It's been a rough week for fans of Cartoon Network's DC Nation programming. Despite continued critical acclaim for both Young Justice and Green Lantern: The Animated Series, Cartoon Network elected to leave both off of their list of 2013-2014, effectively cancelling them. The DC Nation block will continue, but by this summer both shows will have been replaced by Beware the Batman and Teen Titans Go.
We can't help but feel disappointed by this turn of events. Obviously, many of us at IGN huge fans of both Green Lantern and Young Justice. Furthermore, it's depressing to see Cartoon Network retreat into familiar territory. Batman and the Teen Titans are proven quantities that draw in viewers and sell merchandise. But half the appeal of DC Nation was seeing numerous other, less established heroes receive their due in the animated realm.
Can DC Nation thrive on Batman and Teen Titans alone? With the news that Cartoon Network will probably lose Clone Wars to Disney XD after this season, and with the increased competition coming from Nickelodeon and the new Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles series, it's going to fall on DC's heroes to shoulder the burden. That means the DC Nation block needs to grow and be able to target wider demographics. That means that Cartoon Network needs to take a chance on new heroes and franchises again. Luckily, we have a few suggestions for franchises that could thrive on the channel and help broaden the audience.
Luckily, both of those projects are prime examples of how great a character Wonder Woman can be in the right hands. The WW DVD movie in particular could easily serve as a pilot for an ongoing series. That was one of the few cases where WB elected to tell an original story with the DVD movies rather than adapt a pre-existing comic. It was a tightly plotted story that introduced Wonder Woman's world and her relationships with Steve Trevor, the Amazons, and the Greek gods. And it had some solid vocie work thanks to actors like Lucy Lawless and Nathan Fillion.
Clearly we aren't getting a follow-up DVD to that movie. So why not continue it in the form of an animated series? The animated movie earned a PG-13 rating, but we don't think it would be overly difficult to adjust the content to fit a wider, slightly more family friendly audience. It's not as if the violence in the Wonder Woman movie was much more extreme than what you find in an average episode of Young Justice. Or Cartoon Network could play up the PG-13 angle and use Wonder Woman as a method of expanding DC Nation into the late-night Adult Swim demographic.
We assume Cartoon Network would love to draw in the same sort of female audience that Teen Titans alone among the DC shows seems to attract. Who better than Wonder Woman for that goal?
Cartoon Network and WB tried their hands at a Green Lantern series, and apparently the results weren't to their liking. It may be that the show was doomed from the start thanks to the lukewarm reaction to 2011's Green Lantern movie and the fact that most store owners wouldn't be caught dead trying to sell GL action figures at the moment. Maybe the best option is to give Hal Jordan a break and focus on another iconic member of the Justice League who has largely been ignored in other media.
TV viewers will best remember The Flash from the sort-lived live-action series and his role on Justice League Unlimited. Unlike Wonder Woman or Green Lantern, Flash hasn't been given his own animated DVD movie yet (that will finally change when WB releases the Flashpoint adaptation). The character is practically screaming for a animated series to call his own. The potential for good storytelling is certainly there. Flash was one of the more popular character on JLU despite the fact that we rarely saw him outside of the costume and in his personal life.
Part of the beauty of the Flash franchise is that it offers so many options for TV. There's a strong legacy aspect to the character, with multiple generations of heroes all wielding the power of the Speed Force. The series could focus mainly on Barry Allen or Wally West, or it could embrace the legacy angle and star the entire Flash family - Jay Garrick, Bart Allen, Jessie Quick, etc. Taking a page from Geoff Johns' Flash run, the many Flash villains could be complex, recurring characters in their own right. The concept is malleable to whatever Cartoon Network wants the show to be. And whether they opt for a traditional 2D animated approach or the CG style of Green Lantern and Beware the Batman, Flash's high-speed antics could easily give the show the visual edge it needs.
Amethyst's appeal as a character is similar to Harry Potter. Ordinary girl Amy Winston discovers that she's actually a princess of a Realm called Gemworld. After traveling to Gemworld for the first time, she is granted magical abilities, grows into an adult woman, and fights to liberate her homeland. There's a strong wish fulfillment angle at work here. And the fantasy angle helps distance the franchise from the more familiar superhero characters of the DCU.
The DC Nation short offered a modernized take on the Gemworld concept. There, Amy was swept into a digital computer landscape rather than a fantasy world. And like many of the DC Nation shorts, it was strongly influenced by Japanese animation (in this case, "magical girl" shows like Sailor Moon). Maybe that approach speaks more to today's viewers. We could see either a continuation of that concept or a more traditional take on Amethyst succeeding depending on what audience Cartoon Network wishes to target. Either way, Amethyst offers the sort of positive female role model that TV could always use more of.
The similarities arise from main character Timothy Hunter. At the beginning of Books of Magic, Tim is an ordinary, bespectacled 12-year-old boy who learns he's destined to become the most powerful magician in the world. He has an owl for a pet, lost his mother at an early age, and even looks quite a bit like Harry. But the real reason for many of these similarities is that both characters were so heavily inspired by King Arthur's story in The Once and Future King.
Essentially, Tim is an everyman hero who embarks on a quest that covers the width and breadth of DC's magical landscape. Along the way, he encounters a wide range of supernatural characters, including the members of "The Trenchcoat Brigade" (Phantom Stranger, John Constantine, etc.), Doctor Fate, and Zatanna. A show like this would expose viewers to this rich mythology while also keeping the conflict firmly centered on a hero they can identify with. Tim is just a kid who has to decide what he wants to be when he grows up and whether he wants to listen to what all the adults are telling him to do, and that's something we imagine a lot of DC Nation viewers can relate to.
Of course, it's worth pointing out that the Books of Magic comics fall under DC's mature readers imprint Vertigo. Here again is a franchise where WB and Cartoon Network can either embrace the more adult aspects and target the Adult Swim crowd, or simply tone down those qualities and mold the series into something with more of an all-ages appeal. And if WB goes forward with its planned Darkness Calls team-up movie, Books of Magic would be a way of exploring similar characters and conflicts on television. A Harry Potter animated series seems like a huge no-brainer. But if that's not an option for WB, Books of Magic can easily tap into the same appeal.
Check out more of a DC Nation wish list on Page 2!
Source : ign[dot]com
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