- Wolverine has been my favorite character
since I was a kid.
It was an incredible experience to follow the footprints
in the mud of all the creators who came before me
and then to channel the beast.
As somebody who is, you know,
a short, muscular, grumpy,
cigar-chomping, whiskey-swilling loner,
it doesn't feel like too much of a leap for me
to jump into the mindset of Wolverine.
With Wolverine, I'm thinking,
like, what are some essential components of the character?
His ruined memory, his history of violence,
his interest in atonement, the wildness inside of him,
like, it's about man in the wild and the wild in man.
The first season is told in interrogative format.
These agents are interviewing different subjects
who are, every one of them, unreliable.
And in that way, it sort of drew from procedurals
like "S-Town" and "Serial," right?
Podcasts that people were familiar with,
in order to get them on board.
Then we could do more straight-line storytelling
in the second season.
The second season, though, and what you see in his,
Wolverine's relationship with Marcus Baptiste
and his relationship with Gambit is
that he's moving towards the empathy.
And you especially see that in the final episode
in the decision that he makes there.
- He draws some of it out of Gambit, too.
- Yeah, absolutely, right?
Because Gambit
is kind of like a Han Solo character.
- You put your unique mark on that slick son of a *b*tch*.
- One of the things that I love about comic books is
how wide the world is and how interested people are
in interpretations of various characters and stories.
To sort of dip into the variety of that
was a real pleasure.
- The true nerds will be able to notice
these Easter eggs within the series.
But we're also telling our own story
that, hopefully, is true to the character
while taking him towards a new horizon.
Comics are such a visual medium.
Vision is our primary sense.
I tend to write visually,
even when I'm not paneling things out.
And when you, instead, have to, like, envision a soundscape
that's gonna make your audience feel anchored
and create dialogue
that's also gonna carry some expository information with it,
like, that broke my brain in a really good way.
It is groundbreaking, to some degree, in the way
that people have been truly consumed
by the audio experience.
Sometimes, you'd be,
like, you're in the present in one sound environment,
maybe listening to cicadas
or a boat paddling along in the bayou.
But then somebody starts to tell the story
in that other sound environment.
The sound environment of the past bleeds into the present
and they converge, coming together in this storm of noise.
(men laughing)
- Whoa! - Oh!
(Wolverine growling) - Oh, oh! (Gambit laughs),
Well, well, well, as I live and breath.
- What the hell were you doing at her apartment, Gambit?
- I'm sorry. I don't know anyone who goes by that name.
- What happened to Maureen?
- I'm afraid I'm busy right now.
In fact, we were just about to play another hand.
Weren't we, gentlemen? - That's right, that's right. Let's go then.
I'm dealing.
- You wanna play?
I'll join you.
- If only there was an open seat (laughs).
Hey, what the-- (impact thudding)
What are you doing?
- What? - Oh, come on.
- Oh, look, found one.
- The way this was recorded was with a directional mic,
a 3D microphone.
You'll notice, if you listen to it,
that you get a sense of space and direction and distance.
Then we have another scene on a boat
and we sat on, like, a folding table
and pretended to row, you know.
We really treated the microphone,
it's like this sphere just hanging, this orb,
this magic orb that's catching everything,
and you treat it like a camera.
It's kind of like making a movie, in an odd way.
- If you think about the way a novel works,
where you're feeding the audience information,
but they're conjuring the characters on their own,
it requires a major leap on the audience's behalf.
If you look at a movie or a TV show,
everything's being supplied to them.
They can enjoy the entertainment
in a more passive way, as a result of that.
But it's interesting with podcasts
because they occupy a kind of gray zone in between,
like these shadowlands
where, you know, you're giving them just enough
with that drippy faucet in the corner
or that air conditioner wheezing
or the grunts of Bill doing capoeira
(Bill laughing) in his pajamas
or whatever else that the audience feels like, I'm there.
But the audience is almost like a co-author in the process
because they have to take that leap themselves.