AMA: Will the old characters ever come back?

Q: Do you have plans to reintroduce the absentee characters like Evil Atom, Dr Haynus, and Cap's parents?  Or are they gone for good?  Also, while you explained eliminating Haynus because he and Muskiday were a bit redundant having two mad scientists with freaky bodies, I remain curious why the decision to remove Evil Atom and replace him with the minor player of Dr Whoosh.

A. The short answer is — No, I don't have any immediate plans to re-introduce any more characters from the previous Evil Inc universe. (I can't promise that won't change as story needs arise down the road, of course.)

Dr. Haynus and Dr. Muskiday

The truth is: Most of the characters who didn't make the transition to the new storyline were subtracted for a reason.

Dr. Muskiday and Dr. Haynus (as you pointed out) were virtually the same character. And, truthfully... I was never able to really pull off the concept for Dr. Haynus that I had in mind. The idea was that the two brains — man and dog — would be in constant opposition. But when it came to delivering on that concept... I was hamstrung. Unless I gave the dog a "voice" of his own... like Snoopy, communicating through a thought bubble... I couldn't really communicate that.

Dr. Muskiday is — by far — a more intriguing character to me. His fly half and his human half are fully integrated. And — honestly — he fits much better into the situations. Dr. Haynus can't make amorous advances towards women without stumbling into some... weird... territory. Whereas, with Muskiday, this horror-faced runt actually considers himself a ladies' man. He's got a libido. And that's good writing material.

Cap’s parents

Commander Heroic, Cap's dad, made a brief appearance back in 2016, but Cap's mother has not, as of yet, made an appearance...

...and that's for much the same reason. Cap's mom and dad both played virtually identical roles in the storytelling. I haven't made a firm decision on whether Cap's mom will make a return to the central narrative. Truthfully, the role of Cap's mentor is usually filled by Wingman.

Evil Atom

Evil Atom's problem was that he was too competent. He didn't make for very good comedy. However, when I wrote these strips — back in April 2015 — I knew that someday I wanted one of those guys to run the company...

When The Golden Girls (one of the best-written sitcoms on TV... fight me) was airing, the writers explained the character of Sophia (played by Estelle Getty) had suffered a series of strokes that had destroyed her "filter." In other words, she would simply say whatever came to her mind. And that made her a killing machine when it came to jokes. And since this vicious stuff was being deal out by a sweet, old lady, it just took it to a whole new level.

I wanted to try to write a character like that — one that walked the line between dementia and wisdom. And Dr. Whoosh was a much better candidate for that than Evil Atom was. After all... could you see Evil Atom doing this...?

At this point, I've only really scratched the surface of what I want to do with Dr. Whoosh. I have a picture in my mind of what I want him to be, and I need to devote some pages to getting him there.

The reboot

As I've said before, the central reason for doing the reboot was to correct some narrative fumbles I made when I launched this comic as a daily comic strip back in 2005. It was a mistake to present Miss Match and Captain Heroic in a settled relationship. Many of the characters performed redundant roles. Evil Inc as a setting was too big and sprawling.

The reboot in 2016 was an attempt to correct some of that. And I think, for the most part, it has been a success. So, to bring back aspects of that now would be to re-introduce things that I identified as problems. I'm not saying it will never happen. But if a character from that era ever does show up, it's going to be under very special circumstances — and after a considerable amount of thought.