Paper Girls' Jason Mantzoukas Dives Deep on Comics, Hüsker Dü, and Dunkin' Donuts

"F-ck the Moon."

ComicBook.com: Thank you so much for taking the time to chat. I have to get a few points of business out of the way, just to make us both feel better. So, we've got, "Hey Nongman."

Jason Mantzoukas: Oh, "Hey Nongman."

We've got, "Geostorm!"

Okay, "Geostorm." Good one, good call.

We've got, "F-ck the Moon."

That's a new one. "F-ck the Moon." I mean, I feel like that hasn't taken off enough.

Not enough for my liking.

I feel like that needs to be out there more. I feel like I want to exist in a world where, at any point during the night, I can open my window and hear people screaming, "F-ck the Moon" at the Moon.

Well actually, my throat's a little parched from screaming "Geostorm," so I'm just going to take a sip of this brown sugar cream cold brew from Dunkin' Donuts.

Thank God. Thank you, because if you were drinking anything other than Dunkin' Donuts, I'd have to stop the interview, just for legal reasons.

I grew up in Western Massachusetts, so when your commercial popped on, I was like, "Wait, is Jason talking about Dunkin' Donuts on my TV?"

Couldn't have been more excited. As a North Shore Boston resident, I couldn't have been more excited to get to do Dunkin' Donuts commercials. I mean, come on. Huge. Huge.

Next it'll be Cumberland Farms, then Friendly's.

Then White Hen Pantry and Kelly's Roast Beef.

Then just for the 495, just doing commercials promoting the 495. "It's out there, guys."

The Route 1 corridor.

I know you haven't been going back to theaters too much, have you seen the new Thor?

I haven't yet, no, and you're absolutely right. Normally I would've been there opening weekend, but I have not. I haven't seen a movie. The only movies I've seen have been at the drive-in out here in California, so I have not yet gone to a theater, which is really crazy because normally I go to see a movie once a week, once every two weeks. That's such a regular part of my just ordinary life, so to have now spent the last two and a half years not going to movie theaters is not only disheartening, but it's depressing. When I do see Thor, it will be probably with some friends in someone's backyard or something, I will miss out on the experience of ... I'm heartbroken that when I saw [Spider-Man:] No Way Home, I wasn't in a crowded theater. It was a bummer.

Well, the moment Batman shows up in Thor, the audience went bananas.

It's going to be nuts.

"I felt like it was too weird that I was playing punk music."

All these things that are now dominating pop culture were at one point the nerdy things, they were not the cool things. Do you remember back when you were growing up, when it was that you took an interest in something that you realized not everyone was invested in, a comic book or Star Wars or whatever? What was the thing that first tipped you off to, "Oh, this is not what the cool kids love,"?

I have an example, but it's not an inherently nerdy answer, you know what I mean? When I was growing up, the movies that were popular amongst my peer group were Back to the Future, these were the movies that we watched. Raiders of the Lost Ark, Star Wars, and those were popular amongst our friend group. They weren't necessarily seen as fringe or nerdy things. Star Wars was ubiquitous, it was generationally impactful. But when I got into being a teen, the age actually that the girls in Paper Girls are, 12, 13 years old, is when I started to get a taste in music that was not popular music. What was popular music at the time was Top 40 radio or classic rock.

I started listening to Hüsker Dü and The Replacements and a lot of what, at the time, were college rock bands or indie rock bands, stuff that wouldn't yet cross over into being popular for another bunch of years. I remember playing a Hüsker Dü tape for a guy I knew from school who was a new friend, somebody that I was like, "Maybe we're going to be friends." He was cooler than I was and was more in the popular crowd. We were hanging out and I played this tape and he was like, "What is this?" And he was like, "I hate it." He was so negative about the tape I played, and then we never were friends as much. I felt like it was too weird that I was playing punk music or something, I don't know. That's the only time I remember it, that's not inherently nerd culture though, but it is something like that.

Well, and I guess that actually leads to another great point and a question that I had is that, from listening to you on podcasts, I know that you have an eclectic taste in all things. I hear you a lot more on entertainment-related podcasts, but I know you have a vast passion for music and you used to be in a marching band, correct?

Yeah. I played in marching band in high school and orchestra, and I also played in bands, punk bands. I played in regular cover bands and jazz band, all that stuff.

Knowing your passion for music and movies and comics, is there a thing that you feel the nerdiest about? When it comes up, you can't stop yourself from giving people more information than they might be asking for?

Well, so I think what you're speaking to is conceptually something that I feel very close to, which is fandom. There are things that I am just unabashedly a fan of, and so whether that is, if you wanted to sit down and talk about comics right now, I would love to talk to you about comics for the rest of the afternoon. I could do so thoughtfully, and passionately, and with the point of view being my own, as someone who grew up in the '80s and '90s specifically, what I was reading and what I read now as a result. But, if you also were like, "Oh, I'd love to talk to you about college and indie rock of that era," I could do that.

I could also talk about Joni Mitchell for the rest of the day. I could talk about podcasts, something relatively new in terms of its ascendancy in pop culture, but nonetheless something that is now so impactful and so woven into the fabric of pop culture in such a short period of time. I could talk about that.

Movies were my escape. I will say I think a lot of these things are a product of a very lonely, isolated childhood, and so the things that for me were a way to get out were music, the radio, comics, movies, and TV. These were my escapes and so I became obsessed with them. And, as a result, they are the things that I am the nerdiest about or the most passionate about. Just being a fan ... I'm in Paper Girls because I'm a fan. I read the book. Ali Wong is in Paper Girls because I'm a fan. I gave Ali Wong Paper Girls years before the TV show existed just as a friend, like, "I think you'd like these."

So, fandom is driving so much of what I like and what I like to talk about that it even gets me to a point where I get to be in the show that I was a fan of, which is nuts. I love that.

"Let the dog eat me, I don't care."

You talk about Paper Girls, getting to be involved in that, you're involved in Star Trek. Paper Girls didn't define your childhood, but you're getting to be a part of these pop culture-defining, established things. Do you remember what was the first thing that you got to be in that made you realize, "I am now a part of the thing I've loved for so long,"?

Good question. There's a couple of them, but I'm trying to think if there's any that go back a long way.

One of the first times it happened that I was so delighted by was John Wick 3, and it just simply was ... You said "Hey Nongman" earlier and "Geostorm," and these are all references to Comedy Bang! Bang! and How Did This Get Made?, the podcast that I host with Paul Scheer and June Diane Raphael, and there's such a fandom around that podcast. Inside of the podcast, we talk so much about being a fan of things. And so John Wick 3 comes about just because I talk so much about John Wick and my love for it on the podcast that they reached out and were like, "Hey, we heard you're a fan. We've got a small part, would you like to do it?" I was like, absolutely. And that was that, and I couldn't have been more excited.

They were so funny because they were like, "Hey, we just want to make sure you understand, it's a really small part," and I was like, "I don't care if I have no lines. Let the dog eat me, I don't care. I'm so excited to just be a part, to be adjacent to this thing that I love."

I'm trying to think, I still haven't yet gotten to be in a Marvel or Star Wars or the things that go back to my own childhood. None of that, but in terms of modern fandom, absolutely. Paper Girls and especially Invincible is another one. Getting to be Rex Splode on Invincible, a book that I read for 13 years, however long that was running. I read that book for over a decade and now I get to be in it? That's f-cking nuts.

Rancor Egg Salesman

You mentioned Star Wars and Marvel, that you haven't gotten to have an opportunity in one of those giant, mega-franchises, but is there one that you could retire if you got to be in? Is there one be all, end all?

Not necessarily, no. I would be absolutely so delighted to be in either of those universes. But, to be clear, there isn't an "I want to be blank" type of character or anything like that. I just think both of those are doing such good jobs right now in terms of building out the world. I grew up with the original Star Wars trilogy: [Episodes IV, V, and VI] only. I was an adult, I was in my 30s by the time the prequels came around or just about in my 30s, I can't remember exactly what year it comes out. So my entire childhood was spent with only those three movies, so to exist in a world now where we have [Star Wars:] The Clone Wars animated series, [Star Wars] Rebels, which is maybe the best Star Wars storytelling, bar none.

The Mandalorian, the Obi-Wan series. The [Dave] Filoni-verse of stuff is so compelling and so rich. Boy, would I love to be inside of it somehow, if they felt like it made sense. But I don't want to be in it just to be in it, and I don't want to be in it just to be like, "Hey, I'm selling the rancor eggs over here. Here you go. Goodbye." No. I would want to do a thing because, again, because I'm a fan. I want to be inside of that.

And the same with Marvel. I think they've done such a good job, both theatrically in features and also with the TV stuff. We're talking now on the night that Ms. Marvel will have its Season 1 finale and what an incredible show, what an absolutely fantastic show. I love it. I love what they're doing and I would be thrilled to be a part of any of it, but I'm also just delighted to be sitting in my house and having them deliver it to me every week. I feel very lucky right now that we're in a time when I get to have Obi-Wan, and Ms. Marvel, and all these things, and The Boys, and all of this concurrently? Come on, forget about it.

Well, the nerd part of me can't help but think, "Oh, well he said rancor eggs. Do rancors have eggs, or do they give live birth?"

I shouldn't have said that. That's a spoiler.

And not wanting to weigh in on the facts to then have people come at me later and be like, "Nope, Jason was right. Rancors lay eggs." They're like platypi in that you might think they give live birth. No, they lay eggs.

No, no. They just produce eggs.

Committed to Grandfather

With Paper Girls, when you're reading it, you're not thinking, "I'm going to be involved in an adaptation of this," because you never know how this stuff is going to work. You never know that a book is going to turn into a TV series, but given how you are that much more closely connected in the industry and, like you said, you gave the books to Ali Wong, was there any part of you, not even thinking that you would be involved in Paper Girls, but as you were reading it, were you thinking, "I'd love to see this as a limited series or an ongoing series,"?

Here's what I'll say: I started reading Paper Girls when it came out and within the first couple of issues, I was like, "This could be a TV show." I told my agents, I said, "Will you see if Brian K. Vaughan will talk to me? I would be interested in adapting this or helping adapt this. Is there any way?" Not talking about me being Grandfather, that had nothing to do with it. It was just, I love this, I think this could be something that could work just on a serialized storytelling way.

Maybe Brian can speak to this better, but I think this is maybe when he was like, "I'm not doing anything. I'm not adapting Saga, I'm not doing Paper Girls. I'm not doing any TV adaptations anymore." Because this was years and years and years ago. So, I got a "not interested" back and just let it go. Then it wasn't until years later when they were starting to put it together that I, again, I reached out to my agents. I sent them a picture of a panel of Grandfather, long gray hair, long gray beard next to a picture of myself, mid-pandemic. Long gray hair, long gray beard. I was like, "Will you just see if they're even interested in talking to me about this? Because I would love to do this character." Luckily, they were like, "Yeah, we'd love to talk to you about it." So I was very pleased that it came back around in that way, but also it took, I very much solicited their attention. I wanted this part.

You say you take a picture of a side-by-side comparison, how much of it was, that's just a proof of concept, let me just show them that this can be realized with actors and this can be taken off the page versus your passion for Grandfather and wanting to be the one to tell that character's story?

Well, I think it's a little bit of both. It's both in terms of, "Hey, Jason Mantzoukas..." I don't know what my agent said to them, but some version of, "Hey, he's asked us to inquire, he loves these stories." I think they already knew, I think because Ali might already have signed on and I think she had told them that I'd given her the books, I think, because then I talked to them and they already had known that. I think it was simultaneously. The pictures were just to show, "Hey, currently I look like this picture," just because this pandemic and I've not cut my hair or beard. I happen to look a lot more like this character than even normally I do. Then also to communicate, I had my agents communicate to them, my genuine enthusiasm and passion for the source material. Then when I talked to the showrunner and when I talked to everybody, that's really what we talked about was the source material.

"The chaos is true chaos."

And throughout your career, you've had so many incredible roles, most of them I would say are funny. That would be a word that I might use to describe your performances. Grandfather, we get to see a little bit different side of you, a little bit more abjectly villainous, or having nefarious motivations. What was that like for you? Was it an interesting change of pace? Did you easily just immerse yourself in this world?

It was really fun because I think that the facade of the character is not unlike a character that I might play, you know what I mean? Yes, Grandfather is the head of The Old Watch and everybody else in The Old Watch is like a military organization. They're dressed in uniforms, they carry laser rifles, or guns, or pistols. They're from the future. They speak in a Patois, there is something to all of the future people that Grandfather doesn't participate in. He's shaggy, he's wearing a t-shirt and shorts and Birkenstocks. So there was something presentational about it that felt like a character I might play ordinarily, and a charm and a humor that is disarming. But then underneath it, this true thread of malice and destruction, this threat that he represents to the kids. Or to everybody, but especially to the Paper Girls themselves, and Nate Corddry, and so many of the other players.

But I think that, for me, it was really finding the turn for being charming and engaging, and I'm talking about this thing, to then focusing in and being scary, and that was super fun. It was super fun and really exciting both because I rarely get to exercise those muscles or play characters like that, but also because it was in the context of a story that I already know. I know even the larger scope and scale of it, and then just on a practical level, I'm acting opposite phenomenal actors. There were moments acting with the Paper Girls where I was almost taken out of the scene, just being like, "Whoa. These girls are great. Whoa. Oh, sh-t. It's my line." Almost taken aback, and so that made it even more fun because they were coming so hard at me, it made it even easier to go hard at them.

If they came spitting and yelling at me, to really do a take where I would just go so savagely hard at them. It was that dynamic, whether it was the Paper Girls, whether it was Adina [Porter] and myself, all those relationships were so fun to examine both how we could crack each other up or find common ground, but then also find those moments where it's genuinely scary. That was what I would always say to [Christopher C.] Rogers, the showrunner, and the various directors was, "I'm sure I'm being funny, but make sure that I'm not being funny such that it robs the scene of stakes, or threat, or scariness." I want to make sure that I'm landing that element of it, because that's so paramount to the larger story.

It also feels like some of the experience, if you took your character from The League, but just edited him in a slightly different way, Rafi could just be a villain. I'm sure it's a delight for the filmmakers to get to showcase that same malice that they've seen in you before, but orchestrate it in the context of the tone of the series.

Yeah, and I think there's certainly a chaotic nature that a lot of my characters share, but so many of them, the chaos is true chaos. It's just out there, and there's something very focused about Grandfather. One of the inspirations for me, maybe just because it happened right prior to shooting, and also because it was similarly structured, was Grandfather really doesn't arrive until the very end of Season 1. There isn't a really substantive Grandfather scene until very late in the season. And right before I went and shot, it was the Season 1 finale of Loki where Jonathan Majors, Kang arrives. Or [He Who Remains] or whatever it is, and that character arrival in the last episode was so impactful and so incredible.

He made a season's worth of impact in 35 minutes of screen time or something like that. I talked to the showrunner and folks there, I was like, "I want to make sure, because I only have these couple of scenes, I want them to land as much as possible. I really want people to come away from Season 1 being like, 'Oh, there's a real bad guy on the way. This guy's bad,' without being too mustache twirly or too, 'Ha ha ha, I'm going to get you girls,' villainy. I wanted it to be fun, like a roller coaster of, 'What is this?'" which I felt he just crushed in that Loki episode. And I was very inspired by that to be like, "Oh, you can do so much with just a little bit of time in one season."

Well, as I'm running out of time here, we brought it up earlier, you mentioned John Wick, how you love that franchise, how you would have gladly have gotten killed by a dog. With Chapter Four, do we get to see any more of Tick Tock Man being Tick Tock Man?

I have no idea what is going to happen with the Tick Tock Man, is all I'll say.

Great. That's going to be the headline I'm running with.

Please don't. Please don't run with that headline. No, if I had any John Wick information, I would love to tell you, but genuinely I don't have anything really to say about it in a way that is anything meaningful, in other words.

Weekly Pull List

Do you have a favorite comic series? When you get your comics for the week or whatever, however often you get them, do you read the thing you are most excited for first or do you save that for the end?

Ooh, good question. So, I read -- usually -- the thing that I'm most excited for, i.e. something that I'm reading issue to issue. I'm caught up and I'm ready for that next issue of Robert Kirkman and Chris Samnee's Firepower, or a Tom King/Mitch Gerads book. If it's a Mister Miracle or it's a Strange Adventures, or Tom King's Rorschach book, I'm going to read it. Hellboy, I'm going to read it. Every Hellboy. I've been reading Hellboy since it started and I'm all in. I read every BPRD book, I read Lord Baltimore. I read it all. If it's Hellboy related, I'm going to read it. And then there are other books that, there will be suddenly six of them that I haven't read and so I'll read all those in a chunk, which I also enjoy.

I will sometimes do that for books that are very heavily serialized, or books that don't come out regularly. Like if a book is coming out every month, I'll read it month to month. But if there's slowdowns, and three-month breaks and this and that ... I'm going to let like Rick Remender's Low, there was such sporadic issues and it's such a beautiful story and an absolutely gorgeous book. I would just let them pile up so I could read them. I got the issues, but because they were coming out so irregularly, I would wait and read them like that. I'm trying to think. Anything Mark Russell's writing right now, I'm going to read immediately. There's just so much good stuff that I'm going to jump on it if it feels like I'm in the middle of that story, I think.

Dream Comic Projects

Is there an original idea or is there a character that you personally would want to write for?

You know, it's interesting. I'm trying to think. I wrote a Deadpool story in one of the Deadpool collections, which was fun because Deadpool's funny and you get to write jokes. My favorite characters growing up were X-Men and Spider-Man, so there's always going to be some part of me that's like, "Oh, I'd love to write something inside of those worlds," because they are what we were talking about before, that connects very much to my young fandom, buying a Spider-Man book off the spinner rack at the pharmacy while my mom's shopping. The idea that I maybe could then do a Spider-Man or write -- wow, would that be a wonderful life, full-circle thing.

But there's things now that I love, characters or worlds that I love that I'm often like ... Who wrote that Walking Dead story that's set in Spain? [Editor's note: The Walking Dead: The Alien was written by Brian K. Vaughan with art by Marcos Martín.] He let one person write "Elseworlds." Not an Elseworlds, but a parallel episode. I was like, "Oh, I'd love to do a that." I'd love to write a Walking Dead story that's in the world of The Walking Dead, but doesn't feature any of the people. It's just another story in the world of The Walking Dead, or something akin to that, these worlds that I like so much.

I will say I do feel very lucky, I am getting to play inside of one of the worlds, and not only one of the worlds that I've loved so much, Paper Girls, but inside of one of the worlds of ... I tried to years ago, maybe 12-13 years ago, I took a meeting when they were trying to develop Y: The Last Man into a series of movies. I tried just as a writer, I was like, "I love these stories. Can I do this?" But I was pitching it as a TV show, and this was years and years and years before they thought of doing it as a TV show.

So I've been inside of Brian K. Vaughn's stories for so long. Boy, wouldn't it be great to turn [Vaughan's] Private Eye into a series? Holy sh-t, there's so many things. There's so many things that I think Tyler Boss and Matthew Rosenberg's 4 Kids Walk Into a Bank, I think is an incredible story that I'd love to see done. There's so many, there's so many worlds, there's so much stuff that I just think is so compelling and so ready for adaptation in a way that I don't think would take away from or negatively impact the original stories as they existed in issues, or in as graphic novels, or anything like that. I just think these are stories that I just love. And Brian K. Vaughn, especially, but there's so many people out there. Jeff Lemire, I think there's people that are doing such incredible stuff, both storytelling-wise, and then you've got people like James Stokoe who are just doing stuff on an art level that I'm just blown away by.

For me, I feel like the comic-book medium begins and ends with Family Circus.

Oh, of course. Not me.

It doesn't get much better than that.

Sure.

It's succinct. It's just the art and the inks are so compelling, so maybe I'll touch base with you later. We'll loop Brian K. Vaughan in.

We get Cliff Chiang and Fiona Staples to do the Family Circus, the little map ones. You see the little lines of the footprints of where they go.

"Ms. Marvel is essentially Gilmore Girls in the Marvel universe."

Well, Jason, I really appreciate you taking the time to chat. I'm a fan of your work and --

I'll be honest with you, Patrick. My thing says five minutes left.

Again, I would probably talk to you all about Invincible, we haven't really touched upon. We haven't touched upon how good Punisher: War Zone is.

Oh, dude. I'll talk about any Punisher. Punisher: War Zone is amazing. All of the ones that what's his name draws. Oh, goddamn it. Who am I thinking of? He also drew Starlight, the Mark Millar book. Goran Parlov? And they also did a Nick Fury book that's amazing.

Oh, you wanted to talk about Punisher: War Zone the movie, didn't you?

Oh, yeah.

Oh, okay. That's it. Sorry, I thought we were talking about a comic series. Sorry. Forget it. Disregard. Oh, Punisher: War Zone the movie, wow. And also, one of the episodes of How Did This Get Made? that I'm not in, but that I love as a listener because I'm not in it.

It's Patton [Oswalt] and Lexi, right?

It's Patton, and Lexi Alexander, the director of Punisher: War Zone. It's such a good conversation, and it's one of the episodes I'm heartbroken to have missed, but as a fan, I love listening to it. It's great, it's terrific.

I do love how I think there is a tendency to have comics or sci-fi or whatever, have all that stuff become the most popular thing on the planet. I think there are some people who are from an old guard of like, "I liked it back when it wasn't cool." It's clear that your enthusiasm is along the lines of my enthusiasm of, "No, make it all. Get it all out there, make it even more popular," because we have been into these things for so long and they deserve to be the most popular thing out there. Paper Girls and Ms. Marvel, these things are going to change people's lives.

Oh, my God, on a level that is almost unimaginable in terms of representation inside of these kinds of stories. Exactly. Both of those shows you just referenced are massively impactful in ways that we can't even imagine. And so, it makes me so happy that these things, "nerdy things" or whatever you want to call it, are so popular because not only are we getting these big bombastic Thor and Doctor Strange 2, and the Tom Holland Spider-Man movies and so forth, these big multiverse giant event things, you can compare it to comics. Yes, we get these big events, but also such small-stakes storytelling is still present, as well. We're getting to have these big, noisy movies, but we're also getting to have the character development of Ms. Marvel. And listen, Ms. Marvel still has great action set pieces and great superhero storytelling, but one of the things that I find so much more satisfying inside of Ms. Marvel than I do in a lot of the other movies is the character storytelling, the relationships. Ms. Marvel is essentially Gilmore Girls in the Marvel universe.

It's three generations of women who are dealing with all of these issues and events in their lives, and you're watching it through all three of them, and that's really incredible. Four generations, if you count her great-grandmother. I love that, that's something that couldn't be done in a two-hour, three-hour movie. It can only be done over these long stretches and that's what I'm really loving about it.

I think that Paper Girls is a great example, we get to tell a humanist, wonderful, coming-of-age story for these young women inside of an epic time-travel, genre-bending story. But really it's so much about growing up and the themes are about growing up and taking responsibility, and going from childhood to young adulthood. Then the young adults getting to talk to their adult selves, and then those adults being in conflict with the Grandfather and the old people, the old timers. The Old Watch. They're literally called "The Old Watch." It's a wild, wonderful story about childhood and adulthood, and what it means to grow up, in this backdrop that includes dinosaurs.

Paper Girls premieres on Prime Video on July 29th. You can head to the official How Did This Get Made? website for upcoming tour dates.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity. You can contact Patrick Cavanaugh directly on Twitter.