At NYCC, the producers of DC Comics' upcoming animated series Green Lantern and Young Justice told us about the villains and dangers Hal Jordan, Robin, and Superboy will face. Also, who will be on Young Justice's JLA? Spoilers ahoy!
First, we caught up with the Green Lantern team, executive producer Bruce Timm (Batman: The Animated Series) and producers Giancarlo Volpe (Clone Wars) and Jim Krieg (Ben 10).
Timm offered a fairly detailed rundown of what viewers can expect from Green Lantern: The Animated Series:
98% of the show is set in space, so we do have lots of opportunities to deal with other Green Lanterns. Kilowog is in practically every episode, Salaak shows up, but there's not so many in the early episodes. You won't see DC heroes like Batman and Robin showing up, at least not anytime soon [...] We will see a little bit of Earth.
The show takes place on the edge of Guardian space and the show starts off with Green Lantern getting killed off on this edge. So Hal borrows a prototypical, faster-than-light ship and he and Kilowog go to investigate. They quickly discover that there are the previously unknown Red Lanterns systematically killing off the Green Lanterns.
In the first 13 episodes, Hal and his crew are stuck out on the edge of space. Hal's not a rookie, but he's not a veteran. We actually keep that pretty loose. We didn't want to go back and do the rookie story again because we did that in First Flight and that's what the movie's going to be about. That's really well-traveled ground.
We tried to make him on Captain Kirk's level of experience. It won't follow the continuity of the movie, but we draw from the same sources [...] We'll definitely be getting to Sinestro eventually; we aren't sure when we can do that.
Unlike other superheroes, the Green Lantern has to report to somebody. He has to report to these little blue men who are all kind of cranky. He likes upsetting the apple cart in front of them sometimes. He really has a love-hate relationship with them. Hal becomes stranded in the first arc, but he is able to keep in contact with The Guardians.
Additionally, the producers also mentioned that constructs would very much play a large role. We'd see drills, tools, and all manner of deadly implements. Of course, Hal's constructs will be snarkier than the others:
Giancarlo Volpe: We've joked about making Hal's constructs visual puns. He's a prankster who ridicules his enemy as he beats them up, and it's through the constructs. There's a lot of opportunities to have fun.
Bruce Timm: Kilowog of course just makes hammers.
Timm was tight-lipped about whether we'd see Lanterns from the other colors in the spectrum appear, but he did mention that we will see a slew of Green Lanterns (he wouldn't confirm if we'd see F-Sharp Bell). He also said that the New Gods unequivocally would not appear.
Next, Young Justice producers Brandon Vietti (Batman: Under the Red Hood) and Greg Weisman (the creator of Gargoyles) filled us in on the young superhero team who'll act as the Justice League's covert operations wing.
Greg Weisman: We're adapting Teen Titans, we're adapting Young Justice, we're adapting the whole DC Universe. We're set on Earth 16 in the DC multiverse and we're sort of making ours a young universe. Superman's only been around 10 years, the Justice League's only been around three or four years. Robin's been around four years. The others have been doing it for even less time. Speedy for three, Kid Flash for two, Miss Martian hasn't done it at all yet when our series starts. So we're keeping it young.
Brandon Vietti: It's a show about teenagers who happen to be superheroes [...] They're a cover ops unit, and that will have repercussions in their lives, with their mentors, their parents, all kinds of things [...] The villains we will see are Mr. Freeze, Icicle Junior, Killer Frost, Captain Cold, and Black Manta; that's the five that we're revealing, obviously there's a lot more.
GW: Last time I checked, we had over 150 DC heroes and villains in the show. We have a really small handful of original characters in the show. From the Justice League, the big three are Batman, who assigns them their missions; Red Tornado, who is their den mother; and Black Canary is in charge of their training. The other characters include their individual mentors (like Superman and Martian Manhunter), other heroes like Guardian and Speedy, and the Justice League, whose line-up includes Wonder Woman, Captain Atom, Captain Marvel, Zatara, Hawkwoman, and others. We have a 16-member Justice League.
Weisman and Vietti also didn't want to bring Deathstroke into the fold as he's so closely associated with the Teen Titans mythos — the villains will however be making their own covert ops young superhero team to counteract Young Justice.
Weisman also noted that they "date every episode" to chart the team's progress. Audiences will be able to determine how much time has past, and the entire first season takes place within a six-month period. Former Young Justice scribe Peter David will also be writing two episodes of the first season.
A preview of Young Justice will run November 2010 on Cartoon Network and the series will officially debut Spring 2011. Green Lantern will run late 2011 on Cartoon Network as well. Here's further info from the NYCC Green Lantern panel.
[Concept art via Titans Tower and Screen Rant.]