Interview: Minor Threats Team Dives Into the Family Dynamics of THE BROOD (2025)

For the last two years, Dark Horse Comics has been delivering a brand-new comic book universe that shows a different side of superhero storytelling. The Minor Threats franchise has taken readers into a dangerous, experimental, and incredibly funny world that focuses less on the heroes and more on the underdogs.

Co-creators Patton Oswalt and Jordan Blum have been working with a number of talented writers and artists to expand their universe with spin-offs such as The Alternates and the currently ongoing Barfly. With Minor Threats next spin-off, The Brood, just weeks away, Oswalt and Blum, along with writer Heath Corson and artist Ian Culbard sat down to discuss their project and what fans can expect.

Minor Threats first debuted 2 years ago, and it’s blossomed into a full universe with multiple volumes and spin-offs. Talk a little bit about how this world came together and how it’s evolved since the first volume.

Patton Oswalt: If you want the elevator version of this, Jordan and I, have a deep love for comics, and we also have a very deep love for the C and D-level villains and heroes. We love that ideaof there's the elite that are doing the "I'm pushing Earth out of the way of a meteor" and then there's people, yeah, they have powers, but "I just want to use it to make my life a little better. I just want to make some friggin money." So it kind of started there and then because of people like Tim Seeley and now Heath Corson and Kyle Starks, that is now being expanded. It's very flattering that stuff that we wrote is inspiring other writers that we are a fan of to do really cool stuff.

Jordan Blum: And I think when we were looking to expand it, the only two parameters were like, Minor Threats is about the C and D, as Pat was saying, the C list, villains who we never really get to see, show us another perspective that we rarely get to see in superhero comics. And you know, something that's very character focused, and those are really the only two things that we look for. So obviously, you know, Sealy brought us the vertigo characters of the Minor Threats universe, and what it's like to be rebooted for mature audiences, and then rebooted back to be these kind of simple heroes. And that felt very unique, in the same way that that Heath's pitched The Brood, which was, you know, what is it like to be the child of a Lex Luthor and try to live up to those standards and be pulled into the company business?

Heath: I will just say that it was an incredible honor to get a chance to play in this sandbox with Jordan and Pat, and I think I speak for Ian and the entire Brood creative team, that these guys are so generous and so lovely with what they give you, and just saying, "Come play, come make stuff, come stand on the shoulders of what we've done.". And like Patton said, like, just deepen the mythology and make it different. And when I was like "Hey, I've got a crazy pitch, I'm gonna tell the Searcher's origin story. Is that cool?". And they were like "Yeah, why not?". So they were so amazing to get to just say I can cherry-pick this and the world that they had set up and the really detailed way that they tell the story, which shifts from character to character. The super dense storytelling in each page just opens it up. And it's a dream for me to be able to get to tell such a layered story about these really interesting characters from issue to issue,

Patton Oswalt: And again, I'm not trying to argue with Heath, but it's very reductive to say he came and played in our sandbox. He came and he expanded it. He added a jungle. Like, there's stuff that the sandbox looks different when he's done with it. The same way it looked different after Tim Seeley was done. We're inviting people in that are not afraid to go, "Oh, I'm going to pitch something that was never in any of your books. And it's going to change the books going forward.". And it's always so bold and so original that it's just you can never say no to it. And we're been very, very lucky with collaborators so far. It's just the latest to make the world that we're working in even more fun for us to work in when we continue the main story. It's insane. I love it.

Jordan Blum: Yeah, it's kind of like bring us the stories that would break Batman or Superman you can't tell elsewhere, that are really cool ways to investigate and play with superheroes.

That's actually a good segue to my next question, with Jordan talking about The Brood and the Lex Luthor aspect of it. I'm a huge DC fan, so I have to ask about the inspiration of your characters, the Continuum, the Alternates, these characters who really are, I don't want to say pastiches, but very, very similar figures to Justice League and others. When you're coming up with these characters, how does that work into what you're trying to do with Minor Threats and the overall universe?

Jordan Blum: I guess with characters like the Continuum, we needed a shorthand, because we're not telling the story of the Continuum, right? We're telling the story of the Minor Threats. So to get into the story quickly, you kind of recognize "Oh, that's a Green Lantern archetype." Like, we don't need to go into that guy's past. You kind of get who he is, because it's framing this other story we're telling because we're playing on your knowledge, in your history of reading Marvel and DC, for years, we wanted this world to feel lived in.

Patton Oswalt: Much like Heath, Kyle Starks went into the origin of our Green Lantern. And it was so insane and brilliant and not that different. If people forget how truly insane and psychedelic early Silver Age DC stories were, long before they ever had the idea of drugs or LSD or other dimensions. They went freaking nuts with that. And so the fact that he went as crazy with Sunburst as Heath went with the Searcher, it just captures that feeling, and it also captures what Jordan and I were trying to do. There was a Silver Age, and now we're moving into the dark and gritty age, and things are changing. And it's, it's fabulous.

Jordan Blum: Yeah, it's like a frame. You can use it to frame your story so that it's like we're twisting this kind of concept that these art types were familiar with. And I think it's a good place to start. So then you can diverge away from it.

When you look at the main Minor Threats book, we've seen this big narrative build around Frankie Follis and her daughter, while spin-offs, like Barfly, The Alternates, The Brood are all helping flesh out the rest of the world. It's been kind of like a back and forth. Like we get some of Frankie's story, and then it's "Oh, here's what the Alternates are up to. Here's what's going on with S***eater right now." Is this part of a grand plan, or is it more just doing what you feel is the most fun as it comes to you?

Joradn Blum: We want to allow creators to have the most freedom to tell their story the way they want to tell it. I think the idea of "You got to set this up for the crossover" just feels like it hinders this. These are big high-concept ideas, very character-driven stories. And any way we can kind of find connective tissue is fun, but it should never be like the directive to make the book,

Patton Oswalt: I mean, it links back to Jordan, and I's philosophy when we write these series We write each volume, we never try to write so that anything is left hanging like "Come back for this sequel.". But we want each thing to be its own, self-contained, leave it all there. I think you can tell when stuff is being written with the franchise in mind, because certain things are being held back. That, to me, is never satisfying. Make the most amazing story that you can and that is what will lead the people wanting to look at more in that world.

Let's dig into some of the spin-offs, particularly the ones you've got going on right now. I believe Barfly just had its third issue published, and I have to say, I think it's my favorite, just because of how gross and weird it is. I'm a huge fan of Kyle Starks because he wrote the Peacemaker book last year, which I just loved. But I also like how the main character, S***eater, appears in the background of, I think, the first issue of Minor Threats. Talk about the process of him getting a book.

Patton Oswalt: We have an artist, Scott Hepburn, who we're like "Fill in the details. This is a super villain bar, okay?". Like he drew that guy at the bar, and it sparked someone else's interest, and it became "Oh, there's a whole story right there." It's kind of interesting, when you read The Brood, because now we're in the upper echelons of Meteor Falls in Twilight City, it is a very sterile, stark, clean background. There's almost a lack of detail, because this is the rich. The rich can afford to have space and silence and nice art design. People that are struggling, you just kind of end up where you land. And that difference. I mean, we'll talk to the artist more about that, but that was such a brilliant stylistic choice. You realize immediately these are different worlds.

Jordan Blum: I think it just comes out like we talked to Ryan Brown, the artist on it and Kyle is like "How much do you want to match what you guys were like?". We don't. We want you to do what you like. We are so excited to see the Ryan Brown take on on Twilight City. You know, we're so excited to see what Kyle's planning to do, and his sense of humor woven into this and sense of tragedy and all that. Like, I think that's, to us, the fun thing. Like, we have no interest in trying to control and move all the chess pieces. We're fans of all these people who we're working with, we want to be able to read the comics too and be like, "Holy crap.". That was a great comment that I got to read from these people who I love their work. And that's kind of really how we build the universe is just as fans.

Heath Corson: I will say that in turning in material, there's no one more enthusiastic than Jordan and Pat when they get to see, they're like, "This is f***ing great. I love this issue of this art. Oh my god, I can't wait.". And so it's so much fun to get to turn stuff into them and just have them react to it.

Jordan Blum: That's being a comic fan, right? Like you have a million interpretations of Batman and how to do Batman. And I want to see that artist take on Batman, or that one, right? And I think it's the same way in our universe, where it's like, I don't want someone to kind of like, pick up where we left off. We're trying to create these corners for people to just play.

Patton, you kind of touched on this a little bit, talking about the disparity between the upper echelon of Twilight City and the lower classes. This does kind of veer into more of a DC thing, with them doing more fictional cities, like Gotham or Metropolis, Central City. Talk a little bit about building a new city environment. Because you could have easily just made it so it feels just like Gotham or Metropolis. Talk about building up a fully fleshed-out world with a history.

Patton Oswalt: Well, realistic cities have their highs and lows. You know, that's the one thing about Gotham and Metropolis is they kind of split that, whereas I think most of these have that in the same thing. What we really wanted, and this, Jordan said it so well, is a city that's had 60 years of comic book continuity inflicted upon it already. It's all in the background. So we want anyone coming into it to feel like they're in the city for the first time, and they are discovering it, along with, you know, in their own real time, as other characters around them who clearly live there their whole lives and know the city, but they are, they are visiting for the first time, and they're getting that thrill.

Jordan Blum: And Ian, you've got to design a whole city. Do you want to speak about that?

Ian Culberd: Coming to it, you were talking about different artists, different takes and stuff, I think my first question was "Why me?". Because I've not done a superhero book before, and I'm not doing a superhero book, we're doing a super villain book. But I think it was when we sort of sat down to do this, that's another good point that was raised earlier, was about the fact that we don't have the hang up of because we have the Searcher appear in ours, and we don't have to ask what they were doing or if they're going to be used somewhere else, in some other thing that can we borrow this, you can just use it because it's there. There's a ton of history to draw on and to sort of transplant that to a new location, kind of assuming all that stuff is still running. One of my favorite things is world building. And so that's sort of make it from there and just add in little things, like "Oh yeah this is always like this, because they have this system here." And, you know, there's a lot of conversations with Heath just going over how we can make this place feel like you could live there, and that's that sort of deal to it. But also creating the city as well. I mean, it's called the Punch Bowl. We talked about the neighborhoods and what they're actually called. We talked about mapping it so that we kind of knew very roughly mapping it, so we kind of knew where things were in relation to other things.

Heath Corson: I mean, Ian says roughly, but he sent me a full rundown the entire city, because the city is literally built in an impact crater from a meteor that hit in like, the late 1800s so that's why the city's called Meteor Falls. And so then we would build out the neighborhoods around and we would talk about, like the middle is called the Punch Bowl, and then this is called the Crater Rim, and that's where the really wealthy people live, and this is the Copper Coast, because it exposed this line of copper, and we went way deep into all of this stuff. And he sent me a full map of the entire place. And I was like "This is insane, and I love it so much.".

Ian Culberd: It was a lot of fun to do, but it's also just not doing this. The other thing that was spoken to earlier was about that we just get to do it in our own way. And so I really appreciate that, because you know, not having to do it like what I kind of imagine superhero comics is like. Rather, it's more like, this isn't ready to in my head. It's not a superhero comic or super villain comic. It's a family comic. So it's about family dynamics. So that's something that comes up often in the conversation, just in small things and being able to feed that back. And we had a long conversation about family right at the beginning, and we talked about the way people annoy each other in families. So we could just build all that in into the thing as we go. But, yeah, it's good, and it's really, I love all the little factions that pop up in it. There's tons of that kind of stuff in it, it's good fun. It's really good fun.

Heath Corson: We wanted to pick up where Jordan and Patton had given us this sort of lived-in feeling. So we're not stopping and like, explaining this and this. We're just going, like, yeah "These guys know each other. They've known each other for 30 years." .Like,we're running, just keep up.

Ian Culberd: And I guess the readers do have a kind of shorthand, but there's a meta understanding of what superheroes are. Now, you know, you don't need to go into that. So you get to tell the story from a slightly different perspective. In that case, yeah, it's good fun.

What I liked with The Brood is that you've had the Searcher pop up in pretty much every book, but now we actually get to see more of her life. Particularly through this relationship she has with her Lex Luthor, Napoleon Archimedes. And what I like is that you could have just done straightforward Lex Luthor. But it's Lex with kids. Heath, I definitely want to hear more about what you were thinking with Napoleon.

Heath Corson: The elevator pitch for The Brood was when I was watching The Royal Tenenbaums, and it sort of occurred to me that this is the continuing story of Gene Hackman's Lex Luthor, who married Miss Tessmacher and had kids. And I was like "Put them in the family business." So I started, and I'm the oldest of four, so I have a lot of sibling drama in my life. My father was a very weird, emotionally distant man, and I s*** you not, we did not know what he did when we were growing up. He would go on business trips, and then he would come back, and we would "What do you do?" and he's like "I was working.". So there was a lot to draw from, and a lot of personal stuff in here, as well as Ian would tell you, too, he's a member of a big family with a lot of siblings. So we wanted to mine the idea of what is it like in this sort of Royal Tenenbaums meet Succession world with this very powerful, domineering man who still comes home and wants to interact with his family, but it's like "Don't roughhouse with daddy, the Searcher took out his cornea and fractured his shoulder.". And it's like, what would that be like and what is the day that you realize like "Oh, my dad's the most powerful super villain on the planet.". How does that feel? And what's great is all three of them had very different reactions, and we're gonna get to see that story told three times. And what's great about Ian is Ian draws it three different ways, so we're really pulling out completely different details, because you're in a different character's point of view, because as we would always say, adult siblings are sort of like you've gone through the exact same thing, but you have a completely different take on it. We thought that was such an interesting point of view to have these three characters all have different outlooks on what it's like growing up in a hollowed out volcano, and then you move to this lair in the summer and then you move to Meteor Falls.

Patton Oswalt: Yeah. "The last time I was happy was in the volcano!".

Jordan Blum: And to pick up on what Heath was saying, it's so not traditional, it's not a superhero style. It has an indie comics vibe like speaking to Wes Anderson, the way you frame things, you find patterns, and all these things. And I think that is so important to us that this book have its own identity and I think that's the key to this book.

Patton Oswalt: But it's such a key to the character in a weird way, Archimedes' world vision like, literally infected the look of the world. He wants clean, spare, simple lines, because he is a scientist and mathematician at heart and that has affected his kids, the way that the core is and the way the world is. I mean, it's, it's amazing. You understand the characters the minute you look at the art.

Heath Corson: I want Ian to elaborate on one thing, because he brought me this concept of Napoleon Archimedes' hexagons. But I want to give the chance to sort of talk about where they came from.

Ian Culberd: My world building comes from overthinking stuff. Here's the hexagon helmet because he's like a science guy. And essentially the hexagon you can't actually make a hexagon of sphere with just hexagons, you have to have a pentagon in there at some point. We were talking about the fact that that hexagon is nature and science, because that's the thing you have with when you're showing chemical formulas and things like that. But then when we're talking about pentagons, it can mean family, but it's also the fact that it's magic. So it all ties back to the youngest son. So we have, like the whole thing, the science of it is all held together with family, but also possibly magic. So that's where that came from. Classic example would be massively overthinking.

You guys answered like, three questions that I had all in that one little conversation.

Ian Culberd: Heath asked me at the beginning "What do you like to draw?". And rather than say, a horse riding a bicycle up a spiral staircase, I would describe time travel and how basically, everybody doesn't agree on the same thing and stuff like that, right? You know, it's not possible because nobody agrees on the same thing. I tend to think in abstracts more than anything, so it tends to work in that way. But it's, yeah, it's been a hell of an experience. You know, superhero comics is so different in terms of the other stuff that I do, in terms of pace and things like that. And I really enjoyed the way that the structure of this has worked, because it's got a really nice pattern to it in the way that it works. But, yeah, it's been good fun.

Heath Corson: There is no aspect of this book that is not all Ian. He's doing the pencils, he's doing the inks, and he's doing the colors. Can I just say he'll blow me away every time I get to see him. It's just a completely different look from anything else that you've seen in the Minor Threats universe.

Ian Culberd: That's the thing I quite like about this, because things like Barfly and going back to earlier discussions, about the way that it can be anything, it can go off and try something new in this universe, it's great. I really like the idea of that.

I do find it funny that Heath referenced Succession, because as I was reading it, I was literally thinking, Succession meets Venture Brothers, and that's such a funny combination to me. Because I love, love superhero universes, and there are so many that pop up now and I feel like it's getting increasingly harder for creatives to come up with new ways to do superheroes. Is that on your guy's mind when you're building these stories, like "What's the angle that hasn't been done yet?"?

Ian Culberd: I worry when I'm designing something, because I'm questioning myself when I've done, saying "Okay, this must have been done before.". Like the helmet, agonizing over it, because it's such a populated genre, in terms of however many years, but the very fact that that's used as a shorthand instead, so it's not debilitating, really, that was the thing I learned doing this. Because at the beginning I was like "How do you do this? How has this not done before?". You can find your path through it because it's just shorthand. That's all it is, really, to a story about a family or whatever, really, you know, I think that's, that's the key thing,

Heath Corson: I think for us, for The Brood, it was all about, what are those family moments that are universal, that we're all gonna see ourselves in? And then how are we doing them through a superhero prism? So it's like, yeah, we've all avoided our father's calls, but on the third try, he doesn't take the UN hostage and insist that we're the only people that he's going to talk to. But, like, that's what happens in this universe, right? Or, like, when you go to talk to your baby brother, but you have to find him on the rooftops because he's, you know, committing a supernatural murder at the time, but you brought his favorite snack that you used to coax him out from his pillow fort with.. That's how she has a conversation. The older sister has a conversation with his baby brother. But they're all really rooted in reality, in terms of, like, just family. And those kinds of conversations, which I thought was kind of different and interesting and in the Minor Threats universe, family is the cornerstone of a lot of this stuff. And so to get to pull the curtain back on some of these archetypes and go, "It's because of my daughter" or "I'm doing this because I'm taking care of my mom", makes you go "I'm kind of rooting for them. I don't know if I'm supposed to be, but I'm kind of rooting for them." And it's such a great magic trick, that they pulled off. So it's great to get to do that.

Jordan Blum: With The Brood, it's about the in-between moments that wouldn't be in a Marvel for DC Comic. Like the DC comic would be about the big fight between Superman and Lex Luthor, not the moment with Luthor comes home and has a quiet moment with his kid who discovers, you know. I think that's the exciting thing is that a lot of the stuff that would be in the Big Two that's off-panel and these are the little moments in-between that create a whole new story that we've never seen before.

Heath Corson: Yeah, as we would say it's about the concussions and repercussions after those big moments.

Ian and Heath, is there anything you want to tell fans about what they can expect from your particular miniseries. And Jordan and Patton, is there anything you want to tell fans about the future of the Minor Threats universe?

Heath Corson: Sure we can go first. I would just say this is a book about the concussions and repercussions of living with the world's greatest super villain and being a member of the first family of super villainy and trying to hold that together. Napoleon gets a horrible discovery in our first issue that he is dying. And this is the year after his diagnosis and how the family sort of comes together and falls apart trying to figure out how they're gonna deal with it. And that's something that's super unique to the superhero world. I don't think we've seen something like that since The Death of Captain Marvel, probably. Ian, anything to add?

Ian Culberd: You're gonna put me the spot?

Heath Corson: And we need to do it through Ian's incredible art, character design, all of it, I'm such a huge slobbering fan of all of it. It's so good. It's so much fun. He's just brought the entire thing to life.

Jordan Blum: And character designs. That Legion of Doom Archimedes belongs to is so unique and crazy, I'm very excited for people to see that.

Patton Oswalt: As far as the Minor Threats Universe, there is actually a lot of stuff we can't really talk about right now. We are working with a lot of other writers and artists on a very interesting. take to further deepen the world and I also feel not just Archimedes, but his family members, because they're so wonderfully drawn and so wonderfully fleshed-out. They will definitely be making appearances Meteor Falls and Twilight City. It is not just a one-off, they will be showing up again.

From the World of Minor Threats: The Brood #1 is on sale on December 11th, 2024 from Dark Horse Comics.

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