And the rapport the two actors already shared certainly helped with the development of their Gargoyles characters.

Frakes and Sirtis went from playing heroic Starfleet officers to recording Gargoyles where, unlike many animated shows, the voice actors all performed in the same room together. Shakespeare!įrakes joined the cast alongside his TNG co-star Marina Sirtis, who had originally auditioned to play the gargoyles’ human ally Elisa Maza but was asked instead to audition for the role of the series’ other primary villain - the traitorous gargoyle Demona. To Greg Weisman’s credit, the writing was very, very smart and funny at the same time.” A Traitor, Tragedy and. It examined the battle between good and evil in a very dense, interesting, psychological way. It had a lot of Shakespearean references. They didn’t pander to a children’s audience. “Gargoyles was ahead of its time,” recalls Frakes. He credits the strength of the character to the writers and voice director Jamie Thomason. It’s a delicious job.”įrakes had auditioned for both Xanatos and the leader of the gargoyles, Goliath. You can be somebody that you’re really not. It’s so much more fun than playing a good guy.

The charm and humor that Weisman wanted for the character, who would always be the hero of his own story, was perfectly captured by Star Trek: The Next Generation’s Jonathan Frakes. His complex schemes became such a model for future villains that he’s even the namesake of a TV trope. The result was David Xanatos, a genius billionaire who remained a dangerous adversary throughout the show’s run because he always had so many redundant plans that he somehow emerged victorious even after seemingly being defeated by the heroes. “What if you had a handsome villain who would say things like, ‘Revenge is a sucker’s game.’ He wasn’t into being a villain. “Bruce Wayne in the comics I read growing up was charming and a guy that you’d admire,” Weisman tells IGN. When Weisman and Bates teamed up to write for Gargoyles, they designed their primary villain by taking that quality but stripping away Eiling’s cruelty and intolerance, instead fusing him with another comic book character’s traits - those of Bruce Wayne! Weisman had worked with Cary Bates on the DC Comics series Captain Atom, where the series’ antagonist, General Wade Eiling, always had plots within plots.

Download gargoyles comic series