Latest / Vigilante Vibes Podcast / Ep. 144. Interview with Julia and Eric Lewald

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Ep. 144. Interview with Julia and Eric Lewald · Vigilante Vibes Podcast

0:18
Hello to all the comic fans, Marvel geeks, and all the nerds
0:20
in between. Welcome to another episode of
0:21
the Vigilante Vibes podcast where we talk all things Marvel
0:24
without the toxicity that's taking up way too much space in
0:26
the in the fandom. I'm your host, Megan Nicole, and
0:29
today we have a very special 2 guests that I'd love to
0:32
introduce. One of them developed X-Men, the
0:36
animated series for television and served as a showrunner, and
0:39
the other wrote for the series. And together they are the
0:42
dynamic duo that brought our favorite mutants to television.
0:45
Please welcome Eric and Julia Lee Wald.
0:48
Hello, hello, hello. Thanks, Megan.
0:51
Glad to. Be here.
0:52
So happy to have you guys here. So why don't we start all the
0:56
way from the beginning? Where did your interest in X-Men
0:58
start? OK.
1:02
You really want to. Know about about 12 hours before
1:07
we got the job. Let's go on the way back
1:11
machine, all the way back to 1992.
1:13
February 92 and we, we, we both worked with the people at Fox
1:18
before and other stuff. And on a Sunday night we got a
1:21
call saying, guess what, you guys, guess what?
1:24
You guys, the X men's happening, Eric, you're going to run the
1:27
show. And that's a Marvel book, right?
1:31
So I'd never, I'd never, I'd never touched an X-Men comic
1:34
before the night before where I had to meet Stan Lee and
1:37
everybody to talk about my, my vision for the series.
1:42
So I just, and it was before the Internet, so we couldn't Google
1:46
it. And on Sunday night, you know,
1:48
the comic book stores are closed so we can't go check them out.
1:51
So I just had to keep my mouth shut during the the big meeting
1:54
and let everybody else talk. I wish they were happy to do.
1:58
Was there a reason they thought that you would know about X-Men?
2:00
Or were they just like everyone knows about X-Men?
2:03
No, it was just as a real practical thing, like, and like
2:07
anybody else's work. I'd worked with the guy there
2:11
that was making the decision about which of maybe seven or
2:14
eight people he knew might run the show, might be the best to
2:17
do it. And so he just picked me for my
2:21
TV animation writing skills or tone or, you know, the thought
2:27
that my writing might fit the X-Men better than the other
2:30
people. He had option to do it.
2:32
So it was just that it was, it was a professional hire, not a
2:35
fan hire. To set the stage, though, you
2:38
and I met as writers on the Disney afternoon at Disney.
2:43
You you were in offices next to each other, and that's how we
2:46
met. And I was writing animation.
2:48
You were writing animation. And after three years of Disney,
2:51
everyone's contracts were like, OK, go join the freelance
2:54
market. You worked on some shows and
2:58
ended up running the the the fourth season.
3:00
The last season of Beetle of Beetlejuice, which Fox has just
3:03
started as a little bitty network.
3:04
It was like half a network there on half the day.
3:07
And they gave this wonderful woman named Margaret Lesh the
3:10
presidency and her right hand man, Sydney, I want her who was
3:14
the hands on executive for all the cool shows like ended up
3:18
being, you know, Batman and Spider Man and everything.
3:21
He was his. Yeah.
3:22
So I'd worked with him for a couple years in the seven years
3:28
of my career. One was helping him develop
3:30
shows for a Japanese company called TMS. And then that last
3:34
year of Beetlejuice. So I had a long history with the
3:37
guy that was doing the hiring and that's, you know, that's how
3:42
that's how it came. But yeah, we'd each I'd been
3:45
writing in TV animation for seven years.
3:47
So it wasn't like he just picked me because he he was a buddy.
3:50
It was, you know, we we'd had a lot long professional.
3:53
Experience together and and your tastes, your sensibilities.
3:57
Yeah, our sensibilities. We had the chance to do that and
3:59
work together for a few years, and then when it came time to
4:02
pick someone to sort of be the showrunner for X-Men, it was a
4:07
function of the work you'd done with him, you know, and who they
4:10
thought had this the right sensibility to to craft a show
4:14
based on. Those books and we were really,
4:16
I mean really lucky. There's this balance on the
4:18
show. The two or three other main
4:21
creative people Sidney knew and loved the X-Men.
4:26
Larry Houston, who's the head artist, who's like in charge of
4:30
the, the all the artists, the way I was in charge of all the
4:33
writers. He had read just about every
4:35
X-Men comic there was since, you know, that the early 60s.
4:38
And Will Mineo, who was kind of overseeing the whole production,
4:42
also was a huge Marvel fan. He, you know, had got it, got
4:45
his little Marvel Society fan card in like 1961.
4:51
So there were people on on board that really knew what the X-Men
4:55
were, and they just wanted me to get a group of writers together
4:59
that could make it intense. It was such a frantic time,
5:03
though. Larry Houston, What was the doc?
5:06
He had a book and he photocopied black and white photocopy.
5:11
Was it the Marvel Universe? Yeah, yeah.
5:13
Just so they were very helpful. They there were, there was like
5:16
the reference books that would have all the characters and I
5:20
bought a set of cards, you know, just the trading cards.
5:22
To know. Who everybody was and what their
5:24
relationships were and what their powers were and a little
5:26
bit about what their histories were.
5:28
And so it was a pretty, it was a pretty quick study.
5:31
But Larry Houston had to get you photocopies of that one Marvel
5:36
book to give you information. Yeah, they didn't have them
5:39
there, but yeah. But it was, we worked really
5:42
fast back then. I mean, people were hand
5:45
painting, so that took forever. They took hundreds of people
5:48
overseas drawing the show, but we were hired in, you know, mid
5:53
February and they were expecting it to be on the air in September
5:57
and no computers and no Internet and you know, it was so we were
6:04
like 3 months behind when we started.
6:05
So we all went very fast and there wasn't a lot of time.
6:11
Nowadays, you know, there's Marvel's so huge, it's this
6:15
multi billion dollar company. I'm sure that all sorts of
6:17
people on the news show are looking over to make sure it's
6:21
exactly what's good for Marvel. At the time, Marvel was was a
6:25
struggling comic book company and nothing else.
6:28
And they even went bankrupt in, what, 96?
6:32
So they didn't really have time to oversee us.
6:34
They just kind of, you know, crossed their fingers and and
6:37
hoped that we came up with something that was OK.
6:40
And Marvel Comics was in New York City.
6:41
Yeah, I was in New York, we were out in LA, and so it was hard to
6:45
communicate. There was no, there's no e-mail
6:48
or no cell phones. So if, if, if, you know, they'd
6:51
read our scripts and they might have some ideas or some notes
6:55
we'd fax to each other, or when the the show got recorded,
7:00
they'd send out, they'd stay on mail audio, audio cassettes to
7:04
everybody so that we could all hear what the episode sounded
7:07
like from the and. The voice talent recording all
7:10
took place in Toronto, Canada. In Toronto, Canada.
7:12
So we're all separate. So we're all just working as
7:15
fast as we could in our own little corners and hoping that
7:18
everybody else was on the same page.
7:20
And we, you know, we talked to each other on the phone or we,
7:23
we. From 9:00 to 5:00 LA time.
7:25
Yeah, or, and, and we would fax each other questions and notes.
7:29
And so we kept on top of stuff. And if something was felt wrong,
7:32
we, we, we talked about it. But mostly everybody was just
7:35
really, it's like you had a date.
7:37
It was a daily newspaper or something.
7:39
We just got the stuff out as fast as we could because they're
7:41
all these artists and craftspeople waiting.
7:44
You know, where's that script? You know, we got to do draw a
7:48
900 picture storyboard to send overseas and get all these
7:51
animate animators waiting. So today it's real different
7:55
with the computers and everybody's locked in.
7:57
And if as soon as somebody changes a little something in
8:00
the design, everybody sees it. It's just so much more
8:03
efficient, so much, so faster, much faster.
8:07
But you know, we, we had a great time.
8:10
I heard I, I believe it was Lenore Zan that said it was very
8:15
complicated without the Internet because they didn't know if
8:19
anyone even liked the show. They were just kind of sitting
8:21
in the dark until they were asked for more.
8:24
So that that whole situation sounds very, very stressful,
8:28
like a little English for you. So Margaret Lesch, Fox Kids
8:33
president, determined that she was going to make an X-Men show,
8:37
but the folks above her didn't have confidence in the project.
8:40
So you only got 13 episodes? Yeah, And it was a weird time.
8:44
It's hard to think back to 92. There had been no successful
8:48
Marvel shows on television, really.
8:50
I mean, they're just, there hadn't been.
8:51
They tried a few things on Saturday morning, and they just
8:54
could never get the tone right. They would be like little kids
8:57
shows instead of the kind of intense stories that Marvel
9:00
liked to tell. So there were no great hopes for
9:02
it. In fact, as Lenore said, it was
9:05
the same for the writers and the artists as it was for the voice
9:08
talent. As soon as we were done with the
9:10
1st 13, we were all let go and we're off trying to work on, you
9:14
know, we had two, two babies. We're trying to get get work for
9:18
the four months. We were waiting until all the
9:19
shows were animated and to see if it was going to be successful
9:22
or not. So we had often worked on a show
9:25
called Exosquad and got it going.
9:28
But so, yeah, it was not a it was not a time where 90% of
9:34
America didn't know who the X-Men were.
9:36
And that's hard to imagine now. But that was that was what we
9:39
were told by our bosses. They looked, you got to
9:41
understand, the fans know the fanboys and fangirls.
9:45
The comic book fans. They the comic book fans know,
9:48
but that's like 2 million people.
9:51
And maybe if if if we need more like 10 million people to like
9:58
this show. And so you guys have to write
10:00
this stuff for an audience as if and thinking in your mind as if
10:05
they don't know what a mutant is and they don't know who these
10:08
characters are or what's at stake.
10:10
And be really clear about it and be really, you know, keep that
10:14
in your head because if you write it like you're you're a
10:17
fanboy, you're going to miss all these people aren't going to get
10:21
what you're talking about. You have to be really like
10:23
simple and clear. And we're writing for a kids
10:26
time too. So we also had to be kind of
10:28
simple and clear. That's very true.
10:32
I never really thought about it because that was before the
10:34
movies. That was before it became so
10:36
mainstream. Imagine going into that show,
10:39
watching it for the first time, You're like, what?
10:42
A he's a Wolverine. That's an animal.
10:44
Like I could see how that's very very confusing for a lot.
10:49
I want to give all credit to Two Wheel Mineo and Larry Houston
10:52
for if you go back to the original series and watch the
10:55
opening title sequence that was crafted over 1.
10:59
That was a that was like a long weekend and they made this
11:02
beautiful thing and. To introduce each character.
11:07
'Cause people were, they were worried that, OK, this is such a
11:10
confusing universe. Kids aren't going to remember.
11:12
You're trying to tie some stories together.
11:14
They're going to forget and. They're going to have code
11:16
names. What you can't do that?
11:17
Kids will never keep these characters got two names.
11:19
This is going to get weird. So they made, So that was one of
11:23
the things that Margaret made sure of that we got their names
11:26
in the credits and we we showed their powers in the credits so
11:30
we wouldn't have to keep reminding people of that.
11:33
That or new people that are coming to episode 6.
11:37
They hadn't seen the previous episodes there.
11:39
There wasn't any streaming. If you missed the first five,
11:43
you missed the first five, unless your friend, you know,
11:46
VHS, videotape them at home. So we had to just make sure that
11:51
everybody was kind of up to speed and the credits did a lot
11:54
towards that, which is weird, but it's just that one little
11:57
minute every week really helped. I can say it helped me as a
12:02
child because I remembered I was too young to read comics at that
12:04
time. X-Men, the animated series, what
12:07
got me into it? So I remember watching and I'm
12:10
like, I don't know. I don't, I don't know.
12:13
I don't know what's what Wolverine and Nightcrawlers deal
12:15
is, but I like them. So I'd say the opening credit
12:18
really did do a huge service. Sure.
12:23
So you talk about how when it first started there really
12:28
wasn't that big of a fan base. But looking at it now, it's like
12:31
no one doesn't not know what X-Men are.
12:34
Did you anticipate the cultural impact the series would have?
12:39
Well, again, no. No, nobody did.
12:44
I think Margaret was confident it would be a great it was a
12:48
perfect property for an animated show.
12:50
She saw it. She saw girls could like it,
12:52
boys could like it, adults could like it.
12:54
Which and she couldn't get her bosses to understand that.
12:58
And nobody. And she'd been, she and Stan had
13:01
been pitching the show for seven or eight years in Hollywood back
13:04
when they before Margaret got her job at Fox and nobody at the
13:08
networks wanted to touch with it And, and, and these nobody got
13:12
to get these books. So no one had any big
13:15
expectations. So in that way, it was a little
13:17
easier for us. The X-Men 97 people had to come
13:20
in being told, well, there are a couple 100 million fans around
13:24
the world that know who these characters are and love them.
13:27
You guys better not screw up, you know?
13:29
So there's a lot of expectation and pressure on them that we
13:33
really didn't have. And 60 years of comic book
13:35
history. 60. Versus 30 years of comic book
13:38
history that you had to deal with or be aware of.
13:40
Yeah, so we were kind of writing it under the radar in a little
13:44
bit for ourselves. And as I say, Sydney referred to
13:48
us as a garage band and, and referred to while he's referring
13:53
to Batman as cool jazz, because Batman had this big budget and
13:56
all this beautiful artwork that they could linger on.
13:59
And, and he just shook his head and said, man, you don't have
14:02
half that budget. You better make this thing rock.
14:04
So we tried. Now, the, the fact that it hit
14:08
it, God, so many near misses in terms of the show just
14:13
collapsing. Like I said, you were hired to
14:17
to draft craft the show and come up the first to come up with 13
14:20
episodes. That was it.
14:22
And I guess we were all let go. But so those first 13 episodes,
14:26
it was like, well, hey, let's, let's, let's push as far as we
14:31
can on all of these moments because this, this is all we
14:34
get. Then when when animation started
14:37
to come back for the September release date, most of it was
14:43
not. It was.
14:44
Awful it was. It was awful.
14:46
And Margaret made the strategic decision to hold back the the
14:52
release date to January for X-Men and came up with what's
14:55
the brilliant idea of what she could salvage of those episodes,
14:59
Episode 1 and episode 2. She aired them on Halloween
15:02
night in prime time on Fox. And I thought, kids are going to
15:05
be out trick or treating, No one's going to be home watching
15:08
this. But.
15:08
They were. Right, it was perfect.
15:10
But they watched it. Big hit.
15:12
They repeated that again I think in.
15:13
November, in November, around Thanksgiving, they repeated it
15:16
again. And so all these, instead of
15:18
being one of maybe 30 new shows in September, when it came out
15:23
in January, it was the only new show on kids TV.
15:25
And so that gave them kind of a boost.
15:28
Obviously it cost Fox kids like hundreds of thousands of dollars
15:33
to delay it because they had to show reruns for the entire fall
15:37
and that lost them a lot of money.
15:38
So they never would have done this on purpose.
15:41
But it was a kind of a boost to us that we started that we were
15:44
able to start in January. I think the problem was the
15:47
overseas, when the overseas studios bid to do the animation,
15:51
they were used to, literally used to doing stuff like
15:55
scooby-doo or Super Friends, which is really kind of simple
15:58
and slow and flat and not much drawing.
16:03
And X-Men was this big. It was this big spectacular
16:06
thing, but they thought they could do it at the old like a
16:11
scooby-doo budget. And then they realized, Oh my
16:14
God, they can't. And so they that's why they had
16:17
to have the delay the first season.
16:19
They had to redo so much of the animation and then negotiate.
16:22
Well, if you're going to do a second season, we can't pretend
16:26
to do it at at the price we did before.
16:28
We're going to have to make it a little more expensive.
16:30
So all that went on during the fall while they were, you know,
16:32
figuring it out. There weren't.
16:35
The Internet didn't exist then. We didn't get immediate feedback
16:38
on anything. The Nielsen ratings were a thing
16:41
though, that we would be notified about through Fox, and
16:45
almost immediately X-Men became the number one show.
16:49
Yeah, within about four weeks. And not just number one, it's
16:53
time slot, but beating ABCNBCCBS combined sometimes.
16:57
Sometimes, yeah. Yeah.
16:58
When, when, when Fox started on Saturday morning, they would get
17:04
about 5% of the audience. You know, ABCNBC and CBS would
17:08
get the 95% and they get a little dribble over from Fox.
17:11
And as she said, four or five weeks in, we were getting 40% of
17:17
the audience and you know, sometimes as much as the other
17:21
three as the big networks combined.
17:23
So it was it was a real phenomenon.
17:26
It was a real cultural all this ever.
17:29
All the kids were telling the other kids at school, you got to
17:31
see the school new thing. And that lasted for the the 4
17:35
1/2 years we did it. It didn't they didn't stop doing
17:39
it out of ratings. I just new people bought in the
17:43
fox and Margaret was gone and so they they just stopped caring
17:47
about it. Didn't have the same ownership
17:48
rights in the property, so yeah. Wow, like 40% after a few weeks?
17:55
That's crazy. Well, congratulations on that.
17:58
It is to look back on that, my God.
18:01
And now, you know, now we, we, we people like you from
18:04
everywhere around the world, you know, around the world, you
18:07
know, Latin America, Asia, Africa, Europe, this, oh, I grew
18:11
up on expense. I grew up on your show.
18:13
I grew up watching the stories. And some people learned English
18:17
watching the stories or, you know, whatever.
18:19
We had no idea. But we had When we're here,
18:21
we're just writing. We're writing in our dining room
18:24
table. There was no office.
18:26
There was no writers. There was no writers room.
18:28
It was just like they said, we need thirteen.
18:30
OK? The head writer, Mark Edens, is
18:33
a friend of mine and I came up with a 13 and hand them out to
18:39
people we knew that we knew were like my wife.
18:41
You came up. You came up in the 1st 13 at our
18:43
dining room. Table that was our.
18:45
Official office. So and then, you know, they
18:47
wrote them and I polished them up and we handed them off and
18:51
there was no big to do, you know, we'd get notes from
18:54
everybody, you know, from. Those you'd get notes.
18:56
I'd get notes from everybody and have to kind of squeeze them in
18:59
there without ruining the writer's script.
19:02
But but yeah, so it was a real simple project, but we never, we
19:09
didn't get it. It's not like a performer.
19:11
If you're if you're a rock musician and there are 50,000
19:13
people in the stadium listening to you and, and you have a
19:17
really good song, you can feel it because the place is shaking
19:20
with how much they love it. If we have a, you know, she
19:24
writes Days of Future Past and 100 million people watch it and
19:28
love it. She, she doesn't feel it because
19:30
she's just on to the next. She's, she's still at home
19:33
typing and she, the audience isn't there.
19:35
So we started feeling it though at cons.
19:37
We started going to cons about 8 years ago.
19:40
Because. Because we because she taught me
19:43
to writing a book. So Eric, the oral I could I
19:46
consider this the oral history of the making of the X-Men show
19:49
called previously on X-Men. And that gave us an excuse to go
19:53
to cons because we're not storyboard artists, we're not
19:56
voice talent. We can't talk, we can't draw you
20:00
anything. But that was became our way into
20:04
cons. So we can tell you the story of
20:05
how the show happened and that was remarkable to start going to
20:09
cons. It was really great.
20:10
And then, you know, meeting the fans and there's just more and
20:12
more of them. And X-Men had been off the air
20:16
for a couple for a few years, but then Disney, Disney plus
20:21
came along and it was back. And then suddenly the word of
20:24
X-Men 97 was, well, not suddenly, but eventually X-Men
20:28
97 came along. So there's all these things that
20:31
built towards its, its return. And, but all during that time,
20:37
you know, we kept on meeting people said, look, I, I watched
20:40
it with my dad and my grandmother, and now I'm
20:42
watching it with my kids. And, you know, so that kind of
20:46
stuff was really gratifying to find out how many, you know, how
20:49
many people actually watched the show and enjoyed the stories.
20:54
It's it's it was great. I get that.
20:58
I have one of my daughter's. She is five years old.
21:02
She is autistic, so she can't talk, but she loves X-Men.
21:07
She loves X-Men. The animated series.
21:09
She calls it the Storm Show or sometimes the Doobie Show, which
21:13
is short for Jubilee. Yeah, she loves it.
21:16
And you guys are. You guys gave me another chance
21:19
to watch it through her eyes. So it's it's been such a
21:23
beautiful experience because it's something I watched when I
21:26
was a child. And it's funny how these
21:28
generations just keep getting sucked into the X-Men.
21:31
They have a spell on us and we can't stop.
21:35
Well, I like to think so much of that, and we talk about this a
21:37
lot. The X-Men, they have superpowers
21:42
and things go bright, sparkly and splashy, and they fight big
21:46
robots. And there's a lot of, you know.
21:48
But there's but there's action and lots of other shows.
21:51
But the X-Men stories that you were able to craft with all the
21:56
writers, I think really hit on the the sweet spot of what was
22:01
going on personally for each of the X-Men characters and how
22:04
they had to deal with that. It's the personal stories that I
22:09
are the ones and they're all personal stories.
22:11
But I think that was that's been the the thing that that folks
22:15
have been able to respond to and have responded to for over 30
22:18
years now. Yeah, like Rogue.
22:22
Rogue, for example, you know, she who would want to give up
22:27
the mutant power will be Rogue because she can't touch anyone.
22:30
And if she and Wolverine switched powers, he'd be happy.
22:33
He'd go off and live in the woods and he wouldn't touch
22:35
anyone and he'd be fine. And Rogue would not use her
22:39
adamantium clause and she'd be fine.
22:41
She'd be able to touch someone and she could have that life.
22:44
But the thing that's her biggest X-Men power is also her biggest
22:48
personal sadness. And I think that applies to each
22:50
of the X-Men if you look at it closely, and that that makes for
22:54
great storytelling. Yeah, that's how people always
22:57
ask you how did you choose the stories?
22:59
Because there was 25 years of X-Men comics before that and we,
23:05
since the head writer and I really never read the comics.
23:08
We didn't start with trying to adapt any of the issues.
23:12
We just, we went from the characters like what's the
23:16
what's the most intense beast story we could tell?
23:18
What's the most intense rogue story we could tell?
23:21
And then we once we decided on one like say the Beast story
23:26
where he falls in love with the blind girl Beauty and the Beast,
23:30
which Julia came up with. And our friend Stephanie
23:32
Matheson. It was all there's lots of
23:36
action going around it, but the core story was all about him and
23:40
what he was going through as a mutant that looks so different.
23:44
Yeah, that's true. And so that was, that was the
23:47
starting point for certainly for our best stories was, was a, was
23:52
a character thing that really focused on a person.
23:56
Like we wanted to introduce Nightcrawler and say, OK, who
23:59
would be the most intense person to to introduce Nightcrawler
24:03
with? And I said, well, Wolverine is
24:05
like 95 and he's probably been through, you know, he's probably
24:10
lost 100 friends and had faith and lost it before.
24:13
He's somebody that could talk to Nightcrawler about the struggle
24:16
to keep his faith. Whereas it was Jubilee, she was
24:19
13, she might not have even thought about that yet.
24:23
And since that Nightcrawler thing was had devout he was, we
24:27
played him immediately right up against somebody that maybe
24:31
would like to be developed but doesn't know how to or has lost
24:34
it. And it wasn't proselytizing.
24:37
Gambit is also in that story, Nightcrawler and he.
24:40
No, I'm not. I'm not interested.
24:42
I mean, but it was an examination of faith and
24:45
religion that I don't think I've ever seen on a Saturday.
24:48
Morning kids show. So yeah, it wasn't the the the
24:52
episode wasn't about religion. It was about it was about
24:56
meeting Nightcrawler, which we all wanted to do, and about
24:59
Wolverine's struggle to to feel that or not.
25:03
Got to give a shout out to like the third key player in this
25:08
whole thing between Sydney and Margaret.
25:10
Oh yeah, Avery. Avery Coburn was the woman who
25:13
was the broadcast standards and practices person at Fox Kids,
25:17
and she'd come there from live action.
25:20
And she was a fan of the X-Men books and she understood what
25:25
the X-Men stories were like. So when you would approach her
25:30
with ideas and she would, she had absolute control.
25:33
She could she she could kill anything.
25:37
Yeah, she could just say Nightcrawlers too controversial
25:40
a character for kids. You can't, you can't use them.
25:43
And and the discussion. She could say that, but to her
25:47
never ending credit, she didn't. Especially when you and Mark
25:51
came up with. Oh yeah, the.
25:53
Two parter that opened the series, Knight of the Sentinels.
25:57
Yeah. And we just, we decided that to
25:59
show that there's real heroic sacrifice going on and that
26:04
there were stakes and true jeopardy for the X-Men being the
26:08
X-Men, we decided, well, we need to have someone, one of them die
26:12
in the opening story. And when you told me that that
26:14
this was going to be more. And more fans remember that than
26:18
anything. You know, they're watching this
26:20
kids show and they're in the first, they're beginning of
26:22
episode 2 and suddenly the most fun character in the whole team
26:29
is dead. And that's just it really
26:32
grabbed people and made them understand that being an X-Men
26:36
wasn't a wasn't a casual thing. But Avery Coburn.
26:39
She got it. Yeah, she understood it and she,
26:42
she gave you some rules. There were guidelines you had to
26:45
follow. Yeah, he had to be off screen.
26:47
It couldn't be gratuitous. Had to be about his grief,
26:50
everybody else's grief, not about him suffering at all
26:53
during this. And so it was a nice a long, but
26:55
she was thoughtful and trusting enough to talk this through with
26:59
me back and forth rather than just saying no.
27:02
Right. And she could.
27:03
Have every other one of these people we've dealt with in the
27:07
past dealing with the TV sensor would have just said, no, I'm
27:11
not going to, I'm not, I'm not going to get angry letters from
27:14
800,000 mothers saying why did you kill this person in front of
27:18
my child, which could happen. I mean that there there are
27:24
people at TV stations are worried about children's
27:28
programming because when you do something that parents don't
27:32
like, parents write in and parents tell their congressman.
27:35
And it was a real pressure on broadcast TV back then.
27:40
The the catch to that though was when the ratings went through
27:44
the roof, X one was a huge success and then you get called
27:47
back to do one more season. What would be Season 2 we didn't
27:50
get? You didn't get a bigger order
27:51
until Season 3, but OK, come back and we'll do Season 2.
27:53
We'll do another season great and and so Sydney, who would
27:57
love the fact that we killed more if I thought it was a great
28:00
thing. I think a lot of us did not mind
28:03
it. We're like, if you had to tell
28:05
someone, it might as well. Have been more and and just, you
28:09
know, he just understood it dramatically.
28:10
He really understood it was important for the stories.
28:13
And he called. They have said, look at the
28:15
great news is that you've got 13 more.
28:17
You know, you get 13 more and you can feed your children for
28:20
another six months. The bad thing is, is that we
28:25
just showed a few episodes to a big room full of nine year olds,
28:29
asked them who their favorite X-Men character was.
28:31
And Morph won by a landslide focus group.
28:35
So he said, is there any way, please, is there any way you can
28:38
bring him back? So that's why Morph came back
28:41
damaged. PTSD is because the fan, a bunch
28:47
of nine year old fans said we love him and we want to see him
28:49
again. But if you want, if you show it
28:51
in a focus group, if you showed two or three episodes to kids,
28:55
that's because you and Mark did such a great job setting up who
28:58
Morph meant to each of the characters.
29:00
He mattered. He had a very special relate so
29:02
that when he died, it would be a huge emotional thing for each
29:05
character. And I swear, that's what.
29:08
Yeah, we made him too lovable. We made him too lovable.
29:10
Yeah. Oh well.
29:13
Oh well. So he was supposed to stay gone.
29:16
He was supposed to. I can tell you that.
29:18
I was there. I heard it happen.
29:21
It's so funny how different it is now because you know, you
29:24
have this focus groups on focus groups about Morph dying, but
29:27
then you get to X-Men 97 and Gambit dies and traumatizes
29:33
millennials who have lived with this character for so long.
29:38
They've been waiting all this time for those two to get
29:40
together. Oh my God the 97 people not only
29:44
tease you by having her flirting with wolf with Magneto for 4
29:49
episodes but then then he then he sacrifices himself and he
29:53
dies. I love watching the reaction
29:56
videos on YouTube. I didn't know those things
29:58
existed, you know, until fairly recently.
30:00
And but you know, I, I love, I love that sitting here 30 years
30:05
since the first show going, no, people have had 3 decades to, to
30:10
sort of marinate. And be invested in that.
30:13
Invested to have those feelings and and I love that everyone is
30:18
feeling that together as it's. Happening and it was funny from
30:21
for Marvel, but about 1/4 of our cast were pretty much new
30:25
characters. Gambit had only been around for
30:27
a year or so in the books. Jubilee was pretty much brand
30:30
new. Rogue was fairly new.
30:34
So, so these were people that the, the, the comic book Marvel
30:39
people hadn't really fleshed out that well.
30:41
You know, what's Gambit really like?
30:43
What's because I call the, the, the head guy over there,
30:46
wonderful guy named Bob Harris and say, well, we're going to do
30:49
a bigger story about Gambit's history.
30:51
Can you tell me more about him? And they said, well, not really.
30:54
We've only done, you know, nine months worth of we've only done
30:58
a few issues with him in it. We're still figuring out
31:01
ourselves. So OK, let's keep him
31:03
mysterious. And that was kind of fun because
31:06
obviously, you know what Scott's like, you know what Wolverines
31:08
like, they are so upfront about themselves and Gambit's more
31:12
mysterious. And so that that was that was in
31:17
part because they just hadn't quite figured him out yet in the
31:20
books. And so we ran with that.
31:23
I'd say it paid off. I think that's one of the
31:25
biggest things that drew everyone to him is like, he's
31:27
the cool guy. He's the guy you don't know
31:29
about the guy, the guy that girls go for.
31:32
Oh, 100%. So Speaking of Gambit, who was
31:40
both of your favorite mutants? Like which one did you, I don't
31:44
know, connect with the most? I having getting to be a writer
31:50
on the show, my answer is always Beast.
31:53
And the reason is because Beast technically is the smartest
31:57
person in any room. He's a damaged poet.
32:00
He's got the romantic soul, you know, it really is.
32:03
You know, Beauty and the Beast kind of thing.
32:05
He he can't walk down the street without everyone pointing at him
32:08
going, that's a mutant. Yeah, he can't hide and he
32:11
doesn't. But every now and then it it,
32:14
it, you see him. You see him feel those things.
32:18
The fun part was so as a writer, you get to pretend you're the
32:21
smartest person in the room when you write for a character like
32:23
Beast. And in the first, in the in the
32:26
pilot, you had him a call to action.
32:30
Yeah, yeah, that's like you remember other cartoons like,
32:33
you know, Cullibanda or you know, Gojo or I mean your your
32:38
team is about to leap into and in the industry, they call it a
32:41
call to action. And it's oh, if you're going to
32:43
have a big toy based action show you need before they leap into
32:48
it, they have to have a call to action.
32:50
So I thought, well, if Beast is going to have a call to action,
32:54
it should be something obscure and literary and poetic.
32:59
And so we just did it that one time and the pilot just for fun,
33:03
to amuse ourselves. And everybody liked it.
33:06
All the production people and the Marvel people really enjoyed
33:09
it. So then writers, when they got
33:12
an assignment that had Beasts scenes in it, they would they
33:17
kind of compete to see who could come up with the more obscure a
33:21
literary reference. Or if they didn't put one in,
33:23
I'd put one in when I was polishing it.
33:25
The literary quotes of Beast. In the book there's a whole
33:28
there's a whole chapter just on on his quotes.
33:31
But that was fun, too. And again before the days of the
33:34
Internet. And it's over there on our
33:35
shelves. Bartlett's Book of quotations,
33:38
That was how. Yeah, we weren't that well read.
33:41
We just would would say, OK, what do we need to quote?
33:43
Yeah, Beast is about to jump off a mountain here.
33:45
Let's look up quotes about mountains or jumping or so it
33:50
was that kind of a kind the that's the incredibly primitive
33:56
Googling a ChatGPT was was Bartlett's book of quotations.
34:00
And how about you, Your favorite?
34:02
Oh, yeah, just I I had to love all of them because I had to
34:07
think of each of them as we're polishing up the scripts and you
34:10
have to be, you know, live within them all.
34:13
But the one I felt closest to of all people, who's not the
34:17
biggest, the most charming one was Professor X, because she was
34:22
in charge of seven or eight very different people.
34:26
And they had a common goal. And we had, over the course of
34:30
five seasons, we had 20. I had 20 different people
34:32
writing for me, including Julia, but so there were 20 different
34:36
writers, all of whose style and vision I had to kind of, you
34:40
know, ease into making it feel like it was all one show.
34:43
So I felt very much like this bald, bald father in a
34:48
wheelchair, you know, keeping them all on the same page and
34:52
all doing so. I, I, I had a great empathy for
34:55
him, I and he, he had to give a lot of long speeches and he had
34:59
to, you know, so and a lot of the other characters are much
35:05
more fun. So it's certainly for the, for
35:07
the kids watching. But yeah, I felt closest to
35:10
Xavier. That makes sense.
35:13
It's, I mean, being in your position as like the head writer
35:15
with a whole bunch of teams under you, I mean, that's very
35:19
understandable. So was there a favorite memory
35:23
of working on the animated series?
35:27
What was wow? Was it the fan?
35:30
The the the fan letters. Well, OK, OK, this, this is not
35:36
that, but everything having to do with X-Men the animated
35:42
series that was that was such a marvelous chapter in in my life,
35:46
in your life, in our lives. And then 30 years later, X-Men
35:50
97 comes out. And then when X-Men 97 was
35:54
nominated for an Emmy, Yeah, didn't win, but it got
35:58
nominated. That was for me, a huge sort of
36:01
validation. The the original series was
36:04
never got nominated for anything, which I always stuck
36:07
in my craw. But the fact that X-Men 97 is
36:11
has been so well received to me is indicative of how much love
36:15
there is for the original series, and I love that.
36:18
Yeah, there were there was a there was a favorite moment for
36:22
me that when we got hired to come on to just as advisors,
36:29
just as consulting producers. And but that basically means as
36:34
a bunch of people your age did all the work building the world
36:39
of X-Men 97 and drawing it all and making the stories work and
36:42
doing all this. And they would then show us,
36:45
let's say, a first draft of a script or of an animatic, a
36:49
rough version of. What it looked.
36:51
Like with the first voices on it and we would give notes to say,
36:55
OK, we some here's something where something you might be
36:57
able to do a little better or we see something here we really
37:00
like. Can you do more like this?
37:02
So we were just being advisors on it.
37:05
And really, again, 99.9% their work.
37:08
But the showrunner was so nice. He set up a surprise for the
37:13
staff, a surprise Zoom call and this is back.
37:16
Was this still comedy? No.
37:19
Yeah. Yeah, it was.
37:20
It was probably the tail end of COVID would be a lot of people
37:23
still working. From home, that's true.
37:24
That's true, but she got like 60 of the staff together, artists
37:29
and, and staff and writers and, and had them on and she was just
37:35
running this Zoom call as if it was a normal Zoom call.
37:38
And then he said, Oh, by the way, we've got a surprise for
37:41
you guys and the two of us and Larry Houston, who was again,
37:45
the head artist on the first designer on our show.
37:48
We're waiting by our cameras and he popped the button and the
37:53
three of us came on and this was hit Wow.
37:57
When they announced that we're going to be part of the show and
38:00
they hadn't told any of the people and they were clapping
38:04
and crying. It was.
38:07
It was, yeah, it was a big moment.
38:10
Oh, that's so nice. I love how close you are to
38:12
Larry Houston. It seems like we can't hear you
38:16
guys's names without hearing his.
38:17
You guys are so intermingled together through this whole
38:20
X-Men journey. Yeah, we, we were and we had
38:23
that. We had never met him before
38:24
this, this show. He, he worked in animation.
38:27
He's done, he's done over 100 shows.
38:29
We've done, we've done 50, but he's done over 100.
38:33
And so we've worked on others. We knew some of the same people
38:37
because it's a pretty small community, but we've never
38:39
worked with them before. And again, in this, we did work
38:42
in the same office, but we are constantly, I don't think that a
38:45
day went by that I didn't send him something, we didn't send me
38:48
something. So we did this thing together
38:53
from day one and it was so creatively satisfying that it's
39:01
we just feel like family now after doing that for 4 1/2 years
39:04
with him. But also it's it's kind of funny
39:07
how now in 2025, how, how often did you get to sit down and have
39:11
a meal with every Houston? Oh no, I don't.
39:13
I don't think I ever had lunch with him.
39:15
No. There was no time.
39:16
We were no time. We were just all cranking the
39:18
stuff out and we had to get to the next bit and so we were
39:21
going so fast and then and. We worked on other shows
39:25
together but. Yeah.
39:26
And then once we met, met each other, we, we, yes.
39:30
There were half a dozen other shows that he'd draw on and
39:33
read, write on and vice versa. And so we kept in touch just,
39:38
you know, but it's, it's funny that way.
39:40
It's all this work that we've done with people.
39:44
It's like with the cast. When we wrote this book in 2016,
39:52
I, we had, I had never, neither one of us had ever met a cast
39:56
member. We did 76 episodes.
39:59
They recorded all these episodes.
40:01
They read everything we'd written for all those years.
40:04
We'd heard their voices for all those years and.
40:08
We didn't know what they looked like.
40:09
We didn't know because they were in Toronto and and somebody
40:13
else, you know, voice directed them and we just would make
40:17
notes on, on the tapes. So when I did the book, I got
40:21
the call, all of them, and got to know them through the
40:25
interviews for the book. And now, starting about five
40:29
years ago when they started coming to cons, 'cause they
40:32
didn't know about cons, they're up in Toronto.
40:34
Oh, no one's told us that the fans are interested in us.
40:37
They want to, they want to meet the person that did Jubilee or
40:40
Rogue or Wolverine. Really.
40:43
You know, they want to pay for our autograph.
40:45
You're kidding. Yeah.
40:46
That was so big. Game changer.
40:49
It's a big deal. So four or five of them came
40:51
down to a con in Texas. Our.
40:55
First time ever. Yeah, with us and Larry and and
40:58
they like that and they like the attention and gradually over the
41:01
last five years now they go to cons all the time and
41:06
everybody's getting to know them and, and it's like a whole
41:09
second career for them. And working on X-Men 97.
41:12
Now, yeah, and about half of them are working on 97.
41:16
So that that was another nice connection with the people of
41:19
the new show made. They tried to get as many of the
41:22
old cast into the new show as they possibly could.
41:26
Which I loved. Even if they recast them as
41:29
another rule, they still had a place in the family, which I
41:33
thought was such a beautiful thing it was.
41:35
Doesn't happen often in Hollywood right now.
41:40
So, Speaking of X-Men 97, do you remember how you reacted when
41:43
you heard it was happening? Boy, did we get the OK, we, we
41:49
may have gotten the we heard a little more plugged in now that
41:55
oh, Disney was acquiring things and oh, looks like they've
41:59
acquired Marvel. Well, that's interesting, huh?
42:01
Now that when you 'cause when you wrote previously on X-Men,
42:06
there was there was no single holder of the rights for X-Men.
42:11
Everything had been. Followed 20th Century Fox 'cause
42:13
it was Fox TV had some rights and some and I think Saban had
42:17
some rights and Marvel, Disney had some rights.
42:20
And so they were all spread around.
42:22
And when when Disney, Marvel bought 20th Century Fox about 3
42:27
years ago, suddenly we were they could make another show cause
42:32
fans would always ask is this going to be another show?
42:33
It's going to be another show. And we said we don't think so
42:36
until the rights get together because you can't make a show if
42:40
somebody else owns 1/3 of the rights to it.
42:42
They'll just sue you or they'll demand 10 times too much.
42:46
So finally it's all together and our and we're, you know, we know
42:50
that we, we know that it's going to be high on their list.
42:53
Because I found that Disney Plus has put out a A.
42:59
A fan list. They've they've gone online and
43:01
they they said ask all the fans all all around the world.
43:05
That said, we have all these properties that we're about to
43:08
put on Disney Plus. We're just going to start in
43:10
about two months. Which are you most excited
43:13
about? We've got all the Star Wars
43:15
stuff. We've got all the Pixar stuff,
43:16
all the Disney movies, we've got all the Disney animation stuff.
43:20
We've got all the Marvel movies, we've got all this.
43:22
And they listed, you know, 30 different huge properties they
43:25
had. And at the top they were, they
43:28
listed I think 75 or 100 and #1 by some margin was was our show.
43:33
X-Men the animated series. It wasn't, it wasn't Star Wars.
43:36
It wasn't a movie. It wasn't it wasn't Toy Story.
43:39
It was. It was our TV show.
43:43
Oh, so then your book comes out in 2017.
43:46
All this Disney stuff is kind of happening and but we did this on
43:50
our own. You did this on your our own.
43:53
Then you get an e-mail from the vice president in charge of
43:56
global licensing for Marvel Disney.
43:58
And we went, oh, crud, they're going to slam us down.
44:01
They're. Going to get mad at us for doing
44:03
the book without them. Instead, they reached out and
44:06
said we're going to do a book about X-Men, the animated
44:09
series. We'd love it if you would do
44:11
this book for us with us, but we're doing it either way.
44:15
Are you interested in? So we jumped on board and we
44:18
have to. We can tell you that this has
44:21
also served as like a model sheet for the folks on X-Men 97.
44:25
But it's crafting that book. And with that coming out, we're
44:30
starting to hear things like Disney's putting this book out,
44:33
Disney Marvel's putting this book out because there's there's
44:37
interest in in, in an animated X-Men.
44:40
So we know, we knew they were bubbling interest and then we
44:42
got then we got a phone call saying it was happening.
44:45
Oh, we heard from the voice talent that they.
44:47
That they that they were being contacted that if they were
44:50
interested in doing a new show. So but not X-Men there there was
44:54
a code name but I swear one of them said the sides they got to
44:58
record were the original sides in the animated series but names
45:02
were changed. I know, I know what this is.
45:06
Yeah, they tried to be clever about it and not let everybody
45:08
know they were doing a new show and everybody saw through it.
45:11
Yeah. Well, some did.
45:13
I talked to some of the voice casting for X-Men 97 and I think
45:18
it was Gee and Isaac both said they're like, I had no idea it
45:23
was X-Men. I'd found out at the end I did
45:26
not know what I was doing. But when you got when you're a
45:28
young actor, you just auditioned for everything.
45:32
And I'm like and imagine that that's.
45:34
Crazy. They're young people, I mean,
45:38
which is wonderful. That's and that's and they're
45:40
and it's delightful. It's delightful.
45:43
But again, for them to pull as many of the original cast
45:46
members back as they can in all capacities, yeah, that was very
45:49
exciting. And then we got the call that
45:51
they're doing X-Men 97, the art and making of books.
45:55
Which just came out. Came out July 1st and we got to
45:57
do an interruption. We prefer that.
46:00
I mean, yeah, this is a fine book, but X-Men, the art and
46:03
making is more. We wrote that one all the way
46:06
through. Yeah, so we got.
46:07
So we love that one more. Yeah.
46:10
Oh, well, that's so good. That's so cool.
46:12
Look at you like you have three books right there.
46:16
You have a wildly successful show.
46:18
You're working on another wildly successful show.
46:21
You guys have achieved so many amazing things and touched so
46:24
many lives. The touching of lives is the
46:27
thing that makes my heart sing. You and I, when we first started
46:32
dating, were bonding over, and I say this a lot, our mutual
46:37
admiration for the original Star Trek series.
46:39
Because when we were little, that's what that's what we
46:41
geeked out of. That's what I got to.
46:42
Watch. You guys have been nerds from
46:43
the beginning. Oh my.
46:44
God describe. Being a.
46:46
Geek nerd girl in Texas decades in the last in the last half of
46:50
the last century. Oh well, that terrifies me when
46:54
I hear people talk like that. But so Star Trek meant meant and
47:00
means the world to me. Then we get to work on X-Men the
47:04
animated series and we find out after after when you're writing
47:09
the first book, who, who, who was on X-Men the animated
47:13
series. This kills me.
47:14
Killed me because we didn't know we.
47:15
Didn't know why we were doing it, but but the voice of
47:18
Apocalypse, who we just loved writing for, he's one of our
47:22
very favorites. He was also the actor was the
47:26
very first Klingon. In the original star.
47:28
Trek in like the spring of 1967 Commander who was going against
47:36
Kirk and in the first season of Star Trek and it's the same guy
47:41
so we. John Kolikos.
47:43
John Kolikos was that. Sadly, he passed in O 7.
47:46
So we didn't get a chance to talk to him about it.
47:48
But we didn't know. We didn't know.
47:50
But I got to work with someone who worked on the.
47:52
Original we got we got the right, you know, dialogue for
47:55
the first Klingon. But but yeah, that was that was
47:59
a cool thing to to. Stumble.
48:00
Yeah. For something like Star Trek to
48:02
touch the kind of lives it touched because it touched me,
48:05
and then sort of feel this little invisible thread
48:07
connecting all these things is good Lord, yeah.
48:10
Good Lord. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
48:13
Works in mysterious ways. That's so I had no idea that was
48:17
apocalypse voice like that's so cool.
48:19
I love knowing that well as we wrap up I want to thank you both
48:24
for all you've done bringing these characters life changing
48:27
entire generation giving us all these different types of role
48:30
models and representations to look up to as a child.
48:33
It means so much because I told you about my daughter and we
48:36
are. We finally have something we can
48:38
both relate to and both love and she gets to learn all these
48:41
amazing things and she's screwed for life because she is going to
48:45
be the biggest nerd in the world.
48:46
So this is her life now. One of.
48:50
US. One of.
48:50
Us, she's got a community. She's got a community.
48:53
She's got a a community with depth and breadth here, baby
48:56
action figures and action figures.
48:59
Yeah, she has the action figures.
49:01
She she tries so hard to say the names but it ends up being some.
49:06
I think the other one she called Nightcrawler A bapple.
49:10
I don't know what that means, but I'm going to roll it.
49:14
Azaviel, there are there's some various words for for a deviled
49:17
character I don't know anything about, but we'll give.
49:19
Her, I think she heard him speak German one point and that stuck
49:22
to her and I was like, there's no way you are speaking German.
49:26
So if you guys want my kids German, that's kind of amazing.
49:32
No, we, we have a story we tell on our two sons who are now
49:35
young adults themselves. Your, your father was from
49:38
Germany and I have, I'm half German, half Welsh, just
49:41
generationally. And when our kids were little Oh
49:45
my goat in Himmel, we were trying to, you know, instead of
49:47
cursing or something. Oh my God, in heaven.
49:50
My God in heaven in Germany, In Germany it's Oh my God, my goat
49:54
in Himmel. And it comes out.
49:56
From our kids. From our two year old Oh my
49:58
goatee pimple so. That became a phrase in our
50:00
house. Oh, my goatee pimple.
50:02
It's like, OK, so German, you know?
50:04
Yeah. Fun German.
50:06
German, Yeah, yeah. I love when kids say weird
50:11
things wrong. That's like my love language.
50:13
It's just everything to me. So thank you too so much for
50:17
coming on. Where can our listeners find you
50:19
and where can they find your books?
50:23
I am on the interwebs way too much.
50:26
We are on Instagram, Blue Sky Twitter X and we are at X-Men
50:33
TAS and we use X-Men TAS for X-Men the Animated Series
50:37
because Star Trek, the original series of Star Trek TOS.
50:41
So we're X-Men TAS basically wherever you can find things
50:46
like that. We even have a website that
50:47
we've got to get back to. X-Men TAS 92.
50:50
Which has no, no, no, just X-Men, tas.com.
50:55
Oh, a font of information there if you like to come and dig
50:58
around archives. Yeah, we put a lot of stuff on
51:00
there for about a year and a half and then we kind of ran
51:02
out. But but yeah, as far as the
51:06
books go, they're they're available.
51:09
Barnes and Noble Barnes, we were just yesterday.
51:11
Yeah, the new ones at Barnes and Noble, the art books, they
51:13
probably don't have the other ones in stock.
51:15
But if you guys want to get in contact with us, we tend to keep
51:19
a few cases of each one here. And if you want to sign one,
51:24
we'll be happy to like we would take, you know, Venmo or PayPal
51:28
or something. And if pay us and we will, we
51:31
will sign and ship you one directly from their office.
51:34
And our e-mail because it's on all our different sites, but
51:38
it's X-Men TAS 92@gmail.com so there there are ways to find us.
51:44
Yeah. And again, just I, I do the, the
51:50
X and the Instagram and all that good having having found a
51:55
community of X-Men fans. It's just, it's a nice place.
51:59
It is not the septic sewer that's around everything else.
52:03
It's just people having fond memories, people remembering
52:05
things, people finding fun things, you know, like Wolverine
52:09
ice cream sandwiches from the 1990s.
52:11
You know, just so come find us that way and, and on podcasts.
52:18
And we will be at La Comic Con in September.
52:20
We're not making. It end of September.
52:22
Yeah, end of September. LA Comic Con.
52:24
Yeah. Well, that's perfect.
52:27
Whoever is watching or listening to this episode, if you just
52:29
look in the show notes under the episode, you will see all the
52:31
links to everywhere you can find Eric and Juliet.
52:35
So thank you for listening to this episode of Vigilante Vibes.
52:37
Wherever you're listening, please click that subscribe
52:39
button so you don't miss any of my amazing guests like Aaron,
52:42
Julia, or any other future episode.
52:44
Thank you for listening. I hope you enjoyed it.
52:46
Have a marvelous night.