Dean Lorey Breaks Down the Wild Success of Harley Quinn and Kite Man: Hell Yeah!

The prolific DC producer talks his animated projects.

By Jenna Anderson - September 20, 2024 06:04 pm EDT

For several years now, DC's Harley Quinn animated series has been providing viewers with a one-of-a-kind take on the franchise's mythos. Created by Patrick Schumacker, Justin Halpern, and Dean Lorey, the series has navigated multiple streaming services to become a bonafide fan-favorite. The franchise's first spinoff series, Kite Man: Hell Yeah!, even premiered its debut season earlier this summer.

Lorey recently sat down with ComicBook to discuss the wackiest parts of showrunning Kite Man's first season, the future of the "Harleyverse", his involvement with James Gunn's forthcoming Creature Commandos animated series, and more.

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ComicBook: As a DC fan, I've really loved seeing the continued success of the Harley universe. How does it feel, from a creative perspective, to now be at the point where the show has tie-in comics, a spinoff, and all of this love from fans?

Dean Lorey: We love where we're at right now with what we've been calling the "Harleyverse." It's very exciting to have multiple projects coming out that we've been working on. I mean, Kite Man was a major step for us, to be able to bring that out. I know that a lot of people were kind of wondering why we would pick Kite Man as the first character to come out with, because there are a lot of characters. And we talked about many things, but we thought he was sort of a fun, easy person to start with. Plus, he has a giant potential redemption arc for himself. And so we thought we would do that. We have a lot of other ones that we're really hoping to bring out, things that are pretty deep in development. We really want to build the universe out, and we've gotten a lot of support from James Gunn and Peter Safran, and Warner Brothers Animation is really behind it. So we're really looking forward to building out this world.

Can you tease anything at all about the things that are in development?

I wish I could. In fact, I'm desperate to. But I can't. I'm hoping to have some news relatively soon on at least one of them. Believe me, nobody wants to talk about it more than me.

I've spoken to Justin and Patrick about Harley versus Kite Man, and how they really gave you the creative reins this time around. What was it like to take that step in the creative partnership that you guys have had across all the shows you've worked on?

Well, we created Harley together many years ago, and the three of us ran it in seasons one and two. Then I went off and did a show called Big Shot, and they were off doing their thing, so we weren't really in charge for three and four. And so I came on on five to run that season. And it was fun to do, because it was kind of odd. I've been part of the creation of the thing, and then I came back and sort of inherited a world that other people had been working on and all that, which was kind of interesting to do, actually. I really did enjoy that. We wanted to get back to basics a little bit on Harley season five, so we have a new environment for it, and a new villain that was more than a little teased at the end of Kite Man. So that was enormous fun, to be able to come back on.

And there's a lot of people that I've been working with, and people that I've wanted to bring up as showrunners. On Harley, I worked quite a bit with Katie Rich. I expect that she'll be running a show hopefully soon. And then with Kite Man, there's a guy named Chris Mars that worked with me. He was like my number two on the show, and if there's further seasons of Kite Man — and I wish there are — he'll likely run those. So it's been really fun to do that. It was kind of a lot to juggle for a little bit because, ultimately, I was doing Kite Man, Harley season five, and Creature Commandos at the same time. So it was kind of a lot, and that's why I really had to rely on good people around.

Cheers has been a huge touchstone for Kite Man, ever since it was announced as Noonan's. What do you think it is about anchoring it around a bar that is so inherently has so much potential in terms of storytelling?

Well, first of all, I'm a giant fan of the Hitman comic by Garth Ennis. In fact, some years back, I wrote a pilot for the Sci-Fi Network, hoping to get a Hitman show. I always had a real soft spot in my heart for Noonan's, just as a concept. We were looking for ways to distinguish Kite Man from Harley, and we decided that maybe what we'd do is just a spin on the multi-cam — even though we go way outside of what a multi-cam normally would do — but do a more character-driven group of dregs and villains and people that normally wouldn't be taken seriously by anybody. Whereas Harley and gang, a lot of them were sort of known, they're bigger villains and all of that. But in Kite Man, they tend to be the smaller ones, so that was one of the ways we distinguished. And we just really liked the idea of, like in Cheers, that it's a place for people to gather that don't have anywhere else to go. That was, fundamentally, what we wanted to do there.

When we talked before the series premiere, you couldn't really talk the spoilers of the Beast Mode arc. Now that we can, how important was it to tackle toxic masculinity in such a ridiculous way?

It was very important to us because, when we were designing Beast Mode, we knew that we wanted Kite Man's goal [and] overall arc for the season was to get a power, because that was the one thing he didn't have, and it made him feel lesser than everybody else. We wanted to give him a power, at least for a period of time, and we didn't know what it should be. We batted around a lot of ideas and finally we decided, 'Well, he's the nicest guy around. Everybody likes to be with him. He really is thoughtful and caring about other people. He's barely a villain, in a way. We should just make him the opposite of that.' And the opposite of that seemed to be a very toxic, male energy kind of dude. It took us a little while because, initially, he turned into that in the earlier scripts of it, and he was just a douche. But then we hit on the idea of: Kite Man doesn't want to be that. He got into this thing that he doesn't know how to get out of, and he's desperate for somebody to help him.

We love the idea about his humanity poking through Beast Mode, and that all he really wants to do is go back to being the person that he used to be. Beast Mode seemed like a great expression of the opposite of Kite Man. And it was fun for us to see that side of Kite Man, and also to make fun of all the bullies and people who used to give us all kind of grief in high school. So we spent a lot of time just pitching out 'What are his powers?' His powers were just, basically, anything that makes him an asshole. And so, we had a lot of fun doing that.

Another spoilery arc I have to ask about, of course, is the time-traveling toilet. How did that pitch kind of come about? Was there any sort of pushback or back and forth in bringing that to life?

There wasn't really any pushback. We decided that it would be really fun to place Bane in the 80s. I don't know why. We just sort of thought like that might be a nice decade to see Bane in. I grew up in the 80s and it seemed like everything that was dangerous and sort of naughty that Bane would really get into, like candy cigarettes were one. That's when they put asbestos into homes, and stuff like that. And then we were trying to figure out, 'Okay, if we're going to do a time travel thing, how do we get them there?' And I don't remember who came up with it, but we sort of thought, 'Let's not like have it be another villain with a power or a cosmic device or anything like that. Like, let's just be in a normal object.'

And then, we spent a lot of time coming up with the rules of how the portal potty works. What do you have to do to go back in time? That turned out to be a number two and a flush. I'm not even sure we ever specified this, but then returning back to the present involved, I think, peeing and then a flush. There's a lot more to it that we haven't really explored yet, but we built out a lot of the rules of the portal potty.

Now that the entire season of Kite Man is out into the world, what would you say you're the most proudest of?

First of all, I think the romance between Golden Glider and Kite Man, I think we did a really good job of making it distinct from the Poison Ivy relationship that he had in Harley. We always sort of felt like that relationship was built on the idea that Ivy is just way out of Kite Man's league. There's no real reason in the world for her to date him. Originally, it was in episode two, the Bar Mitzvah episode of Harley season one, that we introduced him. We just needed like the worst D-list villain to be hitting on Ivy to show 'This is what she has to put up with, guys like this.' And then, we kind of fell in love with the character. So for Kite Man, we were looking for a relationship where you'd feel like 'We like these two together. We'd like to see them happy, and we'd like to see it move forward.' I think we did a pretty good job of building that relationship, giving them problems and all of that, but making you care about them in a way that was different from Kite Man and Ivy.

The other thing that I was really happy with it was the resolve of Kite Man's dilemma. We had started with a problem we didn't have an answer to. We always knew we wanted to have Kite Man, for some reason, face off with Darkseid over the Anti-Life Equation. But then the question was, how could Kite Man defeat Darkseid? We've already established he can't really do anything. What would that look like, and what would be satisfying? And then, somewhere in there, we started thinking about, 'Maybe it's just his basic decency.' What allows him to win is that he's the only one who can control the Anti-Life Equation, at least for a small amount of time, before letting it consume him, because he doesn't have much ego to have his will bent. The way that that resolved, I was very happy with. I like that it came from a good place for him, and I was particularly happy with Exorcist rules. So I love it.

I have seen a lot of love for Powerless on social media lately. People are really arguing that the show was before its time, and really highlighting parts of it. I know it didn't really get its due while it was on air, but how do you feel about the legacy of it, all of these years after the fact?

I mean, I really enjoyed making it with those guys. It was a little tough at the beginning, because we had this show that was, fundamentally, a superhero show. The one mandate that we had was that we had to go really, really light on the superhero stuff, and we were kind of like, 'Well then, why did you ask us to do this?' And then there got to be a point, a few episodes in, where it became clear the network was no longer really interested in it. They sort of backed off and let us do more what we wanted to do from the start, and I think that those episodes became more, more fun. And we were able to bring people onto that show that we later used heavily in Harley Quinn. Ron Funches was a lead on the show. Alan Tudyk, he played several roles for us. Natalie Morales was on it, we had her on the show. Matt Oberg was in it for an episode, and we always knew we wanted to use him. So it was fun in that way. I miss the show. I like working with all those people. It's fun to work in live action. Most of my career has been live action, the animated stuff is relatively new, but Justin, Pat, and I really have loved working there.

I have to ask about Creature Commandos. What has that creative process been like, versus your work on the Harleyverse?

It was great, and it was really different in the sense that James Gunn had written all of the scripts before we started shooting. Usually, I'm one of the writers on a show, even if I'm running it. But James had fully written [it]. They were great scripts. Everybody was really, really excited about them. So the process went into production quicker than normal, because there were scripts that were ready to go. And we were really lucky to get voice cast that [we have]. I think the Harley voice cast is great, and Kite Man, and I think the Creature Commandos voice cast is easily the equal of those. It just was a pure pleasure to be working with James, who had such a very clear vision of what he wanted the show to be. He really knows that world backwards and forwards. So just in terms of like making the show, it's been a pleasure, and everybody has been great to work with. I think it's going to be a significant release. I don't know if people really know what they're in for yet, but it's fantastic. We're so proud of it.

For you, personally, which character on Creature Commandos are you most excited for people to meet?

God, I love them all. I really do love them all. But in a way, my heart is with G.I. Robot. I just love him. He's played by Sean Gunn, and I was really curious when Sean came in to record, because I didn't really have a take on what that would sound like, how robot-y would it be, and all of that. He brought such a beautiful humanity to it. He also played Weasel, another great character. Every one of those characters is heavily featured in different episodes, so you really get to fully know all those characters.

It's definitely an adult show. There's a real sweetness to it, though, to many of the characters, as you get into their stories.

At this point, you've probably done years of interviews about the Harleyverse and about working in DC. What's one thing that you've always wanted people to ask you that you haven't been asked yet?

Oh, wow. If the question was 'What's the best thing that ever happened to you in making the show?' Probably the best thing that ever happened to us was that nobody was really paying close attention to it while we were making it. It was just this animated thing that I'm not sure anybody had any real expectations for. It was going to be going on DC Universe, which wasn't even a thing at the time, and wasn't a thing too long after it started. There were some people that were passionate about it at Warner Brothers Animation, but nobody was really paying attention, and because of that we really got to make the show that we wanted to make.

It wasn't until much later that, because it tested really highly, people started paying attention. And then they were like, 'What is this? What are you doing?' And I think there was a moment of panic because they had no idea that we were making a show as R rated as it is, but they left us [alone]. Had we gone through the usual development process, I don't know that we would have been able to end up with a show that was so purely what we wanted to do. And then, that's just informed the universe of it. You look at Kite Man, and you can feel it's very much in the same universe. And, hopefully there will be other ones to announce that people will be excited about.

Harley Quinn and Kite Man: Hell Yeah! are both streaming exclusively on Max.

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