The Upcoming Marvel Show No One’s Talking About: M.O.D.O.K.

 This article was originally published to the Grand Geek Gathering on April 10th, 2021.

Amidst all the excitement for Disney’s upcoming Marvel series, including Loki and Hawkeye, there’s one Marvel show that’s criminally under-hyped, and that show is M.O.D.O.K.

For those not in the know, M.O.D.O.K. (Mental Organism Designed Only for Killing) is a classic Marvel supervillain who looks like a giant head.  He’s one of those weirdly designed, silly-looking bad guys you think could never have a show, but you’d be wrong, because Hulu is pairing with Marvel to give M.O.D.O.K. his own series.  Premiering on May 21st, this adult animated series features Patton Oswalt as the voice of M.O.D.O.K.

At WonderCon last month, M.O.D.O.K. paneled co-creators Jordan Blum and Patton Oswalt for a Q&A, during which they revealed some of the other cast members: Jon Hamm as Iron Man, Whoopi Goldberg as Poundcakes, Nathan Fillion as Wonder Man, and Bill Hader as Angar the Screamer.  With its unique stop-motion animation, its cheeky humor, and its star-studded cast, M.O.D.O.K. is actually shaping up to be huge.

The panel opened with Patton Oswalt in his home office, wearing a floral-print shirt.  He introduced the other members of the panel: Melissa Fumero, Ben Schwartz, Aimee Garcia as voice actors for M.O.D.O.K.’s family, Jon Daly as Super Adaptoid, and Jordan Blum, co-creator.

Oswalt described the original M.O.D.O.K. as humorous due to his self-loathing and incompetence, not to mention his strange appearance.  The show itself expands on M.O.D.O.K.’s “angst” by delving into his family life and his attempts to run a company as a supervillain.  Garcia compared the series to Guardians of the Galaxy, a “group of misfits” with a sense of humor who shouldn’t work together, yet somehow do.

As far as it being stop-motion, Bum stated that he had wanted to do something creative and “take a risk” after seeing the unique animation of Spiderman: Into the Spiderverse, and felt that stop-motion was the best way to capture the facial expressions of characters.  The production company behind the animation, Stoopid Buddy Stoodios, has quite a bit of experience under its belt; one of its founders, Seth Green, was the executive producer behind the stop-motion series Robot Chicken.  (Ben Schwartz was also a writer on Robot Chicken.)

A sneak peek showed off some different animation styles, with homages to Pokemon and Mortal Kombat.

“There’s so many easter eggs I can’t talk about,” said Oswalt, who confirmed that Hulu’s M.O.D.O.K. is part of the canonical Marvel universe.  He did reveal that “There’s a very intricate, very messy time travel episode that ends up being so genuinely poignant.”

“I think we’re the only Marvel show to have our big, epic finale take place at a bar mitzvah,” stated Blum.

You can watch Hulu’s trailer here, and check out a sneak peek at the end of the WonderCon panel here!