DC Already Has an MCU (That Isn’t Awful)
No, I’m not talking about anyone in Justice League or Zak Snyder’s Justice League but Long. I’m talking about a fictional universe connecting DC’s best properties in a Decade-Long story building to a clash with a Fan Favorite villain. We’re talking dozens of characters, multi-year foreshadowing, surprising team ups, the Whole Nine Yards!
And they have chosen to contain this expansive universe in a single animated series only available on streaming.
If Robert Downey Jr. had been cast as Miss Martian, this would be a multi-billion dollar property by now.
Young Justice debuted in 2010 (and as someone watching the whole time, HOW?) as a successor to the Teen Titans (pre-Teen Titans Go). It was DC’s young comic heroes trying to save the day, 22 minutes at a time. Unlike the original Teen Titans show (great in its own way), Young Justice brought in its adult roster of heroes immediately: the Justice League are already established, saving the day, and never too far out of focus.
But the show’s focus was on the young heroes (“don’t call them sidekicks”) trying to prove themselves as their own team. The show is highly serialized, so the episodes can’t be watched out of order if you want the show to make any sense. The story isn’t spoon-fed to the audience, either. There are not always convenient morals at the end of an episode. A quietly simmering conflict can take an entire season to reveal itself. Over the course of four seasons, the main cast has grown from four young heroes to dozens in rotating spotlights of importance, sometimes falling into the background for dozens of episodes before becoming central players again. It’s impressive, if a bit hard to follow.
This is a good, sometimes even great show. But what’s most impressive about the show is that it’s a shockingly good adaptation not just of a comic, but of an entire comic-universe. Here are a couple of the storylines that have taken place in the background, off-screen, or during a time skip:
Robin left Batman, became a new hero, got replaced, dealt with his replacement dying, and got replaced again.
Superman had a son.
A main character’s love interest and best friend join the super hero squad. The love interest dies and the best friends resigns in disgust.
A main character’s mother is killed and he develops super powers. In a later time skip, he joins another super squad with his surrogate mother. All of his team mates die except for the robot. This is not mentioned for dozens of episodes.
The Justice League introduces a few dozen new heroes, most with established friendships and grudges. Figure them out on your own time.
This show has gods, magic, aliens, street crime, time travel, heroic legacies, and grand conspiracies all in the first two seasons. Whatever the story is currently focusing on, you get the feeling that characters and stories are continuing to develop and play out where you’re not looking, and that is the mark of a fictional universe that people want to spend time revisiting.
It’s a shame that with a few exceptions, the DC film universe is such a dumpster fire, because this one show demonstrates how many beloved characters and storylines are waiting to be thrown on screen. Until the company gets its act together, though, this is the best DC crossover on the screen we’re likely to see.
Streaming on HBOMax. Check it out.