The newest DC animated feature, Justice League: Gods and Monsters hits stores on July 28th (watch it here), but before fans get to see the vampire vigilante, the son of Zod, and the warrior from Ares, Machinima is launching Justice League: Gods and Monsters Chronicles, on June 8, which will feature three prelude shorts:
From visionary producer and animator Bruce Timm (Batman: The Animated Series, Superman: The Animated Series), Justice League: Gods and Monsters Chronicles turns the DC Universe upside-down. In this dark, alternate world, telling the good guys from the bad guys is never easy: Superman is not the son of Jor-El, he’s the son of General Zod; Wonder Woman is not from peaceful Themyscira, but rather the warring nation of Ares; and Batman is more vampire-bat than man…and he’s not Bruce Wayne. It is unclear if our greatest heroes are here to protect us...or to rule us. Machinima has already announced a second season, which will come out in 2016.
Producer Bruce Timm talked to us over the phone about Gods and Monsters, which is available on Machinima today.
COMIC VINE: Before the July 28 release of Justice League Gods and Monsters, you're teaming up with Machinima to produce 3, 7-minute prelude episodes. What led to this relationship and the decision to do online episodes?
BRUCE TIMM: We've been for the last couple of years exploring really hard the venues available to us and digital distribution. We've been having talks, with Machinima, for quite some time about possibly doing a series together at some point. When the Gods and Monsters thing came up, they heard about it, and they expressed an interest in it and specifically said they'd love to do a series of shorts, for Machinima, that weren't just pieces of the movie, but all new shorts. The only downside was we had to do them really fast because it came up really late in the process. They wanted it to premiere before the movie did, so we rushed them into production. But I have to say you'd never know. The work is as good as anything I've ever done. They were so pleased with the three shorts and came back with "would you be interested in doing an extended series of shorts for a season two?" First I was like "yeah. There's tons of stuff I'd love to do with these characters and this world.
CV: How fast is "fast," when you said you needed to rush to get these out?
BT: I don't remember exactly, but the schedules were really tight and the other issue was that we didn't really have most of the crew we wanted to use because they were committed to other projects. I was able to steal my friend and long-time co-producer James Tucker. He'd been chomping at the bit to do storyboards. I was able to corral him for a couple weeks for the Batman short. Jay Oliva, one of our top directors, when he heard what this was about, he got really excited and said "I'll make time and squeeze it end." It was down to the wire but he managed to fit it all in there as fast as poop through a goose. He's really fast and really brilliant. Amazingly, the overseas studios had a short period of time to animate it, but you'd never know. They pulled out all the stops and did a spectacular job.
CV: What's Justice League Gods & Monsters all about?
BT: In a nutshell, It's a story about an alternate version of Batman, Superman, and Wonder Woman. The idea that these guys have somewhat similar origins, in cases, and the same names, but it's not Clark Kent, Bruce Wayne, or Diana of the Amazon. They're three completely different characters, from the ground up and it's exciting on so many levels, creatively because I've been doing traditional versions of these characters for so long. I started on Batman: The Animated Series back in 1990, so god, almost 25 years now. Even though I love those characters and in fact, I'm currently working on some projects that involve those characters, as well as the Gods and Monsters stuff. It's a breath of fresh air. It's like real good adrenaline rush to do completely different things with these characters than what I can do with Bruce Wayne and Clark Kent and Diana. Everything we do gets sent over to DC comics for approval and occasionally, we'll come up with a story line or story beat or something that they'll come back to us and say "you can't do that because Superman would never do that" or "it doesn't work that way. Batman would never do that. He'd do this instead." We're usually fine with that. Every time I can think of that DC has done that to us, we've somehow gone back to the drawing board and come up with an idea that was better than our first idea. But still, it's nice to be able to not have to worry about that because they don't know these characters. They haven't been established yet. Even though they are Batman, Superman, and Wonder Woman, they're practically brand new characters and we get to create the rules. It's enormously freeing.
CV: Was Superman given a goatee just to make people think he's evil?
BT: Of course! I had to stop myself from giving him a 'stache. I was aware of that when I gave him the goatee. When we did another story, Crisis on Two Earths, Alex Ross did a lot of those early designs for me and I specifically design the Marvel family and he said "ok. I'm going to give everyone in the Marvel family a goatee... even Mary!" I was aware of that cliche, but that really came from Terrence Stamp. When I started thinking of Superman being the son of Zod, I was thinking of Terrence Stamp's face in my head, so that's where the goatee came from. He ultimately didn't end up looking anything like Terrence Stamp, but that's where it came from and it stuck.
CV: You mentioned that DC comes back and says they want you to change something. From the one scene I've seen, this is dark. There's severed heads and dead bodies being set up in a family room by Harley Quinn. Were there any moments where they wanted you to pull back a little bit?
BT: There was a little bit of a nervous moment when the guys at Machinma saw the animatic for the Batman short. They were a little bit nervous about some of the bloodletting. They weren't quite sure how far they wanted to go with it. So we designed the shot in such a way where the blood was put in layers so if we wanted to cut back on it, we could. We did the full version and sent it to them for approval and they didn't say "don't do it."
CV: Are there any characters from JL G&M that you found yourself loving over anyone else?
BT: No because I'm actually a big fan of the traditional version of the big three and even in the movie, some of the other supporting characters are in the movie, like Will Magnus of the METAL MEN comics plays a big supporting part of the movie. We'll put it this way, I've always liked the Metal Men, and they were never one of my favorite comics, but I've always liked them. The "new" version of Magnus that we came up with for the movie isn't a radical departure from the what he's like in the comics. When you're working on a production of one of these movies, you watch everything so many times, from the script to the storyboard to the animatic to the editing process. The thing is that it tends to grow on you. I've gotten really attached to all these characters from having to see it all so many times. That's a good thing. I'm not sick of them.
CV: How does it feel to know that your art style really defined the look of a plethora of DC animated features and television shows?
BT: It's cool. It's still a little bit startling to me when I go to a convention and some guy, in his 30s, comes up to me and says "your version of Batman was the one I grew up on when I was 9 years old. I used to watch it all the time."
CV: That guy is me.
BT: [laughs] Oh yeah? They tell me "I watch it with my kids. My kids love the show." Just call me grandpa. It's definitely awesome. It's enormously gratifying that the show has that much impact on people. The way people come up to me and talk to me about my Batman show is how I feel about the Adam West show or Neil Adams Batman comics, so it's, in retrospect, in awesome that it's had that much impact.
CV: I want to touch on something you were an executive producer on 5 years ago...
BT: Uh oh...
CV: No, it's a good thing. The Spectre animated short.
BT: Yeah! Yeah!
CV: I was completely blown away with that as well as the Jonah Hex short later that year. Because you are doing these shorts with Machinima, are there any plans to maybe bring back these short film showcases of lesser known DC characters?
BT: You know I have heard a little bit of discussion specifically... Actually, I can't go into that. It's not public knowledge. In addition to the shorts that we did for the direct to video, there was also the series of shorts for the DC Nation block, like that awesome Wonder Woman cartoon. I think there's been some interest in doing more short-form versions of these characters for Machinima or some other digital platform and there's been some talk about that, but I wouldn't at all be surprised if something happens sooner than later.
CV: If you could just use your force to do more Spectre...
BT: [laughs] To me, that was the one of the great things about that series of shorts. I'm not sure I want to do an entire Spectre series, but it was sure a blast to do one. Same goes with Jonah Hex. I like westerns, but I wouldn't want to do an entire series. But to do one really kick-ass one, that was really fun.
Thanks to Bruce Timm for talking to us and make sure to check out Gods and Monsters Chronicles today (which you can watch here) and the feature film coming out on July 28.
In addition, here's a couple sneak peak images for upcoming episodes:
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