A look back at the seemingly never-ending struggle to bring DC Comics' premiere superhero team to the DCAU.
On the surface, it seemed like a slam dunk. The world’s greatest superheroes brought together to fight for truth and justice in the same animated universe as Batman: The Animated Series, Superman: The Animated Series, and The New Batman Adventures. It was a natural progression of the continuity shepherded by visionaries Bruce Timm, Paul Dini, and Alan Burnett. However, in reality, the road to the Watchtower was an uphill battle not only with DC Comics, Kids’ WB!, and the lawyers, but also within the creative team itself.
Obviously, a major concern was comparisons to the past, specifically Super Friends, the long-running series of Justice League-related shows that ran from 1973 to 1986 on ABC. While popular enough to run for over a decade, the series suffered from legitimate criticisms that, more often than not, makes it a show that today people either watch ironically or remember fondly through nostalgia. Jay Allman, Toon Zone (now Anime Superhero) reporter and animation historian, had this to say about the series in 2006:
For decades, that hammy old show had been a rebuke to those who dreamed of making an epic [animated] adventure series on a TV budget. It had tried to squeeze evil villains and earnest heroes into twenty-minute stories; it wound up looking like a bunch of circus clowns piling into a Volkswagen.
Thanks to Super Friends, the public zeitgeist only remembered Aquaman as the guy who “talks to fish” until Jason Momoa took on the role in 2016, and there are probably more people around today that remember Black Vulcan over Black Lightning. For that matter, what about all of the potentially offensive “ethnic” characters like Apache Chief, Samurai, and El Dorado that were created to balance the Justice League’s all white cast from the comics? And why was it that nobody could throw a punch, anyway?
Anyway, in this essay, we look back at the development of the original Justice League television series, and how the DCAU’s final bow almost didn’t happen.
No Bat is an Island
In the beginning, there was Batman: The Animated Series (1992-1995), which featured a lone hero against a city of crime. Sure, Dick Grayson (aka Robin) was there—and later Batgirl, who would debut towards the end of the series—but at first he was merely an accoutrement to the main character, appearing only in a small handful of episodes. For much of the series, Batman was portrayed as a lone hero, and other superheroes simply didn’t exist. Executive Producer Bruce Timm explained their original stance in a 2000 interview with Comicology:
Going back to the original [1992] Batman series, we always tried to pretend that Batman was the only superhero in the world. It makes it more believable somehow. You can buy the whole mythos of Gotham City and all of the weird villains if you don’t also admit that there’s a guy from Krypton flying around. [And] whenever we did have a guest star, it was always someone like Zatanna, who we could rationalize; she’s [presented as] more of a stage magician than a real sorceress. (qtd. in Lamken, “Justice”)
As previously stated, in all 85 episodes of BTAS, the only two heroic guest stars were the aforementioned Zatanna and western hero Jonah Hex, who 1) has no powers and 2) only appeared in flashback. And while today we have accounts of pitched stories featuring additional guest stars—Black Canary, Enemy Ace (Sauriol), and the Creeper (Jankiewicz) to name a few—the fact that they didn’t happen could suggest that they were low priority compared to other Batman stories. Simply put, the creative team was content to have the Dark Knight as an island unto himself.
As the series progressed, this creative choice would be challenged by the network execs. On Fox, the network began to demand the increased presence of Robin in the episodes, turning BTAS into a more traditional Batman series, as recalled by writer and producer Paul Dini in his 1998 book Batman: Animated:
The Fox Network, on the assumption that kids won’t watch a kid’s show unless kids are in it, soon began insisting that Robin be prominently featured in every episode. When Fox changed the title from Batman: The Animated Series to The Adventures of Batman & Robin, they laid down the law—no story premise was to be considered unless it was either a Robin story or one in which the Boy Wonder played a key role. Out were underworld character studies like “It’s Never Too Late”; in were traditional Batman and Robin escapades like “The Lion and the Unicorn.”
[…] Looking back, there was nothing drastically wrong with Robin’s full-time insertion into the series—after all, kids do love him. Our major gripe at the time was that it started turning the series into the predictable Batman and Robin show people had initially expected it would be. For the first season, Batman had been an experiment we weren’t sure would work. We were trying out different ways of telling all kinds of stories with Batman as our only constant. For better or worse, having a kid forced him, and the series, to settle down. (Dini and Kidd).
Following the series’ end at Fox, it was immediately picked up by the WB network and paired with their new Superman show. Called The New Batman Adventures (1997-1999) when it wasn’t The New Batman / Superman Adventures, the network change required multiple adjustments, with one of them being an expansion of the sidekick pool, with Grayson (now Nightwing) joining up with a full-time Batgirl and a newer, younger Robin.
In addition to the mandate adding an assortment of youthful partners, the borders of Gotham City were relaxed, allowing more guest stars to appear than on the previous series. In addition to multiple team-ups with the Man of Steel (whom he now shared a marquee with; more on that in a moment), the Dark Knight found himself teaming up with the Creeper as well as Etrigan the Demon, a character far beyond the “real world” setting of Gotham City but used due to his status as a beloved Jack Kirby creation. Timm, an avowed Kirby admirer, acknowledged this in a 2000 interview: “Then by the time we did the revamp series, we really wanted to do the Demon, so that opened up a can of worms” (qtd. in Lamken, “Justice”).
No doubt had the series progressed beyond 24 episodes, there would have been more.
With a Little Help from My Super Friends
By comparison, Superman: The Animated Series (1996-2000) featured a more open policy regarding guest stars. As Paul Dini said in a 1996 interview, “It’s a little more logical in Superman’s world that he would have team-ups, rather than Batman’s world with such a solo character” (qtd. in Allstetter, “Men”). Bruce Timm concurred the statement in a 1999 interview:
[Y]ou'll notice that we did a lot of superhero team-ups on Superman and not very many on Batman? […] And you notice that Batman's world, strangely enough, was a little bit more realistic that Superman's world. Having a bunch of superheroes running around in Batman's world just didn't really feel true. Whereas, for some reason, if you can accept this guy from another planet running around throwing tanks around, then you can accept a guy with a power ring. (qtd. in Townsend)
This decision may have been motivated early on in the development process because, as previously discussed, an early plan for the Superman series was to turn it into a proto-Justice League, with multiple superhero guest stars every episode. As recounted by Timm in a 1998 interview:
When we were developing the Superman show, we were playing around with different ideas. So, at one point, we said, “Well, what if we did Superman and the Justice League, where every episode would have Superman in it, plus two other members of the Justice League?”
I sat down and did designs for a bunch of the different characters, even some that had never even been in the JLA, like the Question. We tried to put in as weird a mix of characters as we could so it wasn’t just Superman, Aquaman, Hawkman. […] Batman wasn’t going to be part of it. He already had his own show.
[DC President and Editor-in-Chief] Jenette Kahn put a stop to it. She thought it was not a good idea, since we were just reintroducing Superman to the audience, and she thought teaming him up with the JLA would be diminishing to him. We all kind of agreed with that, so we dropped the JLA idea. (qtd. in Brick)
Surprisingly, the first guest star to appear on Superman was not a traditional superhero, but the antihero Lobo, who appeared in the two-part episode “The Main Man” in November 1996. It would take another ten months before the Flash would appear in the episode “Speed Demons,” first airing September 13, 1997. Described by Timm as looking like Barry Allen but acting like Wally West in a September 8, 1997 Comics Continuum article (Allstetter, “Superman”), fellow producer Alan Burnett added this comment in 1998:
I’ve always wanted to do the Flash, so we decided to incorporate him into Superman. We didn’t identify which Flash he was, although I think he’s probably the Wally West Flash. He was identified as coming from Central City, so some fans said, “He must be Barry Allen!” But, y’know, Wally goes back quite a few years, so it’s very natural for him to have been from Central City himself. (qtd. in Brick)
Soon to arrive at the party was the Dark Knight himself, as TNBA premiered on Kids’ WB! the same day as “Speed Demons.” First appearing on STAS in the three-part, 90-minute TV movie “World’s Finest” (October 4, 1997), Batman immediately butted heads with the Superman, infringing on both his turf and his girl. Said Burnett in a 1997 Wizard Magazine article:
Superman and Batman don’t go together. I talked to somebody at DC [Comics], and I said “How did you guys write all those stories for all those years? We’re pulling [our] hair out trying to come up with a story.” And he replied, “Because all those stories sucked.” (qtd. in Allstetter, “Dark”)
Added Timm:
If you think of Batman as [a] goofy guy in a blue cape, then they work. But we’re using the archetype—the ultimate Batman, if you will—and we’re making him as grim as he ever was. That version of Batman doesn’t work with Superman. It really is oil and water; they just don’t match. (qtd. in Allstetter, “Dark”)
Added Dini:
It was not easy to write. We dreaded turning it into an episode of Super Friends, with just a bunch of caped characters sitting around yapping to each other as if they’d known each other all their lives, and they really were cardboard, cutout personalities. We wanted to do justice to really four characters: Superman, Batman, but also Clark Kent and Bruce Wayne. And bring these characters and conflict on every level. There’s a romance involved between Bruce and Lois [Lane]. There’s a definite difference in the way Batman and Superman work. And, right off the bat, Superman has problems with Batman’s reputation, and his attitude, and just the fact that he’s shown up in Metropolis. (qtd. in Allstetter, “Dark”)
Of course, by the end of the episode, the hostility between the two heroes had cooled enough for Batman to make further guest appearances in STAS episodes “Knight Time” (October 10, 1998) and “The Demon Reborn” (February 6, 1999).
The next hero to appear was Dr. Fate—DC Comics’ equivalent to Marvel’s Dr. Strange and frequent Justice Society member in the comics—who appeared in “The Hand of Fate,” first airing October 11, 1997. Designed to physically resemble The Prisoner’s Patrick McGoohan, who was originally approached to voice the character (according to the June 25, 2024 episode of the Justice League Revisited podcast), Timm revealed the motivation behind using the character in a 1998 Wizard Magazine article:
I believe we were just tossing ideas around about which heroes we wanted to use, and we thought Dr. Fate would look great in the cartoon. We thought it’d be a great episode to go all out on, with Lovecraftian monsters and such, and we loved the way it turned out. (qtd. in Brick)
The next major guest star was Green Lantern, who appeared in “In Brightest Day…,” first airing February 6, 1999. However, the creative team—taking into account the changes made to the Green Lantern comic book series in the mid-‘90s—made a decision that would later complicate the Green Lantern mythos in the DCAU by combining comic book Lanterns Hal Jordan and Kyle Rayner into one character. Described by Paul Dini as a “smorgasbord Green Lantern” or a “Frankenstein Green Lantern” in an April 17, 1998 Comics Continuum article (qtd. in Allstetter), Bruce Timm would later expand on their reasoning for creating the hybrid:
I changed the Green Lantern design I’d done for the original JLA presentation, because originally I was going to use John Stewart. […] It’s basically Hal Jordan’s origin story, but it happens to Kyle. The costume is a bit of both, although perhaps a bit more like the Hal Jordan Green Lantern. It’s kind of a coincidence, but Kyle Rayner works for the Art Department of the Daily Planet, so it’s more convenient that Superman would be along for the origin. (qtd. in Brick)
Finally, Aquaman appeared in “Fish Story,” first airing May 8, 1999. In adapting the character for STAS, Timm was cognizant of the issues that would need to be addressed, including the aforementioned prejudices that would need to be challenged. As he would recall in an August 31, 2004 post on Toon Zone (now Anime Superhero):
I referenced the “Aquaman’s only useful when there’s a body of water around” thing as being the general public’s perception of Aquaman, not mine, based on his poor showing in the old Super Friends days. It’s becoming something of a popular joke (I recall [Cartoon Network] even doing a spoof ad mocking his supposed “uselessness out of water” a few years back; b.t.).
Added Timm, in a September 1st follow-up:
Yes, [the team] were all handled poorly on Super Friends, no question. But for some weird reason, the lame-ass Aquaman is the one that sticks out in people’s minds. And again, it’s not that we held it against him, but that we felt his rep in the general public’s perception had been severely damaged by Super Friends. Obviously, it didn’t stop us from using him; in fact, it made us want to make him as cool as possible when we did use him, to undo the damage.
However, in doing so, we gave him an attitude that really doesn’t scream “team player.” (b.t.)
In the end, the character resembled the classic, orange-and-green suited Aquaman, but he possessed the character’s new, aggressive attitude, popularized by Peter David’s 1990s Aquaman series. As Timm stated in a 1998 Wizard Magazine article:
It’s the old Aquaman costume, but he’s got the new Aquaman attitude. I don’t want to say he’s Namor-like, but he’s definitely not quite the old, benign Aquaman. He’s got the attitude, but he doesn’t have the beard and the hook. He’s more like the classic Aquaman. (qtd. in Brick)
(In addition to the above, the series also featured appearances by both Steel and Supergirl, but despite their popularity these are largely ancillary Superman characters compared to the superheroes listed above. The series also featured an appearance by three characters from the Legion of Super Heroes—Cosmic Boy, Saturn Girl, and Chameleon Boy—but, again, they are part of the Superman mythos, having originated in the Superboy stories of the ‘50s and ‘60s.)
Despite the appearance of such DC Comics royalty, there are a few notable absences in the above guest stars. Most notably absent is Wonder Woman, who was mentioned in early press materials (Allstetter, “Men”), but never appeared, likely due to the complicated licensing issues that plagued the character at the time (which I’ve discussed in a previous article). Also mentioned in the 1996 article were potential appearances by Mister Miracle, the Spectre, and Etrigan the Demon (whose appearance must have shifted to TNBA; Allstetter, “Men”).
Also mentioned as a potential guest star was Captain Marvel, whose friendly rivalry with the Man of Steel is as storied in the legal system as it is in the funny book pages. Apparently, during Superman’s third season, the creative team began developing an episode that would not only feature the Big Red Cheese, but it would also occur on the JLA satellite with an appearance by the JLA. Said Paul Dini in a July 22, 1998 interview on Comics Continuum:
We were going to do Superman / Captain Marvel, and while we were working on the story, we said, “Well, let’s put them on the Justice League satellite; they’re just up there, and we bring in the other characters. We just do the Justice League for no good reason other than they’re there and see if we can make it work on the show.”
We had fun sort of brainstorming that episode, but in the process of writing it, we had to call DC and see what characters we can use; we went to them with a list. And, in the time it took for them to get back to us, [Alan Burnett] had been developing the Aquaman story, and it worked better, so we put that one aside and did the Aquaman story. (Allstetter, “Justice League Cartoon?”)
In the end, the episode—that would have begun with an arm wrestling match between the two titans (Sauriol), but then apparently devolve into an all-out brawl—never came to pass, allegedly due to a similar rights issue. And while we know less about Captain Marvel’s licensing issues than we do Wonder Woman’s, I can say that, according to former Toon Zone (now Anime Superhero) poster and Justice League insider DarkLantern (aka the late Ted Sterling), “The legality of using Captain Marvel in the animated medium [at the time] is almost as complicated as Wonder Woman.” Whatever the reason of his absence, Bruce Timm later stated his regrets in his 2000 Comicology interview:
We really did want to do the Captain Marvel / Superman fight. And since we’re not going to be doing any more Superman episodes, that doesn’t seem likely to happen. That’s one that I’ll kinda miss doing. (qtd. in Lamken, “Ever”)
Fortunately, after several unsuccessful attempts—including a potential guest appearance in the Justice League episode “Hereafter” (Gross)—he would finally make a single appearance in the Justice League Unlimited episode “Clash.”
(Then, years later, the rights issues entangling both of them would be relaxed, allowing both Wonder Woman and Captain Marvel to make multiple appearances in shows such as Batman: The Brave and the Bold, Young Justice, and Justice League Action. Go figure.)
NOTE: The above image is a copy of “Earth’s Mightiest Heroes,” a limited edition cel issued in 2000 and sold in the Warner Bros. Studio Stores.
Fantasy League
Considering the sheer volume of potential members introduced in STAS and TNBA, one would suspect that a Justice League animated series would be a logical brand progression. In fact, it was, and had the Superman series received a fourth season we might have gotten it earlier. Said Alan Burnett in a 1998 Wizard Magazine interview:
We were toying with the idea of introducing all the characters that would be in the JLA one by one in Superman, then the last episode ever would be the formation of the JLA. […] We don’t know if we’re going to have another season on Superman at this point, but if we do, I’m sure we’re going to be introducing them. (qtd. in Brick)
Unfortunately, like The New Batman Adventures, the potential for new Superman episodes presumably evaporated with the approval of Batman Beyond (Reisman), which was officially announced January 12, 1998 (“Kids’ WB!”). However, even if both shows were technically cancelled, the creative team still had to finish existing episodes from both series already in production while, at the same time, begin production on Beyond, which—as it was intended to premiere that fall—had a “ridiculously short production window” with which to create (Avila). Said Timm in a 2021 IGN interview:
Once I came around on it, we had to hit the ground running. We had no time to develop the show […] We didn’t have scripts, we didn’t have characters, we hadn’t done any of the world building yet. It was a mad dash. We were making stuff up on the fly. (qtd. in Avila)
(It’s worth noting that, at the same meeting that birthed the Batman Beyond, that television executive Jamie Kellner pitched the creative team an idea from “outside sources” that would have seen Batman training a “junior Justice League” [Lamken, “Ever”]. While only “verbally batted around five minutes before we came up with the Batman Beyond concept” [according to Timm in a February 12, 2005 Toon Zone <now Anime Superhero> post; b.t.], the series would have featured the Dark Knight training “Aquaman Jr. & Wonder Woman Jr.,” presumably among others [Lamken, “Ever”].)
Still, the idea of Justice League lingered. In a July 22, 1998 Comics Continuum article, Alan Burnett announced that he wanted to do the series for Kids’ WB! and would “be pitching it in the next development season” with the intent on getting it to air by Fall 1999 (Allstetter, “Justice League Cartoon?”), adding:
It’s a matter of all the kingdoms [the various factions at WB and DC Comics] coming together on these characters and deciding, “Yeah, we’ll give it a shot.” I think the time’s right for the Justice League. I know that the toy companies would love it. We’ll see. (qtd. in Allstetter, “Justice League Cartoon?”)
However, it seems that sometime during the following month the story changed, as Paul Dini, Alan Burnett, and Bruce Timm revealed at San Diego Comic-Con that year. As reported in an August 18, 1998 dispatch on Comics Continuum, Dini stated, “It’s very, very doubtful we’ll do a Justice League series,” while Burnett added, “It depends on if the rights are available, and if we can come up with it so that it’s just not another team show, that it has some personality. That’s where it’s at right now” (qtd. in Allstetter, “JLA”). Finally, Timm voiced his frustration:
It’s really hard to write episodes around [just] three characters. On the Batman show, trying to give Batman and Batgirl and Robin all something to do is really tough. And these characters aren’t super-powered. If you have a superhero team, they have to fight a villain who is equally as strong, if not stronger. It’s hard to come up with shows like that.
[Also, l]ogistically, Justice League would be a really difficult show to do because there is no reuse of stock backgrounds in every episode. The only thing that recurs in every episode would be the Satellite. One day you’re in Calgary, the next episode you’re in Sydney.
So, it would be really, really tough. But it could happen someday. (qtd. in Allstetter, “JLA”)
The reason for this change was most likely due to evolving attitudes at Kids’ WB!, which had just ditched a series featuring an adult Batman in exchange for a teenaged one. To explain, here’s an excerpt from a 2000 Comics Continuum interview with BTAS alumni Boyd Kirkland, who was writing, directing, and producing X-Men: Evolution for Kids’ WB! at the time:
The WB right now, and I believe they’ve released statements through their own publicity, [said] that they’re about being more kid friendly than they were with Batman. The feeling there now is often times those shows went too far with the violence level, so they’re being pretty hard lined with us on this show about what they’re going to allow and not allow. It’s one of those areas I have no control over. I’m basically told what I can do and can’t do.
[…] The attended target audience for the network has always been for 2-11. That’s where all the advertising is targeted and that’s the market that’s everybody’s interested in. That’s the demographic everybody’s trying to reach. It was always great that we had an audience that went way beyond that for Batman but, frankly, the network never cared because they weren’t selling advertising to that market. So, in terms of the revenue coming back to the network, those numbers never entered the picture for them. It’s the same thing now. (qtd. in Allstetter, “Question”)
These concerns were echoed by Alan Burnett at a 2002 panel at Mid-Ohio-Con in Columbus, Ohio, when he was producing Kids’ WB! series Static Shock and Ozzy & Drix:
One time, I asked Jeanette Kahn, of DC Comics, “What’s your median age for comic book readers?” And she just floored me when she said it was 25. I thought, “My God, this is past college graduation.” And, on Saturday morning, they’re after 6-11 year-olds because that’s the advertising they have there, so they want to attract that audience. They also want to attract girls as much as they can. They want some sort of girl element so that girls can stay with a superhero show throughout the thing. So, we’re struggling with two different animals here.
[Batman Beyond, in some ways, ended an era of superhero animation.] We started to get lighter and more juvenile shows to hit the 6-11 year-olds. A pendulum not only swung, it thwacked all the way to the other side. And now it’s sort of coming back a little bit. We’ve done two years of Static Shock, which I enjoy doing a great deal. But I always realized it needed to be darker than what it was. They wanted 14-year-olds and stories for 14-year-olds and 14-year-old villains, and only now are we starting to shift to a little bit darker in the third season, and it’s making a great deal of difference. The shows for the third season, which starts in January, when you see them, you’re going to think it’s a completely different show. It’s still the same show, but there’s a real tonal difference. (qtd. in Allstetter, “Alan”)
And even Bruce Timm, despite his apparent frustrations with the network, could see their point, as he posted in a February 12, 2005 response on the Toon Zone (now Anime Superhero) message boards:
To be fair, Kids’ WB! is in the business of making entertainment for children, not teenagers, young adults, or grown-ups. I can’t fault them at all for trying to do their job. Don’t anyone take this the wrong way, but all you guys and gals who post here on the Internet are not their intended audience. The fact that shows like JLU, [Teen] Titans, and, yes, The Batman interest and appeal to you is purely “gravy.” From BTAS onward, I’ve always tried to make shows that appeal to a broad age-range of viewers but have always tried to keep in mind that the 6-11 demo is all-important, bottom line. And I gotta tell you, it’s freaking hard to find that balance between “kid-friendly” and “appeals to all ages.” Again, I can’t blame Kids’ WB! for interpreting that mission their own way. (b.t.)
In effect, the executives at Kids’ WB! only really wanted animated programs featuring children for their chosen demographic, which was not to exceed pre-adolescence. So what if Batman and Superman were critically acclaimed and generationally beloved! Never trust a cartoon character over thirty! We’ve got action figures and Happy Meals to sell! It should come as no surprise then, when Paul Dini revealed in a July 7, 1999 Comics Continuum post that “[e]verybody wants to see it, and we would like to do it, but the suits at the network keep pounding it in that [this] is the Kids’ WB! If we were to do a Justice League [series], all they see is a bunch of adults in suits” (qtd. in Allstetter, “Dini”).
Finally, it should be noted that division was beginning to form in the creative team itself. While Burnett and Dini were on record as saying that they were on board with a Justice League series, Bruce Timm was beginning to show apprehension, and even indifference, such as in this 1998 interview:
Truthfully, it’s a difficult show to do. It’s got all those characters, and it’s hard to keep two heroes busy in an action scene at the same time. We do that all the time on the Batman show. When we have Batman, Batgirl, and Robin in a scene together, fighting a group of criminals, you get lost. If you follow Batman too long, you wonder what’s happening to Robin. It’s a logistics thing. It’s very difficult. (qtd. in Brick)
And again, in a 1999 interview:
You know, I don't really understand why they want that so badly. I mean, I guess I kinda do, but... […] There's a [number of] reasons we're not going to do The Justice League. There's a real big legal reason, actually. For a while there, we weren't even allowed to even think about it, because of that live-action pilot they made a couple of years ago. I'm not sure, that may even still be in effect, so there may be a legal reason why we can't do it. But just from a creative standpoint, it's really hard to have that many characters in a 22-minute show and give them all something interesting to do. We found that even on Batman, that it was hard to have Robin, and Batgirl, and Batman all in the same episode. Just staging a fight scene is really difficult, to keep them all busy. You can't ever have Robin just get knocked out, because then you think, “Oh, why wasn't Batgirl there to help him?”
When you have a show like The Justice League, where you've got not just Batman and Batgirl and Robin, but you've got Superman, and Green Lantern, and the Flash, and all these people who have really extra super powers, and [you're trying] to come up with things for them to do every episode, and to come up with opponents that are strong enough for them to figure logically; it's kind of a hassle. That alone is enough to make me think I don't want to go there.
Not only that, but by having that many main characters in a 22-minute show, it's hard to focus personality-wise on any one character. The beauty of a show like Batman is that you can really get into that one character, into his personality.
I'm not saying it couldn't be done well. I just have no desire to do it. (qtd. in Townsend)
And, finally, in a 2000 article:
I’ve said this before, but one of the reasons why I will never do a Justice League show—that’s not to say that one won’t ever happen with somebody else—is that there’s just too many characters in one series. We found that out even with the revamped Batman shows, that having Batman and Robin and Batgirl fighting a group of thugs in a fight scene—it’s literally too many characters to keep track of; it’s hard to stage, you don’t want to spend too much time with any one character because then it’s “What’s Batgirl doing?”
And, of course, with the Justice League, you’re talking about characters who all have the powers of gods, so you can’t just have them fighting thugs, fighting guys robbing banks; they have to be fighting, y’know, huge criminals every time, so you’re talking huge set pieces. One look at the new Avengers cartoon will show you exactly what I’m talking about. (qtd. in Lamken, “Ever”)
However, even with Timm’s increasing trepidation and alleged disinterest, the series found its way forward in a most unexpected way: a backdoor pilot.
Justice League Beyond
Much like their time on BTAS, the creative team took great pains to restrict appearances by other superheroes on Batman Beyond, save for a pitch to include “an updated version of the Huntress,” who—considering how she was originally the daughter of the Golden Age Batman and Catwoman—would have been very interesting had it moved forward (Allstetter, “Batman Beyond Movie, Etc.”). As Timm said in an August 19, 1999 interview with Comics Continuum:
[W]e don’t really have many plans to [do] any other heroes in the Batman Beyond universe. We kind of have the same rules for the Batman Beyond show that we had for the old Batman show. We would kind of like to keep the superhero team-ups to a minimum. (qtd. in Allstetter, “Batman Beyond Movie, Etc.”)
This mandate apparently even included references to other heroes, as Timm recounted in a 2000 Comicology interview:
There’s a Talia episode [Batman Beyond’s “Out of the Past”] that’s going to be in next season’s worth of shows […] in which Bruce is sorta walkin’ down memory lane on the [Bat]computer. [Paul Dini] threw in a shot of Batman with the Justice League. And I said, “Nope. I’m taking that out. We’re not doing Justice League.” (qtd. in Lamken, “Justice”)
However, while previously adamant about keeping Terry McGinnis a solo act, there was one exception, as Timm revealed in the same interview:
All the way through the series, we kept talking about doing a Superman episode. We toyed around with a bunch of different scenarios, and the problem with Superman is that he’s such a big icon; whatever we decided to do with him, we felt that it should be something special. So, we got sidetracked, moved onto other things, and towards the end of [production on] the series, there turned out to be a script shortage—a couple of scripts that [the writing staff] had been working on just went south for one reason or another, just weren’t panning out, and so Paul [Dini] whipped up this Justice League episode. […] So, I look on this as Paul’s revenge. (qtd. in Lamken, “Justice”)
This two-part episode, “The Call,” introduced a futuristic Justice League, dubbed the Justice League Unlimited, to both Batman Beyond and the DCAU. Written by Rich Fogel, Hilary J. Bader, and Stan Berkowitz—and based on a story by Dini and Burnett—it was hoped by the creative team that it would serve as the series finale (Lamken, “Justice”). In the episode, the new Batman is invited by Superman to join the JLU and to help him find a potential traitor in the ranks. Of the team, Dini had this to say in an August 7, 2000 article from Comics Continuum:
There are some old, familiar faces in there, but there are new characters you’ve never seen before, sort of [a] second generation of classic characters, but the basic JLU lineup consists of Superman, the senior member; Barda, from Apokolips, who is sort of second-in-command; Aquagirl, who is the daughter of Aquaman and Mera; a character called Mircon, who is sort of like the original version of the Atom mixed with a little bit of Giant-Man; a character called Warhawk, who is sort of like Hawkman, but who is also the badass of the group; and a new Green Lantern, who is an Asian child, who’s about [eight-years-old] and is sort of like the Dali Lama—he just sort of hovers and is mystical all the time. (qtd. in Allstetter, “Justice League on Batman Beyond”)
Of “The Call,” Timm came off as cautiously optimistic, as seen in the aforementioned Comicology interview:
When [the JLA episode] airs, people are definitely going to want to see a Justice League series because, somehow, even though it was as problematic as I predicted—way too many characters, way too many set pieces, way too much stuff happening; it was a hell of an episode to do—it’s going to be a really exciting episode, the characters interact really well together, and in that respect the episode worked.
It has nothing to do with Batman Beyond. The adventure doesn’t even take place in Gotham City. It’s the problem that I’ve always had fundamentally with team-up books like JLA and Avengers. It’s kind of interesting to see those characters teamed up, but logically, the minute that you start thinking about it…
I’m on record in print, with you, saying that I would never do a Justice League show because it’s too many characters, blah blah blah. But I have to say that it’s gonna be a really cool episode. (qtd. in Lamken, “Justice”)
However, as problematic as the episode was (Timm would later call it both an “extremely fun show” and “a freakin’ mess” in the same January 26, 2005 Toon Zone [later Anime Superhero] posting), it appears that “The Call” served to motivate the creative team to purse a Justice League series again. Said James Tucker, director and storyboard artist for Batman Beyond, “Prior to that, Bruce was very public in saying he didn’t think we could do a Justice League show. Then, after ‘The Call,’ it kind of clicked something in his head that made him think we could” (qtd. in Gross).
Rumors began circulating that a Justice League series was in development as early as October 23, 2000, weeks before “The Call” even aired on Kids’ WB! (Allstetter, “Briefly”). But they were only that at the time.
The Justice League Test Animation Reels
The end of 2000 was a complicated time at Kids’ WB! for the creative team. As Batman Beyond reached 52 episodes production ceased, and the network refused to cancel the show (Allstetter, “Batman Beyond to Return”) or order new episodes (Allstetter, “Batman Beyond’s Future?”), apparently allowing the series to die on the vine. Of course, this was the same period that saw the series’ direct-to-video movie, Batman Beyond: Return of the Joker delayed and significantly edited, so perhaps the writing was on the wall.
In need of a new pitch, Bruce Timm prepared a modified take on Justice League for Kids’ WB!, one that featured a multi-generational team featuring adult superheroes (Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, John Stewart Green Lantern, Hawkgirl, and Martian Manhunter) training a group of younger crimefighters (Robin, Impulse, and a female version of Cyborg). He discussed the pitch in a February 12, 2005 post on Toon Zone (later Anime Superhero):
When we first started talking about [Justice League] the powers that be felt that it should be pitched to Kids’ WB! first. Knowing their preference for younger heroes, I was hesitant to go there, but we prepared test animation of the “female Cyborg” character (Glen [Murakami’s] idea, if I remember right), and Impulse too, I believe, just in case. The Robin footage was just clips from TNBA, I think…
[…] After the pitch meeting, the powers that be realized Kids’ WB! wasn’t likely to go for [Justice League], even with a couple of young ringers in the line-up, and we were given the go-ahead to pitch it to Cartoon Network. (b.t.)
(Other pitches during this time period included a “Batman Beyond on Mars” series, as well as a Pokémon-esqe take on Batman dubbed Batanime. They can be read about here and here.)
The first clip, which was released as a special feature on the Justice League: Season One DVD box set (released March 21, 2006) and referred to as “Justice League: The First Mission,” repurposed models and board panels from previous series (most notably Batman Beyond) to create a sizzle reel of the proto-League. You can see a remastered version of it below, courtesy of Watchtower Database:
Looking back at the pitch and the test footage during a 2004 interview, Tucker reflected how “[i]t was our attempt to try and do something that wasn’t as edgy or as dark as we would normally want to go […] we did the promotional footage, we looked at it and said, ‘This is good, but it’s a little too compromised from what we would really want to do’” (qtd. in Gross).
In preparation for pitching the series to Cartoon Network, the test footage was recut, with the teen heroes removed and clips of the Flash from “Speed Demons” added (this version was released to the public on April 9, 2003 as an Easter Egg on the Justice League: Paradise Lost DVD). However, as it turns out, it wasn’t even needed, as all it took was one phone call to Cartoon Network’s senior vice president of programming, Mike Lazzo, to seal the deal. As Timm recounted during a 2001 interview with Comics Continuum, “I called him up and said, ‘We’re thinking about doing a Justice League show.’ And he said, ‘Great. How many do you want to do?’ It was like, shoot, now we’re in business” (qtd. in Allstetter, “Bruce”).
…And Justice for All
Justice League was officially announced on January 22, 2001 in a press release by AOL Time Warner and TBS Entertainment (“JUSTICE”). As the series debuted in November that same year (the three-part “Secret Origins” first aired November 17th), it would appear that the series suffered from a short production window much like Batman Beyond did (which would explain some of the unevenness in the first season’s episodes), but bear in mind that, unlike Batman Beyond, they didn’t have to start from scratch. They had a template to start, and they were able to cherry-pick the characters from the comics that would provide the best line-up for their needs rather than create new ones. Finally, considering how production ceased on Beyond months before, they must have had some down time to plan ahead.
Sadly, the transition to the new series had some casualties, as longtime producers Alan Burnett and Paul Dini, who had been with the creative team since BTAS, stepped away from Justice League to pursue other projects. In Burnett’s case, he stayed at Kids’ WB!, where he wrote and produced a number of shows, including Static Shock (2000-2004), The Zeta Project (2001), Ozzy & Drix (2002-2004), and The Batman (2004-2008). He also worked on a “young Aquaman” series (Allstetter, “Alan”), and he did return to the DCAU to produce the 2003 direct-to-video Batman: Mystery of the Batwoman.
In Paul Dini’s case, he decided to step away for other reasons, saying “I just feel like I’m moving into a new direction in my career where I’d rather concentrate on characters I create myself, or different types of writing” (Archie). This sabbatical took the form of working on a series of one-shots and short comic book stories including original creations Jingle Belle and Mutant, Texas; then published by Oni Press. He also worked on a number of one-shots for DC Comics, including his oversized graphic novel series with Alex Ross (including Shazam!: Power of Hope [2000] and Wonder Woman: Spirit of Truth [2001]), as well as Zatanna: Everyday Magic (published February 2003). He also kept up with Warner Bros. Animation, working in “development” on a number of projects (Archie), though he eventually settled in as a producer on Duck Dodgers (2003-2005).
And, of course, both Burnett and Dini worked on a screenplay for a live-action Batman Beyond feature film with Director Boaz Yakin (Remember the Titans), according to a January 26, 2001 dispatch from Comics Continuum (Allstetter, “Briefly”).
Over twenty years removed from its debut, the significance of Justice League and, by extension, Justice League Unlimited cannot be emphasized enough. While it took time to find its footing, I would argue that, at its best, the quality of animation and storytelling was a significant improvement over much of the Kids’ WB! era, and it arguably equaled the best episodes of Batman: The Animated Series as well. And it certainly was an improvement over Super Friends, as discussed by the aforementioned Jay Allman in 2006:
By the time it ended, Justice League / Justice League Unlimited had accomplished a task some of us had been anticipating for thirty years: it submitted itself to The Challenge of the Superfriends, and it won. […] Any producers who do not study and learn from this series will unnecessarily risk resurrecting [Super Friends] after Timm and company had finally buried it.
And as for Producer Bruce Timm, who openly dreaded tackling Justice League and its challenges, it certainly proved another feather in his cap, as well as providing Warner Bros. Animation with valuable experience, which they would later put to use creating their series of DC Universe original animated films over the next decade or so. Of course, by doing what he swore up and down for years in the press that he would never, ever do, he did have to eat some crow when initially promoting the series. At the beginning of a 2002 interview with Starlog Magazine, Bruce Timm exclaimed, “I went on record many times saying I would never, ever do Justice League. All I can say is be careful what you promise!” (qtd. in Jankiewicz, “Justice”).
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Images courtesy of Warner Bros. Discovery, Warner Bros. Home Entertainment, DC Comics, and Bruce Timm. YouTube videos courtesy of the CatraDhtem and Watchtower Database channels.
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