Super busy artists
Pasadena's man of action bets on itself and wins big with 'Ben 10' and 'Generator X'
By Carl Kozlowski 08/26/2010
Childhood is hard enough battling zits and worrying about whether the girl or guy you like likes you back. But when you have superpowers, things can get really complicated, as the four guys who form the Pasadena-based animation company Man of Action know all too well.
That’s because they’ve created two of the quirkiest hits on Cartoon Network, “Ben 10: Ultimate Alien” and “Generator Rex.” “Ben” follows a 16-year-old named Ben Tennyson, who has the ability to transform into the aliens in his imagination and winds up fighting battles all over the planet. He wanted to keep his powers a secret, but once exposed, he has to balance being adored by kids worldwide and distrusted by most adults.
“Rex,” meanwhile, features a 15-year-old dude who digs the usual things — cars, girls, music, sports — but possesses a few special abilities, like being able to sprout a jet pack out of his back and turn his legs into a rip-roaringly fast motorcycle. These skills have garnered him the coolest afterschool job ever, working for Providence — a global conglomerate created to fight mutant creatures — as their ultimate weapon.
The success of these two shows has propelled the Man of Action team — Steve Seagle, Duncan Rouleau, Joe Casey and Joe Kelly — to both worldwide success and Comic-Con stardom, not to mention a prime new gig as supervising producers of the “Ultimate Spider-Man” animated TV series debuting in 2012. In fact, they formed the idea for their company while attending Comic-Con, the annual San Diego convention spotlighting the latest and greatest developments in comic books and the movie industry, after getting tired of working under the corporate dictates of others at Marvel.
“We set up shop 11 years ago informally, and formalized it 10 years ago,” explains Seagle. “We worked on the ‘X-Men’ franchise as writers, and Duncan was also an artist. We all enjoyed the creative process of that, but at the time [“X-Men” publisher] Marvel was bankrupt and that was vexing. We decided we worked well collectively, and so Man of Action was born.”
The guys in MOA were born all over the country, with Altadena resident Seagle originally hailing from Mississippi before spending his childhood following his Air Force officer father to Colorado and California, and ultimately working 22 years in the comics industry. Chicago native Rouleau lives in La Cañada Flintridge but grew up in Tennessee before moving to California and entering the comics business 14 years ago.
Casey was born in Tennessee and now lives in Tarzana, while Kelly has lived in New York his entire life, studied screenwriting at New York University and now teaches a course in animation writing at his alma mater.
It took two years for the team to sell “Ben 10,” but the wait paid off, with the show becoming a global hit lasting seven seasons. They managed to present the show to Cartoon Network thanks to their friend Matt Senreich, who is co-creator of the long-running Cartoon Network hit “Robot Chicken.”
In what Seagle terms “a classic Hollywood story,” they were allowed to pitch 20 series ideas in 20 minutes, though “Ben 10” was the eighth idea they offered and it sold immediately. Now approaching its 150th episode, “Ben” is not only a big hit in America, but also in places as far-flung as Australia, Scandinavia and Brazil, and the franchise has generated more than $200 million in revenues counting DVD and other merchandising.
“Here’s how weird it is getting,” says Casey. “When they had elections earlier this year in Britain, a newspaper asked candidates ‘What ‘Ben 10’ alien are you?” That amazed us — how much we’ve seeped into popular culture.”
“Whatever character they picked would give voters a consolidated answer about what sort of personality they have,” adds Rouleau. “This was on a children’s show in England, and Gordon Brown had the ‘Ben 10’ theme song on his iPod. There’s also a Bollywood musical version of it, in live action, and there’s a live-action version being worked on in Brazil.”
In keeping with the international nature of their work, the foursome often communicates by way of telephone and the Internet, mainly due to the fact that Joe Kelly lives in Merrick, NY. They find that decentralizing their office into a virtual setup keeps their overhead low and enables them to be more flexible, as they only set up actual offices when a new show goes into production. Both “Ben 10” and “Generator Rex” are largely created at the Cartoon Network’s offices in Burbank before having final animation applied in South Korea, which has long been heavily involved in the international animation industry.
They’re also used to mostly working separately because their extensive experience in creating comic books has ingrained them to that method.
As Seagle explains,
“Writers, artists, colorists and lettering are done in different cities so we are used to not seeing who we work with. We thought with Man of Action we’d have an office, but we found that that model has remained viable for us.”
Aside from running their two Cartoon Network series, Man of Action wrote some of the recent “X-Men” and “Superman” comic book series and currently publishes its own original creations through Image Comics. The team also wrote the bestselling video games “X-Men: Legends” for Activision and “Darksiders: Wrath of War” for THQ.
But handling the new “Spider-Man” series could prove to be their biggest challenge yet.
“We’ll be in charge of the writing on that show,” explains Seagle. “It’s very cool because Marvel is finally getting recognized for its comic properties. Our success in animation made us an ideal candidate. We’re one of the few entities with feet planted firmly in both animation and the comic book worlds, so it’s kind of a perfect fit.
“Our biggest challenge at the moment is we’re almost too successful for our own good — there’s a lot of work, consulting, ongoing gigs on ours and other series. There’s four of us and our pedigree is doing our own work. When they hire Man of Action, they want our specific expertise and the company can’t be more than us, so it’s a question of managing the growth and what we do.”
Despite all the pressure to keep three hit franchises rolling along the path of success, the MOA guys are thankful for the opportunity and looking forward to ever greater things.
“The reward hasn’t really happened yet,” says Casey. “We’re still growing and there’s no ceiling. Pop culture has moved to us and what we do has grown more valuable as the years go on. We bet on ourselves and won big time. It’s always gratifying when you bet on yourself and win.”
To learn more about “Ben 10” and “Generator Rex,” visit cartoonnetwork.com.
DIGG | del.icio.us | REDDIT