientist. More than anyone, she knows the stakes, but she chooses to stay hopeful. She’s the bubbly kid sister of the group and heart of the team.
Speaking of Heart, Ma-Ti rounds out the group. Historically speaking, Ma-Ti’s always been treated as a punchline since most people don’t understand the power of Heart. But it’s really tactical telepathy, as he’s able to summon animals and reach inside people’s minds. As far as his backstory, Ma-Ti is an indigenous person from Brazil whose people were forced from their land to mine for lithium. But when he encounters the power of Heart, it cleanses his mind of all anger and violence. This turns him into an avowed pacifist — who could absolutely wreck you.
Talking of camp, the original cartoon had some of the most gloriously over-the-top villains ever. Are they going to be scaled back? Even more outrageous? On par with the original?But there's far more challenging forms of villains and villainy, and since Blackwater's prosecution may have been politically motivated, that's why it's a very easy choice for a metaphor. This is what Mr. Pepose considers a problem, not Islamic terrorist organizations like the Taliban, which have imposed sharia upon women in Afghanistan? That Pepose cited such an easy example like Blackwater is telling of where he's standing on the issues, and unwilling to focus on more challenging ones. Even the mention of "right-hand man" could hint at where this is going. So, what good is it doing to adapt all these cartoons and other such products of the past century for the sake of comicdom? All they're relying upon is easy subjects, not hard ones, and even giving strong hints they only think right-wingers make good targets for ridicule and condemnation. That's awfully cheap.
I honestly miss the days where we used to be able to say Captain Planet villains weren’t subtle enough.
[Laughs]
It feels like reality has gotten a lot less subtle over the last few years, and so it hasn’t taken much recontextualizing for Captain Planet’s villains to reflect the world today. We’ve got ruthless billionaire Lucian Plunder as the big bad of our origin storyline. He’s a guy with all the money and technology and power, but with none of the ethics.
We’ve also got Argos Bleak, a Blackwater-style mercenary who serves as Plunder’s right-hand man. And we’ll have a few other characters spinning off of Plunder’s immense wealth, including Dr. Blight and her artificial assistant MAL. For me, it hasn’t taken much to bring these villains to a place that they feel grounded and of our world. Sadly, real-life villains have only become more obvious as time has gone on, so Cap’s villains feel all-too-timely these days.
Labels: animation, history, indie publishers, islam and jihad, licensed products, misogyny and racism, moonbat writers, msm propaganda, politics, science, terrorism
