Cartoon Network has announced a whole bunch of new shows, including an animated sketch comedy show based on Mad magazine and a new superhero show, Young Justice. DC’s Source blog has a more details on both shows, including a poster of the Young Justice team lineup (follow the link to see the whole image), the names of each character and a few sentences about what the show will apparently be about.
DC Comics fans will note it’s a rather unexpected roster. In addition to the three shown above, who were the original line-up of the Young Justice team (well, the teen speedster in that was called Impulse, not Kid Flash, but close enough), the team will feature Miss Martian, a Teen Titan who was introduced in DC comics less than five years ago; a dark-skinned, blonde-haired Aqualad; and “Artemis,” who combines the name of a Wonder Woman supporting character with Arrowette’s basic costume design and Green Arrow’s favorite color.
The Young Justice comic was launched in 1998, spinniong out of the miniseries JLA: World Without Grown-Ups by writer Todd Dezago and pencil artists Humberto Ramos and Mike McKone and one-shot Young Justice: The Secret #1, also written by Dezago.
Peter David replaced Dezago as the writer of the monthly before it even bagan, and David wrote the book until it was canceled with issue #56 in 2003. Todd Nauck and Larry Stucker provided almost all of the art for the entire run.
The line-up grew to include Wonder Girl, Arrowette and new character The Secret almost immediately, later to be joined by a teenaged version of Lobo and new character Empress. Both the line-up and the creative team were remarkably stable, particularly compared to the teen team title that Young Justice was canceled to make room for—Teen Titans.
The book featured a lighthearted tone, mixing superheroics, melodrama and comedy in a way that was evocative of the Giffen/DeMatteis Justice League comics. It should be interesting to see if the show will lead to new Young Justice comics, either in the form of out-of-continuity cartoon adaptations as usually accompanies cartoons based on DC comics, or a relaunched DCU title that more closely reflects the line-up of the show.
April 22nd, 2010 at 6:12 am
You can expect a DC tie-in book around 2014
April 22nd, 2010 at 7:44 am
Wonder if the “new character” “The Secret” is this character? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secret_%28comics%29
I really liked the Young Justice comics so I’m optimistic about this. I absolutely loved the Legion and Teen Titans cartoons so if hey live up to that I’m sure my daughters and I will dig it.
April 22nd, 2010 at 11:09 am
Young Justice was the first comic series I read and enjoyed monthly, so I am stoked! And Greg Weisman producing? The quality just got kicked up a few notches! Let’s hope they do bring Secret into the fray.
April 23rd, 2010 at 12:59 pm
Shannon – Yes, that is Secret from YOUNG JUSTICE.
This is one of my all time favorite tv series. I hope the show keeps with the light-hearted tone of the comic book series. And please, please into Lobo into the series, if only so we can get animated Slo-bo!
April 23rd, 2010 at 2:55 pm
I would love for Young Justice to get the Starman Omnibus treatment!!
April 24th, 2010 at 7:58 am
Yep, seems like a bit more mature version of a Teen Titans animated replacement. If you can actually add the word mature when referring to any cartoon that airs on Cartoon Network these days. Notice I didn’t add Adult Swim to that last statement since their comedies are completely juvenile (in a fun way..sometimes) or anime since its just basically teen-targeted material airing in a graveyard time slot when the drunks and acid/raver culture does drugs and pounds down alcohol well into the night. What that the longest run on sentence ever or what?
December 16th, 2010 at 3:10 am
It’s another Teen Titans cartoon in everything but name. Seems like the producers borrowed the Young Justice label for this show, as well as Kon-El (Superboy) lol… though he’s in his Teen Titans outfit. <- That just proves my original point.
To make this even weirder, the producers decided to rid the chemistry between Kon, Tim, and Bart by replacing the latter two with the original Robin and Kid Flash. Talk about time travel/parallel dimension displacement!
No Wonder Girl, no Secret, Arrowette "replaced" with a young, green-clad Wonder Woman rival, and a new Aqualad freshly adapted from a new DCU character (what's with shaving the dreads and dying the scalp blond? Dennis Rodman?) – this show is definitely a Titans show in heart. I'll watch this with a pinch of salt, especially since the heart of (the original) Young Justice, in my opinion, has always been Kid Flash II – Bart Allen, aka Impulse.