Superhero Media: Justice League (2001)

The follow-up to the highly successful Batman and Superman animated series, Justice League sees the coming together of legendary heroes Batman, Superman, Wonder Woman, Green Lantern (John Stewart), Martian Manhunter, Flash and Hawkgirl to form the Justice League. Given the success of the solo cartoons, Justice League feels like the logical progression in the DCAU, but it's not quite as good as Justice League Unlimited would be later on. What lets the programme down is the writing, despite how good the previous DCAU efforts were, the team just seems to have made some poor decisions in constructing the episodes. The team admit this themselves in the DVD extras, not being used to writing for an ensemble cast, and doing things like making Superman less effective to try and make the team feel more justified. All that said, once the Second Season begins, the programme gets a lot better and there are genuine moments of greatness. 

The strength that Justice League has over the previous DCAU efforts is in how 'organic' the world-building feels, from the core team of seven heroes, characters like Etrigan, Supergirl and Kilowog are introduced, as well as villains ranging in power and influence from Cheetah through to Mongul. For me, this is really where the "Universe" part of the DC Animated Universe comes to the fore, yes we've seen other planets before, but now places like Oa are actual recurring locations, rather than offhand references. The majority of the episodes are two-parters as well, which helps build bigger stories and longer narratives, with 44-50 minutes to work with, each story could almost form the basis of a film. In fact, despite the stilted start, Justice League just serves to demonstrate that Bruce Timm and Paul Dini should be handed the reigns of the DC film franchises. In the first episodes, a disparate group of heroes come together to defeat an alien invasion. Only Superman and Batman have worked together in any significant way in the past, but they kind of know Green Lantern, Flash and Hawkgirl. Wonder Woman has just left Paradise Island, they rescue Martian Manhunter from the government and go defeat the bad guys. 

I'm not pointing any fingers here, but doesn't that sound a lot like the plot of The Avengers (2012), at least in the abstract? Like introducing the heroes and forming the group dynamic is more important than learning everyone's origins or building up a major villain who will never be seen again? It's far from perfect, but clever casting, a bigger budget and more passes at the script could turn 60+ minutes of cartoon into a decent live action JLA film. At least better than the one we got. Enemies like Doctor Destiny and Felix Faust prove to be way more interesting than world-conquering threats and the adaptation of "For the man who has everything" is actually pretty brilliant. If you've been wanting to learn more about the DC heroes, but don't feel like committing to a pile of comics, Justice League is a good place to start, despite the shaky first season. For me, the DCAU "Timmverse" is where my brain goes to when I think of the "iconic" versions of these characters, it's really that good.