Why The DCAU Should Be Allowed To Rest

I’m not a huge X-Men fan, so even if I had Disney+ I don’t think I’d be watching the current X-Men ’97. I don’t have anything against it, and I hear it’s better than anticipated…which may be why Disney fired the showrunner over a PG Onlyfans account. Doing things the fans like seems to be the opposite of current Disney’s goal, but that’s a whole other discussion. This resuming of the 1990s Fox Kids cartoon seems to be doing well and its fans actually enjoy it.

This has led to another big return being hoped for by nostalgic fans of the DC Animated Universe, specifically Justice League Unlimited. Bounding Into Comics contributor JB Augustine even wrote a piece asking for it back, which would go against James Gunn’s plans for combining animated and live-action productions into his shared DC Gunniverse. Not that it’s stopped My Adventures With Superman or the announced Batman: Caped Crusader shows, with varying levels of adaptation even though the now Adult Swim airing Superman show seems to have found an audience for finally getting Superman right. It’s just the world he lives in they royally screwed up, which is why I can’t get into it. Pretty boy Deathstroke is just wrong and I just saw a clip for season two that makes Amanda Waller full on evil in ways the last season of Unlimited didn’t even reach. And I’m one of a select few who didn’t like the Cadmus storyline or the “Epilogue” episode.

The DCAU was some of the best comic adapting out there, and even gave us new characters like Harley Quinn, Renee Montoya (which has been ruined by DC and further adaptations), and the villainess Livewire. I fully enjoyed all of it, even the shows that Bruce Timm didn’t work on. Static Shock was a version of the Milestone hero Static I could more get into tonally (so I have no ill will towards My Adventure With Superman fans and wouldn’t with the Snyderverse fans if they and Snyder himself weren’t such jerks about it at times) and while I didn’t get the chance to get into The Zeta Project, it was a unique addition thanks to the backdoor pilot in Batman Beyond, set in the DCAU thanks to a crossover with the Batman of the future. It was great storytelling and a good adaptation of the DC multiverse. Does that mean it deserves another chance like the Fox Kids X-Men are getting? I’m not convinced.

First off, what is the DCAU? It started with Batman: The Animated Series, and the later rebrand The Adventures Of Batman And Robin, as Fox thought bringing Dick Grayson in would be a benefit for the younger audience. Given the character’s reason for existing, that’s not necessarily a terrible thought on Fox Kids’ part. It also gave Batman someone to talk to. This would have been it but Kids WB, whose parent company owns the DC characters, saw their success and wanted to try it with Superman. Thus, Superman: The Animated Series was produced by the same people. To their credit, they didn’t try to Batman-up Superman, but got the tone and style closer to something you should see in a Superman story. However, both shows existed in their own bubbles, much like Supergirl did on CBS, with the shared creator of Arrow and what became CW’s “Arrowverse” putting them in separate universes in an episode of the CBS show by using the CW version of the Flash and his ability to travel between realities.

Much like  the CW Kara’s live-action adventures, Kids WB soon came calling for Batman, moving the show over to their channel, but not having the same issue of multiversal confusion. Instead, The New Batman/Superman Adventures altered the Batman show to be closer to Superman in art style and lightened the tone slightly to match the risks Kids WB weren’t willing to take that Fox Kids were. It’s why the Fox Kids years are usually more celebrated by a segment of Bat-fans. Still, this is where the DC Animated Universe began. The crew decided to try a future Batman story with a young mentee taking on the identity in Batman Beyond, which I mentioned spun off The Zeta Project. Meanwhile, Static Shock wasn’t intended for the DCAU but nothing contradicted. Despite Milestone’s city of Dakota being in its own universe, including a crossover with the DC universe called “Worlds Collide”, the cartoon would be absorbed into the DCAU, and used to tease a Teen Titans cartoon, though the final version we got was set apart from the DCAU even when Cartoon Network started airing Justice League.

Justice League was intended to be an hour long but Cartoon Network turned down the idea, forcing the existing scripts to become two-part episodes…that Cartoon Network aired back to back despite deciding the kids didn’t want an hour long show. I don’t get it either, but that would be how Justice League would continue to be produced until Justice League Unlimited, which followed the Superfriends formula of having heroes from across DC, but done with the style of writing that the DCAU was known for at this point. There would be seasonal story arcs and great stand-alone stories before it finally finished its story and ended the DCAU. Other direct-to-video movies would ape its style but it wouldn’t be the same continuity anymore.

That’s the first big reason for me not wanting a return of the DCAU. The story’s told. Outside of bringing out Starro and having a season long battle to reclaim their friends, whose left for the League to take on? The Reach maybe, but Young Justice already told that story despite not being in the DCAU timeline. The Thanagarians were taken out in a movie, the White Martian stand ins defeated in the pilot, Darkseid at best could only return if they did the Anti-Life Equation story arc, which would be too dark for a kids show as would trying to do a Black Lantern story today, Amanda Waller’s character arc is complete and that would preclude another run-in with Cadmus, so what’s left to do? They did anything that didn’t come from DiDio’s Darker DC, and I hope nobody wants an “Identity Crisis” based story, dead Ted Kord, heroes having their heroic status diminished (and they’d have to find a reason other than the rape of Sue Dibny), or any of the rest of his nonsense infecting the DCAU. Maybe you could work Maxwell Lord in, but his heel turn was born out of the alteration to an existing character that the DCAU didn’t really have. I just don’t think you could find a new villain, while X-Men ’97 is just continuing the previous show’s reworking of classic comic stories. The DCAU had its inspirations but stood on its own stories and ideas, even altering the comics with the aforementioned new trio and Mr. Freeze’s origins.

This is a promo video for Imaginext’s “DC Super Friends” toyline. This 17+ minute video was done in the style of the old Superfriends series, which I grew up with, was my introduction to the DC universe, and still a favorite from my childhood. Even with the new characters and altered depiction of Cyborg from the Super Powers Team season, it hit all the nostalgia buttons. My only real complaint is that they used the first season narrator, Ted Knight, as the guide for the narration rather than Bill Woodson, who was the narrator for the rest of the series outside of the Challenge Of The Superfriends intro. (Woodson would also voice the intro for the Ruby-Spears Superman, reciting the classic line from the old Adventures Of Superman intro.)

Part of me wishes that when they finally made a DC Super Friends series they stuck to this format. Instead they went in their own direction, with a series of shorts that formed a multipart story in a style unique to that show. I haven’t seen all the shorts, but it wasn’t too bad. It just didn’t hit that nostalgia button, and that’s what Augustine and other DCAU fans want, in the same way the Fox Kids X-Men are getting now. I’d be lying if I said having a return of the Superfriends or even Super Powers Team: Galactic Guardians, wouldn’t make me happy…at first. There were concerns about the Disney+ show and the current direction of Marvel Studios. They thought hiring the gay guy would add more queer elements to the show, the current cause du jour, and seeing that’s not what happened outside of Morph suddenly being “non-binary” because they’re actually stereotyping shapeshifters now may be the actual reason Beau DeMayo was let go, the same guy who complained that the writing staff of The Witcher were hostile to the source material while he was working on it. So I’m not sure I could trust the same crop of people who look down on Superfriends and trash Aquaman because of a misunderstanding of how cool he was to this kid from the 1970s and 1980s to do it justice.

In the same vein, I’m not sure the modern writers would do the DCAU justice–no pun intended. Instead we got Young Justice and I was okay with that. I’m not sure what more they could so with Superfriends or the DCAU, and that’s fine. TV and comics are different media types, and its okay for a show to end when you’ve done all you can with it. If Superfriends hadn’t ended we wouldn’t have had the Ruby-Spears Superman or the DCAU or Young Justice. Without the DCAU ending we wouldn’t have had The Batman cartoon from Kids WB, and that show was fun, leaning on the action side of Batman. I didn’t get into the CG Green Lantern cartoon, but it had its fans. These were great shows and great interpretations of the DC heroes, but they came, did their thing, and left. I don’t even think we needed more Teen Titans with or without Teen Titans Go! and it’s issues.

Maybe in comic form a new DCAU story series could work. The old “Adventures” comics from that period made the mistake of being too close to the main DC universe instead of the DCAU way too many times, but when it got it right there were some great stories. We’ve also seen comic continuations of the Adam West Batman, Christopher Reeves and Tom Welling Superman stories, and the Linda Carter Wonder Woman. These don’t affect the shows and not being canon makes it easier to ignore any bad stories while fans can see more of a favored take on those continuities to enjoy. It might not be the same to some, but it is an option that doesn’t risk the shows being ruined by a bad run of stories.

The DC Animated Universe was something special, especially for us DC fans, but it had its time. X-Men ’97 is something of a fluke but I don’t trust anyone new to not ruin it. I wouldn’t mind one last season of Fox Kids’ Spider-Man or Spider-Man Unlimited if it meant completing their cliffhangers but after all these years they wouldn’t be the same answers that would have come up in the 1990s and thus won’t be the same as if they had continued. Even with the same writers and showrunners, they’ve told other stories since, evolved as creators, and wouldn’t have the same takes they would have if any of those ideas would have ended up elsewhere. Justice League Unlimited was great storytelling for its time, and should be on any list of studying adapting comics to cartoons, but it had a great run. Why risk ruining it like fans were afraid the resumed X-Men tales would be and not get the same experience out of it? The DCAU went out on a high mark. Let’s not risk that.