Why don't Marvel comics get adapted into animated films like DC comics do?

[comicstar100]

I walked away from Marvel animation after Earth's Mightiest Heroes ended. I just haven't seen anything that looks great since then. I'd love Marvel to put more effort into their animated shows though. All the 90s animated series like X-Men and Spider-Man got me into Marvel in the first place.

[Frontier]

I think it would be even better than Young Justice. Post-Season 1 YJ kinda has the problem of being a show about sidekicks where the sidekicks can't outshine the Justice League. I think this got even more awkward since they brought in Darkseid. Dick and Garfield's teams are the main leads but it wouldn't be logical for them to defeat Darkseid over Batman and Superman, but you can't have them feel irrelevant either. The more the show progresses the harder this balancing act will get.

I think the show has always had the opposite problem where the sidekicks constantly end up outshining their mentors or the adult heroes, even when said sidekicks become adult heroes on the Justice League.

OG!Aquaman got hit with this the most.

There hasn't been a single Daredevil animated series because the character, especially as reconfigured by Miller, is too adult, too dark, and violent for kids. There's none of the baroque theatrically that makes Batman even at his darkest a little fantastic. All Daredevil has is Netflix.

Whenever Spider-Man fans keep insisting that Kingpin is a Spider-Man villain they keep bringing up the cartoons ignoring the fact that the reason Spidey gets cartoons is that he's "all-ages" whereas Daredevil simply has "not suitable for kids" branded on his horned head that prevents him from being adaptated for a medium that's aimed for kids. Granted, Wolverine shows up too and somehow they made the Canuck mass murderer PG-13 but at least the X-Men have giant robots and stuff for him to claw through, as well as high fantasy elements whereas Daredevil is a very gritty, very dark, and sad genre.

Daredevil was in the 90's Spider-Man cartoon. They didn't even change him that much.

That's true. And even then DC/WB hasn't done a good job since the end of JLU to support its properties in animation. Like after BTAS and Batman Beyond, there have been two attempts at a Batman cartoon (The Batman, and Beware the Batman) but there's not been a Superman cartoon since the '90s nor has there been a Wonder Woman the Animated Series even if Gal Gadot's big success would lead to an overnight pilot order and greenlight for something like that...it could be the next She-Ra.

You skipped Batman: The Brave and the Bold.

The Legion of Superheroes cartoon was basically a Superman cartoon that also featured the Legion of Superheroes, even if sometimes the Legion members were more in-focus than either Superman or Superman-X (his future clone).

The problem with DC cartoons is you can't trust Cartoon Network to support or handle them well. Justice League Action was a great attempt at creating a more fun, zany, half-minute cartoon adventures CN would want with the action-packed stakes of a proper DC Superhero cartoon and CN still treated it terribly.

The one thing I'll give Disney is that, barring super long hiatuses and lack of promotion, they put more investment in their Marvel cartoons. Maybe not the ones people would've wanted them to to where Ultimate Spider-Man or Marvel's Spider-Man end up dwarfing Spectacular's episode count, or Avengers Assemble getting five seasons to EMH's two, but still.

Instead all the effort has gone to the DTV videos...which have been generally mediocre and regurgitations of stuff they have done better. The only one I like is the Short film based on The Sandman -- "Death" (teleplay written by J. M. DeMatteis).

The DC Showcase stuff is great, but I thought Death of Superman/Reign of the Supermen was great, as well as Judas Contract, their Suicide Squad films, and some of their Elseworld films.

[Lukmendes]

I think it would be even better than Young Justice. Post-Season 1 YJ kinda has the problem of being a show about sidekicks where the sidekicks can't outshine the Justice League. I think this got even more awkward since they brought in Darkseid. Dick and Garfield's teams are the main leads but it wouldn't be logical for them to defeat Darkseid over Batman and Superman, but you can't have them feel irrelevant either. The more the show progresses the harder this balancing act will get.

An X-Men show wouldn't have this problem. Cyclops and his team can outshine Professor X and beat Apocalypse and the Shi'ar directly. And also Greg Weisman's Cyclops would be amazing (just look at what a great leader Kaldur'ahm is).

How's YJ a cartoon where the team can't outshine Justice League when they do that every damn season? Even Batman, of all people, Batman, is mostly useless.

No better example than season 1 when they have to deal with AMAZO, it was said the League took 4 hours to defeat him, and the heavy hitters like Supes were there, meanwhile, the team dealt with him in like, one hour tops, and they're a smaller team with less experienced heroes, who also have been working together for less time, yet, they outclassed the League in competence by far, and there are many other examples, this one is just the most blatant one.

I honestly would prefer if YJ stopped showing the League, they waste screen time by being useless, it's annoying if you like the characters by seeing them suck, and it's annoying if you don't care about them because a bunch of informed badasses are just wasting screen time being useless.

I think the show has always had the opposite problem where the sidekicks constantly end up outshining their mentors or the adult heroes, even when said sidekicks become adult heroes on the Justice League.

One ironic thing I noticed, Zatanna is the opposite, she wasn't really useful when she was part of the team (Before she joined she was doing fine, just stopped doing **** after she joined), but she became more useful once she joined the League (Helping defeat Despero for example).

Kaldur'ahm was also noticeably way less useful in season 3, and I'm sure it's only a coincidence that it's in the same season he joined the League

OG!Aquaman got hit with this the most.

Ironically, Arthur looks less bad specifically because of how little screen time he has, he looks less dumb and incompetent, all because of lack of screen time lol.

His brother on the other hand, oh boy, Orm got no focus as one of The Light's leaders, the cartoon doesn't even reveal that Ocean Master is Orm, how he helped The Light is so subtle you may not even notice (Starro's piece was sent to STAR Labs, then a few episodes later Light just knew it was there and stole it), and then he's just killed off by Lady Shiva in season 3... Yeah lol.

Daredevil was in the 90's Spider-Man cartoon. They didn't even change him that much.

Yeah I remember hearing he was there as a poorly disguised pilot, never went ahead though.

The Legion of Superheroes cartoon was basically a Superman cartoon that also featured the Legion of Superheroes, even if sometimes the Legion members were more in-focus than either Superman or Superman-X (his future clone).

Ironic how it was the opposite with the comics, it was supposed to be a Superboy comic that has Legion, then it basically became a Legion comic that had Superboy, and then he left the team lol.

The problem with DC cartoons is you can't trust Cartoon Network to support or handle them well. Justice League Action was a great attempt at creating a more fun, zany, half-minute cartoon adventures CN would want with the action-packed stakes of a proper DC Superhero cartoon and CN still treated it terribly.

Cartoon Network may handle some **** too well, like Teen Titans Go... Yeah.

The DC Showcase stuff is great, but I thought Death of Superman/Reign of the Supermen was great, as well as Judas Contract, their Suicide Squad films, and some of their Elseworld films.

I was surprised that New 52's Death and Return of Nupes were good ****, specially with how little characterization he had before that, and ironic they made his personality, and life, closer to post-crisis Supes than Nupes lol.

[Frontier]

One ironic thing I noticed, Zatanna is the opposite, she wasn't really useful when she was part of the team (Before she joined she was doing fine, just stopped doing **** after she joined), but she became more useful once she joined the League (Helping defeat Despero for example).

Kaldur'ahm was also noticeably less useful in season 3, and I'm sure it's only a coincidence that it's in the same season he joined the League

I just remember in Outsiders where we're shown various missions and one in which the Leaguers are shown (Flash and Shazam) ends up failing while the former members of the Team (Kaldur and Rocket) end up actually accomplishing anything.

Ironically, Arthur looks less bad specifically because of how little screen time he has, he looks less dumb and incompetent, all because of lack of screen time lol.

Although put him next to Aqualad and you wonder how he feels about constantly getting outshined by his sidekick (before said sidekick succeeds him off-screen) .

His brother on the other hand, oh boy, Orm got no focus as one of The Light's leaders, the cartoon doesn't even reveal that Ocean Master is Orm, how he helped The Light is so subtle you may not even notice (Starro's piece was sent to STAR Labs, then a few episodes later Light just knew it was there and stole it), and then he's just killed off by Lady Shiva in season 3... Yeah lol.

Yeah, Orm got done dirty. We still don't even know how he got ousted from the Light, and probably never will.

Cartoon Network may handle some **** too well, like Teen Titans Go... Yeah.

CN only seems to really want TTG! when it comes to their DC Superhero cartoons.

[Lukmendes]

I just remember in Outsiders where we're shown various missions and one in which the Leaguers are shown (Flash and Shazam) ends up failing while the former members of the Team (Kaldur and Rocket) end up actually accomplishing anything.

Compared to previous seasons, he's way less of a mastermind, hell, the whole plan of pretending that League members left it to avoid UN's regulations completely useless because they did no missions on-screen that actually benefits from it (I remember there's a throwaway line mentioning that Batman helped out some country in Africa, but it did nothing to stop The Light, though at least it's helping people), and the one time they did one mission that could benefit from it, when they invaded Russia, Kaldur'ahm, who was leading this mission, went there himself instead of sending members from the "separated but not really" League, got found out like it was expected to be, and then he even got blackmailed by Waller because of his incompetence, since League members can't just go to other countries without authorization.

Compare this to the mastermind who outplayed the Light so absurdly well (Which made him look as boring as the Light itself), he looks way dumber.

Although put him next to Aqualad and you wonder how he feels about constantly getting outshined by his sidekick (before said sidekick succeeds him off-screen) .

He seems to be glad, which does help in making him focus in his king duties, and his family, since he doesn't have to worry about being a super hero too.

If I were him, I'd be a bit jealous at least, also feel disgust at the **** Kaldur'ahm pulled in season 2 lol.

Yeah, Orm got done dirty. We still don't even know how he got ousted from the Light, and probably never will.

I worded it poorly in the other message, Orm being Ocean Master is not revealed in the cartoon, but it is revealed in the comics that are canon to the cartoon (It explains some ****, even minor **** like why Superboy hates monkeys).

You can maybe guess that his plans from the comics might have something to do with him being ousted, but he only failed to fulfill his own plans, he wasn't found out, was still alongside Arthur and Mera too, and the comics showed him being rather competent too.

While it's not surprising he's not part of the Light anymore, the position he has is a replaceable one since it's only used for whatever Light needs in the current season (Which is done by the writers, as in, The Light doesn't make someone a leader just to kick them out once that specific objective isn't needed anymore, Orm used it to get Starro ****, Black Manta, don't remember, but Kaldur'ahm was helpful, Granny in season 3 is more to try to advance Darkseid's plans, and in season 4 it'll probably be that Zviad guy using what's pretty much Maxwel Lord's mind suggestion/control power), it's still surprising he specifically got ousted, and season 3 talks like he was imprisoned, so he was found out at some point and imprisoned, and probably ousted because of that (Doubt it'd be a situation like how Deathstroke replaced Ra's, since Ra's seems to be fine with it, but then again, it's possible Black Manta just replaced him, Orm got pissed, did some **** and was ousted, who knows...) but we never see it because lazy time skips being used to pretend that story development actually happened lol.

[vitaminbee]

The reason is probably because everything needs to connect or feel like the MCU. Which, is really tiring. They have so many great artists and then look at the animated content that they put out. It looks like garbage. Earths Mightiest Heroes was the last semi interesting looking Marvel animated project (not counting Spider-Verse or Big Hero 6). They are missing out on making cool projects. DC knows what they are doing and while not every film is amazing, they put in a solid effort with each one.

[Kaitou D. Kid]

How's YJ a cartoon where the team can't outshine Justice League when they do that every damn season? Even Batman, of all people, Batman, is mostly useless.

No better example than season 1 when they have to deal with AMAZO, it was said the League took 4 hours to defeat him, and the heavy hitters like Supes were there, meanwhile, the team dealt with him in like, one hour tops, and they're a smaller team with less experienced heroes, who also have been working together for less time, yet, they outclassed the League in competence by far, and there are many other examples, this one is just the most blatant one.

I honestly would prefer if YJ stopped showing the League, they waste screen time by being useless, it's annoying if you like the characters by seeing them suck, and it's annoying if you don't care about them because a bunch of informed badasses are just wasting screen time being useless.

They established that Amazo was rebooted. The Amazo that took the League 4 hours to beat had a lot more powers than the one the sidekicks fought.

YJ is a cartoon where the main villains (The Light and Darkseid) are technically the main villains of the Justice League. But the Leaguers aren't the main characters - the main characters are the sidekicks. This means the show has to juggle three balls at once: they have to make the sidekicks proactive in taking down the Light (ball 1), while not having them surpass their mentors (ball 2 - although Kaldur'ahm and M'gann might be exceptions), while making the sidekicks' story more interesting & engaging than that of their mentors (ball 3 - this one is the most important).

Season 1 was able to pull it off nicely, but the show's been struggling since then. Season 2 resorted to writing out most of the main Leaguers just so the sidekicks could be the driving force in thwarting the Reach. Season 3 again wrote out the main Leaguers for its first half and then got awkward in the second half where nothing practically happened. The cliffhanger was the same as the one at the end of season 2 (Darkseid is coming!), and the sidekicks didn't achieve much besides taking out one of Darkseid's main subordinates and losing Brion. Yeah, there's also Superboy dealing a big blow to Luthor, but that could've happened anytime and didn't take much of effort on the team's part.

So it seems to me the premise of the show is getting harder to pull off with each season, to the point that Season 3 even became genuinely redundant and forgettable towards the end. I think there were two ways to maintain the quality of the show after Season 1:

1. Every season was stand-alone and focused on an entirely different sidekick team. That way The Light didn't have to be the main villains of each season.

2. The show had the Season 1 Team fully grow up and genuinely surpass their predecessors (all of them - not just Kaldur'ahm). This would have been easy to do with every single one of them except for Superboy and Robin where it would get trickier.

[Silvermoth]

The people currently in charge at Marvel Animation are Quesada and Loeb. Neither of them have expressed interest in making any serious animation. In fact, Loeb went as far as to dumb down their best-produced Marvel show (Avengers EMH) and eventually cancel it. This trend of dumbing everything down and using the cartoons as pure promotional material for the MCU is likely to continue for the near future.

Marvel's What If? will be animated, but that will be an MCU show. That might actually be good.

Yeah I do feel like maybe management might be from a bit off a different era. I think you can’t necessarily get away with same old same old after avatar, Steven universe, shows like that.

I don’t really blame quesada because he has an artistic background but yeah, they might need to get some new voices in with a new vision

[Lukmendes]

They established that Amazo was rebooted. The Amazo that took the League 4 hours to beat had a lot more powers than the one the sidekicks fought.

Ivo never says if he was rebooted or not, and nothing indicates that was the case considering he had Black Canary's, Superman's, Flash's, Martian Manhunter's, Captain Atom's, and Red Tornado's powers, which Batman even pointed out in the debriefing that he copied the powers after more Leaguers arrived when they fought before, and every member there, except Batman (As it looked like there were batarangs thrown in the brief video he shows), Green Arrow (Mentioned to have been attacked and called for help) had their powers copied, plus Captain Atom who's not shown in the video, so he copied everyone who had super powers there, and there wasn't much point to use Batman's and Green Arrow's since AMAZO mostly uses super powers (He did use Black Canary's martial arts once though, only once, any other time he just used the Canary Cry).

Now, if he had been rebooted, and copied the powers from the team, it'd be more justified, but that's definitely not the case, Ivo even said it was pointless to copy their powers since everyone had weaker versions of the power sets (Except M'Gann, but that strictly the telepathy, which nobody else knew back then, and AMAZO doesn't use telepathy for some reason).

YJ is a cartoon where the main villains (The Light and Darkseid) are technically the main villains of the Justice League. But the Leaguers aren't the main characters - the main characters are the sidekicks. This means the show has to juggle three balls at once: they have to make the sidekicks proactive in taking down the Light (ball 1), while not having them surpass their mentors (ball 2 - although Kaldur'ahm and M'gann might be exceptions), while making the sidekicks' story more interesting & engaging than that of their mentors (ball 3 - this one is the most important).

Season 1 was able to pull it off nicely, but the show's been struggling since then. Season 2 resorted to writing out most of the main Leaguers just so the sidekicks could be the driving force in thwarting the Reach. Season 3 again wrote out the main Leaguers for its first half and then got awkward in the second half where nothing practically happened. The cliffhanger was the same as the one at the end of season 2 (Darkseid is coming!), and the sidekicks didn't achieve much besides taking out one of Darkseid's main subordinates and losing Brion. Yeah, there's also Superboy dealing a big blow to Luthor, but that could've happened anytime and didn't take much of effort on the team's part.

I guess season 1 at least had that time the League saved the Team from the Injustice League, and when the grown ups and kids were separated, the League helped on the grown up side, don't remember anything besides those, but we also had **** like when the team was being ordered to do their missions, if they disobeyed, they were right to do so.

Black Canary also taught them how to fight, don't remember any other mentoring though, but in actual missions the League was mostly in the background, alledgedly being awesome.

On the Lex part, what Superboy did throwing more **** on Luthor's pile of **** to deal with, so if it happened earlier, might not've been as impactful, then again, it probably would.

And yeah, season 3 didn't add as much to advance the story as the other seasons, it did introduce characters though, and explained better what's up with Darkseid and Vandal...

Sheesh, the more stuff I realize about season 3, it becomes even worse lol.

So it seems to me the premise of the show is getting harder to pull off with each season, to the point that Season 3 even became genuinely redundant and forgettable towards the end. I think there were two ways to maintain the quality of the show after Season 1:

1. Every season was stand-alone and focused on an entirely different sidekick team. That way The Light didn't have to be the main villains of each season.

2. The show had the Season 1 Team fully grow up and genuinely surpass their predecessors (all of them - not just Kaldur'ahm). This would have been easy to do with every single one of them except for Superboy and Robin where it would get trickier.

Honestly, the dumbest thing of season 3 is that the way the League is away from Earth is different from season 2, 'cause in season 2 they were there to stand trial, they legit couldn't do anything else besides be there and be judged, in season 3 they were actively trying to stop The Light/Apokolips in space, and while we did get episodes that give them enough focus, they accomplished nothing, so having them fight in space is no different than the trial from season 2... Which is seriously dumb.

At least Guy Gardner has that magnificent music about his ass, legit best moment in the entire season, so there was that going on for the League .

Anyways, I don't think the team necessarily have to surpass their predecessors, just have their own identity.

Robin surpassing Batman is trickier yeah, in the comics it was rather simple, Dick was a better Batman because he was a better people person who's also friends with basically everyone, on top of having the other skills necessary to be a proper Batman, but this version of Batman lacks most of his comic flaws, he's even a nice, reasonable guy who's not emotionally neglectful, and the cartoon tries to pretend he's the usual Batman (When Dick says that he doesn't want to be like Batman, and when Bruce says that he doesn't want Dick to grow up like him), but actually, really isn't, and ironically, season 2 and 3 made Dick act more like usual Batman by being secretive about his plans, taking insane risks and just not thrusting people, and Batman only did that **** in this cartoon in season 3 (Which Barbara tries to say it was Bruce, intentionally or not, manipulating that group to with people who worked under him, used to his ways so it'd do more of what he wants, but that's horse ****, and it sounds like she wanted to throw more blame on Bruce than everyone else).

[Mistah K88]

The problem with DC cartoons is you can't trust Cartoon Network to support or handle them well. Justice League Action was a great attempt at creating a more fun, zany, half-minute cartoon adventures CN would want with the action-packed stakes of a proper DC Superhero cartoon and CN still treated it terribly.

Yeah Cartoon Network is definitely not the place to air DC animated series. The only one that seems to last is Teen Titans Go, which puts an emphasis on comedy. Interestingly, I hear that Justice League Action was supposed to be more action oriented, but the higher ups wanted to focus on more comedic elements, in which they did well...but Cartoon Network does what it does best.

The one thing I'll give Disney is that, barring super long hiatuses and lack of promotion, they put more investment in their Marvel cartoons. Maybe not the ones people would've wanted them to to where Ultimate Spider-Man or Marvel's Spider-Man end up dwarfing Spectacular's episode count, or Avengers Assemble getting five seasons to EMH's two, but still.

I'm not sure if that's fair...as Disney themselves actively killed both Spectacular and EMH. Maybe it would be better to compare the Disney series to series who's short existence was actually specifically caused by them. So maybe the Spider-Man series' prior to Spectacular (MTV, Unlimited), or Avengers: United They Stand would be better to compare? Isn't Ultimate Spider-Man the longest running Spidey cartoon? Even dwarfing the 90's Animated Series?

[Triniking1234]

I don't know why Cartoon Network sabotages their outside properties.
- Beware the Batman
- Young Justice
- Thundercats
- Green Lantern

[Frontier]

I'm not sure if that's fair...as Disney themselves actively killed both Spectacular and EMH. Maybe it would be better to compare the Disney series to series who's short existence was actually specifically caused by them. So maybe the Spider-Man series' prior to Spectacular (MTV, Unlimited), or Avengers: United They Stand would be better to compare? Isn't Ultimate Spider-Man the longest running Spidey cartoon? Even dwarfing the 90's Animated Series?

Yes. even made it to 100 episodes.

[Kaitou D. Kid]

Ivo never says if he was rebooted or not, and nothing indicates that was the case considering he had Black Canary's, Superman's, Flash's, Martian Manhunter's, Captain Atom's, and Red Tornado's powers, which Batman even pointed out in the debriefing that he copied the powers after more Leaguers arrived when they fought before, and every member there, except Batman (As it looked like there were batarangs thrown in the brief video he shows), Green Arrow (Mentioned to have been attacked and called for help) had their powers copied, plus Captain Atom who's not shown in the video, so he copied everyone who had super powers there, and there wasn't much point to use Batman's and Green Arrow's since AMAZO mostly uses super powers (He did use Black Canary's martial arts once though, only once, any other time he just used the Canary Cry).

Now, if he had been rebooted, and copied the powers from the team, it'd be more justified, but that's definitely not the case, Ivo even said it was pointless to copy their powers since everyone had weaker versions of the power sets (Except M'Gann, but that strictly the telepathy, which nobody else knew back then, and AMAZO doesn't use telepathy for some reason).

I believe there was a throwaway line that he was rebooted reaugmented. Also, how long was Amazon's fight with the sidekicks? I remember it taking a while since it started during day and ended at night.

I could be wrong. It just doesn't seem like a plot hole that would pass Greg Weisman.

I'm not sure if that's fair...as Disney themselves actively killed both Spectacular and EMH. Maybe it would be better to compare the Disney series to series who's short existence was actually specifically caused by them. So maybe the Spider-Man series' prior to Spectacular (MTV, Unlimited), or Avengers: United They Stand would be better to compare? Isn't Ultimate Spider-Man the longest running Spidey cartoon? Even dwarfing the 90's Animated Series?

Disney didn't really "kill" The Spectacular Spider-Man, though. It was a rights situation. Sony is just as culpable in what happened as Disney is.

But yeah, Disney did technically kill Avengers EMH.

[LifeIsILL]

Those DC animated movies aren't good anyways. Well, most of them are well below-average.

And plus, they never adapt the "interesting" storylines. It's always the casual storylines that gets the adaptation (Hush, Death of Superman, Darkseid crap etc..)

[Lukmendes]

I believe there was a throwaway line that he was rebooted reaugmented.

I watched the episode just to be sure and heard no lines about AMAZO being rebooted, and again, nothing during the battle indicates it.

Also, how long was Amazon's fight with the sidekicks? I remember it taking a while since it started during day and ended at night.

Superboy reached the train at 21:21, and the time isn't shown afterwards during the battle (We only see it when they're back at Mount Justice again, and it's 01:06 by then), so it started at night, and ended at night, so it looks like one hour tops, and that's if you time it when Superboy is fighting him, since more than half of the fight is him fighting AMAZO alone.