Hi, elisamaza76! Can you tell us a little about your screen name and where it came from?
A couple of these answers are not so quick. I mean, I’ll do my best, but YOU KNOW WHAT YOU DID!
Username: Well, “1000 years ago, superstition and the sword ruled…”
Just kidding.
My username is an homage to one of the best characters ever, from one of the best shows ever: NYPD Detective Elisa Maza from Gargoyles, a cartoon that aired as (sort of) part of the Disney Afternoon cartoon block for two seasons, starting in 1994. That means it has somehow been an entire 30 years since it debuted, and I’m gonna need a moment to recover from that realization.
Whew!
Anyway, Gargoyles is surprisingly mature, complex, and dark, given its origins. Huge betrayals, massacres, secret babies, a vision of a brutal dystopian future, flagrant violation of scientific ethics concerning human subjects… I mean, it features an entire plot thread in which Macbeth (yes, that one) turns out to have a surprising connection to one of the main characters (hoo, boy) that gets even more complicated than it already was thanks to a “gift” (*so* good) bestowed by Puck (YES, THAT ONE!). With all of this going on, Elisa Maza is the first human the gargoyles come to trust in the wild new world they find themselves in (aka Manhattan in 1994). She kicks ass, I once wrote a whole blog post about her being awesome and also Black and Native American, and I have to stop now or I’ll never make it to the next question.
Do you have any recommendations for books with Gargoyles vibes?
You know, my first thought was that I couldn’t think of anything, so I was going to cheat and say the Gargoyles comics. But I’m actually going to go out on a limb and say Neil Gaiman’s The Sandman comic series. I haven’t thought about this until just now, but I think maybe I mean it. It’s not the same—The Sandman is obviously meant for an even more mature audience. I’m not sure if it’s actually more complex or if its complexity is just more sustained and more in the foreground. And it is even darker, but maybe not by as much as one might expect. Gargoyles gets pretty damn dark, it just doesn’t dwell on it or foreground it the way The Sandman does, for obvious reasons. But I think they share some storytelling DNA. There’s a pretty clear overlap in some of the stuff Greg Weisman (Gargoyles) and Gaiman were both inspired by. And there’s a sort of dark fantasy vibe to both and something about how both mix it up with mythological, literary, and historical figures (and a healthy dose of capital-D drama) that clearly resonates with me.
That said, if you’re looking less for the “complex, dark fantasy, big drama” vibe and more for the “interspecies love story” vibe, C.M. Nascosta’s How to Marry a Marble Marquis has absolutely nothing in common with Gargoyles thematically or tonally, but it was a satisfying historical romance featuring a human/gargoyle pairing, and that should tell you everything you need to know to determine whether or not it’s for you.
Do you have a favorite movie or television adaptation of a book or graphic novel? What is it and what makes that one special?
I tried to think of something surprising and cool, but what actually sprang to mind was The Princess Bride and the 1995 Pride and Prejudice. (I won’t pick, and you can’t make me.) Probably the most cliché answers I could give, but I stand by them! I’d say The Princess Bride is a perfect combination of smart silliness, optimism with a hint of darkness, and love (romantic and friendship) conquering all. As for Pride and Prejudice, there’s obviously Colin Firth’s Darcy and Jennifer Ehle’s Lizzie Bennet both being delightful nightmares, which honestly might be enough. But Austen, in general, and Pride and Prejudice, in particular, influenced SO MUCH of what I already loved by the time I saw that adaptation! I was basically wired to love it by a bunch of media that either draws (sometimes directly, sometimes indirectly) on the story itself or has patterns from Austen’s writing, more generally, woven into its structures and its tropes.
As an example: my best friend and I were talking about season 2 of Bridgerton recently, and she said to me something like, “You always did like enemies to lovers—when we were reading romance together in middle school, the ones you loved most all had at least some of that feel to them.” I didn’t have that terminology in middle school and hadn’t ever really thought about it that way, but I suspect she’s right. A whole heap of romance novels; TV shows like Remington Steele, Scarecrow and Mrs. King, and Moonlighting; movies like When Harry Met Sally and the original Star Wars trilogy—all favorites when I was young, all with different flavors of enemies-to-lovers at their core. Pride and Prejudice was the source text I didn’t know I’d loved all along. All BBC had to do was not completely fuck it up, and they exceeded that bar by a good bit.
Following up with sort of a reverse of the last question. You’re a published expert on Buffy, the Vampire Slayer. Have you given the new graphic novels a try?
Lol at “published expert”! Actual quick answer for this one: I have not read the graphic novels, though I do have the first volume, which was given to me as a gift. Full disclosure: Despite my love of the show, I might not be ready to return to worlds created by Whedon just yet. I definitely won’t get to it until after I’ve caught up on the Gargoyles comics!
One last question. We’re going to play Kiss Marry Kill the cast of Battlestar Galactica remake. Which would you choose for which and why?
How dare you?! OK, going with my first mind, basing this mostly on character (except for one) and strictly hormonal impressions of the actor who portrayed the character:
Kill – Jamie Bamber’s biceps put in a good showing, but I have zero hesitation about killing Apollo, who is a self-righteous dick. He wasn’t always wrong, but even when he was right I mostly still wanted to punch him in the nuts.
Kiss – The Number Threes are played by Lucy Lawless, so I gonna go with kissing with her.
Marry – I guess I’d marry Helo? He’s definitely the most consistently marriageable character, being basically just a really good dude. And Tahmoh Penikett was, for sure, *very* pretty as Helo—I’d have kissed him, but…Lucy Lawless! You know what, fuck it—I’ll marry Roslin. We’d argue about ethics and talk about education—it’s a better match, honestly.
Now that you’ve learned all about elisamaza76, head over and see what she’s been reading lately. Or meet other Cannonballers we’ve interviewed recently.