Whether self-imposed or thrust upon us, our parents’ expectations can have an impact on who we are and what we decide to do with our lives. Will we live up to those expectations or will we actively rebel against them? Will we concentrate more on building the lives we want or building the lives we think our parents want for ourselves?
Those existential questions are difficult enough to wrestle in our own families, but in a family whose patriarch is an archvillain extraordinaire? Those are ginormous. But, whether they like it or not, the adult children of the wicked villain Napoleon Archimedes are faced with in From the World of Minor Threats: The Brood #1, on sale now from Dark Horse Comics. In The Brood, Napoleon is old and dying and has to decide which of his children to bequeath the reins of his criminal empire to, if any of them. Does he want any of them to have his life’s work? And what’s more, do any of them really want it? These questions and more are those that Minor Threats creators Jordan Blum and Patton Oswalt, writer Heath Corson, artist Ian Culbard, and letterer Nate Piekos put under the microscope in this new miniseries.
I spoke with Heath Corson, Jordan Blum, and Patton Oswalt recently about the conceit of The Brood, nature and nurture when it comes to villainy, who we meet in the miniseries, and how we all contend with familial expectations, whether from normal parents or the nefarious variety.
The debut issue of The Brood is an absolute banger; then again, so has every Minor Threats series. What is great about each installment is that, while every miniseries is set in the same world, each has its own flare and flavor. That’s a testament to the creative team, their vision, and the latitude creators have to run with their ideas. It’s clear that everyone involved in The Brood is having a ball, and that energy is certainly reflected in issue #1.
From the World of Minor Threats: The Brood #1 cover
FreakSugar: Before we start, and this isn’t a question, just a praise: My mother recently broke her hip. My fiancée’s mother had a cancer scare. So, this book… got me. It’s so good and, while my parents are not villainous, the book hit a lot of things I’m thinking about. You all nailed it. Thank you.
Patton Oswalt: Awwwww, you’re beyond welcome!
Heath Corson: Okay, this is incredible lovely and exactly what any writer wants to hear. This touched me a great deal and very much speaks to the personal aspect of this story. As I was writing, my mother also got a cancer diagnosis and the emotional fissures spread through the entire family. As of now, she’s one kidney lighter and thankfully cancer-free. Hoping things are better for your mother and future mother-in-law.
FS: Before we get into the miniseries itself, who are Napoleon Archimedes, Killer Queen, and their brood?
Jordan Blum: Napoleon Archimedes is the archnemesis of the Searcher, a hero we’ve seen appear in various Minor Threats books over the years. If she’s our Superman archetype, then he’s our Lex Luthor. But Archimedes is a family man, married to a former Cold War super assassin with three children of their own. The oldest rebelled against his supervillain dad and became a cop. The second, their daughter, is a mad scientist like her father, desperate for his approval and the youngest is trying to carve out his own path as a dark sorcerer. But at the end of the day they’re oddly just like your own family.
PO: They are the supervillain elite of Meteor Falls, the Beverly Hills/Upper West Side equivalent to Twilight City’s Compton/Queens.
HC: They are the First Family of Super Villainy: Napoleon Archimedes (aka Stan Tyler) is the world’s greatest supervillain and has been the arch-nemesis of The Searcher for over four decades. Over the years, it occurred to Napoleon that the only way to beat the heroes was to create a dynasty to outlast them. Consequently, Napoleon and his wife, Contessa Villanova (aka the feared assassin Killer Queen) indoctrinated their three children, Agatha, Benny and Simon, into the family business in the hopes that one would step up and continue their legacy.
FS: Where do we find Napoleon and his family at the beginning of The Brood?
JB: Well… um… Napoleon is about to die! He’s learned he has a terminal condition and now the only thing on his mind is legacy. Which of his children will take over his tech empire and supervillain mantle? The question is, are any of them worthy, and, do any of them actually want it? For years his kids have struggled with his dual life, his attention more on The Searcher, being brought up in volcanic lairs and manipulated day in and day out. They resent this man but they also love him. It’s a deeply human and relatable story about how family binds us and how we as a family can come together to face a pending tragedy.
PO: Napoleon is old, and is dying, and has to face the reality of handing over his empire to one (or all…or none) of his progeny. Does he hand it to the dutiful, needy daughter, the equally villainous-but-not-in-the-way-Napoleon-would-like-him-to-be-villainous “dark sorcerer” son, or the rebellious son who became a cop? Family is tricky!
HC: It’s summer when arch-villain Napoleon receives a terminal diagnosis. Each issue clocks a season in Napoleon’s final year as he and his family wrestle with his legacy and mortality.
FS: While I hope none of us can relate to have villainous parents, I think we might all have experience in trying to live up to others’ expectations, as well as our own. Did you draw from any of those feelings or experiences when writing the comic?
JB: Haha, show me an artist that doesn’t have dad issues. The specificity of Heath’s scripts were so lived-in, yet infinitely universal. No one knows us like our family and no one challenges us like them either. We all fight and rebel against our parents and we all desperately want their approval and love. It’s so fun to explore that concept against the backdrop of super suits, demon henchmen and subterranean lizard people.
HC: Where most superhero comics present a world of “good” and “bad” characters, those binary concepts don’t translate to a family story. Which fascinated me. Every family has a villain. And a hero. And, day-to-day, depending on who you ask, it changes. Multiple times a day, if your family is anything like mine. Additionally, I’m the oldest of four siblings and we never really knew what my father did for a living. He would pack a bag, leave for “business trips” and come back exhausted. Was he CIA? A Mafia hitman? We’d ask and never get a straight answer. He thought it was hysterical. For me, it was the germ of the idea of what would it be like to be raised by a Lex Luthor? And of course, a family of super-villains would be super dysfunctional.
FS: One of the themes of the first two issues seems to be “nature vs. nurture.” Is that a fair reading?
JB: Absolutely. I think each kid is struggling with that concept and how much their father has shaped them. Can they live up to his legacy or escape the fate he’s damned them to?
PO: Very much so. And unlike in the world we live in, this is nature taken to superhuman extremes, and “nurture” at either villainous levels of neglect of doting. Either way – not good.
HC: YES! I love playing with the push and pull tension of each of the Tyler children and their relationship to their parents. All of them anxious to distinguish themselves from the outsized shadow their father casts over the world, even as they’re all equally desperate to earn his approval and attention. Clearly Napoleon attempted to shape each of them in his own image – Forgetting that children have their own minds, wills and POVs – So, the experiment was successful in some aspects and a wild failure in others.
FS: All three of the children are so different, yet you can tell each one is a child of Napoleon. What was the process of deciding what the relationship would be between him and each of his brood?
JB: I know Heath based a lot of this on his own siblings. It’s fascinating that you can be raised by the same person but see them in such different lights.
HC: Kudos here to our artist Ian Culbard, who designed the characters to really look like a family. We talked a lot about the specifics of where the characters intersect and where they needed to be completely different, which drove so much of their unique visual look. Which traits would be dominant from each parent and which ones wouldn’t? For instance, where Napoleon favors an elegant, well-dressed silhouette, middle son Benny is always in athleisure wear, subconsciously indicating he’s not connected to his father. Oldest daughter Agatha is most like Napoleon and presents as the likely heir apparent, but she’s the most unlike her deadly, graceful mother and acutely feels that distance. And Simon, the youngest, who wears suits like his dad – albeit, mostly double-breasted and tighter Italian cuts – Has completely befuddled him by delving into sorcery… Which is a metaphor for my relationship with my businessman father who never really understood the intangible creative work I do. I love that the extended world you’re creating is so expansive. Even when we meet a brand-new character, it feels like they’ve existed for decades. How do you go about creating characters that feel so lived in from the get-go?
FS: I love that the extended world you’re creating is so expansive. Even when we meet a brand-new character, it feels like they’ve existed for decades. How do you go about creating characters that feel so lived in from the get-go?
JB: I don’t think we’ve ever really done an origin story. We always wanted everything to feel in media res. I think we try to use archetypes or analogs to set the table before we quickly subvert those expectations. The books speak a language comic fans understand. There’s no hand holding and at the same time a lot of care goes into making each series accessible, especially if you’ve never read a Minor Threats book. It’s sort of our feelings on comics. They shouldn’t exist to support continuity but if you are invested, you’re rewarded by the larger tapestry at play.
PO: A lot of our inspiration comes from our years of reading comics and watching movies and being especially enchanted by the more colorful secondary characters, and wondering how they got to be he way they are. There are stories within stories, the deeper you dig.
HC: Speaking of legacy and inherited traits – Those are all key elements we picked up from Patton and Jordan and Scott’s work on Minor Threats. The world should feel like there’s years and years of history here and the readers just get dropped into the story currently in progress. That’s very present in all of the Minor Threats books and it’s one of the most exciting things about the world.
I also think after years of superhero familiarity in comics, film and TV, readers are familiar with so many of the tropes that you can just nod to them and move on with the current story without fear of losing them. Plus, this is the first story that we’re telling outside of Twilight City. The Brood takes place in the futuristic metropolis of Meteor Falls, a port city built in the impact crater of an asteroid. So, Ian and I got to invent a totally different landscape in the Minor Threats world, but tried to maintain that sense of vast world building, continuity and history.
Hysterically, Ian had to lay out a 3-D model of the entire city before he could start drawing and insisted that we nail down names for all the neighborhoods the characters live in: The Punchbowl, Copper Coast, Northside Tangle, Crater Rim. It’s one of my favorite details of the series.
FS: So much of the first two issues are about Napoleon’s children’s conflicted feelings toward him. Do you think they love Napoleon? And do you think Napoleon loves his children? Or is he only concerned with his destiny and legacy?
JB: I think that’s the unspoken truth about most families. It’s love or some sort of connection that no matter what you do these people have to accept you. Relationships can have ups and downs but you can’t really sever those ties. Especially Napoleon’s kids. Each of their lives is a direct response to their father. Much of their identities are tied to his influence, both good and bad.
HC: Yeah, in the end they all love each other. They’re a family. People you might never have chosen to be friends with but would die protecting. There’s love there all the way around… Which only serves to makes the dynamics MORE complicated, layered and difficult.
FS: This creative team is so damn stacked. What is the collaboration like between all of you?
JB: Each Minor Threats project is different. The Brood was such a fully formed idea by Heath. We did a mini-writers room on it where Heath laid out the story and Patton and I helped shape it. Ian coming on board made the whole thing click. His art brought the Wes Anderson-like quality to the story that both grounded it and made unlike anything else on the stands. It’s Heath’s personal story through the lens of a master artist who builds entire worlds with every panel.
HC: It’s a dream. My own personal Legion of Doom.
When I broke the story, I laid out the series on cards colored-coded to characters for Patton and Jordan and we discussed it all at length. Then, I talked through the arcs and themes to Scott Hepburn, who did an incredible initial pass on character designs.
Things really took off once Ian agreed to come aboard and he refined the look and feel of the entire book. Really synthesizing the Wes Anderson and Succession influences with a Silver Age nostalgia.
FS: Is there anything you can tease about what we can expect to see in the miniseries?
JB: In the original Minor Threats mini and in The Alternates, we rotated narrators, allowing different characters to take the spotlight. Heath uses that structure so well, tying the voices to different seasons as he fills in a year in the life of the first family of super-crime. It’s an amazing onion of a story which reveals new truths and secrets of this family as the layers get peeled back. It’s also exciting to move out of Twilight City and spend time in Meteor Falls. Different locations dictate different stories and Ian has designed a city with its own unique flavor and history. A history tied to the Searcher which we get to learn a lot about.
HC: I can say that you’ve seen this world’s minor threats, but now it’s time to head to the majors. These are the omega-level threats. The world-dominators in their volcanic lairs. And we’re going to follow the concussions and repercussions of raising children in that environment.
Plus, there’s lost love, betrayal, heists, handball, hostages, a couple of birthday parties, funerals, loss, masterplans… Oh, and the secret origin of The Searcher revealed!
FS: If you had a final pitch for The Brood, what would it be?
JB: It’s a math equation: Lex Luthor + Succession x The Royal Tenenbaums = The Brood.
HC: What if Lex Luthor had a family and tried to indoctrinate them into the family business?
Super. Dysfunctional. Family.
From the World of Minor Threats: The Brood #1 is on sale now from Dark Horse Comics.
From the official issue description:
From the world of the hit Minor Threats series comes a family drama starring the planet’s most feared villains.
Napoleon Archimedes is the archnemesis of The Searcher, and he’s fought her to a standstill for over four decades in the futuristic metropolis of Meteor Falls. But now, as he confronts his mortality, he’s forced to name a successor from his three extraordinary children: Athena, Benjamin, and Spookshow. Each brilliant, cunning … and unlucky enough to be the child of the world’s greatest supervillain.
See, Napoleon believed he was smart enough to have it all: Raise a family AND conquer the world. Then he thought: Why not combine them? Take the kids on as partners. Create a dynasty… None of it went according to plan. Who will rise above the betrayal, failure, and dysfunction to seize the family business?
Join us for an unlikely coming-of-age story, that wrestles with the concussions and repercussions of getting raised by a once-in-a-generation criminal mind. Think your father is manipulative, cold and demanding…? Wait until you meet Napoleon.
• Writer/Producer Heath Corson joins Patton Oswalt and Jordan Blum for an all-new Minor Threats story!