23 Years Later, Justice League Is Still Everything DC Fans Wanted

For all the varying universes with shared continuity, the DC Animated Universe remains the peak adaptation of comics’ oldest characters. While many who make that argument may do so from a place of nostalgia, the storytelling throughout holds up. If the DCAU has a cornerstone, it’s the Justice League series that ran on the Cartoon Network from 2001 to 2004. Justice League gave fans a very similar experience to reading the comics, from interconnected storytelling to the pure joy of seeing their favorite heroes work together. Interestingly, the DCAU was not the first shared universe featuring these characters. More than 30 years earlier, Filmation produced a “cinematic universe” featuring DC Comics’ characters. It was followed by others, including the iconic Super Friends.

Justice League was not the first time fans saw these heroes together on the small screen. But, with all due respect to the stories that came before it, Justice League was better in every possible way. It was the first DCAU series to use digital ink and paint, as well as appear in widescreen format (starting with Season 2). Of course, it wasn’t just the production quality that makes the show stand out. Justice League told intelligent, thoughtful and (most importantly) multipart stories throughout both seasons. This allowed for a nice balance between animated superhero action and humanizing character development. Put another way: Justice League allowed DC Comics fans of all ages to see these characters come to life in a way they’d always dreamed about.

Justice League Was Just Mature Enough for All Audiences

The Series Struck the Perfect Balance Between Spectacle and Substance

The series was nominated for 11 prestigious awards, including Emmys, but didn’t win any of them. Season 2 was meant to be the series’ grand finale, until Cartoon Network greenlit Justice League Unlimited. Warner Bros. scrapped a movie that was meant to bridge the series to Justice League Unlimited. The pitch was reworked into Justice League: Crisis on Two Earths.

At the time Justice League debuted, it was the first time audiences saw DC’s heroes taken seriously outside the comics. To call it “mature” storytelling, however, feels wrong when decidedly darker and edgier follow-ups like the DC Animated Movie Universe, the Tomorrowverse and Young Justice also exist. Justice League is a superhero show made primarily for children, meaning the storytelling is much simpler than other adaptations. Yet, its storytellers never wrote “down” to that young audience. Despite its young target market, the show examined heady and contemporary moral questions, but in a more limited way than modern fans are used to.

For example, in Justice League‘s premiere, Superman — taking a cue from Superman VI: The Quest for Peace— dismantles the world’s nuclear arsenal. When aliens later attack across the globe, General Ed Reiss complains they can’t use those missiles to fight the aliens. Any adult viewer (or even a child who knows what a nuclear weapon is) might be given pause to consider the validity or the consequences of using such weapons in the world’s cities. Despite its protracted storytelling, Justice League doesn’t have time for such in-depth social commentary. The general’s warmongering attitude and others like him was merely meant to stand in contrast to the world’s need for the Justice League and other super-powered beings.

Forcing the audience to question the superheroes’ relationship to institutional authority brings with it a level of maturity. Taking a completely grounded approach to these characters, like in Matt Reeves’s The Batman universe, is valid. While the heroes in Justice League felt like real people who lived in a familiar world, the series also embraced the inherent fun and silliness of comic book storytelling. Justice League stands out among its contemporary peers for how it veered into darker emotional territory while still being a colorful superhero story. Above anything else, the show was always about how cool it was to see these heroes together, being friends, saving the world and fighting supervillains.

Justice League Made an Important Choice for Its Green Lantern

Including John Stewart Over Hal Jordan Helped Diversify the Cast

Best known for their contributions to Batman, comics legends Neal Adams and Dennis O’Neil also created a new Green Lantern, John Stewart, in 1971. At the time, he was the tenth Black character in DC Comics’ history. It took 30 years, but the character finally made it into animation with Justice League. Instead of Hal Jordan, the second (but most popular) Green Lantern, John was this League’s Green Lantern. While this may seem like a small step towards diversity by today’s standards, it was nonetheless an important one.

Carl Lumby voiced J’onn J’onzz, and Melissa Canals-Berrera voiced Shayera Hol. With Phil LaMarr, who played John, three of the seven central Justice League characters were actors of color. Yet, what makes John so important is that he was undeniably human. Both Martian Manhunter and Hawkgirl were aliens with clear physical differences from humans. This played into the old sci-fi trope of portraying POC characters as literal aliens. Conversely, Superman (a Kryptonian) and Wonder Woman (a demigod) could pass as ordinary humans partly because they were depicted as Caucasian. The inclusion of the very human John proves how easy it is to include diversity in a cartoon, let alone a superhero story. John’s case was especially impressive and monumental, since Justice League is now more than 20 years old, and John was already in DC canon for 30 years when the series began. John’s very existence in the cartoon proves that there’s no excuse for avoiding diversity today.

Representation is important for people of all ages and all social demographics, and John helped them feel seen. Of course, the importance of diversity goes beyond representation, extending to kids from other demographics. To these kids, it didn’t matter what John looked like on the outside. Rather, because of Justice League‘s excellent storytelling, they saw something of themselves in the morally upright and ever-dependable John. Or, at the very least, he gave them something to aspire to, which is when superheroes are at their best.

By Embracing Serialization, Justice League Opened Itself up to Bigger Stories

The Series Respected and Rewarded Its Audience With Stellar Longform Storytelling

Before the days of streaming, serialization in a television show was a rare thing, doubly so for animation. The cartoons of the ’80s and ’90s lived on in syndication, meaning episodes could air in any order. More importantly, and ignoring the occasional two-part special, every episode was a stand-alone story. Conversely, a staple of Justice League were its multipart episodes. Just like the comics that inspired it, each episode was part of a larger, epic tale. The DCAU maintained a certain level of continuity before, but Justice League made paying attention to the larger story part of the fun. Each episode was good on its own, but the larger story made the series unforgettable.

The storytellers trusted that kids could handle a more complex, interconnected narrative that extended beyond a typical 23-minute episode. With its serialized storytelling, viewers of all ages watching Justice League were invested in the series as a whole. The characters grew and evolved, both individually and through their relationships with each other. Their actions had consequences that paid off in future episodes or even an entire season later. There’s nothing wrong with a fun half-hour featuring characters who never change, but Justice League proved that animation on television could do so much more than just kill time.

Every show has its struggles coming out of the gate, and Justice League was no different. Season 1 had a few bumps along the way, mostly in its lack of an overarching story. The League’s missions were fun and even dramatic, but too loosely connected. However, Season 1 laid the groundwork for Season 2, which is one of the finest bodies of work in the DCAU and, arguably, across the DC media multiverse. Season 2 doubled down on the heroes’ characterization and, most famously, it covered the Thanagarian invasion of Earth. If Season 1 had untapped potential, Season 2 unleashed it all to tell one of the greatest superhero stories ever televised.

Some think animation is a lesser medium than live-action, but Justice League proved the opposite to be true. The freedom of animation allowed the show’s artists and writers to realize tales far more epic than they could in live-action, at least for its time. While visual effects artists work miracles, often thanklessly, fans rightly wonder if the new DC Universe could live up to what Justice League accomplished with its now-quaint 2D animation. Justice League’s high quality and popularity paved the way for traditional animation in the 2000’s to the 2010’s, which many fans agree is something of a golden age for the medium.

Justice League Remains the Gold Standard of DC Comics’ Adaptations

The Series Was and Still Is the DCAU’s Crown Jewel

DC Comics characters have been around for more than eight decades, and every modern adaptation gets more right than wrong. For some fans, Zack Snyder’s darker take on this universe was perfect, but it was purely for adults. An entire generation grew up with the Arrowverse, which created a vibrant multipart epic, but with the melodrama and lower budgets typical of The CW’s young adult-oriented shows.

There are also other DC animated adaptations that fans love, from the original Teen Titans cartoon that appealed to anime fans and Max’s raunchy adult comedy Harley Quinn. No fan’s favorite version of the DC Universe is wrong, but what puts Justice League above them all is that it’s the most purely “comic book” of them all. The DCAU had the luxury of being the first shared universe in the modern era, and Justice League holds up much better than the DC adaptations that followed in its footsteps.

The literary and artistic value of superheroes and comic books have been overlooked forever, even long before Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons published Watchmen. Similarly, animation is often seen as lesser than live-action, meaning some may overlook just how well-executed Justice League was. Comic books are special because they can deliver childish silliness plus intellectual and emotional depth in the same issue. Justice League fully embraced this dichotomy, and it was risky.

The show could’ve ended up being too “grown-up” for the kids, or too childish for the adults. Instead, the balance that the producers, directors and animators found drew in a wider audience across multiple generations. Justice League never talks down to its viewers, but it also never shies away from embracing a superheroic sense of fun. This series delivers what DC Comics fans have always wanted to see: their favorite heroes working together in a story that respects the characters but never takes itself too seriously.

The complete Justice League is available on DVD, Blu-ray, digital and streams on Max.