Van Goes Ballistic on the Avengers Cartoon
(or, Would DC do this with the JLA?)
--by Van Plexico

The Avengers are and always have been, from the very beginning, Marvel's answer to the JLA. The idea is that these are the very best, the elite, of Marvel's heroes (the FF, as a family unit, is naturally excluded from the equation).

When you look at the JLA, you see icons, absolute legends, and that's sort of what the Avengers are supposed to represent as well. Would you ever see Superman and co. wearing little "JLA" logos on their costumes? I can't imagine such a thing!

Can you imagine DC putting Supes and co. into "battle armor?" Can you imagine DC setting JLA in the future, whether it be five minutes or five hundred years?

What would you get with a JLA cartoon, in all likelihood, based on DC's recent track record? You'd get a very well-crafted, attractive cartoon, with great attention to quality writing and animation, and the characters would look as close as possible to the images most associated with those characters (sort of like Kurt and George and co. have done with Vol. 3.)

I simply can't imagine that anyone with any sense at all would look at the success of vol. 3 and draw from that the following lesson: that everything Marvel supposedly learned about how to best present the Avengers is just wrong; that the leading characters should be excluded for dubious reasons; that the classic appearances of the others should be changed; and that the winning formula of Busiek and Perez, which is at its root a simple combination of strong stories and great art, combined with a respect for the traditional appearances and characterizations of the members, is somehow wrong and should be thrown out in favor of an outdated sense of what a 10 year old wants to see in a cartoon.

Didn't Marvel learn from the X-MEN cartoon that the public, including adults, will watch a superhero cartoon if it respects its roots and treats the audiences as having half a brain?

And the thought that it's somehow okay to exclude three of the most interesting and most prominent characters in the group from the show, simply because kids won't know any better, is just repulsive to me.

Again, can you imagine DC *ever* leaving Superman, Batman, and Wonder Woman out of a JLA cartoon, putting the remainder of the group in battle armor with logos, setting the show in the future, and daring to call this not "Future JLA" or "Battle Rangers JLA" but simply THE JLA?

--Van