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[Fone Bone]

BT said in this interview that Dwayne McDuffie was the writer he was the most in sync with.

Do you have a favorite piece of work that you’ve done?

The short answer to that is: I love all the series I’ve done pretty much equally. I haven’t done a single series that I have been embarrassed by. Some of the movies are better than others.

My absolute favorite show I worked on, just because of how much fun it was to go to work every day, wass Justice League Unlimited. It’s the one that I actually go back and watch. I can actually go back and binge watch the entire Justice League Unlimited in a week.

We were a well-oiled machine at that point. And the crew that we had was really stellar. Dwayne McDuffie, I miss him every single day of my life. [McDuffie passed away in 2011.] I was so in sync with Duane. He understood me in a way that no other writer I’ve worked with has ever understood me. And it wasn’t just Duane. Sitting in the writers’ room with Duane, Stan Berkowitz, Matt Wayne, and James Tucker. It was just the most fun I have had in this business. Normally, I kind of hate sitting in the story room breaking episodes, but that was a blast. Every episode was a joy to work on with that crew.

Bruce Timm Interview: Justice League, Batman, Harley Quinn, & More

Den of Geek had a chance to chat with Bruce Timm about Justice League: Gods and Monsters and much more!

www.denofgeek.com

I feel the same way as b.t. about JLU. It remains my favorite animated show of all time and is in the top three of my favorite TV shows of all time (along with Twin Peaks and Deep Space Nine). Dwayne McDuffie was a legend.

 

[Pfeiffer-Pfan]

Yeah, I highlighted Tucker, but McDuffie might have been the secret sauce on JLU.

They were all brilliant. In the spirit of the conversation, I think we could all revisit Giancarlo Volpe's wonderful depiction of Timm:

Stubborn and absolutely right. I wonder if he's been ignoring those rumored test screenings for Batman: Caped Crusader as well?

 

[JonnyQuest037]

In the spirit of the conversation, I think we could all revisit Giancarlo Volpe's wonderful depiction of Timm:

Thanks for posting this! I'd forgotten about this piece.

Stubborn and absolutely right. I wonder if he's been ignoring those rumored test screenings for Batman: Caped Crusader as well?

I can't imagine that BT would change his mind on that at this point. He's done pretty well for himself by ignoring test screenings so far.

 

[Karkull]

Legion of Super Heroes’ James Tucker

CC | January 17, 2007

As Elmer Fudd might say, it’s “vewwy quiet.”

The facilities at Warner Bros. Animation are next to empty. Cubicles that normally house the folks who help create some of the most colorful characters on television are stripped. No one’s about. Walls that would be plastered with model sheets, storyboards, and various forms of inspiration are blank, except from scattered Justice League coloring book pages and a kid’s drawing of Spider-Man.

It’s downtime for the studio. The season’s episodes are in the very final stages of completion, and the animators are awaiting word on what shows the networks will be picking up for next fall. Keep walking, though, and you finally see signs of life, the row of producers’ offices, where the likes of Bruce Timm, Alan Burnett, and Paul Dini oversee their projects. That’s where we find the subject of the intended interview—James Tucker—arriving back at his office.

As part of Timm’s gang of creators, Tucker has been an important part of such shows as Superman, Batman Beyond, and the two Justice League series. This past year, Tucker became a showrunner, guiding DC Comics’ beloved Legion of Super Heroes into their own animated series for the first time as one of the stalwarts on Kids’ WB!’s Saturday morning lineup.

With seven new episodes yet to air this season and a good possibility of a second season, the Continuum sat down with Tucker last week to talk about his Legion experiences and hopes for the next year.

CC: This place is basically barren. You’re done with the first season?

JAMES TUCKER: Oh, yeah. We had an order of 13 and generally that takes about a year. Last year we started around this time. So, when we know about our second season, we will be starting around this time.

CC: Are the episodes completely done?

TUCKER: We mixed the next-to-the-last one yesterday, and we mix the last one tomorrow. They just have to show them now. [LAUGHS.]

CC: On Legion, you’re the showrunner. How has that experience compared with what else you’ve done?

TUCKER: In the past, I’ve been a co-producer with Bruce Timm, and then Dwayne McDuffie and Bruce Timm on Justice League Unlimited. The division of labor was different then. Bruce was in charge, and we all kind of pitched in and divided up everything.

When you’re the sole showrunner, a lot more is on you. It’s been grueling. It’s very intense, especially to do a team show.

Legion is like compressing three years of Justice League into one year. All the decisions came through me, as opposed to me or Bruce.

CC: Did you like that responsibility?

TUCKER: I liked parts of it. Other parts were a little overwhelming. I thought I knew what being a producer was having been on Justice League. It’s a whole other thing when the buck stops with you.

My job on Justice League, I knew what Bruce would want, and so it was to save him time. Anything he didn’t need to see, I saw. There’s millions of decisions a day and, basically, it was my job to cut his down to…

CC: Half a million.

TUCKER: Half a million, yeah. That’s basically what a co-producer does, at least that’s what I did on Justice League.

On this one, I get all the decisions. Everything that goes through, I’m asked. It’s overwhelming. If it would have been a single-character show or a single-focus show like a Batman, I think it wouldn’t have been quite as overwhelming.

But it was fun. I enjoyed it. I’m really happy with the way the season ended up. And I think, really, the best shows are to come and haven’t aired yet.

CC: Obviously, you’re aware of the Legion fan base…

TUCKER: Oh, sure.

CC: And, generally, the reaction has been really good.

TUCKER: Yeah, I was shocked. Working with Bruce on everything, usually the first gut reactions to a show are negative—even if the show goes on to be very popular and well-respected.

Starting with Superman, there wasn’t a big Internet for people to glom on to back then, but a lot of people were comparing it to Batman: The Animated Series. And they were disappointed it wasn’t Fleischer. The first reactions are always negative, same with The New Batman Adventures, same with Batman Beyond, same with Justice League, same with Justice League Unlimited. When Justice League Unlimited was first announced there was a barrage of negativity. So, when Legion didn’t get that, I was like, “Uh oh, I must be doing something wrong.” [LAUGHS.]

I look at Legion as a great franchise, and there’s only a few things that needed to be changed to suit the intended audience. So, why throw it all out if I didn’t have to? It just makes my job easier. I didn’t have time to reinvent it, and I wouldn’t have wanted to. I tried to keep the gist of what the Legion was.

CC: You didn’t invent it, but it’s still kind of yours. How would you describe your Legion?

TUCKER: A little bit country, and a little bit rock ‘n’ roll. [LAUGHS.] I just thought what I wanted to see when I was a kid and what I did when I was a kid. That’s all you can really do when you’re doing these things. If the Legion were on as a cartoon when I was a kid, how would I want to see it? And just given my particular tastes and things.

I didn’t have full control over every aspect of it. I didn’t write every one of them, but I thought that—with the style of it—I didn’t want it to be heavy. I didn’t want it to be sterile science fiction. I want to mix a lot more fantasy into it. Basically, the era I was born into was the Mike Grell / Jim Shooter era, so I kind of wanted to have a little funkier edge to it, a little more mod, for lack of a better world. Something that boys could tap into, but it wouldn’t scare off girls, and it wouldn’t be too adult skewing. Although, I hear it is adult skewing, and I don’t know what happened.

CC: I would think because of the fan base.

TUCKER: I would think so too. The fans have been great. Legion fans are awesome.

I’ve been accused on this show of gearing it to fandom and not really thinking about kids, but kids adapt to whatever you give them as long as you make sure there’s enough interest there, and it doesn’t go over their heads. Kids liked Justice League Unlimited; I can’t tell you how many times a parent would say to me, “I watched Justice League Unlimited with my kid, and he loves it.” Even though that was very adult skewing, there was stuff in there a kid could watch. And the stuff that went over his head just went over his head.

Working with Bruce, we like to do entertainment that grows with you, so you really don’t outgrow it, you go to another level and then there’s something you understand more that maybe you didn’t understand earlier on. Like I said, I could only make the show that would interest me.

CC: Your instincts seem to be working.

TUCKER: Well, thank you. I’m glad the fans like it. Our ratings have been picking up lately, and I think that had to do with the fact we’re on a new network, for all intents and purposes, and people didn’t know how to find it. Now that they’re starting to go up, I’m really happy about that.

CC: With Teen Titans, the characters seemed to quickly grow to be very defined and likeable. Only six Legion shows have aired, but do you see the characters doing that?

TUCKER: With the types of characters the Teen Titans had, they were, if not stronger, but more easily defined. And Glen Murakami really paired them to their essential elements. And I didn’t want to do that with Legion because we didn’t want Legion to be as young skewing as Titans. I wanted the stories to be a little more complex, but having said that, you still need that level of character. And when you’re doing complex character studies, that takes a little more time to build up.

I definitely think the second half of our season, things definitely start to fall into place. But because people who have watched the show have only seen these same six episodes, things are getting put into place, but they haven’t gelled yet.

I think ours is a slower build, whereas Titans came out of the gate running because their types were clearly defined almost immediately. Robin was the leader, the strict cop. Beast Boy was the goofball. Raven was the goth, Starfire the airhead, etc.

Our characters aren’t that clearly defined with one sentence. For good or ill, I thought we could be more complex than that. With Titans, you had that instant in because you know who Robin is. And once you know who Robin is, everything falls off of him.

We kind of have that with Superman, though this Superman is a Superman no one has ever seen before because he’s a novice. Apart from Smallville, no one has really done that. This is the point where he’s starting, he’s just put on the costume. So, it’s almost the point after Smallville, which I thought was an interesting hook for the show.

CC: Talk about how much DC Comics is involved with the show.

TUCKER: Well, they give notes. We send them our outlines; they give us notes on it. They have approval power over characters and stuff. And if there’s something [they] feel […] doesn’t fit right with the Legion, they’ll tell us. We’ve had a few instances where we had to change some characters around. And we’ve had some issues that deal with licenses. You would think that if Superman is in the Legion, then everything that is Superman falls into the Legion too, but it doesn’t work that way.

It was a challenging year, figuring out what we could and couldn’t do. But it all worked out, and they’ve been great.

CC: Is it safe to say, in today’s animation, a second season of a show is usually better than the first?

TUCKER: All things considered, yeah. I can’t speak for anyone but myself … [PAUSE.] I don’t know if I can say that, actually. Because the first season of Batman Beyond was dynamite, but through circumstances the successive seasons got a little watered down—even though there were gems in those other seasons. But that first season was really stellar.

But with other shows, the first season of Justice League didn’t hit its stride. In the second season, suddenly things were playing a lot better. And, in Justice League Unlimited, it was great. So, sometimes it does. Sometimes, it doesn’t.

I definitely say for Legion it will because there are things we want to do and that we’ve talked about that I’m really excited about. I think setting up all the characters in the first season has been done. And that’s something you can’t get around. People just have to have patience with you. Hopefully, while you’re building up these characters, you’re telling good, interesting stories with them.

People only warm up to characters when they think they know them. And it takes a while, sometimes, to get to know a person. And, sometimes, characters don’t work out. You have to learn that this character is gelling better, so therefore you pull him or her forward, and that this character isn’t, so you recede them. The great thing about the Legion is that there are so many characters to pick from. If one doesn’t work, you can re-shuffle them pretty easily without affecting the show. With Titans, those five characters had to work because it wasn’t opened up to a lot of other characters until the later seasons.

With me, I could have gone that way with Legion. But I just thought that it says “Legion” in the title, and you just have to have more than five characters. You just have to. And even if there’s cameos, the idea is that it’s a legion of superheroes.

On Justice League Unlimited, we didn’t have to know every single hero you saw in the Watchtower. If you were a comic book fan and you saw them and you knew them, that’s fine. But if you were just a casual viewer, you could just look at it as a guy in the background who has a cool costume on. It was not important that you knew his back story or anything.

CC: You’re hoping for a second season, and you should know soon, but it definitely sounds like you will be back if there is one.

TUCKER: Yes.

CC: So, you’ve been thinking about what you would do? I’ve heard stories are already being worked on.

TUCKER: We have to proceed as if we’re doing it. You have to be ready. You leave all that stuff up to the people in charge. You have to act as if it’s happening and change course if it doesn’t.

CC: So, you’re excited about the prospects of a second season?

TUCKER: I’m excited about the stories we’ve talked about and the direction we’re taking with it. The great thing about Legion is that reboots are kind of built into the history of it, and I think Legion fans are flexible enough where, if things are changed, it won’t feel so radical. If we get our shot, things will change. That’s what I like about Legion. You’re not fixed to one specific continuity. It’s open to change.

CC: I just got a new HDTV, and the first thing I saw on it was the “Timber Wolf” episode. It was really impressive-looking—maybe because of the TV—but I was also impressed with the backgrounds on that one.

TUCKER: They were awesome. That was mainly Craig Robertson and Richard Kim, who were background painters on Justice League Unlimited. Everyone mentions that episode for the backgrounds. They’re very colorful. It was supposed to be a scary story, but I wanted it to feel more alien, and I just thought their color choices were awesome.

I think that was one of the best-looking episodes of the six that are airing. There’s more to come.

CC: I think that, with the look of the show, it must be challenging because you’re creating whole new worlds.

TUCKER: Yeah, there’s no stock that we can use from Justice League that would carry over into this. In animation, especially in this building when you have five shows going one, if you need a cityscape, we have a computer, you can go to it and say, “I need a city,” and it’s from another show. Static Shock used to have Justice League backgrounds. With this, there’s nothing. There were a few Justice League shows that took place in outer space, but not many. So, we pretty much had to create it from scratch.

CC: It’s pretty much a certainty there will be Legion toys.

TUCKER: I don’t know how much I can say. Definitely, we were in talks for toys. That kind of talk starts the minute the show is green-lighted. I don’t know if there actually will be toys, but there were talks and prototypes.

CC: Judging from you office, you’re someone who likes toys. Is there anything you want to see?

TUCKER: From this season? Actually, I would like to see a Starfinger toy, but I know they’re not going to do that. Just from the Justice League mold, if they do all the Legionnaires that we’ve designed, even if they’ve just been in a cameo. If they do like a three-pack where you have Superman and Lightning Lad as the mains and they throw in an extra one, that would be great.

CC: Do you like being part of the DVDs, like the Justice League ones?

TUCKER: Sometimes. The last few Justice Leagues, I was in the middle of production on Legion and my head was really scattered. But I love the DVDs. You work on these and the excitement of making the shows and all the things that went into the making of them, there’s a story behind every episode. We quickly forget the information, and I know there’s lots of stuff that fans would love to hear or know about. You’re on to something else and you don’t have time to reminisce or think about [it]. So, I think [of it] as a document of our process.

We made Justice League to be a perennial classic. Hopefully, it will stand the test of time. It’s the best animated action show I’ve seen. And I’m saying that just as a viewer; there isn’t an ego involved at all. If I was a fan, I would have loved it.

It really needs to be documented, the process and what went into it. It wasn’t easy; it wasn’t an easy […] show to do. There were lots of arguments and gnashing of teeth to get it there. So, I’m glad we do have the DVDs to at least document what happened, even though we’re only scratching the surface on a lot of them.

 

[Karkull]

Batman Beyond: Will Friedle

CC | November 23, 2010

With Batman Beyond: The Complete Series arriving in store on Tuesday, Warner Home Video has released a question-and-answer with Will Friedle, who provided the voice of Terry McGinnis and Batman during the show’s 52 episode run. [The] following is an edited transcription:

QUESTION: When you think back on all those Batman Beyond sessions, what are your favorite memories?

WILL FRIEDLE: This sounds like a cheesy answer but working with [Voice Director] Andrea [Romano] is just the greatest experience. Every week, you go in, and it’s amazing and fun. You just never knew who the guest cast would be. My favorite was recording Return of the Joker. Sitting between Kevin Conroy and Mark Hamill for five days was pretty incredible. I learned more about being a voiceover actor in those five days than I did in the five months before that. Just watching the two of them work—how Mark got so into the character, completely losing himself in that role. And then there’s Kevin, with that deep, booming voice, always sitting with his back straight and working perfectly with the microphone. It was an education.

Q: Do you have a favorite Batman Beyond episode?

FRIEDLE: There was an episode called “Out of the Past,” where it’s Bruce Wayne’s birthday and, as a birthday present, Terry takes Bruce to see a new play Batman: The Musical. So, there’s Bruce sitting in the audience, watching these people in costume jumping on stage, singing about the Dark Knight, and Terry’s right behind him humming the songs. And Bruce just hates it. Seeing Bruce Wayne watching Batman: The Musical was pretty funny.

Q: Were you a fan of Batman: The Animated Series before you were cast for Batman Beyond?

FRIEDLE: I have been an animation fan my whole life. Love cartoons, always have. But I thought Batman: The Animated Series changed the whole ballgame. Every generation thinks they grew up with the best cartoons—I had Thundercats and Transformers, shows like that. Very bright, and the acting was very big. But then Batman came out, and there was nothing cartoony about it. The acting was very real, and the overall feel of the show was dark. It was like nothing you’d seen before, and I was a huge fan of the show. This was pre-TiVo, so this was one of those shows where you had to see it every day. You didn’t want to miss an episode, so when I got a call to be the voice of a new Batman, and the series was being made with the entire team that did Batman: The Animated Series … well, that was huge.

Q: You spent a lot of time with Kevin Conroy over the course of the series. What was that experience like for you?

FRIEDLE: First of all, Kevin is a classically trained actor. He’s very professional. I’ve had the good fortune of working with several characters like that, but I’d never done an animated series before, and I was kind of slumped in my chair saying my lines. And Kevin started giving me tips. Simple things, but things that really make a difference. For example, he had me sit up straight and showed me how that helps open your diaphragm naturally. Little things you look for in an actor of his caliber like the right ways to play to the page, the right ways to not pop your Ps. He was nice enough to take me under his wing and teach me, and I’ll never forget him for that.

Q: What set Batman Beyond apart?

FRIEDLE: To me, it always goes back to the writing. Batman Beyond was so strong that you couldn’t wait to get the script for the next week. The character development was outstanding—from the new villains they’d invent to the way they brought back the old villains. And the way they treated Terry and Bruce and their relationship. The casting was phenomenal, but even the greatest actor can’t make bad writing good … so it all comes down to what was on the page, and that’s where Batman Beyond became a great show.

Q: How important are superheroes to you?

FRIEDLE: I love superheroes, and Batman was always my favorite. I was never a huge Superman fan. I like the idea that Batman was just a man. He doesn’t have super powers. As you’re reading comics or watching animated series, I think you normally gravitate toward one or the other. But, for me, it came down to this: Superman had to come from another planet to save us. Batman said, “Look what we can do for ourselves—with our heart and mind and soul, we can save each other.”

Q: Why are superheroes important to society?

FRIEDLE: I love to read. I’m a voracious reader. I think the superhero genre is really our modern day Greek mythology. These are our gods; this is Homer reading the Iliad. We’ve got superheroes; they had gods. From a literary standpoint, this is the next generation of mythology. From a fan standpoint, with authors like Robert Jordan and Brandon Sanderson and even the Harry Potter series, a great fantasy book just takes you away. You can disappear into an entire world where you can forget what is going on in your world. For kids, I think it teaches a sense of right and wrong. For the most part, these stories are tales of good vs. evil. That’s important for kids—to see what is good and bad, and how it can be fought without violence. And just for the fun of it all, who doesn’t want to get lost in a great book or series?

Q: So, now you’re back in the superhero realm—and Batman’s universe—on Batman: The Brave and the Bold. How do you like your role as Blue Beetle?

FRIEDLE: Blue Beetle is a ton of fun to play. I wasn’t totally familiar with the character, but I studied up for the role quickly. It’s been tricky because we wanted to make sure that we played to Jaime Reyes’ heritage—as he is the first real Latino superhero—but we didn’t want to do a cartoony Latino voice. But, at the same time, you also have to make him Hispanic, so there was more riding on this role. Terry could be created in any way, shape, or form. Jaime had already been established. IT’s not a heavy character, but there’s more of a story. So, to step into a world that’s already established was more difficult than creating a character from the beginning.

Q: You’ve been solely focused on voiceover roles for several years. Are you no longer interested in on-camera acting?

FRIEDLE: I retired from on-camera work at 30, plain and simple. I started acting on camera when I was 10, so it had been 20 years. I really enjoyed it, but the on-camera side of the industry isn’t as fun anymore—it’s definitely not the same as when I started. I’m now more established in the voiceover world, and I get to do it in a far more fun, more uplifting way. I think I went out on a high note. I was still doing films and television series, and I thought I’d rather walk away when it was my choice. I know you’re never supposed to say never, but I can pretty much say never to on-camera again.

Q: What’s the best thing about playing a superhero?

FRIEDLE: At the time we were doing Batman Beyond, I thought the coolest thing was telling my nephews I was Batman and not being lying to them. One time, my oldest nephew Huck came out from Brooklyn. He pulled me aside and said, “Look, Uncle Will, I want you to know I’m six now. I think I’m old enough to see the Batcave.” He actually thought I was Batman, which is very cool. It can’t get much better for an uncle.

 

[Karkull]

NOTE: This article is no longer available either on the original news site or on Internet Archive. I happened to archive a copy of it two years ago.

Bruce Timm Discusses the Batman He Was Never Allowed to Make … Until Now

Jevon Phillips
South Florida Sun Sentinel | June 8, 2015

Bruce Timm and his animation style have been a popular hit for the animated DC Universe since Batman: The Animated Series first hit the air. He followed it up with Superman: The Animated Series and a few other DC titles as well, but his latest anticipated project, Justice League: Gods and Monsters Chronicles changes everything for the classic DC characters, including a whole lot of dark directions Timm wasn't allowed to explore in the past.

In this alternate world, Batman is a bloodthirsty vampire, Superman is the son of General Zod, and Wonder Woman is a warring New God. Other twisted characters include a "bizarre" Green Lantern Corps and a maniacal Harley Quinn, complete with dead bodies and severed heads in her refrigerator.

[…] The film comes out July 28th from Warner Home Entertainment, but the web series—a miniseries with just three episodes—launches today online at Machinima. A second season has already been announced for 2016, but it will be a full season of episodes. We talked to Timm about the series, his style of animation and what went into the new world of variant characters.

JEVON PHILLIPS: Where did the idea for these versions of the Big Three come from?

BRUCE TIMM: Different places. I started with the Superman idea. Rather than creating the entire DC Universe from the group up, I wanted to tie it in to the existing "real" DC Universe, or the in-continuity DC Universe. I took the easy route and kept Superman coming from Krypton, and I just had this flash of insight like, "Oh, what if his dad wasn't Jor-El? What if his dad was Zod?" And that sent us down an interesting path with him. And then, with Batman, I kind of always liked the idea of making Batman a vampire. We actually tried to do that in the animated series a long time ago, but [we] weren't allowed to do that for children's television. So, somehow, we went to the whole Man-Bat thing and thought, "Oh. Kurt Langstrom. Kurt Langstrom is Batman." And then Wonder Woman. We came up with a bunch of ideas. At one point, we were going to keep her identity close to the whole Greek mythology thing, and it wasn't really working for us. It wasn't a big enough change. Then, after talking it over with Alan Burnett, I had already drawn an image of her where she was wearing a sort of Kirby-esque basic battle armor, and Alan looked at that and said, "Whoa, wait a minute. Why don't we just make her one of the New Gods?" And there you go.

For all of the other characters that we're going to be introducing in the web series, they were a little all over the place. Some of the characters weren't really radically changed from their in-continuity counterparts. For instance, Harley Quinn shows up. She's an extreme version of Harley, not really a different re-imagining of her. A pretty evil version. It's just been a little bit of this, a little bit of that.

JP: So, there's no real need to reference Kal-El or Bruce Wayne or...

TIMM: Well, Kal-El here doesn't exist. The only thing we know about Bruce Wayne ... as far as I'm concerned, Bruce Wayne's parents didn't get gunned down in Crime Alley, so he had a completely different life. We may deal with that at some point. If we do, then he'll have a role that's completely different than what you might expect.

JP: Everyone loves your style of animation. Who were your influences?

TIMM: Tons of different people. It's a combination of classic Disney animation style. "Sleeping Beauty" was always my favorite in terms of pure design. It really kind of simplified that particular style. That plus a heaping dose of Alex Toth character design of Hanna-Barbera superheroes of the '60s. That's the basic two main ingredients of my style. Then there's a little bit of Jack Kirby, a little bit of John Buscema, Wally Wood, and Harvey Kurtzman.

JP: The son of Zod, the Superman in Gods and Monsters, asked the question about whether he should rule Earth or not. What philosophical debates were you having about the project?

TIMM: Well, that's Superman in a nutshell. This version especially, because he has a completely different origin than Kal-El. He has a different biological father—this megalomaniacal supervillain. Also, he wasn't raised in Kansas by the Kents. He was raised by an immigrant Mexican couple in the Southwest, so he has a completely different set of values than Clark Kent / Kal-El. It brings up the whole nature versus nurture argument. Is who we are hard-wired into our genes, and how much of it is our environment or upbringing? It just gave us an interesting space to explore with him.

JP: What character tweaks are you most excited about?

TIMM: It's still in the early days. We're still finalizing scripts for the second season. Some of the characters have been announced. Everything else I want to keep under wraps just to have some surprises. For the ones that have been announced ... we have a new Mary Marvel. She's black and kind of looks like Pam Grier from the '70s. Cool way to go with her.

And we have a cyborg super soldier that is a mash-up of two different characters named Steel. A character in the '80s named Commander Steel who was a cyborg super soldier and the John Henry Irons version of Steel. And the other thing we announced was the Green Lanterns. We want to do a really bizarre version of the Green Lantern Corps focusing on the idea that they're genuinely aliens. We want to explore some ideas that we haven't before, like how alien can an alien be and still be understandable by humans. So, we want to make sure that they don't act like human beings, don't think like human beings and don't talk like human beings. They have different points of view on everything and they're kind of scary.

JP: In terms of the web series, how has the distribution of this project changed the way that you now think of doing animated series?

TIMM: The biggest change is also the biggest challenge. The episodes are going to be pretty short. The episodes are going to be about seven minutes long instead of 22. It's made us rethink completely how to tell a story, and the second season does have a bit of a story arc, but at the same time they stand alone so that you don't have to have seen all the others to follow it. It's been a real challenge to cut to the chase. You want to give the audience enough information so that they can follow, but you don't go too much into back stories and origin stories and such. It's been a challenge, but to me it's been really exciting. We just cut through all of the boring stuff and just get to the good part.

 

[Karkull]

Since we're on the subject of Justice League: Gods and Monsters, let us not forget the only images we have of the proposed Season Two, which possibly came from the Machinima event on May 4, 2015:

 

[JonnyQuest037]

CC: Do you like being part of the DVDs, like the Justice League ones?

TUCKER: Sometimes. The last few Justice Leagues, I was in the middle of production on Legion and my head was really scattered. But I love the DVDs. You work on these and the excitement of making the shows and all the things that went into the making of them, there’s a story behind every episode. We quickly forget the information, and I know there’s lots of stuff that fans would love to hear or know about. You’re on to something else and you don’t have time to reminisce or think about [it]. So, I think [of it] as a document of our process.

We made Justice League to be a perennial classic. Hopefully, it will stand the test of time. It’s the best animated action show I’ve seen. And I’m saying that just as a viewer; there isn’t an ego involved at all. If I was a fan, I would have loved it.

It really needs to be documented, the process and what went into it. It wasn’t easy; it wasn’t an easy […] show to do. There were lots of arguments and gnashing of teeth to get it there. So, I’m glad we do have the DVDs to at least document what happened, even though we’re only scratching the surface on a lot of them.

As somebody who's been trying to document the DCAU to the best of my ability, this hit home.

 

[Karkull]

As a fellow DCAU Historian, I agree.

 

[M.O.D.O.K.]

Still sad to this day that we didn't get more Gods and Monsters stories.

 

[Karkull]

Added 2017 links. Lot of 25 year retrospectives for BTAS.

 

[Karkull]

Added 2018, 2019, 2020, and 2021 links.