It’s a shame DC and Warner Brothers can’t seem to get their collective strategies worked out. “Green Lantern: The Animated Series” is a great example of how a show could easily have been the cornerstone for a new wave of series that would create a sort of unified universe that we saw from 1992 to 2006 with the DC Animated Universe. Because the live action Green Lantern film didn’t perform as expected, the tie-in animated series was cancelled. This is the problem with creating a series for this reason. A lot of time and effort is wasted and the audience starts to not care.
Instead Warner Brothers (and Cartoon Network which it owns) wanted to “focus on the new DC Nation” block of programming or some such crap. What do we get? “Teen Titans Go” and “Beware The Batman” are the only two DC animated shows in production now. The shows aren’t connected and there’s no pointing towards a larger universe. I see another animated rebooting and retooling in the near future.
And this is a shame, really, because “Green Lantern: The Animated Series” is good. There’s a solid foundation here, one that could have easily paved the way for more series to share a continuity. And in many ways this series is what the live action film should have been.
Green Lantern was poised to help revitalize the DC hero brand and the mishandling of the film did so much harm. It’s a shame that Warner Brothers couldn’t let the television division keep running with this series and build on it. Here we get Hal Jordan called away from Earth to the headquarters of the Green Lantern Corps. An investigation is going on into a series of murders which then uncovers a plot to eliminate the Corps. There are consequences, ramifications, and ultimately when Hal Jordan returns to Earth he finds that things have moved forward without him. This was all done very well and reminiscent of earlier Bruce Timm produced series.
Continuity is key here, as it was with other Bruce Timm produced shows. This is another of the frustrations as there are things put into place that obviously would have a payoff in following seasons had the show been allowed to continue. Cancelling the series because the film didn’t perform well was a mistake and points to just how short-sighted Warner Brothers is. Don’t get angry at DC for Warner Brothers’ sins.
The stories are almost all solid, with good characters, many immediately familiar to readers of the comics. Thankfully you don’t need to have had a rich history reading the Green Lantern comics to enjoy the series. For those who have been reading the comics off and on over the years there will be plenty to watch out for.
No special features, which is sad, but expected. The series is being dumped onto Blu-ray and while it looks and sounds great, Warner Brothers obviously doesn’t care about it (or fans). If you like Green Lantern at all this is worth picking up.