By Kenn Gold and Shaun Daily

Wil Wheaton: Photo obtained from Wikipedia Commons License.

In the meantime, he re-invented himself as a writer.  Among many other columns, Wheaton wrote a brilliant piece, called William Fucking Shatner  .  There he told the story about how the balding Priceline hack, and former starship captain, had dashed the hopes and broken the heart of a young fan who was now piloting a much cooler enterprise for The Next Generation.  He would also go on to publish 3 books (two from his own publishing company), embracing web technologies like Twitter and typead as he went, and writing blogs that were sometimes funny as hell, sometimes a little twisted, but that would always cut through the shit.  Wil also has been continuously working as an actor for several years before Stand By Me, and continuously since, while being involved in multiple other projects and jobs ranging from advertising guru and pretty face, to code monkey.  Then at some point, he started doing voice over work in animated series.  Along the way, he took on Aqualad in Teen Titans, Cosmic Boy in Legion of Superheroes, then re-united with Yuri Lowenthal (Superman from Legion though now he was Ben Tennyson) to play one of the new series plumber kids, who almost got to join the gang till he tried to suck the life out of Ben’s cousin.  He also made a return appearance in the second season of the very cool Ben 10: Alien Force.  Finally, Wil was ready to take on the ultimate universe, and was cast in a one shot for The Cartoon Networks, new Batman series. 

MediaBlvd, and the TV Talk radio program were lucky enough recently to get the Eleventy millioneth and one interview with Wheaton about his role in Batman: The Brave and the Bold and the other incredibly cool things that he has been doing.  Here now, uncut and uncensored, is the longest and one of the most entertaining (for the editorial staff anyway) interviews ever published in this space.

  Shaun> Congratulations on the Blue Beetle.

Wil> Oh, thank you very much.  I’m really excited; I can’t wait to see it.

Shaun> It’s a great show.  So you’re Blue Beetle is the original Blue Beetle, I think it was the one I read in the comics and I’m 40 years old? 

Wil> Yes.  I play Ted Kord, who I guess you could consider to be the silver age Blue Beetle.

Kenn> Now was that supposed to be a secret?  I’ve known you were going to be on the show for awhile, but I wasn’t seeing anything about your character, then I think Diedrich gave an interview and said you were going to play the Blue Beetle, so the net was in an uproar about whether or not you were replacing Wil Friedle, or what was going on there?

Wil> Yeah, when we originally recorded the episode, I asked James Tucker if it was ok to talk about it, and he said, “Yeah, it’s totally ok to say you are working on the show, but we really want to keep the actual identity of the character you are playing pretty close to the vest so that we can make that announcement when it’s going to be best for the show.  So I wasn’t allowed to talk about it for a really long time, which was really hard for me, just because I’m so excited about being on the show.

Shaun> It’s unusual for an animated series to go through so much secrecy about the show.  We saw this with Dallas and all that, keeping certain plots secret.  But with an animated series, were you surprised that they kept it so much a secret?

Wil> Not really.  The world has changed so much with how fast information is spread online, that for a show like this that is going to pull in a really big online enabled audience, it makes sense to me that they would kind of try to control the message a little bit just to make sure they get maximum value out of me being on the show.  I feel like such an advertising dick talking like that.  I think I should talk about,  “synergizing our media properties so we can leverage our position in the online blogosphere!”

Shaun> I was at CES, and that sounds exactly like what I was hearing from those guys.  All of that stuff went straight over my head.  Just tell me what the screen does and I’m happy, don’t get into all that techno-babble- know what I mean?

Wil> Yeah, I can do a great Dr. Spock.  So I could go on and on, but I’ll stop.

Kenn> I think that’s one thing that we’ve kind of learned about you from your blog is that you have a way of cutting the shit, or just cutting right to the quick.

Wil> I try to do that.  I’ve spent my entire life in various forms of the entertainment industry and some of the things that really drive me crazy are the way people have always dealt.  It’s like that movie The Big Picture.  When I had an opportunity with my blog to speak for myself, and just kind of start talking directly to people who are interested in my work without going thorugh the traditional media filters and the traditional media channels of communication, it was real important to me to just talk to people the way I like to be talked to.

Kenn> How did you get into the voice over work? You’ve done that for a few series now.

Wil> I had always wanted to do voice work.  It’s very challenging and some of the best work you can possibly get because it’s completely different from on camera work.  It’s not as repetitive as on camera work.  You don’t have to spend a lot of time getting your makeup done and if you can actually make it into that world, if you can learn the secret handshake to get into the room, it’s a real honor.  So I worked really hard to gain access to it.  Years and years and years ago I did a program called The Zeta Project.  I was on for one episode and that was a Warner Feature animation program that Diedrich Bader was on, and I ended up not sucking.  All of my years of quiet practice alone in my room when I should have been out talking to girls finally paid off.  Because I was brought back for Teen Titans and then that character was made a semi-regular.  Then the same people brought me back for The Legion of Superheroes, then that character was made semi-regular, and that kind of led into me doing Batman: The Brave & The Bold.

Shaun> Are you a huge DC comics fan?

Wil> I’m a huge DC comics fan.  I’ve been reading comics most of my life. It wasn’t until the mid to late ‘80s that I figured out that comics could be more than those Donald Duck comics that you get in the drugstore, and the occasional EC comic that was still floating around in the ‘70s when I was growing up.  I became a huge, huge fan of what was then called the Prestige format, which became the Vertigo line.  It was comics like Sandman, and I was really lucky to be reading Watchmen when it was actually in single issue format; things like Killing Joke, and some of the real early eventual Vertigo titles that turned me into one of those can’t wait for Wednesday guys.  I was just talking about this recently with one of my friends who writes for Marvel.  I was never really a Marvel comics fan until I started reading Brubaker’s Captain America, which has the same level of gravitas and depth, and a kind of psychological intrigue that Batman does.  And Batman has always been my favorite comic ever, since I can remember.

Shaun> Same with me.  I still have that big Wayne Foundation building super-sized book they did some years ago.  I have about eight boxes of comics and they are all Batman and Justice League.

Wil> Oh, that’s great.

Shaun> It must have been pretty cool.  You’re in the Batman universe.  Teen Titans is DC with Aqualad, but now you’re in the Batman universe.  That’s got to be pretty damn awesome, don’t you think?

Wil> I’m not exaggerating, it’s absolutely a dream come true.  When I heard that James was going to Batman: The Brave & The Bold after we’d done Legion together… We were all really sad when Legion was over because we thought we had a lot more stories that we could tell within that universe.  And I loved working with the cast.  When I found out that James was going to be working on a Batman show it was like, “Ok, where am I going to go to get all of the cute animals that I’m going to need to perform the sacrifices to make sure that I get to work on this show?”

Kenn> I guess you’ve really made a transition.  Would you consider yourself more of a writer now than an actor or are you still doing both?  What do you think about yourself when you think of Wil Wheaton?

Wil> This is something that I struggle with.  It kind of depends on what I’m doing on a given day.  If I’m working on a program then that day I’m an actor.  If I’m writing a book, or doing one of the columns that I write every week, then I’m a writer.  I spent some time about a year and half ago where I really felt like I had to choose which one of these things was something I was going to do.  Was I going to be a writer, or was I going to be an actor?  I just decided that I really didn’t need to define myself that way.  I can do both of these things, and I enjoy them both.  The best thing is when I get to combine the two of them to do audio performances of my books, or when I go on speaking tours and things like that.

Kenn> And you’re into publishing now too?  Publishing your own books?

Wil> I am, yeah.  I have a very small publishing company with just four employees, and I frequently act as two of them.  I published my first book, called Dancing Barefoot, I published that a number of years ago.  Then O’Riley and Associates published my second book, Just a Geek.  Then last year I published my third book, which is another collection of narrative non-fiction essays, called The Happiest Days of My Life.  It’s really fun to have this company, and it’s been sort of a test and a proof of the new media world that we live in.  I could never have successfully have published, distributed, and made a living off of independently written and produced small books like I have at any other time.  I’m really lucky.  I’ve been able to go from my blog and some of my other columns, straight to my audience.  When I was working on Just a Geek, I really believed that I had a story that was really cool, that was interesting, that was kind of entertaining to people.  But I thought if I try to take this out to a traditional publisher, they are going to try to keep me in that “guy who used to be on Star Trek kind of mold”, and they are going to demand that I give them that kind of book.  And that’s really not what I wanted to do.  I wanted to tell a different kind of story that had those elements in it, but was I hoped more applicable to people who were sort of in their twenties and trying to figure out what they wanted to do with their lives.  I don’t think I’d ever have been able to sell the book that I wanted to if I had to play by the old rules.  I thought, “I can just go straight to the audience.”  And luckily, I was right. 

Kenn> Do you really see that as a trend with the whole new media thing with blogs and everything?  More and more stuff is being distributed or at least has a connection on line.

Wil> Yeah, I absolutely see it that way.  I was trying to describe this to a friend of mine, the way that small people can publish in niches and still reach enormous numbers of people because they aren’t competing for shelf space with big superstars, and he said, “Oh, you’re talking about The Long Tail.”  And he sent me a link to Chris Anderson’s writing about The Long Tail, and I realized I’d basically been talking about the same thing.  I think that this is the future of publishing, and I think it’s a big part of the future of entertainment.  During the writers strike last year, a lot of people I know were talking about how if the studios were going to continue to just screw the creative people who were involved in making their shows, then they would just go to Silicon Valley venture capitalists and do things that are similar to what they did with Dr. Horrible’s Sing Along Blog.  Obviously, we’re not all going to be Joss Whedon, with the built in audience to do that sort of thing, but I think the next generation of musicians and television stars and creative dramatic personalities are almost entirely going to come out of the Internet.  I think that’s where they are going to be found. 

Shaun> That’s true.  We’ve seen an explosion of online TV series.  It’s amazing the explosion of entertainment options on the Internet.

Wil> Yeah, and it’s a wider variety as well.  If there’s something that’s only going to appeal to a hundred thousand people world wide, that’s never going to have a chance on broadcast television.  But if there’s something that has an opportunity to go to those people without taking space away from anybody else, the Internet is a perfect way to get people to see that stuff.

Shaun>  What do you think of Twitter?  It’s just blown up and I know you are huge on Twitter.  It just came out of nowhere.  It’s amazing isn’t it?

Wil> Yeah, I think it’s really fun.  It’s a great tool and I love it as micro-blogging.  I didn’t really understand what the whole point of Twitter was until Warren Ellis said, “Yeah, I follow Rich Stevens on Twitter because everything he says is like a one liner from a comedy club.”  That sort of helped me understand, “Ah, Twitter doesn’t have to be this what I’m doing and eating, and this is where I’m going.”  It’s just like, “This is what’s on my mind in 140 characters or less.”  It’s been great.  It’s ended up being really fun for me, and I’ve been able to re-connect with some old friends.  I’ve made some new friends, and it’s given me another outlet to express myself creatively and hopefully connect in a different way with some people in my audience.  I don’t like saying “my” anything like that, because it implies ownership, but I think you know what I mean. 

Shaun> Well, you do have a hell of an audience, and people respect you.  You could have gone out and cashed in on the Star Trek fame.  You held back and said, “I’m going to do the stuff that I want to do.”  And I think people respect you for that, and that’s why you are going to draw a lot of viewers to Batman: The Brave & The Bold.  They’re going to hear your voice and see how you’re going to pull off this guy.  It’s going to be a wild ride on The Cartoon Network, I think.

Wil> Thanks, that’s really nice of you to say that.  I worked really hard to make sure that my version of The Blue Beetle was appropriate and true to the writer’s intent, and was true to the  DC Universe.  And I’m really lucky that my initial exposure to The Blue Beetle was in the mid to late ‘80s reading Justice League, when The Blue Beetle at that time was this wise cracking guy who didn’t take anything too seriously, but was still really hard core about justice and honor, and the things that superheroes are hard core about.  So when I started to create my version of Ted Kord, I was just doing the same kinds of things that I read in the comic book.  And it’s interesting.  It’s kind of a double edged sword.  It’s really cool that there are people online who care and who are interested.  But if I mess up, I’m a nerd, and I’m in that audience.  I know how pissed off we get when someone messes up something that’s important to us.  It makes it extra important to me that I give it the appropriate level of respect, and the right level of preparation and that I don’t go and screw it up.  So even though I’m really excited to see the show, which incidentally is on Friday, Janurary 23 on The Cartoon Network, I’m still a little anxious.  I sure hope that what I thought I was doing comes through. 

Shaun> Did you have to research your Blue Beetle?

Wil>  I did a little bit.  I talked to some friends who were comic book writers and asked them if there were any key things that stood out about him; I guess what you would call his essences.  I looked back over some of the comic books I have.  I have so many long boxes of comic books, it’s a little embarrassing.  What am I talking about?  It’s not embarrassing, it’s awesome.  And I had so much research material to look at, I just sort of went back and saw, “Ok, this is this guys point of view about himself.”  And it’s very clear from the script.  The script that I was working from was really, really great, like I said.  I was just really lucky that what my instinct was happened to match up with what the writer was telling us to do. 

Kenn> I don’t know if you were at Comic Con or in the audience for the show, but there was sort of an intensity and a lot of muttering in the crowd when Ted Kord was mentioned.  I definitely read the comics in the ‘80s, but I didn’t remember being that kind of fanbase for it.  But I guess there is.

Wil> Yeah, he’s just one of those guys who is such a huge part of the  DC Universe.  And in defense of people who are unsure about these sorts of things, and in defense of people who kind of like step back and fold their arms across their chests and wait, we live in a post Phantom Menace world.  So I think it’s really important to acknowledge, for those of us who have these things that we care about, we have invested a life time into making parts of our daily existence.  We’re always a little nervous I think, when we hear that this thing that we have loved our entire life is going to be put on television, or made into a movie.  We have to just sit back and hope that there’s no goddamned midi-chloreans in it. 

Shaun> We have some kids in the chat, and they are asking if Batman and The Blue Beetle fight?

Wil> Do they fight each other?  No, they are actually allies.  I have clearance from Warner Brothers to talk a little bit about my episode, so I’ll tell you a bit.  I don’t want to ruin it so I won’t get into spoilers.  As we know, the most recent incarnation of The Blue Beetle is this kid, Jaime Reyes, who found the scarab, or maybe the scarab found him.  And he’s trying to come to terms with what it means to have all of these super powers.  In this particular episode, he’s sort of having a crisis of confidence, and he’s worried that maybe he’s not up to the task.   He doesn’t really know what it means to be the Blue Beetle.  He goes to Batman, and asks him these things, and Batman tells him to go be awesome and stop worrying about these things.  Of course, Jaime is a kid and that’s not a good enough answer.  So he goes on a little bit of a quest to see if he can track down something about the guy who was the Blue Beetle before him.  And this leads him to go on a little bit of a journey to find Ted Kord.  That’s sort of where I come in, and there are these really, really fun flashback sequences with Ted Kord and Batman that are animated to look just like the old Challenge of the Superfriends cartoons from the ‘70s, which we didn’t know about until we went in to do our additional dialogue recording.  Wil Friedle and I were looking at that and we said to James through the glass, “Did you do that on purpose?”  And James was all excited because he had done it on purpose and didn’t know if anybody was going to notice.

Shaun> That’s cool, I grew up on Challenge of the Superfriends.  Don’t start me going down that memory lane.

Wil> Are you a Wendy and Marvin kind of guy, or are you a Zan and Jana kind of guy.  Wendy and Marvin were lame. 

Shaun> I was glad though when Zan and Jana took off, and that damn monkey Gleek, that was always screwing things up. 

Wil> I was the right age for Zan and Jana, so I thought that was really funny.  They always turned into something.  They could have defeated their adversaries, like they were way overpowered for what they actually did with their superpowers.  I was exactly the right age, I was born in ’72, so I was like 8 when I was watching that.  I thought it was awesome, then I grew up a little bit and there was Wendy and Marvin and Wonderdog.  I thought, “They’re dumbing this down!”  I was like 11, “They’re dumbing this down for the audience, and they’re insulting my 11 year old intelligence.  This is awful, worst episode ever!”

Shaun>  I hated the way the Superfriends treated Batman.  The only thing they’d show of Batman is the car stopping and picking up Wendy and Marvin, but the dog doesn’t make it into the Batmobile.

Wil> I know, like you’re going to make Batman the chauffeur? Are you serious?  I can promise you that that does not happen in Batman: The Brave & The Bold.  In Batman: The Brave & The Bold, Batman is awesome, and he is not a ridiculous chauffeur.  Batman is nobody’s bitch in Batman: The Brave & The Bold.

Shaun> The way they draw Batman, I guess he’s kind of a 70’s version of the Batman, with the bigger head and shorter ears on the cowl.

Wil> Yeah, he has this really stylized look and I believe that it’s deliberate.  I believe there is a deliberate effort to make Batman: The Brave & The Bold more stylized and have it look kind of like the ‘40s and have it look like something that is a little bit more classic- something that we haven’t really seen before; bringing back that wonderful art-deco look that Batman once had I think is a really nice counterpart to some of the darker, more anime styles that we are seeing on television today. 

Kenn> It has a very retro feel, and I love the look of the episodes.  It’s pretty amazing what they are doing.

Wil> I’m really glad that you like that.  My investment in the show is much greater as a fan, than as a participant.  I’m only in one episode so far.  But I think it’s really cool.  By giving it that retro look, they make it kind of timeless.  You’re not going to look at it and think, “Oh, that was made in 2005, or whatever.”

Kenn> It reminds of the reprints from when I was a kid.  It’s definitely not the Batman that I grew up with,  but it reminds of the reprints of the giant sized comics I’d always get. 

 Shaun> I also like how they are going into the DC universe; they are pulling out Adam Strange, Red Tornado, some of these people that you really haven’t seen.  I guess we saw Red Tornado in Justice League Unlimited a few years ago.  We have Blue Beetle; it’s good that they are pulling these people out. 

Wil> It’s awesome.  The  DC Universe is so huge.  These characters, these villains that Batman has faced over the last 60 or 70 years, there are so many of them.  I think it’s awesome to go beyond Scarecrow, Joker, Clayface and Twoface.; the guys that we all really know and love- to go back, and go a little further and show kids these wonderful villains who we haven’t really thought of in decades.

Shaun> Someone in the chat is saying they love when you blog about your children and your daily life.  Are you surprised people care what you are doing in your dialy life?  Are you amazed that people even care?

Wil> I would like to believe that when I write stories about the things that I do from day to day that I choose things, and recount them in a way that’s entertaining.  The whole reason that I’m a blogger is that I love just reading and listening to David Sedaris.  And I wanted to tell stories the same way that he does.  And it was real important to me to kind of find my voice that could be as close to his.  From time to time, blogging is about what you had for lunch.  But I really make an effort to choose things that maybe illustrate some insight I had about being a parent, or that capture that moment that I just don’t want to forget.  I think if I was just, “Hey look at me, here’s what I did today!”, if I had that point of view about myself, people wouldn’t be interested.  Frankly, I wouldn’t be interested.  So I make a real effort to write something that’s more like a column, with occasional bloggy posts about talking to my dog.

Kenn> Can you give us the address here?  People in the chatroom were asking about it earlier.

Wil> For my blog?  Yeah, it’s http://wilwheaton.typepad.com.  And I’m Twitter at Twitter.com/wilw.  For years, my blog was at wilwheaton.net, then I ruined my database just by being stupid.  In the intervening years, I moved over to typead, completely intending to be there for a few weeks while I rebuilt wilwheaton.net, then it just became more fun to actually write than be a code monkey.  And wilwheaton.net has kind of sat there unused for years.  However, I have been in touch with the guys who are the admins for wilwheaton.net, and we’re in the process of doing a bunch of maintenance and integrating my typead blog with wilwheaton.net, to make something that I think is going to be really awesome. 

Kenn> Have you gotten away from Star Trek, and the Wesley Crusher stuff?  Or do you still get inundated with fans and questions from that show?

Wil> There was a time when I was like, “I need to put Wesley behind me!”  I’ve kind of gotten over that.  The fact is that Star Trek is huge and it means a lot to a lot of people.  And it means a lot to me.  It was real important to me that I don’t let it define all of my life, but at the same time, I don’t think that there’s anything wrong about embracing and feeling proud of part of something that means so much to so many people.  I’m 36 now and I was 14 when I did the show.  I’m meeting people all the time who are my age who really liked Wesley when they were growing up, and who were really inspired by Wesley.  I meet people who are engineers, scientists and astronomers because they were inspired by watching Wesley Crusher.  The first time I heard that, I was astonished.  It took my breath away and I was speechless because when I was on the show, I mostly heard from people who were older than me who wanted to describe all of the various ways that I should die.  And the third or fourth time I heard it, it started to dawn on me that this thing that I did, and about which I was like, “Oh, I don’t want to talk about it!” it really does matter to people.  I think I have a responsibility to take care of it, and I think I have a responsibility to the people who were inspired by it to give it an appropriate level of respect and caretaking.

Kenn> Do you have any thoughts about the upcoming re-imaging of the show? 

Wil> No, as I said, we live in a post Phantom Menace world.  So we always have to be vigilant about these sorts of things as fans.  But I’m totally willing to keep an open mind.  I’m cautiously optimistic.  I’ve worked real hard to avoid spoilers, but everything I’ve heard about the film makes it sound really cool.  It sounds like they have found a story and a story telling style that’s going to make Star Trek relevant to my kid’s generation.  I was talking to a guy about this yesterday.  I saw the trailer, and I was so excited to see the trailer, then I was totally disappointed by it.  It looks like an action movie, and I thought about that after the movie was over.  It’s funny because I don’t even remember the movie I saw, I just remember the trailer.  And I thought, that trailer is not for me.  It’s not for us.  That trailer is for my kids and it has to be presented in a language that they understand.  And that’s the language that my kids have grown up speaking.  That’s what science fiction is to them.  If that gets them interested in Star Trek and they maybe start working their way backwards, through Next Generation, through the Star Trek movies, and back to the original series, then that’s great.  Star Trek is going to stay alive, and Star Trek is going to be relevant to a whole new generation of people.  I think that’s really possible and something I hope happens.

Shaun> Wil, they want to know in the chat if there are any possibilities of you coming back to Batman: The Brave and the Bold?

Wil> I don’t know what their plans are exactly.  I’m real excited at the opportunity to come back, and all James Tucker has to do is say, “Come to the studio.”  And I say, “Great, when?”  I don’t even have to ask what it is anymore.  I would be back in a heartbeat if they asked me for it, but as far as I know right now, there are not any plans.

Shaun> Jamie in the chat wants to know how cool is it to know that you are going to be in there with your voice, just opposite Batman.  A lot of people are just jumping in now.  That’s pretty cool.

Wil> Yeah, it really is.  Years ago, I did a movie called The Day Lincoln Was Shot.  I played Abraham Lincoln’s son Robert.  I did a scene with Lance Henriksen who was playing Lincoln, and he looked so much like Lincoln, and sounded the way I thought Lincoln would sound.  And he was performing dialogue that was lifted from Lincoln’s letters and memoirs.  After a couple of takes, I realized I was not relating to this guy like he was my father.  I was relating to him like he was, “Oh my God! Abe Lincoln”.  It was a bad acting choice.  So I had to go to the director and say, “Listen, I just became aware of this.  If this happens again, just nudge me back in the right direction.”  I have similar moments when I work on Batman.  I just have to stop myself.  The whole time I’m there, I just want to go, “Oh my God, this is so fucking cool!”  It was the same way when we were doing Legion of Superheroes.  Andy Milder and Yuri Lowenthal and I are all huge legion fans and huge comic book fans.  We’d go in and just slime James.  We’d go in and just slime James and ask if all these things from the comic were going to happen.  Is Duo Damsel going to happen, and when are we going to do this other thing.  Tell us where you are in the comic so we can just read along and know what’s coming up.  It’s really fun to be a geek and get to work in geek culture.  It just lets me get a little closer to things than I’d think I’d ever get to be.  It’s very important though, to retain that perspective and understand, “Look man, you’re here and you’re a professional and you’re expected to do a job.  Save the geeking out for Comic Con. 

Shaun> We need to get you on Smallville and give you a scene with Tom Welling too.

Wil> You know, it was so great.  I played Cosmic Boy on Legion of Superheroes, and one of the things that I love about voice acting is I can play characters that I’d never have a chance of playing on camera because I don’t look right; I’m not muscular enough, I’m not good looking enough, I’m not young enough, and I looked at the guy that was playing Cosmic Boy on that, and I thought yeah, alright fine, you’re younger and better looking than I am, I’m just at that point in my life.  If Smallville ever needs some grizzled old guy who is out of the salad days, they know where to find me.

Shaun> Why can’t they bring the young Blue Beetle to Smallvile, and you play Ted Kord, like the advisors that young Bruce Wayne had in Batman Begins.

Wil> You know, you’re views are intriguing to me.  I want to subscribe to your news letter. 

Shaun> Blue Beetle’s a younger character, he’s not Batman.  I imagine your kids will be watching.  Batman tends to be a little more violent then some of the other heroes, obviously, so who knows where they could go with this character. 

 Wil> You know, this is really one of the things that is wonderful about Batman: The Brave & The Bold.  It’s a new take on the Batman, and it stays true to what Batman is about.  He’s still a masked vigilante who is driven by witnessing the murders of his parents.  But its not as dark.  This is not Gotham Knights.  It’s something that is much more accessible for younger kids.  It lets someone like me watch Batman with my nieces and nephews who are 5, 6 or 7 years old.  I can still enjoy it as Batman, and don’t feel like I have to sit there with the mute button in case something violent or scary comes along, when we’re watching it together.  I think that everyone involved in the show has done a really fantastic job of making a guy like me happy as a long time Batman fan, and Batman geek, but also making me happy as a parent that wants to share some of these things with his kids. 

Shaun> Wil, we’re way over our time with you, so I apologize for that.  We love talking to you though, and we love Batman, so it’s great that you are in the show.  Don’t beat up Batman too much if you get in a fight with him.

Wil> It’s all right, we’re on the same team.  Thanks a lot!  I really, really enjoyed talking to you guys, and if I do more Batman, I certainly hope I’ll get to come back and talk to you again.

Shaun> Certainly.  Now your episode is on January 23?

Wil> Yes, next Friday, January 23 on The Cartoon Network.

Shaun> Same Bat-time, same Bat-channel, right?

Wil> Always the same Bat-time and same Bat-channel.  In fact, we’ll be doing the Bat-tussi while it’s airing.

Kenn> Thanks a lot!

Shaun> Thank you.

Wil> Right on guys, talk to you later.