Were cartoons like yours written as a joint effort with writer rooms, or were they a single one-shot/multi-part story somebody at the project had? How much planning wen into a season?

Zero planning went into a season. Continuing stories were basically forbidden. The idea was that the network wanted to air episodes in any order they pleased. This was before modern streaming services, so the idea of serial stories was seen as an anachronistic throwback to the 1920s and 30s.

I felt like it was a bit of a coup to introduce Nergal Junior, thereby changing Billy's familial landscape. We'd do more of that over the long run, but that was just more of me purposefully trying to push boundaries.

Generally, Gord Zajak or I would write outlines. Gord left after the second season to write cartoons in Canada, but he was vital to the early days and was someone I'd met when we worked on video games when I was in college. The outlines were supposed to be as short as possible. I'd try to limit the text to a page, but sometimes they'd go to three pages. After the outline got approved, I'd stick it in the "out box" on my office door. There, it would join other approved outlines. At any time, storyboard artists could read them and claim whatever inspired them. I really wanted people to feel passionate about what they were doing.

After that, the rest was up to the storyboard artist.

Back in those olden days, Neanderthals would sit down with a massive stack of photocopied storyboard paper and just go to town. The board artists drew the panels, but they were also the writers.

We had a shaky first couple of seasons before we found what I consider to be The Perfect Crew. We all got along. We all went to lunch together. We all knew more of each other's shit than we should've. We were, essentially, a family. Everyone (IMO) had their own special superpower. In fact (and I don't like tooting my own horn) if I have a superpower, it's finding that crew synergy. I'm baffled that no one has employed me to do that since.

If an episode went longer than eleven minutes, I eventually decided that those needed to be scripted. The fun of the eleven minute cartoon is that it's over in eleven minutes. If it sucks, no hard feelings. If it's great? wonderful! If you have a snoozer and it's longer than eleven minutes, you're going to upset people. So anything longer than fifteen minutes I like to script.

I have since worked in a number of writer's rooms. Some have been more fun and more challenging than others. There's definitely something to be said for bouncing ideas around. But there's also something to be said for true ownership. I'd like to think we can both have and eat that cake.

I'd love to do a more modern show where you can actually plan ahead and carry things through. It remains to be seen whether or not that will come to pass. For what it's worth, I'm coming out of my Dead Meat Funk. Anything is possible!