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SDCC 2014: Dan Slott Spotlight, From Ren And Stimpy To The Power Cosmic

Peter S. Svensson liveblogged the Dan Slott spotlight panel for Bleeding Cool, here's the archive:

Dan Slott is reminiscing about San Diego Comic Con of days yore, when he worked on Ren and Stimpy, was on a panel where he took two water glasses and made them into googly eyes. Jill Pantozzi, of themarysue.com, is moderating the panel. She's introducing her friend, listing off his works from Arkham Asylum Living Hell to Silver Surfer.

Dan asked Jill to cosplay as Dawn from his Silver Surfer run, and offered her $10 to do so. Jill couldn't manage to find a black dress with red polka dots. She could cosplay as Ravager, or characters from Game of Thrones, but a plain dress…

This is what Dan wanted to do when he grew up. This precise panel. Wanted to write Spider-Man when he grew up, and made his dream come true.

Quesada asked if you weren't on assignment you're on, what would you want? Everyone said Spider-Man. JMS said Spider-Man, when he was working on it. Dan said Moon Knight, mainly because he never thought he'd get it. This was the Marvel retreat where JMS talked about One More Day. The first thing, good luck to the next guy writing Spider-Man. In my mind, that was never going to be me.

Jill: Let's do Ren and Stimpy!
Dan: I had hair then! You look at someone before presidency, what has that job done to you! I look at myself over 20 years… it's scary.

Jill: I loved watching Ren and Stimpy.
Dan: We had a simultaneous launch with the show. Nickelodeon hated the show, developed a block called Nicktoons, and that became the popular thing. If you were watching, they would get complaints from viewers, and the episodes got smaller and smaller, but on Nick, they were the ones, not SpumCo, who did approvals for the comic. You have to be cleaner than the show. No nose goblins in the comic. Issue #13, they acquiesced. One Nose Goblin. Can I use the same one over and over again. I wrote this story, nose goblin under the table, invents Monster Ray, zaps the table, turns cheese danish into a monster.

Dan does the voices of Ren and Stimpy really well.
Dan: Nose Goblin attacks as kaiju, attacks city, nasal decongestant makes the city drown in snot. Before issue was finished, they said you can't do this. They made it to a piece of gum under the table. They cut 20% of material, said a friend of his, but they didn't cut out the bad stuff. Powdered Toast Man gets a yeast infection was left in, not the fart jokes they hoped would get canned.

Dan:  Issue 21 to get a fart joke in the books. (Spider-Man got used to sneak some of the humor that Powdered Toast Man couldn't in the comic, because Nick couldn't use the excuse of "You don't understand the character.") At a Nick event, the censors were laughing at the jokes that they were going to cut. "Dan, you're the one who wrote that funny joke!" "And you're the one who cut it!"

Dan:  We went to full script, never did one story, cracked up, and Nick said we are never doing this in a million. Substance Abuse issue. "It had a very positive message. The thing that gets abused is slapping fish on your head. High school party are slapping fish on their heads. Little Billy is unsure." And then Ren tells the story of how he's a teenage fish slapper. "I CAN QUIT WHENEVER I WANT!" He goes cold turkey, hitting himself with cold turkey. "IT"S NOT THE SAME!"

Dan:  Ren goes through fish withdrawal. Gets a can of sardines hidden under the toilet… Boss is there with wife, and it's Muddy Mudskipper. (Who is a fish.)
At the end of the story, Stimpy is looking for Ren, the lost weekend, there's Ren in trenchcoat, a sperm whale on an elaborate pulley system for a suicide attempt to crush himself. How he loves him, DON'T DO IT, AND IT'LL NEVER WORK! A WHALE ISN'T A FISH!

Jill is like me, totally enthralled by Dan Slott's vocal skills.

Jill has Kevin (BATMAN) Conroy as her voice mail message.

Dan wrote Batman Adventures and Arkham Asylum Living Hell, his first serious comic work. The game of telephone? It was a Phantom Stranger pitch, became an Arkham Asylum one. Great, we'll be there Monday! He'd been writing Dexter's Lab, he wanted to write Spider-Man. "One Joker rape scene in the shower, and no one will ever ask me to write Daffy Duck again!"

"Why not more Bugs Bunny?" said his mom, after reading the news report about the comic.

She-Hulk was one of Jill's favorite. She asks if Dan had to struggle with writing women. Dan focused on the universal human condition issues, he had been in a relationship with someone and brought the conflict he had with her into the comic, I'm the girl in this relationship so I get to win. It feels real, because women aren't an alien species, and we all know this. You write the same way Louise Simonson wrote Cable.  No one checked her DNA.

"Anything you see in my comics that looks like editorial revision is just me." Guardians in Silver Surfer? All Slott. Avengers in Amazing Spider-Man? Slott. Editorial wanted to have Superior wrap up sooner, but Slott convinced them to extend it.

Spider-Verse, was going to happen earlier where Venom and Stunner were, but Axel wanted to have it be a Peter Parker. " But there will be 20 million Peter Parkers (and I will kill many of them!)" said Slott. Editorial said that Spider-Verse had to wait until Peter Parker. It would be crappy, to have all of the Spider-Men and not 616 Peter Parker, as Slott finally understood.

Fan questions:

Q: Avengers Initiative was a favorite. When recruiting heroes, Eric O'Grady mocks Cassie. "Who's your daddy now?"
A: One of the only art corrections, it was originally much worse. GI Ant Man, 4 in the morning. First time he grows, smacks her with the bus, Cassie laid out on the ground, leveling in the 20 FEET TALL I'M ERIC O'GRADY, he pulls his pants down and looks down, I'M BIGGER THAN THE BUS! The art was so horrible, that joke is not going in. I have the original files somewhere. I'm glad that you liked the fix.

Q: My wife loves Silver Surfer.
A: Silver Surfer has been proven to work on significant others and children of any gender.

Q: Reckoning War?
A: I'd love to. Came back in 2004 with She-Hulk, with the exception of ASM, has hints towards a future event, the Reckoning War, something I've wanted to do since 8, if anyone exploited it it'd be the coolest thing ever, no one has touched in 50 years. It doesn't work with Spidey because it's too cosmic, and Surfer has his own vibe that may not fit with it. Wants to do it someday.

Q: Superior #33, the women all leave him? Will Peter ever be happy?
A: He gets married, has children, gets a trust friend, gets a pot belly, mows the lawn on weekend. Pretty nice. Seriously, did you read Amazing #4?

Q: How do you manage to write two books a month?
LAUGHTER. (I join in.)
A: Dan accidentally got Silver Surfer, and grew a beard. Axel Alonso pulls him into office, says keep the beard, people respect the beard. Tom Breevort talks to Dan about other failed pitches, and Dan comes up with ideas, and then it turns into a pitch and Dan freaks out. I stop sleeping and shaving.

Jill: He also cloned himself.
Dan: I take a laptop to every con so I can write scripts while there. Just can't see Kangaroos at Australia Cons. First World Problem, can't be a tourist because I'm writing Spider-Man. Charles Soule does what I do in a day, and then goes for a run.

Q: Surfer has the Power Cosmic, easy or hard to write?
A: Story isn't about what he has to beat up, but the consequences or the reasons, make it about character not the power. I read Miracleman while Moore was reading it as he becomes a god, and Gaiman and tells stories about living in a world with a god. It's like writing a Superman story, the deus ex machina powers aren't as important as him not yet telling Dawn what a Herald does. It's a different kind of fun.

Q: Death of Spider-Man, Doctor Octopus mindswap, proven that you're fearless to touch iconic characters, characters never age or go beyond 25, since you're not afraid, as long as you write the book…
A: UNTIL I DIE. With how I eat, will be 2 weeks?
Q: Make him age?
A: You can do this as an imaginary tale. As much as we want to change them, we can't. Stan Lee said that if he knew better, Peter Parker wouldn't have graduated high school. The future generations need to discover Peter Parker, they deserve to meet Peter Parker the Spider-Man, at his heart he's always Peter Parker. Peter Parker/Spider-Man is comfort food. He's tomato soup and mac and cheese. Spider-Man makes you feel better. That's why.

That is it. Superior Dan Slott is signing off.
"Now leave."

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