I've decided to go back to animation, and I just happened upon a great deal on Amazon for the Justice League complete series.
I previously covered Filmation's Aquaman in this blog. There were a few JL shorts during Aquaman and the New Adventures of Superman, but with the short length of the segments, you only got a few seconds with each hero. Oh, and the stories were insipid.
The 70's brought us Super-Friends (apparently, Hanna-Barbera thought Justice League was too complex a concept for kids to understand). It spawned several series into the 80's. I don't know if I can take that much Gleek and Marvin the Boy Wonder, so we'll skip that for now.
Warner Bros made a major push into doing their own television animation in the mid-80's, mostly due to their creation of Cartoon Network. Batman: The Animated Series (1992-1995) was introduced to capitalize on the huge success of the Tim Burton franchise, and several sequels followed. Once Superman: The Animated Series was introduced, it was only a matter of time before they would tackle the whole team. The new JL series was done in the same streamlined style that Bruce Timm introduced. Superman and Batman had already met in the continuity, but this was the first big teamup--and the first animated appearance for some of the heroes.
The initial team--we'll cover each in detail as we go:
- "The Trinity" - Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman
- Flash (Wally West)
- Green Lantern (John Stewart)
- Hawkgirl
- Martian Manhunter
They really went all out on this show--impressive animation (at least at the time), great voice talent, intricate stories, and a generally somber mood--this is not your parent's Super-Friends.
We’ll cover both the JL series and Justice League Unlimited, where DC allowed WB Animation access to all the crayons in the box--the whole DC universe.
Unfortunately, Justice League is not on Netflix or Hulu, but the DVD box set is available on Amazon.