Boy, it really must be Throwback Thursday because today I'm bringing back Rants & Recommendations from the grave! For those of you unfamiliar, the R&R is when I compare one piece of comic book media and another of similar themes. For this R&R, I'll be matching the "Justice League" Animated Series against the "Justice League: War" animated movie. Let's rumble!
"Justice League: War" was an animated movie loosely based on Geoff Johns' opening run on The Justice League comic in 2011, and I do stress the word "loosely". In the original comic the JL was made up of Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, Green Lantern, The Flash, Cyborg, and Aquaman. This first obvious difference is that this animated movie switched Aquaman out for Shazam, partly do to Aquaman being featured in this movie's sequel "Justice League: Throne of Atlantis". The story revolves around alien soldiers called Parademons arriving on Earth through teleportation portals. As our individual heroes investigate these creatures, they continually banter and even battle each other out of misunderstandings. To the film's credit, they do actually show Superman beating up Batman twice as he realistically would. The heroes are forced to unite when the Parademon's master Darksied attacks Earth. The action is top notch, but for what the movie does in action it lacks in character. Green Lantern is overly self-confident, Shazam is a immature brat in a jock's body, and the attraction between Superman and Wonder Woman is clearly rushed for the sequel. The only character with actual development is Cyborg, who admittedly gets some golden moments with his father that tug at your heart strings. But the majority of the characters are all punch and no ponder, and Darksied is no better as his origins and motivations are glossed over to focus more on the action. Overall, "Justice League: War" is a good-looking film that's a guilty pleasure at best, but fails to pay homage to the story it's based on. Not only that, but this film was the first to kick-off DC's shared movie universe with films only based on New 52 stories, meaning creativity and originality began to suffer.
Moving on to my recommendation, let's talk about "Justice League: The Animated Series". Actually, "gush" would be a better way of describing it. Counting it's sequel series-"Justice League: Unlimited"-this show ran from 2001 to 2006. Between those years, show-runners Bruce Timm and Paul Dini provided viewers with a multitude of stories and character pieces that allowed them to better understand these larger-than-life heroes. Prior to JLAS, Timm and Dini brought us animated shows based off Batman, Superman and Static. When JLAS began, the creators tied those mentioned shows into this show's canon, creating one of the earliest shared universes in a comic book adaptation. Yet again we received a slightly different line-up from the original JLA, the team consisted of Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, The Martian Manhunter, The Flash (Wally West), Green Lantern (John Stewart), and Hawkgirl. The alterations to the team were made to give the characters a bit more diversity. Each character-whether they first appeared in JLAS or earlier-got plenty of development as the show went on. Even if you didn't have the interest or attention span to cover all fifty-two episodes of this two season show (not counting JLU), you'd still understand each heroes' personality within three episodes. The heroes felt so real and relatable, it was nearly impossible to pick a least-favorite. Any mistakes this show made were almost always rectified and it took story elements from the shows that came before it. The success of JLAS set the standard for what a lot of DC Comics fans love about DC to this day. And all that doesn't begin to cover how amazing the show got when JLU started! JLU turned the Justice League into a literal Justice Legion as the team became more like an organization patrolling the planet with hand-fulls of DC heroes. It's through this show I came to know so many obscure DC characters! No character is done an injustice. Maybe Aquaman. But that was 90's Aquaman. We don't talk about 90's Aquaman.
Now you could argue that JLAS had more time to develop their characters, but even if you compare the first three episodes of JLAU to JLW, you'll see the action in JLAU is just as good as the animated movie while also giving each character an admirable personality. In this instance, the old ways trump the new age. You can find JLAS on DVD and online sources. Thanks for reading.
P.S. Mentioning my upcoming appearance on The Distractions Podcast, it'll be happening this Saturday and you'll find links to it all over this site and my Facebook page. More to come, readers!
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