Captain Planet is one of the most iconic cartoons of the '90s, with a focus on ordinary people coming together to fight environmental destruction and corporate greed with elemental powers.
Though Captain Planet has largely been dormant since the cartoon's original run, now he's coming back in the form of a new Dynamite Entertainment comic book by writer David Pepose, artist Eman Casellos, colorist Jorge Sutil, and letter Jeff Eckleberry, which brings the Planeteers and their mission into the 21st century.
Newsarama: David, we've known each other for a long time, and something that I think is kinda funny is that Captain Planet #1 was announced almost 10 years to the day that you started talking about how much you wanted to make it a comic. It was sincerely within a day or two. How does it feel to finally get to do it, and how is the experience different from what you always imagined?
David Pepose: It's funny, it really feels like the biggest manifestation of my career to date. This is something that I've talked about, especially with you, for over a decade now. I've always seen potential in Captain Planet, seeing all the ingredients for success, how multicultural and diverse it is in such an organic way. It almost feels like Giant-Sized X-Men #1. Seeing the way that new pop culture strains can be kind of injected into Captain Planet's DNA to really heighten all those core qualities. I feel like it's a book that's always been ahead of its time, and now the world is finally caught up.
It's been such a blast to write. Sometimes you work on assignments and it sounds really exciting, and then you get into the nitty-gritty of it, you realize the kind of unexpected challenges. But for Captain Planet, it really feels like a leap of faith being rewarded, like all my instincts have been vindicated. Had I written this book 10 years ago, I wouldn't have been ready for it. But I think with all the lessons that I've learned in my creator-owned books and my work at Marvel, and Dynamite, and Mad Cave, I've really been able to bring a decade of practice to Captain Planet, and it's all the better for it.
You mentioned how relevant the concept of Captain Planet is in 2025, given how serious environmental issues have become. On the other side of that coin is the sort of hokey pop culture reputation the original cartoon has. There are so many memes, and the Don Cheadle video and stuff. How do you move on from the kitchiness of the cartoon while holding on to what is important about the core concept, and the good parts of the nostalgia?
I think that's an excellent question. For me, the appeal of Captain Planet is that it's the world outside your window. This isn't set in a fictional universe, this is set in our real world, and the core cast members are ordinary people like you and me. They're not superheroes. They don't have codenames. They don't even have costumes. So I think it's about taking that ethos and translating it into our book. I think that's similar to what I've been doing on Space Ghost and in my upcoming Speed Racer book.
A big directive I had for all these nostalgic cartoon based comics is, you know, they're very much a product of their time. Captain Planet was very firmly rooted in the early '90s. And so, for me, it's a question of how we take those core elements and just imagine what would happen if it was introduced in 2025 instead. Seeing the ways storytelling has evolved since then, seeing the way geopolitics have changed in the last 35 years, and then letting the characters reflect that.
We're thrilled to see that people seem excited to see that Captain Planet has grown up and evolved with the times, but that it hasn't sacrificed any of the meanings of the the original core message.
As you mentioned, you're carving out a niche for yourself writing comics tied to classic animated shows. You're writing Space Ghost right now, and you've got Speed Racer coming up. What's it like having all three of those on your plate, and how do you make sure to stay true to those concepts without repeating yourself?
I think the big thing is that the genres and tones and modes of storytelling can be a little different between all three. I think the central premise of the way that I attack all these books is the same, which is, how do you take these core elements, these core landmarks, of these original properties, and how do we put just a little bit of a polish, a little bit of a twist on them to make them sparkle like new?
For me, it's always about accessibility. You know, Captain Planet, Space Coast, Speed Racer, they're all brand new continuity, so you don't have to watch the original cartoons in order to appreciate the stories we're telling. I think any of these properties that have the kind of staying power that these three do, there's clearly something core in the concept that has let them withstand the test of time, and that's the thing that I really try to excavate.
And so I think readers have been really excited to see these properties that they maybe only half remember and say, oh, there's like a whole universe here to explore, one that can surprise us, and one that is right for reinterpretation and re-imagination. I think that's why the cartoon nostalgia books have been so successful. Whether it's the Energon universe or Thundercats or Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, people want to be surprised. I think all three of the books I'm writing, they have such amazingly untapped potential. I feel really honored and really privileged to be the guy who gets to excavate that.
Earlier you compared the Planeteers to the cast of Giant Size X-Men, and I think that's such a cool comparison. What can you tell us about the Planeteers as they appear in this comic? Which characters have you found yourself drawn to?
Well, for starters, I should talk about Captain Planet himself. I think both in terms of his visuals and his concept, he really represents, I think, the evolution of this series. You know, for those who might remember Captain Planet in his '90s heyday, there was the mullet, there was the crop top. It was very much, like I said, a product of its time.
And so, working with artist Eman Casallos, one of the first things we discussed was, let's give Captain Planet an update in terms of his design. Instead of rooting it so firmly in a particular year, we wanted to channel how timeless this character is, that he's this immortal elemental champion, made out of not flesh and blood, but rocks and stone and ice and flame. It was Eman who wound up pitching us the Captain Planet dad-beard, and of all his designs, everybody immediately glommed onto the beard, like "that is so cool!"
That speaks so much to Captain Planet. I think, as a character, you know, I don't see him as a grim and gritty character, right? If anything, I see him as this classic heroic, reassuring figure. He's somebody whose core mission is that he doesn't want to see anybody die. And so the idea of having him be this fatherly mentor figure, the dad beard, makes perfect sense.
And on top of it, you know, people are suddenly saying "sexy Captain Planet" later. [Laughs]
I saw those comments. [Laughs] It's definitely out there. I think that's funny, but as you said, it's important to find those little touchstones in the cast. Tell me a little bit about how you've given the same fresh coat of paint to the Planeteers.
For me, the thing that's so important about the Planeteers is, the core part of their relationship with Captain Planet is that it's symbiotic. "The power is yours" - that means we can't just wish it all away. Human beings on the ground level are the only thing that can save our world. So that's the core of this series to me - ordinary people are suddenly granted extraordinary powers.
When Eman and I were talking about this, we obviously weren't going to give them costumes, not even matching outfits. We wanted to make sure that these look like people that you could run into on the street.
So for example, Kwame really is like a natural born leader in that he was a former soccer star from Ghana whose career was sidelined after sustaining an injury. I pitched him as the Cyclops of the group.
I love that. Kwame was always my favorite Planeteer.
I love Kwame too. And so when we meet him, he's kind of trying to figure out what his new trajectory is, but he's got that instinctive team building element. Eman put in a lot of small touches, like his hoodie has the number of his favorite football player, and leaning into the walking stick that he had in the original Captain Planet, and giving him a knee-brace.
Wheeler didn't necessarily need a ton of revisions visually, but I love the way that we've re-contextualized his backstory. We've made him an auto worker from Detroit, and I think that's really important, because there's all these different angles and facets of the environmental conversation. And I think Wheeler serves as our point of view character. His hero's journey is really all about justifying the Planeteers as a team.
Linka might be my favorite of the bunch. Out of all the Planeteers, she's done the biggest 180 from when Captain Planet first debuted. Back in 1990 she was the conservative Planeteer from the Soviet Union. Things have changed pretty dramatically in the last 35 years, so Linka is the most leftist Planeteer now. She headlines an underground eco activist punk band, kind of in the vein of Pussy Riot. She's our team scrapper. She's like our Illyana Rasputin, our Wolverine. She's super fun, and Eman Casellos draws her so, so incredibly.
Gi is very similar to the way I wrote Black Knight in the pages of Savage Avengers. Having a team scientist is very important. You know, it always is helpful in terms of a storytelling tool. In the original cartoon, Gi, who's from South Korea, was a marine biologist. I love the idea of somebody who loves the science of all this. She's genuinely enthusiastic. This is her passion. And I think she's the heart of the team, in a lot of ways. She's very bubbly and effervescent, and a lot of people tend to underestimate her, but as we'll see as the series goes on, she's the one who knows the stakes better than anyone. So for her, hope is a revolutionary act. It's either that, or the alternative is to curl up into a ball of despair.
And speaking of smoldering and broodiness, Ma-Ti is probably our biggest glow up of the entire series. And that was by design. A lot of people saw Ma-Ti in the original cartoon as the punchline. You know, what is the power of Heart? And for me, it's tactical telepathy. So the way that we've recontextualized Ma-Ti is that, you know, he's from, he's an indigenous person from Brazil, and he and his people have been forced off their lands by corrupt mining interests. Ma-Tiwas about to stage a kind of a violent revolution, until he encounters the power of Heart, and it cleanses his mind of all rage and anger and violence, and turns him into this avowed pacifist - who can absolutely wreck you. He's our x-factor of the team. He's our Batman. He's our Shang-Chi. He doesn't need to throw a punch because he's got the power of Heart, which means he can summon animals. He can reach inside your mind. He can make you see things that aren't there. He's really cool.
I'm very excited for readers to get to see what happens when the Planeteers finally combine their powers. It's going to be more explosive than you might think.
You've brought up Eman Casellos a lot as a key part of the creation of this comic. How has it been developing your working relationship with him, and how has he surprised you?
Surprise is the perfect word to describe Eman. I was not familiar with his work before we started working together. He's worked on books like Pathfinder over at Dynamite and, boy, I couldn't be more blown away. He came to this book swinging. You know, I could tell from the jump, he believed in this concept, and he came to this hungry and so he really is the best of both worlds. He's got a style that evokes a little bit of Gary Frank, a little bit of Steve Dillon. But there's also bits of Doug Mahnke and Frank Quitely that you can see in the finer details.
And Eman really nails the big, epic, action blockbuster moments, the Avatar: The Last Airbender style elemental bending. But the thing that I love most about Eman is that his characters really act. There's so much great expressiveness and body language, and you get to he really elevates everything that I send him, and he really breathes such incredible life into these characters. He's not a household name, but I hope to change that with this book. He really has just gone the extra mile every step of the way.
I can't ask for a better collaborator than Eman Casselos. And I think when you see the work that he's been putting in on Captain Planet, along with our colorist Jorge Sutil, and our letter Jeff Eckleberry, you're going to see, this is a really good looking book, and so I'm really thankful that we get to also have a cool story attached to it.
The other really big part of Captain Planet is his villains, his rogues gallery. We know that Lucian 'Lootin' Plunder will appear. What else can you tell us about the villains we'll see in this comic?
I think for me, Captain Planet has always been, it's been two sides of the coin. There's environmental disasters and catastrophes, but there's also the human greed that fuels all of that. And so a character like Lucien Plunder, or as they said in the original cartoon Lootin Plunder, he felt like the perfect villain to start all this out. He's sort of this ruthless Elon Musk type billionaire who, you know, he's looking to amass wealth and power, and he's kind of masking it and couching it in this very utopian kind of speech, almost like a Lex Luthor type. And out of all the elements that have been so timely about this book, that's the one that feels perhaps the most uncomfortably so. Every single day that I read the news, or I read the headlines, I'm like, oh, there's Lucian Plunder at it again.
So he, you know, he feels like a really good villain as sort of like a tent pole that we can then kind of spin other Captain Planet villains off of and so we'll be seeing characters like, you know, Dr Blight and her AI assistant Mal. They're going to have, I think, like a really crucial role during our origin story. Duke Nukem is going to appear. Eman Casellos did a really cool job with a redesign on that character, in a way that I think speaks to the heightened elements of the original cartoon, but also kind of keeps them still plausible in our street level world. Argos Bleak is another one who's sort of like our Eric Prince Blackwater mercenary type. He's Plunder's right hand man. And yeah, we have some other villains in that we're going to keep a little close to the vest. But suffice to say, there's going to be lots of threats for Captain Planet and the Planeteers to face, and they are going to escalate accordingly.
People used to say the Eco-Villains are bad, right? That they were too unsubtle. And I'd argue that reality has gotten a lot less subtle. So it's up to us as people from all around the world to really kind of come together if we want to help save our world.
That kind of dovetails right into the last question I want to ask you here. What does it mean to you to be writing this comic, not just as a dream of yours, but also in 2025, right now? And what do you hope that readers will take from Captain Planet as the series goes on?
You know, I think the reason I've championed trying to write this book for so long is my core philosophy as a comic creator and as a comic fan is that there's always room to build a bigger table. I take that philosophy to everything I write, whether it's the concepts that I do or the characters that I gravitate towards. I think Captain Planet is the truest distillation of all that. You know, this is a book where our goal is to make everybody feel seen, to offer everybody a room at the table. And I think that maybe speaks to who I am and where I come from. You know, I grew up Jewish in the Midwest. I learned very, very quickly that I was not part of the dominant culture. And so I want everybody to be able to enjoy the same safety and rights and considerations that I'd ask for my family.
And I know that there's only so much that I can do as a straight, white comic book writer. But I do feel like representation is important, and I think showing people that we are stronger together than we are apart, that's what a book like Captain Planet really means to me. It's a book that is designed to promote inclusiveness, to promote empathy, to show that you know you can come together and be friends with people from all different walks of life, and that, together, we can fight for a better world. I can't wait for readers to take this journey with us and to see why Captain Planet is one of the great superheroes that they've never thought about.
The current Space Ghost comic was one of the best comics of 2024.
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