Wolfman on Animated Judas Contract

CATCHING UP WITH MARV WOLFMAN: Daniel Robert Epstein talks with Marv Wolfman about his work on The Condor, the animated Judas Contract, Homeland, and more...

NRAMA: Are you still working on the Teen Titans: The Judas Contract cartoon?

MW: I just finished it.

NRAMA: How many drafts did you do?

MW: Two drafts and a polish. I’m waiting for notes on the current draft and if there are any, we’ll make some last minute notes. I’m not sure who the director is at the moment but I am sure he will have some notes. Animation is a continuing process until the film is actually out. I’m hoping that with The Judas Contract that it maintains itself that way. I’m very pleased with that and I learned an awful lot on The Condor in terms of pacing.

NRAMA: How close is it to the original comics?

MW: The original comics were a year and a half long storyline ending in the five-part Judas Contract story and The Judas Contract movie is 72 minutes. So we had to make a lot of changes in terms of secondary plot. The main thrust of the story is 100% identical. It’s stronger in some places than we were able to do in 1985 because it’s now 2007 so we were able to take certain characters make them stronger than we had before. We made some small changes to simplify the story like we don’t have Jericho in there.

NRAMA: Why?

MW: Jericho comes in, in the next to last storyline issue in the original comics. In the last seven minutes of a cartoon you just can’t have a brand new character coming in and expect to give him the type of development that we could do in an ongoing comic. We didn’t get much development with Jericho in the original comic because he doesn’t speak. But the fact that he continued gave him that ongoing development. We had to eliminate that part of it, but that meant giving more to the actual Titans themselves. So we have more with Starfire, Wonder Girl and Cyborg than we were able to do in the original because we were able to play with them a little bit more. The story was always about Changeling, Nightwing, and Terra.

For the full interview, click here.