Justice League: Season One
2001
Directed by Butch Lukic and Dan Riba
Produced by Bruce Timm
With Kevin Conroy, Maria Canals, Phil LaMarr, others.
The Justice League cartoon, which has been officially cancelled for a few years now, is being released in a series of box sets in hopes of capitalizing on those of us were vaguely interested in watching it but had no hope of keeping up with its bizarre scheduling. Due to the serialization of the narrative (nearly every story is told in multiple episodes), the show is best served in the DVD format. Of course, the stop and start and constant cliffhangers most cartoons use to bridge commercial breaks can become increasingly silly when a story takes up two episodes--mathematically, one ends up with 44 minutes of story, broken up into six to ten minute vignettes that almost always close (and then re-open) on some form of stark realization or dangerous trap-type-ex machina. The attempts by the writers to incorporate character-heavy episodes (like focusing on Green Lantern and Hawkgirl while ignoring Batman and the Flash totally) also lends certain episodes a kind of black sheep quality, as if the viewer was doing a charitable service by supporting stories that do not demand the help of the League's more recognizable characters.
Although the show is only "produced" by Bruce Timm, his stamp is all over it. The show is well animated, well designed and rather intelligent (considering both source material and intended audience.) Timm has been successfully creating an entire universe of animated shows based on DC Comics properties since 1992, with the Emmy winning Batman series. Justice League is not as strong as Batman was, in part due to a lower production value, but mostly because League fails to capitalize on what made the Batman and Superman series so successful: accessibility. Batman was widely watched and enjoyed during it's multiple years on television due to the fact that each episode was an independent viewing experience, designed to entertain with only the basest prior knowledge of the lore involved. Tuning into Batman did not require any explanation or history at all. Justice League, while not exactly confusing, still falls on another part of the spectrum. Even at it's simplest, League is like a Cannonball Run of comics-turned-cartoon characters. While at times the full meal is enjoyable, at it's worst the show is so gaudy and mercilessly busy that it grates on one nerves. Fans of the show love to report how much better Justice League is then the abysmal SuperFriends, and while they're right, few people will remember this cartoon when they're still quoting the Wonder Twins to their grandchildren. Like the live action Batman television series from the 60's, SuperFriends has become more a part of the legacy of these same characters than most fans of these characters would like to admit--people who have never seen a comic book know about the animated Wonder Twins (Pail of Water! A Step Ladder!) and many more remember the Saturday Night Live sketch that damned Aquaman to obscurity. The fact that Justice League carries a weight of storytelling that far surpasses current cartoon fare is not enough to carry it over the historical zeitgeist, or the high level of quality previously set by Timm and company. Still, it has its moments--most of them due to Kevin Conroy's brilliant voice work for the Batman character. 12 years into being the voice most remembered for Batman, Conroy continues to be a fountain of enjoyment, even as that joy turns to nostalgia. For him, and for the opportunity to see so many 2-dimensional characters given animated life, Justice League can be quite pleasant.
-Tucker Stone, 2006
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