Both series have Booster Gold and The Question which is an instant fav in my book
http://www.youtube.com/user/Soniman032?feature=mhumBTAS was a lot more experimental with their stories, with a lot of atypical structures like "Almost Got 'Im" that was a couple of mini-episodes and "Heart of Steel" that was a careful paced "Body Snatchers" homage. Later episodes were still high quality but they fell into the more typical "villain has a plot, hero stops them" formula.
Some of the best episodes of the TNBA were the ones that had very atypical plots like "Growing Pains," "Legends of the Dark Knight" and "Mad Love."
What Justice League managed to do was a good mixture of character based stories with big scale plots. Justice League Unlimited season three was unfocused regarding the Cadmus story but it did highlight all of the more obscure heroes and villains you probably never would have seen otherwise (Did Hawk and Dove actually have their own comic series?).
^ Actually, Hawk and Dove had several comic series', if I remember correctly. According to this wiki, they suffered heavily from Depending on the Writer and soapboxing, strawmanning authors.
edited 6th Sep '11 1:06:49 AM by KnownUnknown
Does anybody agree that one of the flaws of JLU is that they (with the expeption of mcduffie) used superman poorly?
Sure batman was awesome. Butit was very obvious they didn't love superman as much as batman.
edited 9th Sep '11 6:51:03 PM by FallenLegend
Make your hearth shine through the darkest night; let it transform hate into kindness, evil into justice, and loneliness into love.
I think the main reason why the writers disliked Superman is because Superman is much harder to write than Batman. That doesn't make him any worse, but not exactly more endearing to guys who have to write him into stories where he can't just fix everything by himself with his 900 different comics canon superpowers at any given time.
I've always thought Superman works better when he's used sparsely, or when the stories center around his cast and how they are influenced by his near godlike presence, rather than him directly. All Star Superman is a rare, precious half-exception, mainly because Grant Morrison is a genius.
Yeah I think the key to superman is giving him treats to his level.
Compare Avengers Earths Mightiest Heroes they have thor the god of thunder who is at superman level and it works!. I think there was no excuse not to use superman effectively on th JLU.
edited 9th Sep '11 7:24:31 PM by FallenLegend
Make your hearth shine through the darkest night; let it transform hate into kindness, evil into justice, and loneliness into love.I think the only Superman-heavy episodes I liked were the one with him and Captain Marvel and the one with the dream plant. Because otherwise he's a Boring Invincible Hero that's damn near perfect in terms of morality.
"Teebs is a total grump, but he's usually right." - NLKIt also helps that in Post-Crisis Superman doesn't have like 900 different powers, and that the DCAU Supes is canonically even weaker than Post-Crisis Supes anyway. Still, he is difficult to write around.
Though I think a good way to avoid the difficulty of writing Supes it might've been cool to use a few more magical baddies in the show (coughMxyzptlkcough). Supes isn't especially weak against magic, but isn't particularly strong against it either.
Yeah, yeah, I already know the main reason they didn't use Mxy in the show was because they couldn't think of a good way to write him in either...
edited 10th Sep '11 3:03:38 PM by KnownUnknown
I'm usually more of a Marvel guy(as in I may read Marvel's comics) but DC's animation was miles ahead in my opinion, especially during the JL-JLU time period. Maybe Warner>Disney?
I thought they used Superman just fine, though I was annoyed at that part when he froze up because that lady cowered away from him. She's a criminal actively trying to kill you! You knew it would come to this when you took on the job. She didn't even pull I Surrender, Suckers!.
But otherwise I didn't see the problem. Was he too boring? Your Mileage May Vary, I thought he had enough of an established personality. Was he too strong? Well he was the strongest guy around when Dr. Fate and Amazo were missing but then what did you expect from Superman?
I'm glad they didn't paint Superman as the pinnacle of power and goodness that everyone wants to be like. I loved how he became all jealous that everyone saw Captain Marvel the way he thought they saw him and got played by Lex Luger because of it. I loved how he showed savvy when fighting instead of Superman just tries extra hard with this punch.
The only part that annoyed me about Batman was when the Martian was worried for him because he didn't have special powers. It was weird hearing that from the guy who comes from the world where special powers were not only mundane but also lead to the downfall of civilization. But really, thank you for not making Batman into the omnipotent Jerkass who supposedly has no powers.
edited 10th Sep '11 4:48:58 PM by Cider
Modified Ura-nage, Torture Rack
Whether or not Batman came off (frequently) as a non-powered omniscient ass is a matter of opinion. Personally, I got annoyed with his always being right.
One thing I recall is that, during the season arc where the government started working up ways to take down the JLU, the creators toyed with the idea of having Batman turn against the League and join Amanda Waller, once she made her case to him. They thought it might be consistent with his character, but they elected not to do it because they thought there'd be no coming back from it; if he did it, there's no way the League would have let him back in.
Biggest problem with going that route would be that the Justice League would be presented as being in the wrong and would end up losing... if Batman's previous track record is anything to go by.
I thought Supes came across as a little too dickish at times (he tended to be condescending), but his powers were never really a problem at all.
Except [condescending response follows]. Because [sarcasm here]. You do understand [snark], right? POTHOLE TO SARCASM MODEMy take:
In the beginning, Justice League was a bit too unfocused. I don't think they gave us enough reason to care about Green Lantern before showing us his big episode where we're supposed to be rooting for him emotionally in the space court, for example. Also, it had pretty lame villains aside from the Injustice Gang and Vandal Savage. "Savage Time" was when the show grew the beard, IMO.
Season 2 of JL was some of the best stuff in the DCAU, except for the lame season finale with the hawk people. "Only a Dream" is one of my favourite superhero cartoon episodes ever, and "Hereafter" convinced me Superman is awesome when under a good writer.
JLU is kind of a mixed bag to me. For one thing, all the lame rock music was way too tacky, and for another, they really used Green Arrow too much. However, it did have some really good episodes, and the Cadmus Arc was really well put together in my opinion.
edited 30th Nov '11 2:29:33 PM by Kerrah

Also for the first Justice League series (figured id just lump them together).
Personally I though it was a crowning achivement on the juggernaut that was the DCAU.
Could have used more Static Shock though
http://www.youtube.com/user/Soniman032?feature=mhum