Alan Burnett sat down with Comics Continuum for an interview and spilled more details about the series of DC Comics animated shorts. Burnett’s been a writer and producer at Bruce Timm’s side on many of the DC animated projects starting way back with Batman: The Animated Series.
The DC Showcase line of short films feature lesser known characters from the comics universe. The first one getting the treatment is the Spectre, which will accompany the DVD of Justice League: Crisis on Infinite Earths. We also know that Jonah Hex is in the second short, which is presumably appearing with Batman: Under the Red Hood. Actually, since the Jonah Hex feature film comes out mid-June, I wonder if we won’t see Batman: Under the Red Hood come out before the typical July slot for these animated releases, so that the Batman viewers can get an introduction to Jonah Hex.
Anyway, Burnett reveals that Green Arrow is the third character receiving a short film. That strikes me as kinda odd since he was fairly heavily featured in Justice League Unlimited. He was even the lead character in at least a couple episodes. He’s also apparently a major player in Batman: The Brave and the Bold, but I’m not a viewer of that one. I was expecting characters with a lot less previous screen time, but whatever. I don’t care too much about which smaller characters are used for these shorts, as long as the products are good. For the record, Jonah Hex has made single episode appearances on both Batman: The Animated Series and Justice League Unlimited along with a couple in Batman: The Brave and the Bold, while the Spectre’s first animated appearance will be his short film.
Burnett also slipped that the fourth short will have a longer runtime of approximately 22 minutes. He wouldn’t say what character that one is featuring, but I can’t help but notice that 22 minutes is right there at the length of a half hour television episode. Could this be a sort of backdoor pilot?
