As quickly as we’ve started it’s already time for one of my patented terrible season reviews! Who wants some incredibly flawed rankings? Who wants some lazy musings? Who wants to know how embarrassingly long these take to write despite how low effort they seem???

Blah blah blah, I keep a spreadsheet that gives point totals to all the episodes and I use to to weigh the various creatives involved in the episodes. It’s largely nonsense but occasionally fun to spot some patterns.

More Season Reviews:

Batman: The Animated Series (Season One | Season Two | The New Batman Adventures)

Batman Beyond (Season One | Season Two | Season Three)

Superman: The Animated Series (Season One | Season Two | Season Three)

Justice League (Season One | Season Two)

1. Season Review
2. Director Rankings
3. Writer Rankings
4. Animation Studio Rankings
5. Composer Rankings
6. Episode Rankings
7. Rogues Roundup

Season Review

Given JLU has this vaunted reputation as a major upgrade over Justice League I was surprised by how many of the episodes of this first season were of just blatantly inferior quality from a writing perspective.

‘Initiation‘ definitely showed the vision for what the show could be with a bit of a punch-up, tightening in the focus on a smaller group of heroes while still finding a quick moment for the veterans like Batman to get in a joke or two. But SO many of these stories left some money on the table in one way or another. Whether it was failing to fully connect the resolution to the ostensible moral of the episode, or failing to take full advantage of a unique aesthetic or returning character, it doesn’t seem like they’ve fully nailed down the 22-minute format quite yet. The episodes certainly move at a good pace and feel like complete stories, just not always satisfying ones.

I think the biggest issue is you can see the tension between Bruce Timm’s original vision for the show and what it will end up becoming. The whole point of expanding the roster to dozens and dozens of superheroes was to do an anthology series with different configurations getting into whacky one-off adventures, reflected by hiring so many bigger name writers to do single episodes. That can certainly be a lot of fun and I’m not complaining whatsoever. However JLU is going to become famous for its longer arcs that weave together years of DCAU mythos, most of it helmed by Dwayne McDuffie. We got a taste of that with ‘Fearful Symmetry‘ and it was delightful, teasing Cadmus and making good on little moments with Professor Hamilton, the use of the prototype Zeta robots and a number of other little seemingly discarded concepts. It also got the maximum amount it could from the rotating cast, creating the dynamic dream team of The Question, Supergirl and Green Arrow, with the two guys bickering constantly despite being more similar than they realised, and Kara caught in the middle simply wanting to do something. Just excellent character work with all three, and a satisfying little mystery caper.

While I opened discussion of this season on a negative note, I think they’ve really tightened up the visuals significantly, exorcising a lot of the little demons I moaned about previously. I think some people tricked themselves into thinking Justice League looked exactly like JLU, but it definitely did not. The art has always been on point (much like the music), but give or take some rough experimentation with 3D models, this is now a very smoothly animated show.

Obviously the biggest strength for the series is getting to show some love to the wide, weird history of DC, from the comically large team of heroes, to the explorations of different time periods, they did a generally excellent job making the world feel HUGE. I really like the idea of pairing one of the Big 7 from the previous show with a rotating cast of newer faces, and you can feel the narrative weight that comes with those veterans compared to the relatively blank canvases of the newbies. Some are tremendous fun, such as The Question and Booster Gold, while others are slightly shakier but mostly great, like Green Arrow and The Atom. The only ones to be a miss so far are Captain Atom and Hawk & Dove. Plus I’m always happy to see returns from the likes of Zatanna and Supergirl. More though, please! Let’s find a way to get some of the sillier background extras talking next season. The villains have also been encouraging so far compared to the first season of Justice League but still a step below BTAS and honestly STAS. I think we can do even more.

Overall a decent start, and I can certainly see the vision, but not the rousing success I hoped for out of the block. I think more positively about the season itself than most of the individual episodes, as I can see what they’re trying to do even if there are a number of clunkers.

Director Rankings

1. Dan Riba (6 eps)
2. Joaquim Dos Santos (7eps)

It’s interesting to me that they paired Dan Riba – who is now their most tenured director – exclusively with Dong Yang – who are now their most tenured animators. It’s up to you whether you think the more proven talent led to better episodes, or if they assigned their favoured staff to the episodes they liked better, but the end result is newcomer Joaquim Dos Santos did my entire bottom 5, while Dan Riba only had a single episode in the bottom half.

I suppose many of Dos Santos’ episodes featured prolonged action sequences I described as boring during the individual episode reviews, but even something like ‘Wake the Dead’ had that gorgeous sewer sequence near the end, so what does any of this really mean?

Writer Rankings

1. Stan Berkowitz (3 eps)
2. J.M. DeMatteis (3 eps)
3. Andrew Kriesberg (1 ep)
4. Warren Ellis (1 ep)
5. Robert Goodman (2 eps)
6. Paul Dini (1 ep)
7. Dwayne McDuffie (4 eps)
8. Henry Gilroy (1 ep)
9. Bruce Timm (1 ep)
10. Ron Zimmerman (1 ep)

Consistently the only one of these sections that means anything, I think I generally agree with The NumbersTM, though it is a little weird to see Berkowitz at number one as he so often ends up in the middle of the pack, but hey, writing two of my top three ain’t nothin’!

The one-and-done ‘big names’ generally placed high, which holds true with Justice League, with former top boy Andrew Kriesberg actually tying with J.M. DeMatteis, but I separated them based on who had the highest individual episode. Comics heavyweight Warren Ellis also fared well, while Paul Dini has slid from his former glory as his number of credits evaporates.

I am pleased that the classic ‘Bruce Timm Manoeuvre’ failed for once though! He always gets a story credit on a script somebody else actually writes and due to how the averages play out, he ends up placing incredibly high. But I really didn’t like ‘Wake the Dead’ so no dice, Brucey Baby.

The one that will no doubt annoy people every time is the late Dwayne McDuffie. I’ve never thought overly highly of his episodes. I believe he’s a solid ‘big ideas’ guy, but just doesn’t have it on a tight scripting level. Look at the vastly uneven sides of the two-part season finale. Look at how much was left on the table with both ‘Wake the Dead’ and ‘Ultimatum‘. I’m so intrigued to see how it goes when his name appears on almost ever episode starting next season…

Animation Studio Rankings

1. Dong Yang Animation Co., LTD. (6 eps)
2. DR Movie Co., LTD. (7 eps)

See Director Rankings, really. Our old pals Dong Yang (once one of the worse studios working on BTAS) account for almost the entire top half, while newer studio DR Movie are the inverse, only managing 1 episode in the top 5.

That being said I think the animation has finally become truly smooth, with none of the little oddities I used to complain about in Justice League like awkward ‘camera moves’ and background textures looking completely out of sync with the characters. Even in the worst episodes, this is a nice looking little cartoon.

Composer Rankings

1. Michael McCuistion (4 eps)
2. Lolita Ritmanis (4 eps)
3. Kristopher Carter (5 eps)

Just as I think the animation was always good this season, even in the bad episodes, the music of the DCAU has always been on point in literally every era. It’s one of its defining traits. This entire trio of Queen Shirley Walker proteges are good at what they do, even if things have shifted away from orchestra and towards synthesisers.

What most undermines this ranking in particular is the music I most remember enjoying this season came from Kristopher Carter, who ranked last despite his wonderful western score in ‘The Once and Future Thing, Part 1’. Unfortunately his name is against 4 of my bottom 5, so it wasn’t even particularly close on points. McCuistion wins on consistency with his episodes all appearing in the upper middle, while Ritmanis was spread all over the map, scoring my favourite and one of my least favourite episodes.

When will I either learn how to talk about music properly or stop doing this bit? Never!

Episode Rankings

The top 5 have strong elevator pitches and/or commit hard to their aesthetics. The upper middle portion are fun but don’t have much else going on under the hood. The bottom half were basically dead on arrival.

1. For the Man Who Has Everything
2. Fearful Symmetry
3. The Return
4. The Once and Future Thing, Part 1: Weird Western Tales
5. The Greatest Story Never Told
6. Dark Heart
7. Initiation
8. This Little Piggy
9. Kids’ Stuff
10. The Once and Future Thing, Part 2: Time Warped
11. Wake the Dead
12. Ultimatum
13. Hawk and Dove

It’s not even that the comedy episodes are all bad, because I liked ‘The Greatest Story Never Told‘ and think ‘This Little Piggy‘ actually had some stuff going for it. It’s more about wasted potential. For example ‘Kids’ Stuff’ could have delved into the psyches of our de-aged heroes and shown how they think outside the box, but they had no interest in doing that whatsoever. ‘Time Warped’ could have gone full-tilt on the future setting and paid loving tribute to Batman Beyond but instead did the absolute bare minimum. Terry barely fucking talks, man! ‘Hawk and Dove‘ was barely even coherent. ‘Ultimatum‘ was painfully boring and didn’t bother to do anything with the inner conflict of the Ultimen. Seemingly so little effort made to extract pathos from these stories.

On the other end of the spectrum, adapting an acclaimed comic story and focusing tightly on the inner desires of Superman and Batman while rehabilitating a villain was always going to be a home run. I don’t love ‘The Return‘ as much as the average DCAU fan, but even I can’t deny how compelling the ending was. I think our best sign of what’s to come is ‘Fearful Symmetry‘ being such a success, as the Cadmus stuff will be the crux of Season 2.

Rogues Roundup

While there are still some duds, we’re off to a better start here compared to Justice League, where despite having double the run-time to establish compelling villains, so rarely managed it. This is almost certainly a side effect of trimming the cast (on a per episode basis that is; there are obviously more total characters than ever), leaving more space for foes with actual personality. So often the previous series leaned on ensemble groups to provide a proper challenge to a 7-person squad of heavy hitters.

By contrast personality is ruling the day again like in the old days of BTAS and STAS, as Lex Luthor, Circe and Chronos all ooze charisma and showmanship to some degree. Even Mongul has had a total transformation into a more traditional big cocky villain, and Amazo’s philosophical musings are certainly memorable.

The trio of villains that are just big brutes with no personality were pretty unfortunate, but Mordru is only at the bottom because of a technicality, really. I love his design and what they do with him, but he’s not actually in the episode.

1. Lex Luthor
2. Circe
3. Amazo
4. Chronos
5. Mongul
6. Galatea
7. Project Cadmus
8. Dark Heart
9. Tobias Manning
10. The Jokerz
11. Solomon Grundy
12. Brimstone
13. Ares (and The Annihilator!)
14. Mordred (and Morgaine le Fey!)
15. Mordru