Jeph Loeb & Jeffrey Bell – Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.

By starrymag | August 3, 2016

By: Melissa Kralik

 

Q) When do you plan to mash all the Marvel series shows with Shield?

 

Jeph Loeb: Is that your clever way of asking whether or not #It’sAllConnected?

 

Jeffrey Bell: Or hashtag Daredevil drops in on Agent Coulson?

 

Jeph Loeb: Here’s what we know, it is all connected. We’ve obviously seen connections through storylines. What’s important right now is that some of the younger shows need to get their feet and need to get people to understand who those characters are. Anything is possible.

 

Q) A lot of people were expressing concerns about the shift to 10pm. Should fans be concerned about that?

 

Jeph Loeb: That would be bad for all the shows that have been on the air at 10pm for like twenty seasons.

 

Jeffrey Bell: When my daughter was growing up at 8 o’clock a lot of kids could watch it live. At 9 o’clock a lot of families went, ” Oh, it’s too late.” 10 o’clock allows people to tell stories a little bit differently and focus on our audiences a bit differently. We’re really appreciating that much more. A lot of the WB shows are 8 o’clock shows and are targeting a younger audience. So going to 9 had a little bit more grown up stuff and yet still had some family themed stuff, still not inappropriate, but I think at 10 o’clock we could push that a little. If it was Saturday’s at 10 then I would be worried.

 

Q) How much will the story arcs in Season Four draw from the comic books? 

 

Jeph Loeb: We always use the comics as inspiration. The feeling in general for all the Marvel television shows, particularly for Shield, I don’t think Jeff and Jed and Maurissa get enough credit for the fact that Shield was something that was entirely new. The concept of Shield was not, but it was built around the idea Phil Coulson who was a character created for Iron Man, not for the publishing division and then the other five characters who were part of the team were all brand new characters.

 

What’s wonderful about it is that those characters are now filtered into the publishing division and so, they’re now in comics. It’s one of those strange things where television breed comic book characters. But certainly in terms of tone, attitude, and overall storytelling we’re very excited. I mean one of the things that we announced today is that Ghost Rider is going to be blazing into Marvel’s Agents Of S.H.I.E.L.D. And that would not have happened had Ghost Rider not only been published for the last thirty years as part of the comic books but also has been recently reinvented in the character Robbie Reyes and so that’s an inspiration from where we’re going. He also has a really cool car.

 

Jeffrey Bell: I would also say, the way we’ve drawn so far because people like to see characters from the Marvel universe and so joining the Secret Warriors and Inhuman characters, those are the characters that people will know, recognize and be excited about and then we find ways to put them into our stories. So if we could find a great antagonist or a great character, like Hive last season as an Inhuman or the fact that we knew Skye was Daisy, we knew we could use that from Secret Warriors.  Hellfire from last season joining those Inhuman characters was something for us to lean on without going to an Inhuman city on the dark side of the moon. So we can do certain aspects of that.

 

Jeph Loeb: And then also, we’ve always believed is there’s no point in taking a story directly from the comics and just making it all live action. You already know the end to that story. It’s disrespectful to the original material and it’s kind of a waste of time on the television side.

 

Jeffrey Bell: I’d like to do that if it would be easier.

 

 

Jeph Loeb: (laughs) Yes, the writers would have a much easier time.

 

Q) With the Inhumans, Secret Warriors,and Ghost Rider coming in, what does that mean for the next season? What is the focus going to be?

 

Jeffrey Bell: Without getting too far ahead of myself, the way it makes sense to us was that Ghost Rider is a vengeance theme. Last year, there was a fair amount of vengeance happening: Daisy was going out doing her stuff, Coulson was doing vengeance with Ward so a lot of attitudes were explored. At the end of the last season we kind of saw Daisy split off and go on her own. So to us it seemed like thematic stuff that could play in from the comic book. Robbie has a brother, Gabe. Family stuff is always at the center of Shield, relationships, like how Coulson treats Daisy and all those family relationships. So it felt though the supernatural aspect is different, theme wise it felt like it fit very well.

 

Jeph Loeb: But I’d also go to the place which is where we were originally started Shield as this was an entity which looked after and explored the strange, the odd, the bizarre and determined whether or not those things were dangerous and then had to figure out where we were going to go with that. This to me felt like a very obvious place to go in the sense of, ”Okay here is something that is strange, new, odd and weird, so shouldn’t’ Shield be checking it out?”.

 

Q) What’s the biggest plan for Ghost Rider? Is he going to be in just a couple of episodes?

 

Jeph Loeb: I think what you should do is on September 20th on ABC at 10 o’clock watch the premiere episode.