Young Justice Forum

Break the Walls Down

Well It's been a long time coming. Cartoon Network is holding their upfronts, where they show off annouce their coming wears for press and advertisers. In the press release you will notice two (well three) shows not listed as "RETURNING SERIES/SPECIALS" in the press release via worldsfinest.com . Young Justice and Green Lantern: The Animated Series are not listed. Star Wars: The Clone Wars is also not listed but that is most likely due to it jumping ship to DisneyXD when the next season starts. Consider me bummed at the loss of Young Justice, since it is a really good show that is worth talking and thinking about. Also as a HUGE Greg Weisman it's sad to see ANOTHER show end after only two seasons. I'll admit I haven't given Green Lantern much thought, even if the Johns run is one of the reasons I'm such a big DC fan at this point. Green Lantern: The Animated Series was listed as coming to Netflix as part of the recent Warner Bros. deal, I'll defiantly check it out.

Replaceing the two parts of the DC Nation block will be Beware the Batman and the new Teen Titans Go!, based on the recent shorts. The original Teen Titans cartoon was fun enough, it had it's moments but I was never overly fond of the characters or art style. So far Teen Titans Go! gives me no reason to really check it out. Beware the Batman also feels unnecessary Do we REALLY need another Batman cartoon? Heck one with crappy looking CG, no Robin (replaced wit Kitana) and a gun toting Alfred! It isn't fair to judge these shows yet but none of them leave me wanting to see them the moment it becomes available.

UPDATE: Cartoon Network has commented on the lack of Young Justice and GL:TAS in the inital press release saying

“Shows will run their courses, others will premiere – but we are not canceling anything, and those two series are still on our air.” – Cartoon Network representative
“[We] still have premieres for both those shows and are committed to excellent action programming and are very excited about ‘Beware the Batman.’” – Cartoon Network representative

I'm a cynical man and consider these quotes to be rather hollow. Cartoon Network might not have officially cancelled a show but they haven't ordered more episodes, which has put both show out of production for months. The shows might not be cancelled, they are just in limbo where no one will ever get to use them again.

I feel bad cause I never got around to seeing either of these shows even though I was constantly hearing people talk about how good these series were. I'll probably get around to watching them on netflix if that's any consolation.

We're also getting a new Powerpuff Girls show. Just like Teen Titians, it looks like they have put a spin on the art direction. Batman's new sidekick is also called Katana. Get it? She uses a sword and she's named after a Japanese sword.

What is it with kids hating cartoons based on comic books? As a kid I was crazy for Batman: TAS, The Tick, X-Men, 90's Spider-Man, and Superman. I even watched the kinda crappy ones like Fantastic Four, Iron Man, Spider-Man Unlimited and The Incredible Hulk. I went so far as to watch old episodes of Super Friends, that horrible Hanna Barbara Fantastic Four cartoon where Johnny Storm was replaced by a stupid robot, or even more obscure that one where this annoying kid turned into The Thing for some reason to fight crime. A bit off subject but remember when USA and TNT use to play cartoons?

As a teenager I got into that MTV Spider-Man, Justice League and Justice League Unlimited. Hell I still get excited when DC releases a new DTV movie. By the way the Dark Knight Returns Part 1 is pretty decent and Peter Weller does a good job voicing an older more grizzled Batman.

You would think with how popular movies based comics are it would translate into these shows being super popular.

No wonder my DVR refuses to record any new episodes, there aren't any! LOL! Seriously though, there were at least two episodes of each that were new and on recently that I had to tell it to manually record for whatever reason, but I guess I'll just have to be somewhat vigilant about checking for few and far between new episodes now. Shame b/c these are two of my most favorite shows right now. YJ, b/c it's the only thing out there that I can get the DCU that I love, the one before the DCnU/New 52 crapfest that's in the comics now. I know that even YJ is supposed to be yet another "alternate earth" but even w/ that it's the closest thing to how things were before w/ all the characters in one cohesive universe rather than all this "some characters are only on this Earth, and others are now only on this other one crap" they brought back into the comics. However, YJ is far enough into the plot that they could just wrap it up and end it with no problem. GL, on the other hand hasn't even barely scratched the surface in the storyline, and they still have some of the other lantern corps to introduce yet. It's far too soon to get rid of it now.

I don't care about a new Batman cartoon unless they have him team up with obscure DC characters like Ghost Tank, Bat Mite or Detective Chimp. I will settle for Batman voiced again by Diedrich Bader. I know Kevin Conroy will always be the best Batman but I thought Diedrich did a great job in Batman: The Brave and The Bold.

I watched Young Justice to a point (season 2 episode 3 I think) but it never really clicked for me. The writing was lacking and more often than not I had no idea why the bad guys were doing what they're doing. The whole time jump thing didn't help either. Still it was a decent show and I couldn't care less about the Teen Titans replacement. I'll give the new Batman show a shot but if the CGI is anything like the Green Lantern show then it would have to have really good storylines to keep me interested because Green Lantern just looks bad.

Which brings me to Clone Wars eventhough their CGI is everything but bad. I'm still catching up with the show and especially season 4 (which I just finished) was excellent for the most part. Stunning visuals and surprisingly good writing (some plot holes here and there but nothing too bad) make for some of the best Star Wars content in a long while. In addition to that it's really dark for a kids show (I'll just say quadruple decapitation at this point) which makes the payoffs in certain moments even more satisfying.

Ah, I was looking forward to some Young Justice and Star Wars Clone War this weekend. The last episode with Maul and Pre Vizsla was a brilliant piece of action.

@Ghost_of_GhostDad:

Edit: In addition to your comment,

I was a big fan of both Marvel and DC animated shows. I used to enjoy Static Shock, Batman: TAS, Batman Beyond, Spiderman (any of them), X-men, Justice League. It's a shame we don't get much comic book animations on obscure characters or shows that revolved around the sidekicks like Batgirl, Robin, Cyborg, etc.