Last week, Crackle launched its newest Web Series Original, Issues.
The premise: Dr. Ted, a psychologist played by Josh Cooke 
(of Better With You and the upcoming season of Dexter), delves into the twisted psyche of a different 2-dimensional superhero each 4-minute episode.
Why it works: The acting is there, as is the production quality, and the characters are quirky and interesting (not to mention the voice-over cameos are fun).
Why it needs to be on TV: while I love to tout the Web as an entertainment hub in and of itself, certain shows just need to be more. This show has a lot of potential, but throughout the course of the seven episodes I watched, that’s all I could think about. It’s hard to get the most out of a series when it’s presented as a series of vignettes, especially when the characters are strong enough to warrant more.
Take a look for yourself. I dare you to disagree:
In my opinion, creators Matt Oates and Josh Cooke came up with a really cool idea, but it deserves more. So I caught up with Oates, Cooke, and storyboard artist Garrett Vander Leun at Comic Con last weekend to ask if they might get it. Here’s what they had to say:
So, for some background, where did this ‘superheroes with major psychological issues’ concept come from?
Matt Oates: In college, I took a psychology class, and as [the professor] spoke one day about how child therapists use comic book characters to explain things like bi-polarity to children and, you know – like Superman has abandonment and alienation issues -
Josh Cooke: Superman has alienation issues? I never thought of that.
Oates: Yeah! So I wrote it down. And year later I spoke with Josh and he kinda liked the idea.
Cooke: Yeah, and the concept grew into a, “what would it be like to be a normal guy – like if you’re a normal guy living in a place like Gotham City, what a nightmare that would be. So, a grander scope of the show that we would like to maybe eventually do, is based on Dr. Ted’s life with these characters sort of being supporting roles in his life. But for the purpose of this Web show, we have to give these little snippets, you know, just to give the sense of who all the characters are and their issues.
Oates: And that larger world will actually be explored. We’re doing a comic book version of Issues that Crackle will actually be coming out with a teaser for next month (August).
[and, there's our answer...]
Are you trying to take it even further, onto TV, eventually, and follow in the footsteps of Web-to-TV successes like Web Therapy or Children’s Hospital?
Cooke: I think TV is the end goal, yeah. Matt championed the idea of using Issues as a Web series, because we pitched it around for six months and could tell people couldn’t get the concept without seeing it. Even some of our actors didn’t get it until they saw it for the first time. It’s just a concept you have to show, you can’t describe.
Oates: That, or we’re really terrible at pitching!
So, when it does turn into something bigger, whether in the comic book or a possible TV series, will the characters all interact with each other?
[I was dying to ask this question, because that was the one thing I wanted most out of the Web episodes.]
Cooke: Oh yes!
[And, I'm on board.]
Cooke: That’s something we’ve always wanted to do.
Oates: Yeah, we wanted to have our last episode be an intervention where all the characters gather around The Nothing, but it just wasn’t in our budget to do that.
What made that idea so expensive?
Oates: Well, we were working with a quality animation house.
Cooke: Titmouse was amazing to work with, by the way.
Oates: Yeah, and we were also working, of course, as you know, with Sony at Crackle, so we had a union crew…
Ahh, I see… so then, speaking of quality animation, my last question is: did you ever think about addressing the fact that these superheroes are 2D?
Cooke: [laughs] No, not really. There’s no mention that they’re 2D, and I think we really liked using that as a way to distinguish between who is normal and who’s a superhero. It’s just accepted in that world.
Oates: I’ve always thought of it as something that had to be animated, and just couldn’t imagine it being as good if we just dressed our actors up in spandex. I think doing that would just come across as cheap, but introducing these 2D characters creates a cool juxtaposition. We loved the idea that someone could have that kind of presence.
So, it looks like this Web series is exactly what it feels like: a pitch. And while that might not sit so well with the Web community looking to develop an experience exclusive to the Web, I don’t see it as a bad thing. In fact, to the contrary – I think it’s great! I think it’s great that the Web can be utilized as a place to pitch ideas that just work better when they’re shown to you. And I love the idea that you can create something that gets people into it just enough to ask for more. The entertainment industry doesn’t incite that enough these days: maybe it’s time to bring it back.
