A supervillain is in the spotlight! New stop-motion series Marvel’s M.O.D.O.K., about the iconic comic book character (voiced by co-creator Patton Oswalt), premieres this Friday May 21st on Hulu. Co-creator Jordan Blum and directors Alex Kamer and Eric Towner share marvel-ous insights on the show. (Interviews are combined and edited for length and clarity.)

Jackson Murphy: I saw on your Twitter that you posted a picture of you in front of a billboard for the show that has a lot of significance for you.

Jordan Blum (Co-Creator): Yeah. It was the same billboard I passed when I was a production assistant on American Dad! And it’s also the one I pass every… Wednesday when I go to the comic store. So double meaning! I was very excited. And the billboards came out great. It’s M.O.D.O.K. murdering S.H.I.E.L.D. agents… so [I’m] very happy with the marketing.

JM: That’s so cool. And you were a producer, writer and assistant on American Dad! for 12 years. How was it mentally transitioning from working in a hand-drawn animated world to a stop-motion animated world?

JB: I kind of had to throw out everything I knew. It’s much more like live-action. It was a new set of tools I had to develop, even in post. When you’re editing, you don’t have retakes but you can hold frames and timing – you split the screen and add VFX. And I was like, “Okay – I can’t use my old tricks to kind of make this work.”

JM: Interesting. And this character of M.O.D.O.K. is quite something. Why do you think that now was the perfect time to give M.O.D.O.K. his own series?

JB: What’s nice is that the world speaks comic books now. M.O.D.O.K. would’ve been a weird one to lead with, but now that we’ve had all the MCU movies and DC ones, people are willing to look at different characters and different stories. I don’t think we’ve really had one told from a perspective of a supervillain or one told in this adult animation style. We love being able to do something new and explore one of the weird oddities and one of the best Jack Kirby designs of all-time.

JM: The character really shines here, voiced by Patton Oswalt, who is your co-creator as well. In watching the first couple episodes and listening to Patton Oswalt (who of course many know as Remy in Ratatouille) – Patton’s got SO much dialogue as M.O.D.O.K. How are those recording sessions for you and for him? A lot of water breaks?

JB: (laughs) Well luckily Patton was there for a lot of the writing and we would be able to pick the lines in the room and then M.O.D.O.K. would just say them. And if they made us laugh they were working because M.O.D.O.K. was right there. So by the time we got to recording in the booth, we got [it all] so dialed in. His instincts are so unbelievable and he gets it. One or two takes. He knows exactly how to hit a joke and find the character and find the comedy in everything. He’s a master at his craft. It makes it very easy.

JM: Do your thing and it’s all gonna work! And speaking of work, you’re working with the folks at Marvel, obviously, to allow you to have access to this character and this world. There is a big-time cameo out of the gate in episode one. Were there specific restrictions or things you were told ahead of time, “Hey – you can do this. You can’t do this.” Anything like that?

JB: Not really. We’re fans of these characters, so I think Marvel trusted us to not break them. We could bend them a little bit. We took the characters who were right for the stories and found our comedic takes on them… and still made them feel true to the characters. At first we weren’t allowed to touch the Fox stuff but then Disney bought Fox during the writing of it, so we started slipping in as many X-Men and Fantastic Four things as we could.

JM: That’s amazing for that acquisition to happen in the middle of a show in the Marvel universe. You could go in one direction and another.

JB: There was a little self-restraint because we didn’t want to just completely fill this thing with cameos and Easter eggs. But we really wanted to focus on our story. Marvel has so much to play with and we even have the handbooks in the writers’ room, and we find things that even Patton and I were like, “I’ve never even heard of this… Who are these guys?” I think that’s the fun thing of this Marvel universe. Any character, if you give them the right story, has the chance to be something and the star of their own story. It’s the same for M.O.D.O.K. I don’t think a lot of people looked at him and were like, “Oh, you guys should do a full animated series about him.” But when we dug, we found this really relatable character that allows you to tell something different. That’s the fun. No one knew about Rocket and Groot before Guardians of the Galaxy came out, but with the right takes, every character has that potential.

JM: Yeah. And now they’re superstars. And one of the big Marvel films from the past couple of years that had Rocket, Groot and everybody in it was Avengers: Endgame. And that really focused on time travel. Your second episode of Marvel’s M.O.D.O.K., “The M.O.D.O.K. That Time Forgot”, is all about time travel and very well done. Were there a lot of challenges making that storyline as perfect as it could be?

JB: Well I like to make things as hard as possible for myself. So the second episode’s a time travel episode. Usually you wait a little bit… maybe. But we thought it was a great way to explore M.O.D.O.K.’s relationship with his wife Jodie because we introduced this concept that M.O.D.O.K. has a wife. And we were like, “Why? Why would anyone marry this guy?” And this gave us the ability to go back in time and earn that relationship. We really like that, and I like fun, insane, complicated time travel stories. At the heart of that episode is really an emotional one about people falling in and out of love and what that looks like over time.

Alex Kamer (Director): The emotional core of episode 2 is M.O.D.O.K. and Jodie finding each other again after growing apart for so many years. It’s important to show that these two characters actually do care about each other beneath all the obstacles they face with their relationship. The most challenging thing about this episode is making sure M.O.D.O.K. and Jodie’s relationship feels genuine and that it doesn’t get lost in the irreverent humor and time travel elements. To me time travel is just a story telling element that can be used in so many ways. I don’t get hung up on the logic of it. I feel that every story creates their own time travel logic and as long as the content is rich, people tend to go along with it. The beauty of the time travel in this episode is that it serves as a brilliant storytelling tool which actually strengthens Modok and Jodie’s connection. The idea of going back in time to share a specific moment with a loved one is very romantic and also very human. Additionally the time travel sets up a major villain of the show in a clever way, so it also creates a fun bit of comic book lore.

Eric Towner (Director): All the episodes had their fun challenges, but anything with time travel keeps you on your toes in terms of continuity. Both physically and emotionally. Because of the way we shoot the animation, once we are shooting a particular set, we will shoot all the animation from that set for the entire series. We were shooting some scenes from the last episode within the first few weeks of animation. It was pretty trippy. I’ve loved time travel since Doc Brown invented the Flux Capacitor. You just have to have fun with it, because as soon as you overthink it, your brain may explode. Like… is time travel relative to Earth’s gravity and position in the universe? Because if you travel in time 6 months ago, Earth is on the other side of the Sun. Would you pop into the middle of space? But the Sun’s position in the galaxy is a whole other story. Not to mention the galaxy’s position in the universe. Not to mention the universe role in the MCU.

JM: Definitely. The animation in this is amazing to look at. How large are the different sizes of M.O.D.O.K. that we see over the episodes?

JB: So the main M.O.D.O.K. puppet is seven or eight inches. He’s pretty big. They fit in your hand, but they’re detailed enough that you can really get the performances out. And then there was a mini M.O.D.O.K. we would use for certain shots – and then they would digitally put his puppet face on the mini one. There’s a few tiny versions but there were at least 30 M.O.D.O.K. puppets because we had about 30 stages going at once at times. You can’t wait for the actor, right? So you just make more of them. And then he’s there on every stage performing. It was cool. It was a real challenge, I think, for Stoopid Buddy, but they knocked it out of the park. It looks unlike anything they’ve done before.

JM: It looks great. I’ve been to Stoopid Buddy. I’ve seen all the different stages and sets. And you’re right: to have so much going on at once has to help when it comes to the production timeline. When I was introduced to this show, it was last October through the virtual New York Comic-Con that you and Patton and some of the other cast members did. How was it doing that, and where were you at that time in production… and how were you feeling at that time?

JB: October…. We were definitely in the middle of production. We were just picking up right around then because we shut down for a little bit. It was fun to show people stuff. We’ve been working on this for so long. It was exciting – even to reunite virtually with the cast and sharing it was awesome. But we’re all bummed we got robbed of some Comic-Con experiences, as someone who loves going to conventions. But we were happy to be there.

JM: Hopefully if we get more seasons of this show we can return to the in-person Comic-Con events really soon. And what’s really cool is that you’ve also released four installments of the “M.O.D.O.K.: Head Games” graphic novel. How did you have time to do this AND do the series?

JB: Comics are my first passion. I’ve loved them since I was a kid, and I continue to read all the time. So it’s something we always wanted to do. It was fun because Marvel asked us to do it and we didn’t want to just adapt our show… we wanted to tell a story with the 616 comic book version of M.O.D.O.K. And it ended-up being, “How do you reconcile with all these different versions of him?” It kind of created the mystery that we set M.O.D.O.K. on. It was really fun to write a different version of M.O.D.O.K. but work in different elements of the show as well.

JM: You’re living out many kids’ and comic book fans’ dreams of creating a world within the Marvel universe. Did you feel pressure in putting these episodes together… or was it more fun than anything else?

AK: There is pressure to create something Marvel and Hulu are proud of, but also because so much talent is associated with the show. Jordan and Patton’s vision is hilarious, the actors give brilliant voice performances, and the scripts are so well written. So there is pressure to do the source material justice. I stopped thinking about the pressure and focused on the joy of creating such a great show. The fun of making Marvel’s M.O.D.O.K. is what I remember the most.

ET: The look of this show ended up being so unique to the Marvel universe, that more than anything we had a blast making it. We definitely felt an obligation to fulfill some of the expectations of a Marvel series by making things feel EPIC and BIG at times, even though in reality most everything was quite miniature. We are very fortunate to be able to work with some of the most talented artists and animators in the business, and seeing what they’re able to create on a daily basis is an absolute joy. Do pandemics make things challenging? Sure! But every Buddy’s positive attitude throughout this production has been incredibly refreshing.

JM: There hasn’t been an MCU movie in two years, which is crazy but it’s true. And the only Marvel movie that we’ve had over the last two years is The New Mutants. So how do you hope that Marvel’s M.O.D.O.K. will satisfy the diehard Marvel film and TV fans?

JB: If you are a fan of the movies or comics, this thing is filled with Easter eggs and nods and characters that you love. It probably has the most amount of Marvel stuff in it. We didn’t have as many restrictions. It will absolutely satisfy and hopefully be something different that you haven’t seen before… and feel unique but inherently Marvel.