M.O.D.O.K. (2020): Showrunners Patton Oswalt and Jordan Blum Talk the Hulu TV Series, the Villain, & His Marvel Comics Roots

Patton Oswalt and Jordan Blum Talk M.O.D.O.K.

Patton Oswalt and Jordan Blum, the showrunners for Hulu’s upcoming Marvel series M.O.D.O.K. (2020) recently spoke at length with the A.V. Club about their passion for the titular giant head guy.

Originally making his silver age debut in 1967, M.O.D.O.K. is a human scientist transfigured in a freak accident into a giant floating head with teeny little arms and legs and a psychotic lust for murder as the initialism implies (Mental Organism Designed Only for Killing). Though relatively unknown by broader audiences, the villain is making a big splash in 2020, featuring in the new Marvel’s Avengers video game and the upcoming Marvel’s M.O.D.O.K. animated series on Hulu. Both big fans of M.O.D.O.K. before pitching the show, Oswalt and Blum  compiled an exhaustive history of the character spanning over four decades of comics, cartoons, and games not only to prepare for their streaming production but also for a four issue comic series they’re writing called M.O.D.O.K: Head Games.

Blum reflected on his youth reading about M.O.D.O.K. “I had read a lot growing up … but reading everything really filled in some gaps. … What you find is M.O.D.O.K. is an incredibly versatile character. He can be very Silver-Agey and arch, other times incredibly menacing and violent like in the video game and obviously very comedic like in Gwenpool or our show.”

“One of the things that tickled us about M.O.D.O.K. was his insistence on keeping up this intimidating/frightening front even when all visible evidence pointed to the opposite,” commented Oswalt who is voicing the character in his show. “Even from the get-go, those early Kirby issues, he’s still frothing and gnashing about the majesty of himself even when he’s been knocked to the ground. The malevolent Weeble was love at first sight for us.”

“There’s an absurdity built into every facet of the character,” says Blum. “From the Kirby design—he’s a giant floating head with baby hands but he’s a legitimate and capable threat—to his insane personality. He’s a genius but he’s also a petulant child, often meeting defeat at the hands of his own ego. He’s got the mind of a super-computer but at the same time he’s petty and vindictive. All these weird dichotomies are what make him a fascinating character.” Bulm elaborated saying, “To make him the main character of his TV series we had to find what makes him human … The more we wrote him the more we related to him. I’m not quite sure what that says about us. But his background is so incredibly tragic, you begin to understand where his rage comes from. The comic really let us explore that.”

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