DC Animated Shows

[Dr. Insomniac]

Jessica Cruz fans get a MAWS spinoff. John Stewart and Hal Jordan fans get their Max show. Guy Gardner fans get a part of the new Superman movie. While Kyle Rayner fans get nothing. I don't really care since I'm indifferent to Kyle, but when did he become the Tim Drake of GLs? When Timm decided to use John instead of him in the JL cartoon?

[Avaitor]

I'd say between that and Johns rehabilitating Hal.

It IS kind of weird that S:TAS used Kyle for its Green Lantern episode, only to switch for John in JL and not bringing Kyle back when it brought other Lanterns.

[Dr. Insomniac]

We know why John was part of JL, because the staff needed a non-white guy in the cast. Same with how Shayera was there so they'd have more than one woman on the team. But why Kyle only showed up once in the show, I don't know. However, you can tell the production crew didn't really get or like Kyle in the first place even in STAS since they just gave him Hal's design, villain, origin, etc. Same with how DCAU Tim is basically just Jason but with a different name, or how they gave Wally Barry's day job. Which I guess speaks to how the producers just looked at these characters as blank slates they can just graft other characters' traits onto.

[Dr. Insomniac]

Weisman and the YJ fans are trying to push for another hashtag campaign to revive the show, with Weisman saying he has ideas for 9 or 10 more seasons.

Okay, if I were Gunn or whoever is the WB exec with the pull to revive dead DC shows, the generous thing would be to give YJ one more season. Only one more season, to wrap up any plot threads and give the show a definitive conclusion. Because as I've probably said tons of times, watching seasons 3 and 4 were bad in ways that burned me out on taking Weisman's writing seriously. Even when he does things that would've hyped up everyone ages ago like how he recently finished writing a Spectacular Spider-Men comic that features plenty of nods to the SSM show, and I haven't heard anybody talk about that, every Spidey fan I knew was either too busy making fun of Paul or glazing USM. And no, I don't dislike Weisman, far from it, I still have plenty of nostalgia for Gargoyles, WITCH, SSM, etc. I do remind myself that Gargoyles was a cut above other 90s kid shows at the time like Street Sharks or Beetleborgs. And as of recently, I've grown sympathetic to him and other writers in his area of expertise given the playing field of TV-Y7 action cartoons they used to flourish in is basically barren in 2025 outside of established IPs. Kid shows aimed at elementary schoolers are almost a dead genre now thanks to TikTok, cordcutting, YouTube shorts, Saturday morning blocks being long dead, and so on. And the only kid shows now are either aimed at toddlers who don't know how to use the internet or legacy sequel/reboots aimed at general audiences because they know the grade school demographic just isn't enough anymore. Nick is just reruns of Spongebob, Disney Channel is just reruns of Bluey, and CN's getting kicked upstairs to bigger paywall. The circumstances that led to shows like Gargoyles getting made and prospering in the first place don't exist in 2025, and I think that sucks for artists and writers working in genre TV right now.

But I just can't see the appeal in Weisman getting 10 extra seasons of YJ. Especially given the noticeable budget cuts in the later episodes where half the episodes are slideshows and Khary Payton is half the cast, and the complete disregard for resolving plot points in favor of introducing new subplots every other episode. At least in the new Superman movie, they could get away with just having Clark show up fully established as Superman since everybody already knows about Superman, while this show just randomly introduces characters like Mary Marvel, Cassandra Cain, Razor from GLTAS, and just expects you to already know them beforehand. And I know them, sure, but it's straining how the show's not just expecting viewers to know its own continuity, but be familiar with other DC shows just to understand the plot. There was a big part of season 3 that only makes sense if you remember the old 00s Teen Titans show, because YJ itself couldn't find any time to make their own version of Judas Contract matter in the context of their own show so they made enough winking references to the old cartoon in the hopes that you could pretend a vague slightly different version of TT's events happened.

The show's fandom got their wish years ago with 2 more seasons, and all those 2 extra seasons did was introduce countless other plot points while doing little to nothing to wrap up anything introduced in the original CN run. So much needless exposition that doesn't do anything to push the plot forward. The Light lost their intrigue a long time ago but are still the main villains for whatever reason. Worldbuilding without a point to it all. The story's essentially a thousand-headed hydra that radiates diminishing returns at this point, and it's difficult to see why this DC show should get hundreds of episodes over other defunct DC shows. They could dig up Zeta Project and give that 10 seasons, and it would make just as much sense. Besides, I remember last season of YJ ended with them setting up season 5 being a Heroes in Crisis adaptation, and that sounds awful. I don't know why anyone would want that.

On a related note, here's this picture of Vandal Savage I found funny.

[Dr. Insomniac]

After a 20+ year tenure, Greg Cipes is out as Beast Boy. He claims WB fired him after he revealed his Parkinson's diagnosis, while others say WB fired him for his increasing anti-vaxx views. For what it's worth, he contradicted an earlier statement he made this year claiming he was in the middle of recording another season Teen Titans Go by saying he was fired back in February, and further news say he's getting another role instead.

[Daxdiv]

Yeah, I don't really see him just getting fired for having Parkinson's Disease. Why would a big company like WB risk giving someone a slam dunk case against them like that. Even Deadline is saying that the TTG crew was gonna make him a new role since they apparently felt that he didn't have the energy to do Beast Boy's voice up to their standards anymore. Though, I wouldn't be surprised if it was because Greg was spreading his anti-vaxx stances with Beast Boy on Instagram.

From what I've understand from the timeline of events, I think he even said back in April that the studio had his back, which to me implied that I don't think he was gonna get fired from playing Beast Boy because of his disease.

[Daikun]

I highly doubt it had anything to do with his anti-vaxx stance. If that was the case, they would've fired Tara Strong as well.

[Daxdiv]

Speaking of Tara Strong, the fact that she isn't outraged over her co-star being fired does say more than it should. Especially since I do remember her showing outrage over Charles Martinet not getting to voice Mario in the Super Mario Bros Movie. Then again, since this is a show that she works on, she probably does have more insider knowledge than us and could confirm that what the studio said is true.

[Dr. Insomniac]

In another timeline...

[Dr. Insomniac]

JL/JLU on Tubi means I have an excuse to rewatch the show, so I've just been streaming random episodes on my phone while I'm doing stuff.

You know, the older I get, the more JLU's season 2 resolution bugs me for ditching the political chess game between Bruce and Waller with "Surprise, it was Brainiac the whole time!" And I know, I remember an old McDuffie interview where he said they wrote themselves in a corner with the arc being "Can superheroes gain too much power and become corrupt, or is it the other way around and the US government sucks?", and they couldn't really land on either side since one undermines the whole show's premise while the other probably wouldn't fly in 2005 America. Contrast that with how recent DC adaptations like The Suicide Squad and Superman 2025 land on the latter argument (I don't think DCAU Shayera would kill the Boravian president). But even so, it does feel lazy to just throw in a random supervillain to kill the big arc conflict there, and resolve it with Wally punching Luthor/Brainiac really, really hard. Which obviously isn't helped that immediately after that, we get the infamous "Amanda Waller transmutes Terry's dad's DNA so he ejaculates Batman-flavored semen because she wanted to make another Batman" episode. Just a string of theme-killing plot devices that I think undercut the character moments. Reminds me of how the Batman Subzero movie rings hollow because even though it offers a relatively satisfying end to Freeze's arc and they really could've ended things there, instead they went "We bring him back in TNBA as a cyborg spider who just does evil shit out of spite now, and Nora died in one of the tie-in comics so even that part means nothing". And I'm usually all for stupid sci-fi bullshit in my capeshit, Return of the Joker's great and that's a story where the big twist is "The Joker just happened to figure out how to clone his personality and memories in a tiny microchip and implanted it on Tim's body where it just happens to activate decades later instead of shedding off his skin or Tim accidentally scratching the mole or something", but when that bullshit detracts from the story, you can really tell.

But that's not to say I've grown to dislike the show at all, no. It's still pretty fun, very quick-paced, snappy dialogue, great at introducing DC characters like they're brand new but demonstrating their history in only a 22-minute episode, probably the reason why Waller shows up in every DC adaptation after this, absolutely sets a high bar for superhero cartoons that I don't think later DC animated shows have ever surpassed. I know Young Justice tried, and failed. And the less said about those DTV DC animated movies, the better. Kinda wish Gunn threw some money at a weird enough team of animators and writers and let them make a Justice League cartoon that tries to be to the 00s show what the 00s show is to Superfriends. Because the time gap between those two shows is now shorter than the gap between JLU's finale and now. And I'll always have a place in my heart for the DCAU, but there really should be a DC animated series trying to outdo it in the same way shows like BTAS and JL utterly outdid the DC cartoons from the 70s and 80s. But instead, all the interesting DC adaptations right now are the live-action ones while most of the recent cartoons feel more like an afterthought (Caped Crusader just came and went, didn't it?). Which is a huge contrast to when Justice League aired, apologies to the Smallville fans, but the one actually watchable live-action DC thing that came out concurrently with JL's 5 seasons was Batman Begins. Honestly, DC live-action media in general was in a pretty low place while the DCAU was around, which I think added to the latter's reputation.

On another note, according to one of the JL writers Stan Berkowitz, the Mad Men creator apparently preferred season 1 of JL to season 2. Don't agree with him on a lot of things, and definitely not here.

[Dr. Insomniac]

ABTAS is nigh.