When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission.Heres how it works.
With environmental concerns more pressing than ever, the time is right for Captain Planet to return.
It was sincerely within a day or two.
David Pepose:It’s funny, it really feels like the biggest manifestation of my career to date.
This is something that I’ve talked about, especially with you, for over a decade now.
It almost feels like Giant-Sized X-Men #1.
It’s been such a blast to write.
Had I written this book 10 years ago, I wouldn’t have been ready for it.
On the other side of that coin is the sort of hokey pop culture reputation the original cartoon has.
There are so many memes, and the Don Cheadle video and stuff.
I think that’s an excellent question.
For me, the appeal of Captain Planet is that it’s the world outside your window.
They’re not superheroes.
They don’t have codenames.
They don’t even have costumes.
So I think it’s about taking that ethos and translating it into our book.
Captain Planet was very firmly rooted in the early ’90s.
As you mentioned, you’re carving out a niche for yourself writing comics tied to classic animated shows.
You’re writing Space Ghost right now, and you’ve got Speed Racer coming up.
For me, it’s always about accessibility.
I think that’s why the cartoon nostalgia books have been so successful.
Whether it’s the Energon universe or Thundercats or Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, people want to be surprised.
I think all three of the books I’m writing, they have such amazingly untapped potential.
I feel really honored and really privileged to be the guy who gets to excavate that.
What can you tell us about the Planeteers as they appear in this comic?
Which characters have you found yourself drawn to?
Well, for starters, I should talk about Captain Planet himself.
It was very much, like I said, a product of its time.
That speaks so much to Captain Planet.
If anything, I see him as this classic heroic, reassuring figure.
He’s somebody whose core mission is that he doesn’t want to see anybody die.
And on top of it, you know, people are suddenly saying “sexy Captain Planet” later.
“The power is yours” - that means we can’t just wish it all away.
Human beings on the ground level are the only thing that can save our world.
So that’s the core of this series to me - ordinary people are suddenly granted extraordinary powers.
We wanted to see to it that these look like people that you could run into on the street.
I pitched him as the Cyclops of the group.
Kwame was always my favorite Planeteer.
I love Kwame too.
And I think Wheeler serves as our point of view character.
His hero’s journey is really all about justifying the Planeteers as a team.
Linka might be my favorite of the bunch.
Out of all the Planeteers, she’s done the biggest 180 from when Captain Planet first debuted.
Back in 1990 she was the conservative Planeteer from the Soviet Union.
Things have changed pretty dramatically in the last 35 years, so Linka is the most leftist Planeteer now.
She headlines an underground eco activist punk band, kind of in the vein of Pussy Riot.
She’s our team scrapper.
She’s like our Illyana Rasputin, our Wolverine.
She’s super fun, and Eman Casellos draws her so, so incredibly.
Gi is very similar to the way I wrote Black Knight in the pages of Savage Avengers.
Having a team scientist is very important.
You know, it always is helpful in terms of a storytelling tool.
In the original cartoon, Gi, who’s from South Korea, was a marine biologist.
I love the idea of somebody who loves the science of all this.
She’s genuinely enthusiastic.
This is her passion.
And I think she’s the heart of the team, in a lot of ways.
So for her, hope is a revolutionary act.
It’s either that, or the alternative is to curl up into a ball of despair.
And speaking of smoldering and broodiness, Ma-Ti is probably our biggest glow up of the entire series.
And that was by design.
A lot of people saw Ma-Ti in the original cartoon as the punchline.
You know, what is the power of Heart?
And for me, it’s tactical telepathy.
He’s our x-factor of the team.
He’s our Batman.
He’s our Shang-Chi.
He can reach inside your mind.
He can make you see things that aren’t there.
He’s really cool.
I’m very excited for readers to get to see what happens when the Planeteers finally combine their powers.
It’s going to be more explosive than you might think.
You’ve brought up Eman Casellos a lot as a key part of the creation of this comic.
How has it been developing your working relationship with him, and how has he surprised you?
Surprise is the perfect word to describe Eman.
I was not familiar with his work before we started working together.
He came to this book swinging.
But the thing that I love most about Eman is that his characters really act.
He’s not a household name, but I hope to change that with this book.
He really has just gone the extra mile every step of the way.
I can’t ask for a better collaborator than Eman Casselos.
The other really big part of Captain Planet is his villains, his rogues gallery.
We know that Lucian ‘Lootin’ Plunder will appear.
What else can you tell us about the villains we’ll see in this comic?
I think for me, Captain Planet has always been, it’s been two sides of the coin.
There’s environmental disasters and catastrophes, but there’s also the human greed that fuels all of that.
They’re going to have, I think, like a really crucial role during our origin story.
Duke Nukem is going to appear.
Argos Bleak is another one who’s sort of like our Eric Prince Blackwater mercenary throw in.
He’s Plunder’s right hand man.
People used to say the Eco-Villains are bad, right?
That they were too unsubtle.
And I’d argue that reality has gotten a lot less subtle.
That kind of dovetails right into the last question I want to ask you here.
And what do you hope that readers will take from Captain Planet as the series goes on?
I think Captain Planet is the truest distillation of all that.
And I think that maybe speaks to who I am and where I come from.
You know, I grew up Jewish in the Midwest.
I learned very, very quickly that I was not part of the dominant culture.
The current Space Ghost comic was one of thebest comics of 2024.
