The Villains of the Justice League
Bruce Timm
on Justice League villains: “One
thing that we really tried to do on this show—and some fans were a little bit
put off by it—we really wanted to get away from the established Superman and
Batman villains that we had done in all the Superman and Batman
episodes that we had done. There’s
this entire sixty year wealth of material from DC comics, in terms of the
villains. To choose from, we
figured, ‘Well, this is a really good opportunity to…put as much of [them]
into the show as possible.’
“You’ll
notice that we hardly ever create brand new villains that have never existed
before. Any time we come up with a
villain for a show, we say, ‘Okay, well, it would be really great if we could
find a DC Comics character—even if it’s just the name or the motif to
use—rather than create a brand new character.’
“For
instance, in [In Blackest Night], the informer…who sets up John
Stewart’s downfall could have just been any old space pirate, but we figured,
‘Well, wouldn’t it be great if it was Kanjar Ro,’ who was a major Justice
League villain from back in the day. So,
we try to do that whenever we can. It
serves two purposes: on one hand,
yeah, it keeps the fans happy to throw in characters like The Guardians and The
Manhunters and, on the other hand, those are just interesting concepts and
interesting characters, and it was our chance to do a fairly lavish…big-budget
look to those kinds of characters. It’s
like…when I was a kid, I always thought, ‘Wow, it would be really cool to
see these kinds of characters,’ and this is our golden opportunity to do so
(courtesy of the Justice League: Justice
on Trial DVD).”
Commentary
I, for one, am glad that Batman's villains have taken a backseat during the First Season of this series. Relying on the same old bad guys would not only be lazy, but unrealistic (really, could Two-Face be a credible threat to the Justice League? The Riddler? Toyman?). Some have appeared, however, and some will appear in Season Two, but—for the most part—I'm happy to see new bad guys on this show.
As for the Justice League's Rogues Gallery, I'm glad to see that the creative team has taken advantage of the leeway afforded them. Unlike with the comic books, where certain villains fall under the domain of certain books, virtually all of DC's major villains are up for grabs in the animated format. This means that their enemies list, which tend to be on the thin side in the comics (most of the Justice League's villains are physically weak schemers and guys who use mind control), can be bulked up by the foes from their solo books as well.
(It should be noted that the new Teen Titans series has snatched up several classic DC villains for themselves. However, I think that Justice League can get along without second-string villains like Dr. Light and Killer Moth.)
Courtesy of Min S. Ku and Heroic 'Toons!