During San Diego Comic-Con, I did a few roundtable interviews with some cast and crew of Batman Unlimited: Monster Mayhem. This interview features Dave B. Mitchell, who voices Clayface in Monster Mayhem. Dave B. Mitchell talks Batman Unlimited universe and comic collecting.
Q: Were you a fan of Clayface before doing this?
Dave B. Mitchell: Oh yeah! I mean, just a fan of Batman in general and comics. I used to be a hardcore collector so just getting to step into this universe is a lot of fun.
Q: What did you collect?
Mitchell: Now, a little bit of everything. I haven’t really been actively collecting comics for about twenty years but in the mid-ninties, I was doing fifty titles a month, buying three copies of every title. I still have six black bag Superman 75’s, I’ve got six of the newsstand editions all bag and boarded up.
Q: Do you have a preferred era?
Mitchell: I grew up in the eighties as a teenager, I really loved all that stuff. I was a big X-Men fan back then, the really early nineties stuff when they split up and Jim Lee was doing the art, I’m a huge Jim Lee fan. Who isn’t? I really liked the end of the pre-Image era.
Q: Are there any characters that you love that you haven’t had the chance to voice yet?
Mitchell: Um…all of them (laughs). Every time the auditions come around and you have a whole list of characters you get to read for, it’s just kind of like ‘I’ll take any one of these, I don’t even care.’ Just to get to be part of this whole universe and to know that now people will see some of these characters in my voice, is really cool. Anybody they’ll let me play, I’ll do.
Chris “The Scoop” Salce: With Batman Unlimted having a different feel than the Lego universe and the darker version geared towards adults, what do you think is special about the Batman Unlimited franchise and universe?
Mitchell: I think one of the big things is that it’s a lot more kid friendly. Kid friendly without being juvenile, which is a big thing because obviously we all love the dark stuff but so much of the stuff I work on, particularly video games, are all dark and not really for kids and I have children in my life, so it’s nice to be able to do something that they can watch, and actually introducing a whole new generation of fans to this wonderful universe and still have it appeal to the older audience as well. I love what they’ve done with the characters as far as some of the redesign, certainly honoring the tradition of the character but I love what they did with the cowl and emblem on Batman. I think it looks really cool. I love what they did with Clayface.
Batman Unlimited: Monster Mayhem is out now.