Cartoon Conversations #5: 'Young Justice' and the Dangerous Future of Streaming

Welcome back to Cartoon Conversations! The semi-regular written essay series where I break down cartoons, their influence, importance, and purpose because nobody’s told me to stop yet so I assume I’m doing something that is, at the very least, acceptable. For this one, I wanted to do something a little lighter but also relevant to current cultural discussion. And what’s more relevant to the zeitgeist in 2019 than superheroes?

Yes, with the revival of the superhero movie as a genre of film in the early 20th century, superheroes are more important than ever to pop culture. I’ve already written a couple of articles over the years on the importance of comic books so I won’t bore you by repeating the specifics, but suffice it to say that even those who experience so-called “superhero fatigue” can be drawn back into the fold by the next offering from Marvel Studios, which has been breaking Hollywood records with its stellar ‘Avengers’ movies for the last seven years or so. But despite Marvel owning the box office, in the realm of cartoons, there’s one universally recognized master of superhero related content.

As far back as the early 1940s’, DC Comics has used cartoons to promote its characters, intellectual properties, and various comic lines. However, their exploits in television reached their apparent apex in 1992. That was the year that legendary cartoon producer Bruce Timm debuted ‘Batman: The Aminated Series.’ Backed by Warner Brothers’ prolific animation studio, ‘Batman’ made a point of taking its subject matter seriously while still appropriate for younger audiences. Due to its film noir designs, amazing vocal performances, and psychological narratives, several major outlets have listed it as the second greatest cartoon of all time, almost always behind ‘The Simpsons.’ And when first place is one of the single most acclaimed television shows of all time, second place isn’t half bad. It was so popular that its voice cast is now considered the definitive identities for the individual characters, having made multiple jumps in medium from television to film to even video games just because it feels wrong to have anyone else in the role. Hell, there are kids today who know Mark Hamill better for being the voice of the Joker than for being Luke Skywalker.

‘Batman’ was eventually expanded into ‘Superman: The Animated Series’ which itself gave birth to ‘Justice League Unlimited.’ Numerous spin-offs followed that branched the DC Animated Universe (commonly called the DCAU) out in a lucrative, creative, and successful manner that would end up being copied by Marvel when it built its own cinematic universe. While the main shows have all long-since wrapped up, the universe lives on in the occasional direct-to-DVD movie that gets released every few years, still with the original voice cast, producers, and animators.

In place of the DCAU, a few other shows based on DC properties have popped up over the years. Some of them have been generation defining.

And some of them…

...were less so.

But if we’re going to talk about things superhero cartoons have been doing recently that have some relevance to the larger cultural landscape, then there’s only one show this entry could be about.

Loosely based around the comic series of the same name, ‘Young Justice’ came out in 2010 on Cartoon Network. It was developed and produced by the Emmy-winning team of Brandon Vietti and Greg Weisman, a combination that should be familiar to cartoon fans as the makers of such classics as ‘Gargoyles,’ ‘Spectacular Spider-Man,’ and ‘Batman: The Brave and the Bold,’ which featured one of the best theme songs in cartoon history FIGHT ME ON THIS I DARE YOU.

The story of ‘Young Justice’ revolved around a team of famous superhero sidekicks forming their own team separate from their mentors in order to prove themselves as equal partners and save the world from new and different threats.

Despite being a cookie-cutter narrative that DC had been using to promote its younger characters for decades, it was a far more nuanced show than its immediate predecessors and dealt with issues of burgeoning relationships, tested friendships, and overcoming trauma, all set against the backdrop of the famously convoluted DC story-telling technique.

The series was well received by both a fanbase that had been thirsty for a mature superhero cartoon and critics who praised the show’s intelligence and sublime voice cast. However, despite its laudable quality, it was taking flak from Cartoon Network early on and was cancelled after the second season, subtitled ‘Invasion,’ wrapped in 2013, leaving the show dangling on a cliffhanger. It’s been revealed in the interim years that the cancellation was brought about not by audiences not connecting to the show, they very clearly were, but rather by toy-makers and show producers Mattel. Turns out that girls were watching ‘Young Justice’ just as much as boys were, perhaps because it portrayed female characters as equal to their male counterparts on a narrative and thematic level. Believe it or not, that caused problems for Mattel since not only do girls not tend to buy as many action figures as boys, but their poor sales of ‘Young Justice’ toys were starting to affect their other product lines. When Mattel pulled its funding for the show, there wasn’t a large enough sponsor to take its place and Cartoon Network decided that the show wasn’t worth producing in-house.

And thus, ‘Young Justice’ and a handful of other popular but unfunded shows were given the axe, ironically to be replaced with new DC shows which were received with far less gusto. For a while, that seemed to be the end of it. But in 2016, Netflix acquired the streaming rights to the show and released the series on its online service. Around the same time, Weisman sent out a tweet suggesting that if fans showed enough support, Netflix could convince Warner Bros. to produce a third season. This prompted an outcry from fans of the show, calling for it to be revived as a Netflix production. ‘Young Justice’ trended on Twitter, the cast voiced their support, and Weisman encouraged the vocal throngs of supporters to keep fanning the flames. The only thing more impressive than the year-long campaign to bring the series back was the fact that it worked. Almost.

By the end of 2016, Warner Bros. had confirmed that ‘Young Justice’ season three was greenlit. One by one, the voice cast announced their individual returns to the characters they’d given life to and for a time, it looked like fans were going to get exactly what they wanted, promoted by the sheer strength of their own willpower. But then, DC threw a significant wrench into the works. In April of 2017, rumors began to circulate that, instead of continuing its partnership with Netflix, the company was looking at options to develop its own separate streaming service. In the following months, the rumors gave way to leaks which in turn evolved into announcements. By May 2018, DC revealed its master plan: DC Universe, a one-stop, paid service where DC fans could read comics, buy merch, communicate with their peers, and, most importantly, could watch classic and exclusive original programing, including the live-action ‘Titans’ show, an animated Harley Quinn show, and the announced third season of ‘Young Justice.’ Netflix was off the table.

This move made waves among the fans who had cried out for a ‘Young Justice’ revival. Netflix as a service was more niche than television, but didn’t restrict itself to one demographic. It provided a broader library for users to select from. Now an entire portion of its audience was being forced to choose between it and the new DC Universe. There was the option to use both, of course, but that would mean spending more money, perhaps just to watch a single show on one or the other. And if enough people transitioned, this could inspire other genres to strike out on their own as well. If DC Universe was overwhelmingly successful within its first quarter, then how long would it be before another company, like Disney for example, decided that it might be more lucrative to pull their movies from Netflix to start its own streaming service?

Five months after DC revealed its plans for DC Universe, Disney CEO Bob Iger announced Disney+, a streaming service owned and operated by the House of Mouse that would serve as the online home of their animated features, their Marvel, Fox, and Lucasfilm acquisitions, and a slew of original projects. This, more than the loss of ‘Young Justice,’ represented a major blow for Netflix, which had an ironclad contract with Disney for the streaming rights to their movies. Disney, for its part, seems happy to let its contract run out, letting Netflix stream its Marvel movies up to the home video release of ‘Captain Marvel.’ But after that, all subsequent Marvel content will be exclusive to Disney+ and all the Marvel media on Netflix will be phased out. It’s already started with Netflix cancelling its popular Marvel serialized shows, despite most of them having a dedicated audience. It’s only a matter of time before all ABC shows and Disney movies, animated or otherwise, are eliminated from the service altogether.

And it’s not just Netflix that has something to lose to Disney+. Prior to announcing its own service, Disney had original content housed on Hulu, Freeform, and Amazon Prime. Disney has since cemented total control of Hulu and Amazon is currently prepping for a huge loss if Disney pulls its content from their service. This puts Disney in a different position from other companies that offer a similar product like HBO or CBS. It’s not a player in the game of streaming services, it’s a shark circling in the water, trying to decide on its next meal.

So how does this track back to superhero cartoons?

Because while the third season of ‘Young Justice,’ subtitled ‘Outsiders,’ isn’t the first cartoon or even superhero cartoon exclusive to an online service, it is the first time we can directly compare how a television channel and an online streaming platform market and produce the same franchise as a continuation as opposed to a reboot. The similarities and differences between the two might serve as an indication as to what the future of online streaming might look like. And keep in mind that this could have very real implications beyond cartoons. Already, Netflix has released its first self-produced season of the popular live-action show ‘Lucifer’ after it was cancelled by Fox and for a time it looked like Hulu might be the new home of Fox’s ‘Brooklyn 99’ before it was saved by NBC. This is a very real phenomenon that is going to affect a not insignificant portion of popular culture in the immediate future, so one of its first examples being a cartoon not only lends relevancy to the medium, but means that, for better or worse, ‘Young Justice: Outsiders’ will frame the way people will view online continuations.

So with that context, let’s take a look at the new series of ‘Young Justice’ and compare it to the original in terms of content, character work, and quality.

Since it’s a lot easier to talk about, let’s start with content. The first season boiled down to a game of Clue stretched out over 26 episodes. A team consisting of Robin, Aqualad, Kid Flash, Superboy, Ms. Martian, and Artemis are assembled, none of them are very familiar with each other, all of them have a specific secret to keep, and they have it on good authority that one of them is a mole for a global organization of supervillains that unveils itself gradually over the course of the season. Everything wraps up at the end with the team uniting to defeat the bad guys, free the enslaved Justice League, and save the world in time for them all to have a New Years Eve kiss. The second season took place after a five-year time skip and involved a new iteration of the team with some new and some old characters trying to resist an alien invasion, only the aliens had used social media and spin television to convince the rest of the world that they were extraterrestrial allies, not conquerors. As a result, the season wasn’t so much about finding out who the primary villain was, but about fighting an enemy with politics and public opinion as opposed to brute force. It was more like ‘Game of Thrones’ than ‘Scooby-Doo.’ That being said, the season finale once again saw most loose ends tied up with the aliens being exposed, sent off-planet, and a world-ending catastrophe being avoided, albeit at a personal price that pulled at fans’ heartstrings.

Both seasons had an overall story structure where the suspense was based on a slow reveal. Each episode would pull back another layer of mystery that would be built on in the next week’s installment, as is DC’s general MO when it comes to serialized story-telling. The third season, or the first half of it that has been streamed so far at least, follows the same general narrative convention and even adds to it. The early episodes of the season set up a mystery, namely a human trafficking ring of superpowered teenagers starting to bleed off of Earth and to worlds beyond, but unlike season two’s sophisticated politics and season one’s layered conspiracies, all the cards were on the table now, for both the characters and the audience. There were no secrets to uncover. The bad guys were behind the evil plot and it was the good guys’ job to stop them. The twist of the season was that the Justice League was under more bureaucratic oversight and scrutiny, preventing them from fully doing their job. Because of this, the primary characters have to operate not only under the noses of the law, but under the noses of the rest of the Justice League as well. The main conceit wasn’t so much about how the heroes had to defeat the villains, but how they were going to get away with it. It was a new and different direction to take the show in and it added to the thematic evolution of the show.

While the overall narrative wasn’t too far out of left field, there was a much heavier emphasis on world building. The original seasons were satisfied with easing its audience into the overall pretty bizarre world of DC lore, but because ‘Outsiders’ was exclusive to a service aimed specifically at existing DC fans, it felt it was safe to introduce or tease Red Hood, Damien Wayne, Leviathan, HIVE, Bluebird, The Judas Contract, Teen Titans, and a number of other famous elements from the vaults of comic history.

But here’s a little thing about comics that most people tend to not understand because the entire medium tends to be dismissed out of hand: the stories don’t actually matter all too much. There’s a reason they have the characters’ names in big, bold letters at the top of the cover. Comics, and all media based on them, are built on visual character work. After all, the worlds comics create tend to be too weird or convoluted to be invested in. Just for reference, there are about fifty different kinds of magic that exist in DC comics and even comic book fans have trouble caring about or even remembering half of them. But characters like Raven, Zatanna Zataro, and Wonder Woman are so unique and endearing that we care about these forces vicariously through them. However, this can be a double-edged sword as if you don’t care about the character, you tend not to care about their cause or motivation.

This was never a problem in the original seasons of ‘Young Justice’ as the characters were all likable, relatable, and fun to follow. They were rarely introduced without some manner of explanation as to their purpose and even when they weren’t, the show felt comfortable enough to plop audiences down with the likes of Batman, Robin, and Superman because they assumed most people were familiar with some of the most important pop culture icons of the 20th century. They also trusted viewers’ intelligence enough to give them only fleeting backstories for Kid Flash, Aqualad, and Speedy, trusting their audience to be smart enough to connect them to their more well-known mentors, Flash, Aquaman, and Green Arrow, and come to the conclusion that their origins were similar but more recent. Even when new characters seemed to appear out of nowhere, like Artemis or Wonder Girl, it was always with the indication that either they had secrets that would be uncovered, or their purpose to the show was as a supporting character, unimportant to the larger narrative.

But ‘Outsiders,’ while still pretty good overall, suffers from some character issues. The main returning characters of Nightwing, Artemis, and Superboy are all tuned down versions of their original incarnations. The argument could be made that they are all older and more browbeaten, therefore less jovial and social, but they’re superheroes. This is what they do. What they’ve been doing for the better part of their lives. We’ve seen them deal with tougher things then they’ve come across so far this season and be able to sling a joke here or there. What’s different now? To give you an example of the drastic character reductions, Superboy was once a hotheaded, passionate young man who struggled to contain his rage and come to terms with his existence as a clone of Superman. Even in the second season, where he seemed to have made peace with his origins, he was still impulsive and led more by his emotions than anything else. In ‘Outsiders,’ he is a much more straightforward character with no real defining traits outside of his previously existing relationships. He even gets engaged to his long-time girlfriend but doesn’t change his characterizations outside of a Facebook status update.

The new main characters don’t fair much better. Consisting of the exiled teenage prince Brion, the amnesiac mystery girl Violet, the alien outcast Forager, the PTSD-afflicted adult hero Jeff, and the corrupted cyborg Victor, the team was hastily assembled from characters who either had only brief introductions or ones too lengthy to be measured. To use an example of both, Violet is introduced in the second episode and while her cheerful but fragile personality is established from the get-go, her backstory, relationships, and even powers are still a mystery. True, the season is only half released with the second half coming in July, but in the first season, Artemis had a hidden backstory that got hinted at in every other episode, leading to an interesting reveal that added depth to her character and context to her previous actions.

We’ve gotten hints as to what Violet’s about and what she’s here for, but they’ve only led to more confusion than anything, shadowed by the overarching question of “Why?” On the other side of the issue is Victor, who is introduced well before becoming his superhero persona and is allowed to putz around in the background of other stories before it’s finally his turn to take center stage. By the time he gets superpowers, we know everything about him. That wouldn’t be a problem excepts when he starts to act contrary to the character that had been introduced and presented. The narrative tries to explain away his sudden shift in character traits with a possession subplot that gets resolved almost offscreen, a testament to lazy writing. For a project three years in the making, the characters made it fell rushed and unstable, not at all the crisp, tight product that the previous two seasons had been.

Which leaves us at quality, which is almost impossible to judge between the third season and the other two. Everyone from the animators to the showrunners to the voice cast was brought back from the original show for ‘Outsiders,’ so the overall quality of the show is more or less the same. The animation is still its stylized, sharp self, the voice actors are all comfortable veterans of the industry who could make a broom sound alive, and it was all organized and directed at the behest of Greg Weisman, a talented and experienced creator. The show is as good as it’s ever been.

The only difference, at least as far as I can tell, is the audience who it’s aimed at. The first two seasons, aired on television and dependent on ratings, were aimed for a more general teen crowd. It never dipped too deep into the DC vault of lore and kept its stories straightforward and enjoyable. The new season was unafraid to fully embrace its bizarre, complicated roots and made reference and homage to events, characters, and stories that only those already familiar with DC comics would understand. This is due to it streaming on a platform custom built for that specific audience. With an audience that is predisposed to liking DC content, the show could lean heavier on the abstract or oblique elements of its narrative.

And it’s this realization that draws me to a final conclusion concerning how an open streaming market will affect our media: it won’t. We will. With more competition and niches to fill, streaming services will acquiesce to audience demands and expectations not because they have to, but because they can and are meant to by design. DC is far from the only service to address a niche audience. WWE has its own streaming network with original content aimed at wrestling fans and services like Fubo and ESPN are both directed towards sports fans. Their content is specifically crafted and made for a predetermined type of consumer. Which is a roundabout way of saying that our tastes have begun determining our media in a more profound way than ever. Original content of this nature doesn’t have to worry about pleasing the masses for the sake of ratings or commercial air time, if you’ve signed up for the service it streams on then it already has your money. Now its goal is to keep you paying by pandering to the tastes and predilections it already knows you have, a much more effective tactic then making content for general appeal.

And that has some interesting implications. The history of television is full of great transitions periods to account for shifts in cultural tastes, but the ever-evolving internet era has narrowed that phenomenon to an individual level. On one hand, that’s a good thing because it means content can be tailor made to entertain you as much as possible. On the other hand, humans are multifaceted creatures that cannot be sorted into simple categories for the sake of demographic studies. More services means more conditioned content, yes, but it also means paying more to enjoy them. For example, Netflix has a ton of original, quality cartoons that I love and enjoy. Seriously, they’re almost all amazing. Like the princesses in their ‘She-Ra’ remake are some of my favorite characters in any cartoon ever.

But because I’m a complex human who’s allowed to like more than one thing, I would also like to watch the new ‘Twilight Zone’ series. In order to enjoy both, I now have to pay for Netflix and at least a month of CBS All Access. But wait, I also want that new Harley Quinn cartoon on DC Universe. So there’s another monthly payment. I mean sure I can delete my HBO account after ‘Game of Thrones’ ends, but I’ll still end up paying for a ton of different services to enjoy roughly the same amount of content as I used to by just paying for Netflix. Sure, that content is specifically crafted to my tastes, but as I discussed that doesn’t necessarily mean better content. And I think that’s something we need to keep in mind before we designate $150 of our monthly budgets for fifteen different services.

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