ANIMATED SHORTS: TALKING TO THE FRISKY DINGO TEAM

[MattBrady]

SWEATING OUT THE DETAILS OF FRISKY DINGO
CREATORS REED & THOMPSON TALK UP SECOND SEASON

by Steve Fritz

It’s a truly sweltering day in Georgia. Matt Thompson and Adam Reed are baking through it in overalls and not much more while my shirt feels like it has attached itself to my skin.

Just off the top of my head, I ask them just how Killface would be handling this kind of weather.

“I think that he’d probably not leave the house,” he says of the villain who sports the solid white body stocking.

What’s also building up heat is Reed and Thompson’s show, Frisky Dingo, which starts its second season on Adult Swim this Sunday at Midnight. A shotgun blast at the world of comic books, FD tells the tale of one Xander Crews, who also sports a superheroic secret identity named Awesome X. Cut from your classic millionaire playboy model, in the first season Crews came to the realization that having an arch enemy made a lot of money through licensed toy sales. Thus he strikes a deal with Killface, your not-so-typical mutant sociopath out to destroy the world who must also concern himself with such things as Worker’s Comp, unemployment insurance and such.

But things go the only way they should when it comes to an [AS] franchise, and that’s horribly wrong. Before you know it, both Crews and Killface are blind, naked and actually working in an underground illegal factory mass manufacturing Awesome X figures. Killface’s pasty faced son Simon is helping an illegal Fight Club ring. Then there’s what they do to tallboys. Then again, what do you expect from a pair of guys whose past work includes Sealab 2021?

With that in mind, here’s what Thompson and Reed had to say:

Newsarama: Now if I remember correctly, Simon blew up the world. So how do you follow that?

Matt Thompson: Well, he turned the Annihilatrix on and, uh, it may not have worked properly. Perhaps the flaws he was trying to solve in the pilot episode still have never been fixed.

NRAMA: Budgetary reasons you might say?

MT: Yes. Yes. Or just sheer laziness coupled by distractions from some other things as so often happens.

Adam Reed: In fact, if you go back and look back on that first season, there was a sticky note on the Annihilatrix that says “Fred. Where are we on the couplings?”

MT: We made sure to hold the camera on that note for about 20 frames.

NRAMA: So it’s back to ground zero, eh?

AR: Kinda. I guess the fact that Season Two is on the schedule is a spoiler. So, yeah, the earth doesn’t blow up.

NRAMA: That or Xander Crews is really awesome.

MT: Or Simon is actually God. I think I can safely say that.

NRAMA: How have you felt about the reaction to the first season?

AR: Overwhelmingly positive.

MT: Pretty good. Pretty good. I think it was on pretty late at night, and many people didn’t see it as we hope will start seeing it this season. I still get the reaction what’s Frisky Dingo? But people who have seen it, love it. At least that’s what they tell me to my face.

NRAMA: Who did a character design for you guys? He did a great job.

AR: We did, with our artists.

MT: We do everything, soup to nuts. Neil and Christian Danley worked a lot on Killface. The other folks, we just took photographs of models and repainted them. Stan, Xander Crews’ business manager, is my dad. We just put the mustache on him.

NRAMA: Did he enjoy being that?

MT: I remember first I called my mom up and said we wanted to put dad in the cartoon, and he said great. So I took a bunch of pictures of him. So he meets all his friends for breakfast and told them all about it. He’s retired.

NRAMA: Don’t tell me it was a Denny’s.

MT: They go to McDonald’s. They get the senior discount. So about a month after I shoot his photos my mom calls and said ‘You know, you’re dad is really excited, but how is he going to do the recording? Does he have to come to Atlanta?’ I had to explain that we have an actor to do that. We were just going to use his face. So, that was hard.

NRAMA: Poor dad.

MT: Yeah. But I don’t think he’s seen the episodes where he’s dancing around naked with only a beer can over his penis.

NRAMA: Was it at least a tall boy?

BOTH: At least we gave him a tall boy.

NRAMA: I remember you killed Jim Babcock not once, but twice and wasn’t Kim one of the models?

AR: Yeah. She’s all over the place. She’s the geisha lady Val. She’s several characters. We just put hair on her. She becomes an assassin in this season and she’s going to be around a lot more.

NRAMA: So do you still have people from Cartoon Network and William Street still campaigning to be characters?

MT: After what we did to Jim, a lot of people started to back off.

AR: Right now we don’t need as many characters as we used to need. We now have enough characters in our files that we can turn them into other characters by adding glasses and changing their hair.

NRAMA: Now obviously you guys must have some kind of comic book background in you. What titles do you still enjoy reading?

AR: We’re decent comic book fans. The guys who work for us are great comic book fans. Some of that is actually coming from our workers. They currently make it a point to populate the house with just about ever cool comic book in circulation.

NRAMA: But if you guys actually were to walk into a store and buy some titles, what would you do?

MT: Given the work force, they do pick up a lot of stuff. There are comic books everywhere. They’re just laying around the house. In the office….

AR: In the bathroom…

MT: There’s a lot of them in the bathroom.

AR: Huge. There’s a lot of Young Justice, Death, Captain America. We love the stuff dealing with the Hero Registration Act.

MT: Got almost all of the recent superhero killings. There’s also stuff like The Goon.

NRAMA: At least you got the bathroom reading covered. About how much of these comics spill over to what you’re doing. I mean one time I forced a friend to watch your show and he got into it as soon as he saw Awesome X’s hover craft. It made him think of Nick Fury and S.H.I.E.L.D.

MT: Hey, that’s how we get a lot of our fan base, people forced to watch. Yeah. We kind of bashed together Batman, Tony Stark and Nick Fury when we created Xander Crews. Basically, we took all the conventions of those heroes and put them in the hands of an utter idiot.

NRAMA: And you named him Awesome X.

AR: We had a long debate with that name. The question really was what would the dumbest guy in the world name himself?

MT: Yeah. We really wanted a Rembrandt Q. Einstein of superhero names.

AR: Yeah. We thought only an idiot would name himself Awesome. We also thought we might have some trouble with the “x.”

NRAMA: But even Marvel can’t copyright the letter ‘x.’

MT: You know, I just noticed this and was going to bring it up to you Adam. The Red Skull’s daughter has just emerged and her name is Sin. We also have a character named Sinn. Our Sinn has two n’s and theirs does not. She was Killface’s assistant in the first season. In this season, Sinn’s role is going to drastically change. She’s out for revenge.

NRAMA: After what happened, could you blame her?

AR: I can’t.

NRAMA: There was one character I saw towards the tail of last season and appears to be part of the new season. It sounds like he was voiced by MC Chris.

MT: Oh, Wendell? Wendell is actually me, with a little filter on my voice. It does sound a lot like him. Hey Chris is MTV now. He’s moved on and up. Wendell is a character we came up with towards the end of the season and we really liked him. He’s going to be a much bigger part of the show in the second season.

NRAMA: And who’s that older woman with the tongue business.

MT: Her name is Dotty Bunch. Being we killed off almost all of Killface’s henchpeople, we felt he needed someone to talk to besides Simon. So we brought Dotty and Wendell in. They know they can’t get too comfortable with Killface though. They know what happened to the last bunch.

NRAMA: Overall, it seems you guys have a lot of fun poking at the comic book industry.

MT: Yeah. It’s fun to work on the soap opera angle of it. The gigantic twists and turns of the things are the things we like to have fun with.

AR: It’s amazing to go to a place like San Diego and see all those fans out there.

MT: Then there’s the whole anime and manga industry, which I didn’t know anything about until just a little while ago. That’s also now a multi-billion dollar industry. I think a lot of it goes back to the idea that people like stories. That was one of the reasons we made Frisky Dingo a linear story, which was the opposite of Sealab 2021 which was blown up every weekend, because we like that. We like people tuning into the story to see what happens to their favorite character. We like that we now do call backs to several episodes earlier. It’s also easier to write because you know about a character, it’s quirks or whatever. You can do a little standalone scene.

NRAMA: These days you also have comic book movies and shows like Heroes making the scene.

AR: I really like Heroes. I was surprised that it took off like that. I remember the last time I tried to follow some superhero-type show was Mutant X on UPN. That was really cheap and just not good to watch.

NRAMA: And on the animation front we have everything from the traditional stuff like Fantastic 4 to stuff like Frisky Dingo and Venture Brothers.

MT: These days you really don’t have to go to the comic store. You can get your fix on TV. It’s now coming to their house.

NRAMA: So are you guys just doing this one season?

MT: We haven’t heard yet. That’s part of the weird and stressful part of TV. A lot of times you don’t know until you hand in the last episode. What I’m really going to be excited about is how people are going to react when they start seeing the new season. Without giving too much away, we are completely changing things. There’s a completely new and unexpected storyline that we are going to follow, and it is a departure from what we did last season. Now people were really liking what we were doing last year, but what we’re doing now is exactly NOT what you would expect from us.

AR: Did they send you a screener?

NRAMA: No. They did not. They said it was from you guys.

AR: I’m afraid that was from us. We asked them not to send out screeners because we really didn’t want to spoil things. Pretty much when the first episode airs, you will know pretty much what the whole season is going to be about. So to us it was real important to make sure no one gave that away.

NEXT COLUMN: All going right, we meet up with the creators of Slacker Cats.

[Odie91]

This show is awesome. So glad it's back.

First post.

[The_Adventurer]

Frisky Dingo is one the best new series AS has hit us with. When Sealab went to ____ I was afraid these guys were out of ideas, but all they needed was a new venue. Excelent Excelent and I didn't realise that Season 2 was so close, good news.

[BillReed]

Dear Adam Reed,

Please be my cousin.

Love,
Bill

P.S. The show takes some getting used to, but it's darn fun.

[MarsHottento]

YEAAAAAH!





YEEEAAAAAHHH!!

[Nate28]

God i love this show!!!!

[Spaz_Monkey]

One of the best, silliest things on TV today! Sheer perfection!

[The_Adventurer]

"Baffling"

[Neal Holman]

Hey guys, thanks for the kind words on the show.

For anyone who's really curious, comics currently floating around the 70-30 house (in no particular order):

The Goon
Immortal Iron Fist
Dr. Strange: Blood Oath
Capt. America
Amazing Spider-Man
Ultimate Spider-Man
Green Lantern/Sinestro Corps stuff
JLA
JSA
Justice
DMZ
Scalped
Powers
Criminal
New Avengers
Invincible
Irredeemable Ant-Man
X-Factor

... and a few I'm probably missing.

Neal

[rwe1138]

Such a great show. I can't wait for season two. Put this in a block with Robot Chicken & The Venture Bros. and that's one damn fine hour of comedy.

[sfritz]

Originally Posted by The_Adventurer

Frisky Dingo is one the best new series AS has hit us with. When Sealab went to ____ I was afraid these guys were out of ideas, but all they needed was a new venue. Excelent Excelent and I didn't realise that Season 2 was so close, good news.

Don't forget Metalocalypse, Daughter of the Devil and Crooked 'Sip.

About the only show I haven't heard any confirmation on is Drinky Crow. Maybe we should start a harrass...er, writing campaign to get it on the air.

Yes, let's force Tony Millionaire to buy us all drinks out of his commission check!

-s

[IronWolf]

I saw this show the other night before work and um.. i don't get it seemed unfunny and lame to me..its not suppose to be crappy right?

[MarsHottento]

It's a show that rewards one better when started from the top. Try it out next Sunday for the premiere and see what you think. That said, Adult Swim isn't for everyone, and Frisky Dingo isn't for all Adult Swimmers!

Neal:
Check out Black Summer (Warren Ellis / Juan Jose Ryp / Avatar - Criminal rec. has a few copies left)!!

[SyVyN11]

Frisky Dingo is subversive, evil, explicitly sexual with references to both sexes, it should set every right minded person to protest.


AND IT IS F&$*IN' FUNNY AS H$LL!!!!!!!!

Best 13 minutes on TV every week. Good luck with season two, and hope CN and WS gives you a early go ahead for S3.

Let's start a letter writing campaign to have Killface to be Father of the Year.

[DynamiteKid]

I enjoyed the first season of Frisky Dingo. I was laughing throughout the episodes and it destroyed my sick humour quota. Master cylinder!

[Neal Holman]

Originally Posted by IronWolf

I saw this show the other night before work and um.. i don't get it seemed unfunny and lame to me..its not suppose to be crappy right?

And NOW it feels like Newsarama! Phew, was getting worried there for a moment.

MarsHottento- I'll check that out, thanks!

[rwe1138]

Originally Posted by MarsHottento

It's a show that rewards one better when started from the top.

Yeah, the whole first season is best viewed as one gi-normous story, broken up into individual episodes.

[marijurama]

Originally Posted by IronWolf

I saw this show the other night before work and um.. i don't get it seemed unfunny and lame to me..its not suppose to be crappy right?

Unless you caught the last half of episode 3 (which is pretty bad, and not indicitive at all of the quality of the show) I completely fail to see how you can think FD is not funny. but I'm sure you probably think Tom Goes to the Mayor and Tim and Eric Awesome Show are comedy gold, which would explain everything.

[OpticHouse]

I would kill for a season one DVD...

... I mean, like a lot of killing. Seriously... Babies, kittens, priests. Name your price.

[marijurama]

Originally Posted by OpticHouse

I would kill for a season one DVD...

... I mean, like a lot of killing. Seriously... Babies, kittens, priests. Name your price.

I'm pretty sure a Season 1 DVD has been greenlit by AS, but I don't think a release date has been set.

[LuisMa316]

Originally Posted by marijurama

I'm pretty sure a Season 1 DVD has been greenlit by AS, but I don't think a release date has been set.

You can still kill though

[Psivage]

I just got into watching it. Funny show.

[SyVyN11]

Originally Posted by marijurama

Unless you caught the last half of episode 3 (which is pretty bad, and not indicitive at all of the quality of the show) I completely fail to see how you can think FD is not funny. but I'm sure you probably think Tom Goes to the Mayor and Tim and Eric Awesome Show are comedy gold, which would explain everything.

I saw TGttM on AS sunday night and DEAR GOD IT SUCKS!!!!! TaEASgj ain't that much better. Why does Adult Swim (and Cartoon Network) are still on this live action kick?

Their live action new shows (fried dynamite and that herman's head ripoff) look craptastic too.


Killface for FATHER OF THE YEAR!!!!!

[Toneloak]

Has anybody seen that episode of Robot Chicken. It was one of their earlier episodes where they had a short "One sided fights". In one of the scenes they had a man steal a baby's lollipop. Then he starts punching the baby in the stroller over and over again until they cut to the next scene in the short.

That was so funny and I laughed so hard it hurt both morally and physically from all the laughing. When watching Frisky Dingo I'm that baby getting the funny pounded into me.

[YotaruVegeta]

Love Frisky Dingo! Can't wait for a new season of that, Robot Chicken and Venture Bros.