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By Chris Snellgrove
| Published
For DC fans, it’s been a rough few years. The DCEU has its fans (Snyder Bros, are you still pretending Rebel Moon was good?), but that failed cinematic universe was mostly kicked in every year by the MCU. Still, fans of heroes like Batman and Superman could take solace in one thing when arguing with Marvel fans: that DC has always had better animation, from groundbreaking TV shows to consistently awesome cartoon movies. However, the war is moving, and so is quality X-Men ’97 as well as the surrounding buzz Your Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man means that Marvel can become the new king of cartoons.
How the Marvel DC Animation War Began
Arguably, the rivalry between the creators of Marvel and DC animation went way back in the 90s. Both companies had previously produced some notable cartoons (eg Spider-Man and his Amazing Friends for wonder and Great Friends for SD), but gave us the ’90s X-Men: The Animated Seriesthe legendary cartoon that eventually led to the excellent X-Men ’97. This show and Spider-Man: The Animated Series would have helped Marvel animators dominate the entire decade if it wasn’t for a little show called Batman: The Animated Series.
That Batman series built on the momentum of Tim Burton’s excellent live-action films and was popular enough to get us a number of spin-offs, including Superman: The Animated Series, Justice Leaguea Batman Beyond. These series all existed in the shared DC Animated Universe, and ironically the DCAU proved to be a a lot a more successful cinematic universe than the later DCEU. While Amazed continue to produce some fun stuff over the next few years (including the fan favourites X-Men: Evolution), DC maintained its reputation as the undisputed masters of animation with similar shows Teen Titans a Young Justice as well as a series of incredible direct-to-video animated films.
How Marvel DC’s Animation War Is Going
Given that Marvel has spent decades getting kicked by DC’s rival animation departments, why do we think the house Stan Lee Built about to take the cartoon crown? For one thing, X-Men ’97 was better than anyone ever hopefully could be, quickly establishing itself as the best animated superhero show since Batman: The Animated Series. And while we’ve only seen a trailer so far, Your Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man looks to continue Marvel’s animation dominance by telling smart, modern stories using an animation style that hearkens back to the Web-Head’s earliest designs.
Even as Marvel’s animators come into their own, DC animation is failing to have the impact it once did. For example, the most recent “original” film was a two-part adaptation of Spectators that didn’t resonate with fans, and even the film’s biggest defenders will begrudgingly admit that this is just another meaningless adaptation of Alan Moore’s classic comic that fails to capture its original magic. However, perhaps the biggest misstep is actually Batman: Caped Crusaderan Amazon-exclusive show everyone thought would be a monster hit.
The show is created by Batman: The Animated Series creator Bruce Timm and set in the ’30s, and made a big splash with critics: on Rotten tomatoesCaped Crusader has a critical score of 94 percent, with critics. Notably, though, the Popcornmeter shows audiences give the show a much more downbeat 55 percent, with some fans hating the big changes the series is making to characters like Harley Quinn and Bruce Wayne’s age. Others took exception to the poor animation, and it’s hard to deny that this show isn’t nearly as great as Timm’s earlier work.
Meanwhile, Marvel’s X-Men ’97 It was a huge hit across the board, sparking strong rumors of a new interconnected cartoon universe that threatens to completely leave DC’s modern animation efforts in the dust. Meanwhile, DC’s best animator came back to try and emulate magic Batman: The Animated Series and fell short of the mark. This is the year that will decide whether the live-action DCU will be a hit with moviegoers, but when it comes to cartoons, audiences already have an old rallying cry for a new year: “make me wonder .”
