Saturday, October 9 - 3:30pm
Speakers: Greg Weisman, Brandon Vietti, and Crispin Freeman.
by Michael Nixon
Many fans of Greg Weisman's animated work (which began with Gargoyles) lamented the cancellation of his Spectacular Spider-Man series last year, but DC apparently heard those cries and transplanted Weisman from a Marvel property over to their side of the street, giving him not one, but a myriad of teenage DC heroes and, seemingly, the keys to his own universe.
For my fellow comic nerds, I shouldn't have to be too complicated, here's the brief: Young Justice takes place on Earth-16. It's a young Earth, with new heroes. The JSA existed back in the 40s, but the JLA has just gotten strong now and the heroes are celebrities in the public eye. Batman forms a covert-ops team out of the sidekicks of other heroes. Robin, Speedy, Aqualad, and Kid Flash go on a secret mission to Cadmus and find a certain Super boy.
For the laymen: we were shown the first act and an extended trailer of the first episode, an hour-long pilot, and while they claimed it was rough, it was easily ready for broadcast. It was so good that the audience demanded to see it again and the producers were more than happy to show it at the end of the panel, to even bigger cheers. The animation is slick and polished, the music is big and grand and the style (a mix of anime look with Western feel) is really something to see. It's the kind of animated series people who aren't fans of cartoons can easily get into. It's fun, but serious, and the action is incredibly dynamic.
In typical Weisman fashion, there's a deeper plot running through the show and a series of arcs that run in smaller pieces through the 26-episode season. Not only that, but Weisman repeatedly promised "150 characters from the DC Universe in [just the first] 18 episodes," which sounds like one hell of a feat.
If you need any other convincing, Batman will be a regular character and will be voiced by actor Bruce Greenwood, who is joining such other big names in the cast as Alan Tudyk as Green Arrow, Rob Lowe as Captain Marvel, and Jesse McCartney as Robin. Crispin Freeman, who joined the panel late (he apparently ran out of another panel to join us), voices Speedy and the Guardian. The voices all sounded great in the preview and only added to a beautifully visual show.
Other team characters Artemis and Miss Martian will be introduced later, and Speedy seems to be missing from other promotional material, implying that all bets may be off in terms of the team always being the group set up in the pilot. What is certain is that, judging by the preview I saw, it's going to a stellar series.
Young Justice premieres with a hour-long episode November 26th, with the rest of the series to follow beginning January 2011.
Michael Nixon is a guest writer from NYU where he is a senior in the Tisch School of the Arts.
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