October 12th, 2021 
Jackson Murphy 
While Aquaman fans wait for director James Wan’s highly-anticipated live-action sequel Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom (due out in Dec. 2022), Wan, HBO Max and showrunners Victor Courtright and Marly Halpern-Graser are debuting a special event animated series. Part 1 of Aquaman: King of Atlantis premieres this Thursday October 14th on WB’s streaming service. (Part 2 debuts on the 21st and Part 3 on the 28th.) Courtright and Halpern-Graser are as excited as can be about sharing their hand-drawn undersea creation with the surface world.
Jackson Murphy: Victor, what intrigued you about doing this three-part Aquaman action/comedy event series?
Victor Courtright: I like action. I like comedies. Those naturally fell together. I think the three-part thing was something that evolved along the process early on. We just started throwing together story and villain ideas. A lot of it coalesced into three main stories and we realized we should stream them together. They naturally fit into this three-part arc. It was all very organic based on things we were really excited about with the franchise and characters.
JM: Each episode can be viewed as a standalone, but I also think you have a great arc when it comes to the three episodes and the consistent storyline of this battle for the throne between Aquaman and Ocean Master… along with getting the townspeople — the residents — really involved. Marly, can you talk a little bit about bringing in that comedy and that angle of the showdown and having the townspeople really have their say?
Marly Halpern Graser
Marly Halpern-Graser: A big part of our idea for the show was that, as you saw when you watched the show, we use the James Wan-directed Aquaman movie as a little bit of our springboard. But we’re very much telling our own standalone story in its own continuity. But the thing we loved about the movie was this idea that Aquaman was just this pretty regular guy from the surface world. He has superpowers but he was living a pretty normal life. And then suddenly he becomes King of Atlantis, something that in the movie he wasn’t even sure he necessarily wanted to do, but he felt like he had to for the good of all the people.
We really love the idea of starting our show with him a little uncomfortably standing in front of all the citizens of Atlantis saying, “Alright I’m your king now. Are we all happy about this?” A big part of our show is following, like you said, the citizens of Atlantis as they slowly, hopefully, come around to this guy who they’re also not sure about. And yes, a lot of the comedy comes from the bystanders and the people in the crowd and they became a lot of our favorite characters as we were working on this. The storyboard artists would throw in a new weird little guy and then the designers would come in and make that weird little guy even weirder. They’d color him and we’d get notes on the color. They’d be like, “Make that guy a different color.” And then you become our favorite guy.
VC: Good ol’ Atlantean Citizen No. 2. Everyone’s favorite. (laughs)
JM: That’s great. And the painter too, with all the portraits. That’s a riot. A really funny element. DC and James Wan are involved in this. Victor, what suggestions or pieces of advice did the folks at DC and James Wan give you in making this show?
Victor Courtright
VC: They were super-duper helpful. They helped a lot with Aquaman’s character. We’re doing our own thing but they really figured out in the movie what made Aquaman likable – such a fun character. And their suggestions really helped us figure out how to land his perspective. Surprisingly, at one point I think they suggested the possibility of making it more kid-friendly. I had some pretty intense drawings in the very early days. “But it’s for kids, right?” It’s really for everybody. All this really helpful, constructive feedback to make this the most relatable character he could possibly be. But it’s also really nice to start with such a solid origin story. They did that in the movie so we didn’t have to do an origin. We could kind of say, “You get a version of that, so we can just jump right in to our stories and not have to worry about explaining every little background detail.”
MHG: Everyone at DC Comics and everyone at Atomic Monster were really supportive. They reviewed everything we did and gave us notes on everything we did. But really, the benefit, the real strength of being our own continuity was that they really were excited to see us do whatever we wanted. And they let us bring in whatever characters from Aquaman comics we wanted to use. They were supportive of us creating original characters. There’s the bandits in that first special – they’re all original and everyone was excited about them. But we also brought-in a couple classic Aquaman villains.
JM: You guys are right about it being relatable and for the entire family. I interviewed Gillian Jacobs a few years ago and met her at the Critics Choice Awards. She’s so great. Marly, what impressed you the most about her voice work as Mera?
MHG: I was a really big fan. We were really excited when we saw she wanted to do it. She did such a good job of capturing that excited angry energy we wanted for Mera. [She’s] this person who really loves what she does and really loves her job but her understanding of her job is that it’s mostly violence-based. The reason we wanted to cast Gillian specifically is that we wanted someone who was going to be able to bring a comedic angle to even her regular conversations. We knew that the whole show was supposed to be funny but we also knew that Mera was gonna have a lot of dialogue, lines, exposition and important conversations that weren’t explicitly set-up / punchline jokes. But we knew that Gillian could bring and find humor in all of that because she’s naturally very funny.
JM: Her timing is fantastic. There’s a lot of quick facial expressions and movements. Victor, why are they so important? And how were you able to pull them off in every scene?
VC: I think that’s just a style thing. Faces are funny. Drawing faces [is] funny. I love drawings. My sketchbooks are full of faces. There’s so much you can do with creating a fun conversation with just facial expressions – cutting back and forth to silly drawings.
JM: It’s cool. Every shot has a bit of a different vibe to it. Marly, what you think would surprise people — even diehard animation and superhero animation fans — about what it takes to use water and how to use water in animation?
MHG: I think the funniest thing about doing an entire animated show underwater (and this comes up when you watch SpongeBob too) is that in animation, most of the time you just sort of pretend they’re not underwater. 80% of the time you board it the same way you would if they were on land and then you get to have these little funny moments where all of a sudden someone floats away and you’re like, “Oh right. They’re swimming this whole time. I forgot.” One of my favorite parts of this process was doing the sound mixing because the sound effect designers and mixers would bring in all of the bubbles and all the water background tone and suddenly you never forget they’re underwater. It was a really fun layer to put on at the end.
VC: The trickiest part is when they’re not specifically underwater but on the surface but you have to start animating all those waves. Oh boy! You just gotta keep that stuff moving all the time. There’s a few really amazing scenes on the edge of the water. Amazing fight scenes around boats. All of the detail that went into… all those freakin’ drawings that went into every single wave crest. It’s a lot of work but man, they did such a freakin’ good job.
MHG: We had it easier than the live-action Aquaman, where the effects artists had to go in and digitally animate all of their hairs swirling around in the water at all times. We didn’t really have to worry about that.
JM: I bet. And they’re gonna do it again for the sequel coming out next year. Wow. Have they given you little hints about what could be in the Aquaman sequel?
VC: Same as the rest of us: we saw that beautiful beard [on Jason Momoa].
MHG: Yeah. We don’t have any extra secrets. The only thing we do have is every now and then we would pitch them something crazy that we wanted to do – very silly / outlandish. And the people at Atomic Monster would be like, “Oh yeah, that’s really cool. That’s a little bit of what we’re thinking about doing in Aquaman 2.” And we’d be like, “Really? That’s nuts. Now I really wanna see that movie!” Watch all three of our episodes and then watch the movie and see if they really meant it.
JM: Now Victor, what did you really *discover* about The Lost City of Atlantis in bringing it to life?
VC: You can see it right away that we’re taking all these different elements. There are these old Greek columns mixed with cool sci-fi Akira looking buildings. It’s all over the place and that’s what I loved about the old comics. You could turn a corner and find this ancient civilization and turn another corner and find this spaceman living under a rock. [There are] so many different types of things under the sea to discover. Atlantis is this hub where it all comes together and there’s old and new architecture stacked on top of itself. I wanted people to look around and get a sense of this lived-in history. It’s this big… potpourri of life and history, and I think that’s super fun.
JM: Marly, are you envisioning that maybe there’s a future for these characters? Because I do. I see this as something people can come back to on a regular basis.
MHG: I agree. We’d love to do more. There’s no concrete plans. We definitely designed this thing to be the standalone series. But obviously we could go back. We would go back. We’re just waiting for the call.
JM: Good. Before I let you guys go… I was [recently] in Philadelphia at a restaurant and a friend said to me, “Have you heard about this Cartoon Network hotel nearby?” And I said, “No. What are you talking about?” And she said, “There’s this Cartoon Network Hotel in Lancaster, PA.” So I looked it up and now I wanna visit it. Do you guys know a lot about what’s going on there?
MHG: No, this is breaking news to me!
JM: They have pools. They have these water features for kids and families. We gotta get your Aquaman and Aquaman characters involved at this Cartoon Network Hotel!
MHG: You could do a real trip. You fly into Philly. Get some cheesesteaks. I assume you can loop around to the Hershey’s factory. Pennsylvania’s not that big of a state. It’s all pretty close together. Then you go to this Cartoon Network Hotel. You do a real week of it.
JM: Yes.
VC: Sounds great.
JM: I think they should ask you guys for input about putting your Aquaman characters in that hotel. It would be cool.
VC: I think so too. We’ve got opinions. (laughs)
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