Filmation’s JLA finally on DVD!

DC Super Heroes DVD

These days comic book fans are frankly spoiled. With characters developed into blockbuster feature films and highly stylized animated movies, the medium is no longer such a strange and alien form of entertainment to be enjoyed in dark basements across America.

But don’t let that stop you.

No, the comic book super hero of today is everywhere and even Iron Man is recognized as a heavy hitter equal to the star power of Batman and Superman. Who thought that would ever happen?

In the 1960’s, Filmation had successfully taken characters from DC Comics and fleshed them out into fully realized animated versions including Superman and Aquaman. They decided that they should go all out and introduce more heralds of the Silver Age of comics collected here in DC Super Heroes: The Filmation Adventures. The Flash, Green Lantern, The Atom, Hawkman and the Teen Titans all saw the glory of the little screen for Saturday morning consumption. While the shows themselves are terribly primitive, it offered fans the first opportunity to see all of their heroes team up in one cartoon as the Justice League!

As a comic fan, I had never heard of this cartoon and was so excited to see it that I sought out a pirated copy. I was… underwhelmed. The animators seemed to have no real concept of who these characters were and what they could do. To prove my point, I could imagine taking any random episode of any of these cartoons and swap lead characters without having to make any real changes. The Atom and Hawkman were equally resourceful and powerful, The Flash and Green Lantern could more or less do the same things. It’s just silly. But that was it! It was a romp.

Each episode features some very unintentionally hilarious moments from Hawkman referring to his pet hawk Skreel as a ‘kooky bird’ to the strangely timed line delivery from any number of characters ‘not… as fast… as you… Flash!’ I was in tears watching these.

When Marvel was in the hey day of woolly rambunctious hi-jinks, DC Comics tried to follow suit in their own way and ended up looking like the square older brother wearing his younger sibling’s Strokes T-Shirt to work. They just looked awkward and bizarre. But looking at these toons today, they are a lot of innocent fun. It’s also just very interesting to see the evolution of an idea from this series to what much later arrived via Bruce Timm.

The DVD release this week consists of 18 cartoons featuring all of the greats and is an ideal way to unwind after a terribly modern day.

I suggest Chimay as an accompanying beverage… or Pabst. Whatever.