Tag Archives: Animation

New 52 Gets Animated in Justice League: War, Flash Cast

Justice League #1With Comic-Con International on the verge of taking over the comics press cycle and fan collective mind for the next week, DC Comics has announced their next animated feature after Flashpoint Paradox: Justice League: War in 2014, based on the first storyline in the New 52 Geoff Johns/Jim Lee Justice League series.

This is the first New 52 storyline to be adapted to animation. Some of the voice case has been announced, including Chris Gorham (Covert Affairs, The Batman) as the Flash.

More info at Newsarama and Comic Book resources.

Flash(back): Animated Anthem

This is the intro for the Flash segments that ran during the Superman/Aquaman Hour of Adventure (1967-1968). Filmation produced three Flash cartoons in which the Flash and Kid Flash battled original evildoers including a giant mutated bug (The Chemo Creature, seen here), a mad scientist in a robot suit (Professor Crag), and an alien speedster (The Blue Bolt). Sadly, he didn’t actually “conquer the barriers of time and space” in any of the segments they produced.

Warner Bros. released all the non-Superman/Aquaman sequences on DVD a few years back, and I reviewed the set a couple of months after this blog went online.

Even setting aside the image quality, you can see that it’s a very different style from modern shows like Justice League Unlimited and Young Justice, or even Super-Friends. Continue reading

Michael Rosenbaum Returns as the Flash in Justice League: Doom

TV Guide reports on the voice cast of Justice League: Doom, an upcoming direct-to-home-video animated film inspired by Mark Waid’s JLA: Tower of Babel, in which Batman’s contingency plans to take down each of his colleagues if necessary are stolen and turned against them. Based on the cast list, it appears to have been adapted to better match the current “New 52” lineup, with Hal Jordan replacing Kyle Rayner (as he replaced John Stewart in Crisis on Two Earths) and Cyborg replacing Aquaman (who is in the new comics lineup, confusing the issue a bit).

The feature will reunite Justice League/Justice League Unlimited cast members Kevin Conroy as Batman, Susan Eisenberg as Wonder Woman, Carl Lumbly as the Martian Manhunter…and Michael Rosenbaum as The Flash. Joining them will be Nathan Fillion, reprising his role as Green Lantern Hal Jordan from Emerald Knights, Tim Daly, voice of Superman from the 1990s animated series and the more recent Superman/Batman: Public Enemies and Apocalypse features, and Bumper Robinson as Cyborg.

The Green Lantern Corps forum has more information including a list of villains (via TRKA): The Royal Flush Gang, Vandal Savage, Cheetah, Bane, Metallo, Star Sapphire, and Mirror Master (Alexis Denisof).

CGI Advantages for “The Flash” Animated Series

Today’s guest post is by Dave Huang.

In 2011, Green Lantern is getting an animated series because of the feature film. The executive producer is Bruce Timm of DCAU fame, along with Giancarlo Volpe (director: Avatar: The Last Airbender, Star Wars: The Clone Wars) and Jim Krieg (writer: X-Men Graduation Day, Spider-Man, Ben 10) as producers. With a history of hand drawn animated DC shows, Green Lantern stands out as the first DC show done in CGI. This article considers the advantages of making The Flash the next.

The main reason to consider CGI is GL’s production. Overcome the learning curve for producing a quality superhero CGI show with GL with make the production team veterans for a polished Flash series and keep their experience from going to waste. Although Batman: The Animated Series was the first DCAU show, the universe wasn’t born until Superman: The Animated Series brought us “World’s Finest”. Until then, B:TAS was closed-off, much like GL is currently being developed to be (taking place 98% in space with no anticipated overlap with non-GL DCU at large). S:TAS established the crossovers and serial storytelling that expanded into the production of a full blown, lasting, and lucrative universe. A CGI Flash series following a CGI GL series can play the same role- bridging two worlds- as Flashes and Green Lanterns go together like PB and J… and CGI and The Flash may be a surprising fit.

While The Flash Family is no stranger to animation, their appearances tend to come in brief bursts, in part because of the challenges with bringing a speedster to the small screen in an animated format. On commentary tracks, Timm has remarked how difficult it is to keep Flash in frame and to convey a sense of speed cost-effectively, perhaps accounting for why he said in 2007 that he will probably not do a Flash series. However, some of the strengths — indeed the requirements — of CGI production might change his mind:

Continue reading

Requiem For a Scarlet Speedster Airs Tonight

Flash vs. Zoom in Batman: The Brave and the Bold: Requiem for a Scarlet Speedster

After a long wait, Requiem for a Scarlet Speedster, the Flash-focused episode of Batman: The Brave and the Bold, airs tonight on Cartoon Network at 7:00pm. (Or, depending on your time zone, already aired.)

It’s been online through sketchy channels ever since it played in Australia in May, and legitimately on Amazon Video on Demand since early August. (It was also available on iTunes briefly, but was pulled, possibly to hold it until the US broadcast.)

So, what’s in it? Three Flashes vs. Professor Zoom. Super-speed hijinks. Time travel. References to everything from Crisis on Infinite Earths to the “Dark Tomorrow” arc in Impulse. Cameos by the Rogues. A race around the world. A story about teamwork and no-ally-left-behind….

And great voice casting!

Thanks to Darren for the screenshot, and JC Norris for letting me know that the episode is being shown tonight.

Quick News: Velocity, DC History, Green Lantern, World’s Fastest Man

A few brief news items:

Top Cow’s delayed Velocity #1 is shipping June 16. I’ve been looking forward to this since reading the Pilot Season book, though of course this is an entirely new creative team. On the plus side, it’s a miniseries, so there’s not a huge commitment to picking it up.

Cartoon Network will be producing a Green Lantern animated series. Green Lantern: First Flight was pretty good, but of course there’s no guarantee that any of the same people will be working on this.

DC will be teaming up with TASCHEN Books to produce 75 Years of DC Comics: The Art of Modern Mythmaking. Basically it’s a history of DC Comics. How soon can I pre-order this?

Hypergeek notes that the UK graphic novel Whatever Happened to the World’s Fastest Man? has been nominated for the 2009 Eagle Awards. From his review, it looks like it’s not about a speester so much as it’s about a man who can stop time, and reluctantly becomes a hero. I’m going to have to look for this one as well. [Edit: I should note that I stopped reading the review once I decided the book looked interesting, just in case there were spoilers.]