John Stewart: Green Lantern Appreciation 2020

[Holt]

[Frontier]

Yep. DC does have some say over these shows. Levitz was the one who turned down the idea of using the JSA in that alternate reality episode so they changed them to the Justice Guild. He also turned down the idea of having Katar Hol be Shayera's fiance in Starcrossed so they came up with Hro Talak. Then Supergirl was from Krypton's sister planet in S:TAS because DC was still pushing Kal as the 'Last Son of Krypton'. There was also one other idea where the producers said that it was in a discussion with Levitz that the idea of a traitor in JL came up leading to the Starcrossed story line.

That doesn't sound too bad. I think their objection to Katar was him being portrayed as a villain. They did the same with both DCAU and Brave and the Bold Batwoman.

Despite whatever the producers may claim, their animated properties are influenced by whoever is in charge. How else would the terrible Flash Rebirth origin become the default origin for Barry across all mediums, Hal becomes the default GL with only Cruz getting a shot and Wally in inexplicably "dead" in his most recent animated incarnation?

I don't think DC corporate had anything to do with Wally given how the creators had handled him up to that point.

[Crazy Diamond]

Yep. DC does have some say over these shows. Levitz was the one who turned down the idea of using the JSA in that alternate reality episode so they changed them to the Justice Guild. He also turned down the idea of having Katar Hol be Shayera's fiance in Starcrossed so they came up with Hro Talak. Then Supergirl was from Krypton's sister planet in S:TAS because DC was still pushing Kal as the 'Last Son of Krypton'. There was also one other idea where the producers said that it was in a discussion with Levitz that the idea of a traitor in JL came up leading to the Starcrossed story line.

Despite whatever the producers may claim, their animated properties are influenced by whoever is in charge. How else would the terrible Flash Rebirth origin become the default origin for Barry across all mediums, Hal becomes the default GL with only Cruz getting a shot and Wally in inexplicably "dead" in his most recent animated incarnation?

On the other hand the TV and movie divisions of Warner Bros seemed to have more independence with how they could use DCU characters. I'm sure there were some talks with Levitiz but then there were also cases like not being able to use certain characters anymore due to newer shows like The Batman and failed movie pilots like the one for Aquaman. It seems like over time there was a push to have the cartoons more in-sync with the comics especially with the direct to DVD/streaming series.

As far as using John Stewart went I remember reading some interviews from ToonZone and it made it sound like Bruce Timm and Paul Dini decided to use Stewart out of their own volition rather than being told to do so by anyone at DC.

[Holt]

Bruce Timm said he liked John from the comics but also they really wanted to strongly avoid having the Big 7 all be white (with the exception of one green martian).

[SecretWarrior]

As far as using John Stewart went I remember reading some interviews from ToonZone and it made it sound like Bruce Timm and Paul Dini decided to use Stewart out of their own volition rather than being told to do so by anyone at DC.

DC holds the license and could have objected, like they have in other instances. Paul Levitz allowed John to star on the show. I doubt Didio would have if he were in charge at the time.

[Redjack]

DC holds the license and could have objected, like they have in other instances. Paul Levitz allowed John to star on the show. I doubt Didio would have if he were in charge at the time.

The original design art for the JUSTICE LEAGUE series had HAL JORDAN and HAWKMAN. I'm sure the art's out there on the internet somewhere. That was the original pitch. You can figure for yourselves who decided to make the changes and why.

[SecretWarrior]

Bruce Timm on Green Lantern (circa 2004): “The only things that really needed to be settled on were which version of the Green Lantern we were going to use, because there’s so many. We could have used Hal Jordan or Kyle Rayner or Guy Gardner, but for a number of reasons, including ethnic diversity, we chose to go with John Stewart—which has turned out to be probably the single most controversial aspect of the show amongst die-hard comic book fans. John Stewart never really got a whole lot of face time in the comics. There was a small period of time back in the ‘80s when Steve Englehart was writing the comic, when John was the main Green Lantern. […] I’ve always kind of liked him too and, again, aside from the ethnic diversity thing, we were looking at what the group dynamic was going to be.

“One of the things we really wanted to avoid was having a group of characters who were all pretty much interchangeable. Going back and rereading a lot of the Silver Age Justice League comics, they really are all the same character—Batman [had] no different a voice than Superman or Flash. They’re all kind of the same character; the only thing that differentiates them is what colors they’re wearing and what powers they have. So we really wanted to make sure they had a much more interesting group dynamic than that and that they all had different personalities. Going back to the original version of John Stewart from Denny O’Neil and Neal Adams’ day, the thing that made him interesting to us was that he was quite a bit more of a badass. If you go back and read those, he comes across as a stereotypical, angry, young black man. We knew we didn’t want to do that exactly, but we still wanted to keep a little bit of that edge to him so that he would be one of the more strident of the characters. We hit upon the idea of the Green Lanterns being kind of a paramilitary force, so we said, ‘Ah, marine. Okay, Louis Gossett Jr., Samuel Jackson.’ So that became our take on him (courtesy of Modern Masters: Bruce Timm).

http://jl.popgeeks.com/lantern/lantern.htm

Then John went and became a fan-favorite, saving the world in 3/5 Justice League finales. I believe he also starred in more episodes than any other character.

[SecretWarrior]

The test footage used to pitch the show to Kids Wb before the show ended up on Cartoon Network:

[SecretWarrior]

Doesn't look like they took long to go from this:



(Possibly STAS Kyle Rayner)

to this:

[SecretWarrior]

Can't wait for this--



December 1st should be fun.

[SecretWarrior]

[Iconic]

Gorgeous artwork and love that team!

[lemonpeace]

I hear the Justice League theme song everytime I see this image

[SecretWarrior]

[SecretWarrior]