“Justice League: Gods and Monsters” is a new DC Animated film, as well as a series of spin-off comics and a new series of shorts premiering on Machinima… The first episode (embedded above) came out Monday and is part of a series of shorts that will all premiere this week. Episode two comes out today, episode three comes out on Friday.
From their press release:
From visionary producer and animator Bruce Timm (Batman: The Animated Series, Superman: The Animated Series), Justice League: Gods and Monsters Chronicles turns the DC Universe upside-down. In this dark, alternate world, telling the good guys from the bad guys is never easy: Superman is not the son of Jor-El, he’s the son of General Zod; Wonder Woman is not from peaceful Themyscira, but rather the warring nation of Ares; and Batman is more vampire-bat than man…and he’s not Bruce Wayne. It is unclear if our greatest heroes are here to protect us…or to rule us. Machinima has already announced a second season, which will come out in 2016.
The universe they’ve created is certainly darker than we’re used to, and that’s why we asked Big Shiny Robot! contributor JJ Harrison to interview Bruce Timm about the new series and how it departs from his previous work.
JJ Harrison: Your previous work with the Justice League was made for more of an audience of all ages. God’s and Monsters is darker in tone. How did crossing into more mature territory affect the story that you wanted to tell.
Bruce Timm: Well, fortunately we’ve been doing these series of direct to movie DVD’s for almost ten years now, so that kind of opened the door for us to be able to do a little bit more adult subject matter across the board. This series, frankly, I don’t think would work for a kid based TV audience. I think it needed to be in a venue on a platform that allowed us to go a little bit into darker territory, even though I hate to use the word dark.
The entire initial idea for this thing was to — and again, some people have said these are like evil versions of Batman and Superman. Which, I don’t think they’re evil, I think their line in the sand, their moral compass, is different then the canonical versions of these characters. To be able to actually explore that in any kind of depth, we definitely needed to go at least PG-13.
And then, again, one of the things that directly inspired this take on these characters, was one of my favorite comics of all time, “The Authority” by Warren Ellis. That comic really blew me away when it came out. And even back in the day, on my traditional Justice League series, it had an influence on how we told stories and where we could go with the characters. That was the first time I had ever seen anybody do such a badass take on a super team type concept. And it was so refreshing. It was so game changing. I’ve always wanted to do something along those lines. This was kind of designed to scratch that itch.
JJ: Andrea Romano is always known to be an amazing voice director. She puts together some incredible casts. When it comes to casting the roles for the voices, what role do you play personally?
BT: Andrea and I always collaborate really closely. We always sit in a room together and usually with whatever project we are working on with one or two other producers or directors. It’s kind of better to get a bunch of people in the room and start throwing around ideas.
Ultimately, I’m the final say. I mean, Andrea obviously has a lot of influence. A lot of times we will mention the character or an actor who will be interesting. She has a lot of experience with people who I haven’t worked with, and she will say, “Oh ya, you don’t want that guy. He’s supposed to be difficult.” Or, “Oh no, that lady is supposed to be a bitch.” Her experience and her contacts are invaluable. But ya, ultimately I get the final say.
JJ: Well, there ya go [laughs].
BT: With a lot of input from the home video. Technically get the final say because they are the ones who hire them. If I get somebody that I really love, but they go, “Uh we don’t really like that person.” Then, they get the final say.
JJ: What can you tell us about the comic book tie in?
BT: It’s interesting because we had a really hard time figuring out how exactly to write the story for the movie. We knew that we were setting up a whole new world. Whole new versions of Superman, Batman, and Wonder Woman. We had to tell their origin stories in as brief of a possible way as we could and still have room left over to have an actual plot. There were so many interesting avenues of their back stories that we kind of wanted to get into, but just didn’t have time to do.
When DC mentioned that they wanted to do a spin-off comic, that was the first thing I thought of. Let’s go into their back stories. To me, that’s always the interesting thing about “what-if” characters or alternate versions of characters. How do they differ from the traditional Superman, Wonder Woman, or Batman. There is only so much time you can explore that in a movie. With all three of these characters it was always, from the time we left off with them with their origin stories in the movie, what are we not seeing? What other interesting things happen?
It’s also kind of fun too, because the traditional versions of these characters, their backstories are so well known it’s kind of fun to go right when they went left. Or vice versa. With Superman, we already know that he’s the bastard son of Zod, not Jor-El. When he lands on Earth he didn’t land in Kansas, he didn’t get raised by the Kents. He landed in the southwest somewhere and he got raised by a migrant Mexican couple. And he lived a much different early family life than Clark Kent did. And he experienced racism up close and personal, throughout his childhood. He also has the genetic material of a world destroying megalomaniac in his body. It’s a pretty potent explosive combination.
That’s the kind of stuff we are exploring in the comics. Kind of doing the same thing with all three characters. Again, what makes them different than Clark Kent and Bruce Wayne and Diana? We had a lot more room to play around with that in the comics.
JJ: Are you co-writing each of those with J.M. DeMatteis?
BT: No, Mark is doing all of the heavy lifting. J.M., myself, Mike Carlin, and Kristy Quinn all had a conference call and threw out a bunch of ideas. Possible directions of where we wanted to go. I’m more of a consultant. I wouldn’t give myself a full story credit. I think that Mark’s done a lot of the heavy lifting. And doing a great job. All credit to him.
JJ: How does your background as an artist influence what you write for other artists to draw?
BT: Oh, that’s interesting. I’ve actually never really written for other artists to draw. [laughs] In this case, I didn’t. We kind of came up with some ideas and concepts to collaborate with Mike and Mark. In my job as consultant, I was able to identify early on in the story process, “That’s a good story beat, but it’s not exactly very visual. There might be a way to make it more visual by doing this. Or make it more exciting if we did that.” My experience definitely helps along those lines. I have come this close to writing stories for other artists, I’ve been asked several times by both people at DC and at Marvel to write something that I wasn’t going to draw. I just haven’t pulled that trigger yet. Maybe some day.
JJ: You have also had the opportunity to work with legendary artists who’ve influenced you, like Dan DeCarlo for instance. Now you’ve been doing this a while. You are now a legend yourself, what’s it like for you working with other younger artists that feel the same way about your art?
BT: Maybe if they do, they are good enough not to show it.
JJ: [laughs] Really?
BT: I actually get really embarrassed when people start getting all fanboy on me. Most of the people I work with are pretty cool. They try to keep their inner fanboy in check, if they are fanboys. So, I really couldn’t tell you. I’ve heard after the fact, “Oh yah, when I first got on your show I was just so excited.” It’s like, oh wow, that’s nice. But, it kind of makes me, I don’t know, uncomfortable.
JJ: So they’re keeping it cool for you–professional?
BT: Yah, they’re keepin’ it chill.
“Justice League: Gods and Monsters” hits shelves next month (you can preorder now on Amazon) and the rest of the shorts for Machinima come out over the rest of this week.