James Eason-Garcia has been dreaming about working with Marvel for years. The co-executive producer and story editor for Marvel’s Iron Man and His Awesome Friends is a self-proclaimed “big nerd,” reading comic books since he was 8 or 9 years old. He also knew he wanted to work in animation, so combining the two is a dream for him.
“To be able to play and write in [this] world is a dream,” Eason-Garcia tells The Nerds of Color over Zoom on Wednesday afternoon post-premiere. “Dreams [are] coming true for me.”
After working on Star Wars’ Young Jedi Adventures (which was another dream for him), Eason-Garcia signed on, alongside his co-executive producers Sean Coyle and Harrison Wilcox, to bring Iron Man to life for the next generation of children — the Disney Jr. audience.
In Marvel’s Iron Man and His Awesome Friends, kid versions of Tony Stark (Iron Man), Riri Williams (Ironheart), and Amadeus Cho (Iron Hulk) are best friends and geniuses who team up to solve problems and protect their city. Although Tony Stark, Riri, and Amadeus are not the same age in the Marvel comics and the MCU, the concept works for this series, as Eason-Garcia and Coyle refer to it as “Earth-123ABC,” a play on preschool learning blocks.
“When we were first approached to start developing and creating the show, we knew Tony Stark/Iron Man was going to be our central figure,” Eason-Garcia explains. “We always knew that, and when that became the focus, we knew we were going to get into inventions and Iron armor and stuff like that. So, we needed the friends and characters surrounding it to be of the same level of intelligence. Inventor [and genius] Riri was already a perfect fit. She was already close to the Iron family. Amadeus Cho flowed in and out of a lot of different comic books, but he’s also considered one of the super geniuses of Marvel Comics. We discussed who could be Tony’s super genius best friends, hanging out with their IQ together, and building suits of armor together. Riri and Amadeus just fit the bill so perfectly.”
Below, we spoke to Eason-Garcia on adapting the Marvel Universe for young children, what makes Iron Man interesting for that generation, the characters’ designs, Easter Eggs, and what more we can expect from the series.
The Nerds of Color: There are numerous fun IP options to work with in the Marvel Universe. Why Iron Man? What makes Iron Man more interesting than Captain America and Friends, or Doctor Strange, or even a Black Panther Disney Jr. series?
One of the things I loved most about working with Iron Man is that he makes all his own mistakes, especially if you read his comics and watch the films. He creates the problems that he has to fix. From a preschool perspective, I found that to be relatable for kids who are still learning a great deal about the world, themselves, and making mistakes. The great thing about Tony Stark is that he does make mistakes, but always does the right thing to fix them. If he causes the problem, he will do everything he can to fix it. I wanted to focus on that with kids: you might make mistakes and do something wrong, but you can still fix it. You can still be a good leader and take the necessary steps to make things right. I feel that kind of vibe goes through the whole show, where the kids are trying their best and something goes wrong – okay, now we have to try our best to fix what’s gone wrong.
Tony and Riri made sense as they’re the Iron Family, but what can you tell me about Amadeus Cho, who is known in the comics as Hulk?
We all really liked the idea of a Hulk on the show. The green is so iconic, and there are so many cool things about the Hulk that this just felt right. Taking [Riri and Amadeus] – I don’t want to say lesser-known characters, but less-exposed characters – gave us more space to play and figure out what we could do [something] cool with them. Like, what kind of personalities can we give them that kids would be excited about? What kind of cool powers can we give them that are a little bit separate from Tony’s? That’s why we came up with Ironheart’s Heartbeat Bubble and Iron Hulk’s Iron Boom and his Hulk Stomp, which is a reference to the original Hulk Stomp, but the Iron version of that.
I do appreciate the inclusion of Amadeus Cho because the MCU often overlooks him. What made you decide to include him and to provide an Iron suit without him turning into the Hulk?
That was something we talked a lot about in the early days. Is he going to be the Hulk? Is he going to have a suit? For simplicity’s sake, let’s give them all suits of armor. It’s coming from that preschool audience. We were wondering if it would be a step too far if he became the Hulk and then had the armor on top of it. There were conversations like that, which we went back and forth to figure out the best way to present this in an accessible way for the audience – preschoolers at home. There! They all got the same suit! They all share the same perspective on their powers. We can go into their helmet displays and talk to each other. That would have been a bit harder if he had just been Hulk.
There is so much to play with in the MCU, but how do you guys create it so it’s reflective of the audience you’re targeting? How do you kidify it?
I always talk about it being like “kid scissors.” Kid scissors still cut, but there is just a rounded-off edge to it. That’s what we look at for all the characters. Iron Man still has to be Iron Man, but what aspects do we need to refine to make it a little softer, gentler, and kinder for this audience? There are certain things that we did with all the characters. What are the touchstone moments for these characters and their qualities/abilities? Can we still do that as closely as possible to the source material? For example, Tony is such a confident character in the comics and movies. He’s cocky and has a lot of swagger. How do we maintain that confidence while conveying it in an appealing way? If a kid imitates that, there has to be kindness behind it, not a braggart kind of thing. We make sure he’s confident, but sometimes his confidence gets a little too overconfident, and that’s usually when he makes his mistakes. Somebody like Ultron, who is incredibly terrifying in the comics and movies, [both the MCU version and our version], still dislikes humans. It’s the same thing. He doesn’t think they’re worthy of ruling or existing – and ours is kind of the same way, but just more kid-friendly. [laughs] He doesn’t want humans to have toys or have fun. Humans shouldn’t get to play human music on the radio – only robot music. The goal is to keep the characters how they are, but just a softer and more preschool-accessible version.
Would you say it’s like Kidz Bop?
I would hope so. I think we’re close, but I want to say maybe we’re just a little cooler than Kidz Bop. [laughs]
I want to discuss the character designs of the characters. We know Robert Downey Jr. played Tony Stark in the films. Dominique Thorne in her television series. How did you decide to design each of these characters: Tony Stark, Riri Williams, and Amadeus Cho?
One of the things I was most excited about with Amadeus was giving him his purple hair. I always have color in my hair. My hair is currently purple to match Amadeus. It was red for Tony a couple of months ago. As one of the creators of the show, I wanted the characters to reflect me a little bit in different ways. There were things we wanted to include. There are certain features of Tony’s hair that are similar to mine – my hair is curly, but normally, it’s big and swoopy. That’s what happens when your hair dryer breaks. My hair is a bit more swoopy like Tony’s. Then with Riri, I love the colors [that she wears]: pink and purple. Those are my two favorite colors. We wanted to draw inspiration from her natural colors in the comic books, but also emphasize the pink and purple in her shows and sweatshirt, as those are colors I would typically wear. We were really lucky. We worked with a great group of development creators and artists every day, who would come in and show us art. We worked closely with Marvel, Disney, and the franchise group to determine what would be the most appealing for the show, as well as for kids, merchandise, and items at home. It was really important to me to show these kids as humans first and then superheroes second. Even though they are superheroes, it was important for me and the showrunner [Coyle] and the team to emphasize that it’s the kids who are super and their armor makes them superheroes. We wanted to get to know them. To me, that meant the designs had to be accessible. I want kids to want to dress up like the characters.
There are so many interesting villains in the Marvel Universe. How did you decide the villains – Ultron, Swarm, and Absorbing Man? How did you decide on the villains that would fit in this storyline/audience? Were there any villains that you wanted, but didn’t fit that preschool narrative?
If you take a look at all the villain names in Marvel, most of them have “hell,” “kill,” and dark names that we can’t say in a preschool space. It became a fun and exciting challenge to figure out which characters we could use and how to bring them to a preschool level. When we were first brought on, we listed about 40 or 50 villains that we liked. What if we had this one? What about this one? We worked closely with our collaborators at Marvel and Disney Jr. to discuss which ones offered the most opportunities for fun and relatability for kids. What can we do with them? So Absorbing Man worked well because we wanted the playground bully vibe, which is very much his character. He possesses a unique power where, by touching something, his skin transforms into that thing. To us, that’s such a preschool relatable thing that kids could visually understand and be excited about. Swarm was a suggestion from our Marvel executive. It was a character we hadn’t really thought about, but as we started digging into it. Swarm likes bugs. Bugs are messy — kids like getting messy. Kids like messy bugs. It snowballed from there, and I could see that version of the character that we would create very quickly, and had a lot of fun with it. The character has been so fun to write. Vanessa Bayer’s voice acting has been phenomenal. She does this: Valley Girl Meets Wicked Witch Meets Maleficent. She’s always a little petty and annoyed. The fun thing about her character is that she just wants to make a mess. She loves mess, not just for herself, but for everybody else. Anytime the people in the city are trying to have a good day, she shows up with some cool new bug invention to cause chaos and drama.
Was there any villain in particular that you wanted to bring in, but it didn’t fit the audience?
If I’m being honest, Madame Masque was one that I was interested in just because there’s a cool visual to them. We talked about it a bit, but the character is an espionage/spy, so it doesn’t fit with our show. It’s a hard sell for little kids to understand because everything is so earnest with them. The duplicity element doesn’t always ring true. There were plenty of characters that I would have loved to have written in, like Hela, because I love the character so much. I mean, the name and the visual are so iconic. When you see that character, you know who that bad guy is. That would have been a really fun character to write and design, but it wouldn’t be the greatest for preschoolers. We would talk about it all the time in the writers’ room. If we could write any Marvel character for our show, who would it be? It’s a fun exercise. People often say ‘Wolverine,’ but how do we do it for preschool? Going back to the rounded off scissors, we’d have to round off his Adamantium claws because he couldn’t have super sharp claws. I think there’s a cute way to do a preschool Wolverine and have him call another kid “Bub.”
I’m not sure if this was intentional for the adults/parents watching, but I noticed from the first episode that Tony is quite sweet with the ladies. He compliments a girl’s shirt, “Nice unicorn shirt.” Are you adding little Easter eggs like that for the adults to notice? Have you left Easter Eggs for us?
Our main goal every day is to make the show fun, full of joy, wish fulfillment, and exciting for little kids. But, it’s also really important for me, the showrunner, and the team to make it feel like a co-viewing thing, where we know there are shows that parents put on for their kids, but also wanted so that the parents could sit down and have just as much fun as the kids would. There are also some intentional elements like that layered into the show. We looked at who Tony is as a character. One of the things that differentiates him from Spidey [in Marvel’s Spidey and His Amazing Friends] is that Spidey and friends still have their secret identities. Everybody knows who Iron Man/Tony Stark and his friends are. They get to be rock stars. Everybody knows what they do and that they save the city. There’s a little bit of “the coolest kids around” kind of vibe to them. Tony’s father is Howard Stark, who is an amazing inventor and titan of that industry. This kid has grown up being a minor celebrity for being a superhero and having a celebrity father. He possesses a confidence and likability that allows him to converse with ladies and anyone else. He does it with a smile and charm because that’s how he’s been raised. We layered in many moments. It’s hard because I tried to be careful because, in the later episodes, we started building things up there. We’ve got more characters coming that I can’t talk about yet. It’s all leading into these touchstone moments from the comic books and movies. We have an amazing episode written by one of our writers, Neyah Barbee. It’s our first visit to Wakanda.
You’ve also worked on Star Wars’ Young Jedi Adventures. How has it been to immerse yourself in both universes now?
I actually didn’t get into Star Wars until I was a little older, like 16. My family wasn’t really into Sci-Fi or fantasy stuff, so I had to discover all these things on my own. When I knew the prequels were coming out, I watched them to understand the story. I immersed myself in Star Wars and became a fan. I will never forget the first time I got to write a lightsaber battle, and the fun I had sending these two characters into a duel, fighting lightsabers. After I finished that sequence, my face hurt from smiling so much. Why does my face hurt? I was smiling the whole time. I’m a big music person. So, when I write, I listen to music of a certain genre or style to get me in that headspace. The whole time I was writing that scene, I was listening to the Duel of Fates, and that was giving me energy. The same for this show too! I’ve listened to music from the MCU, Iron Man, or Avengers while writing a big, fun action sequence. Let me draw inspiration from a scene in the movie that shares a similar vibe. Being able to write in these spaces and present to a younger audience is cool because the series will be a lot of kids’ first foray into these characters and worlds. It’s a lot of responsibility that we don’t take lightly. It’s also one that’s built with so much excitement and joy. Almost every day in our writers’ room, our showrunner would come in and say, “Do you know how lucky we are? We get to sit all day and talk about ‘what if Ultron sneaked into Wakanda and turned himself invisible?’ How would Black Panther and Iron Man deal with that? That’s the kind of stuff we’ve got to do every day. Lucasfilm and Marvel have the coolest toys in the toy box, and for them to let us play with them is probably one of the coolest things I’ve gotten to do.
With Star Wars’ Young Jedi Adventures, you were able to add your canon of characters. Do you have a similar freedom in this series?
The way things work with Marvel for the films and TV shows, everything has to originate in the comic books. If it’s a super-powered being, superhero, or supervillain, it all has to originate from the comic books. That’s something I love and respect because that’s the source material. They want everything to grow up organically from that space. The fun we had was creating the world of the characters around them – the locations and things like that. We got these amazing characters. We got to play with Iron Man by putting them in new situations and new worlds. We mixed and matched them when they’re together and how they work off each other. We have our first episode with Black Panther, who has these cool moments with Iron Hulk. He and Iron Hulk have these cool moves that they do together that I don’t think I’ve seen in the comics. I’ve definitely never seen them in the MCU before. That was something new we got to bring to the show.
What has been the best response you’ve received from the series?
The premiere was Monday, and the first 10 episodes dropped yesterday on Disney+. It’s been great. Everybody’s reactions have been overwhelmingly positive. Families seem to be liking it. Kids seem to be enjoying it. Yesterday, my cousin sent me a video of her 4-year-old son. He woke up yesterday morning and started watching the episodes. He asked his mom if he could have construction paper and cut out a little green circle, which he then taped to his chest. She asked him what he was doing, and he said, “I can hit it and become a superhero.” She asked him, ‘Who are you going to be today?’ He hit it and said, “I’m Amadeus.” That’s what I want. I want kids to feel excited [about the show]. We discussed diversity a little earlier, and it was important to me when we were creating the show that we represented diversity across all the superheroes. For me, that moment of seeing my Mexican cousin’s son play as a superhero and realizing he could be one in that moment is as exciting as all the hype and press and all that stuff. It’s just a really human moment of a little kid being inspired and excited that, to me, all the long days, hard hours, and late nights of script writing make it all worth it. There are so many other little kids out there who feel the exact same way.
It’s quite amazing to see the diversity, and also know you’re an executive producer of color who can do it. We need more in these positions to bring in more characters that look like us. For future episodes, who would you like to bring into this world?
There definitely are. I have to be careful because Marvel and Disney watch a lot of what we say. If I mention any characters I wanted, that might tip my hand to what I could or could not do. I will say we do have more characters coming up that I’m very excited about, and more characters that people will know. It’s been fun to make them preschool accessible because they are some big-name heroes – and maybe one new supervillain. We will eventually see new characters on all these shows. I couldn’t really say, but the short answer is yes – there are a lot of characters I would love to work with and expand upon, just like characters like Riri and Amadeus, who are lesser known, but just as cool as Iron Man. I would love to be able to introduce those characters to a new audience, especially a young one who will grow up thinking Amadeus and Riri are just as cool as Tony.
With this series stemming from the success of Marvel’s Spidey and His Amazing Friends. Can you imagine another Marvel-based preschool series that can stem from this?
If anybody ever asked me [to create a new preschool series], it would be Fantastic Four. It has always been my favorite Marvel property. I love them so much. I’m a huge fan of the new movie. The team that made the film really nailed the vibe and the family love of that group. It’s one of the things I love about them the most. Avengers are like co-workers. X-Men are a messy bunch of teenagers and adults, like a boarding school. Messy. The Fantastic Four are a family. What I love about Fantastic Four is that they never fight with each other. They bicker in that family way. You’re never going to see Ben attack Reed or something like that, which we’ve seen in the Avengers between Captain America and Tony Stark. With Fantastic Four, they’re family, and there’s something really fun about that space. There’s science and exploration. It’s a show for little kids that’s based on exploration and science. That would be really cool.
Marvel’s Iron Man and His Amazing Friends airs on Mondays at 8:30 am on Disney Jr., with the first 10 episodes now available on Disney+.
The interview has been condensed for length and brevity.
