A spin-off of Teen Titans Go in the serious and 80s-tastic Night Begins to Shine universe. Even if you don't like Teen Titans Go, you might like this. From the original episode that kicked this off (this is an edit, it takes until 0:30 to kick in):
Jade Armor – In production with TeamTO and featuring a talented all-female creative team, Jade Armor centers around the martial arts-loving Lan Jun, an unlikely teenage heroine who must learn the ancient secrets of her family and uncover the unexpected, all while navigating life as a teen.
Various Ben 10 specials, one of which involves a young Generator Rex.
Yet more Total Drama Island.
And this, which proves that 2021 isn't much better than 2020: Tweety Mysteries (working title) – Tweety Mysteries is a hybrid live-action/animated adventure from Warner Bros. Animation and Warner Bros. Television that follows a curious tween investigative journalist and podcaster named Sydney and her sidekick Tweety bird. Working together the pair must solve various local mysteries in their small, quirky Washington state town.
Well I'm fucking sold holy crap yes.
I'll stress that the show has done stuff in that universe since then, and they've kept that tone. Zero goofy humor, plenty of action and style, and a setting that's just ridiculous enough to be awesome. Definitely keep an eye on this one.
Call me crazy, but when I watch an animated adaptation of a comic book franchise, I want to feel like the people making it actually like the original comic book stories. Failing that, I'd like to at least get the impression that someone who works on the show has at least read one of those comics once in their lives.
Teen Titans Go is a series that absolutely revels in being both ignorant and disdainful of its own source material and the people who love it. It desperately wants to be about anything other than its own premise.
Someone who works on the show clearly has a passion for 80's album covers, considering they made first an episode, then multiple specials, and now an entire spin-off series on the topic. But you know what I'm passionate about? DC Comics. So I don't think I'll be giving this spin-off a chance just because the tone is coincidentally a little closer to what I like. The people behind Teen Titans Go have never been anything if not petty and spiteful, so I don't see any reason why I shouldn't give them the same treatment.
Sylvester doing anything other than trying to eat Tweety just feels weird. It's like Tom and Jerry hanging around being friends instead of, y'know, going after one another.
That's what happens in Sylvester and Tweety Mysteries though. The title is a bit of a misnomer. It's really a show about Granny solving mysteries while her pets get up to their usual hijinks in the background.
It is also one of the worstLooney Tunes series. The same stale slapstick gags from the 40's, repackaged without innovation. The actual mysteries themselves are Scooby Doo tier, either painfully formulaic and obvious, or unfair gotchas that are impossible to guess, with no middle ground. And to top it all off, a shoestring budget that only got worse in the second season, to the point where most of the show's backgrounds started looking like they were drawn in crayon.
TTG has way too many deepcuts to not have writers and artists who are fans. It's just that they are able to recognize the ridiculous.
The deepest cut I've ever seen on that show was the Challengers of the Unknown, and the writers didn't even read far enough into the Wikipedia page to learn the characters' names or even their modus operandi. Their entire appearance is just one prolonged joke about the name of their team. "These guys call themselves the Challengers of the Unknown! Doesn't that sound awkward and archaic? What does even mean, hyuck hyuck?" I'm sorry that comic industry legend Jack Kirby isn't up to your high standards, Teen Titans Go writers.
What few times there are that the show references something from the comics, it's always that. The time they were forced, I assume at gunpoint, to make an episode about Shazam! as a promotion for the then-upcoming live action film, they did the same thing. Five minutes browsing a Wikipedia page so they could make an eleven minute cartoon shitting on the characters.
The 2003 Teen Titans cartoon made an episode about a supervillain trying to reclaim America for the British Empire on the 4th of July. The villain of the episode was an obscure character from the 60's comic books named Mad Mod. Teen Titans Go remade this episode, using the same high concept premise, but without the message about compromise that was the heart of the original. (TTG has done this to TT '03 a few times to remind people that the latter had silly filler episodes as well, as if that fact somehow absolves their show of all its other faults.) Among the changes they made was replacing Mad Mod with a caricature of Queen Elizabeth. They actually removed a reference, because they didn't even know it was a reference.
So no, I don't buy that anyone who works on TTG is a comic book fan.
It's fine to not like TTG but you should really avoid making assumptions about the people behind it.
They're just putting the Comic back into Comic Book, which is absolutely part of comic tradition. Bat Mite, Myxlplyx, Howard the Duck, Plastic Man, Captain Carrot and His Amazing Zoo Crew, What The!?, Slapstick, the various hyper-campy cartoons and TV series, and so on, are kind of a big deal. Also tons of mainstream comic issues were goofy as hell. Superman comics are full of ridiculous nonsense with weird versions of kryptonite.
If you don't like goofy comics, that's fine, but they're part of the central DNA of comics.
It's fine to not like TTG but you should really avoid making assumptions about the people behind it.
They're just putting the Comic back into Comic Book, which is absolutely part of comic tradition. Bat Mite, Myxlplyx, Howard the Duck, Plastic Man, Captain Carrot and His Amazing Zoo Crew, What The!?, Slapstick, the various hyper-campy cartoons and TV series, and so on, are kind of a big deal. Also tons of mainstream comic issues were goofy as hell. Superman comics are full of ridiculous nonsense with weird versions of kryptonite.
If you don't like goofy comics, that's fine, but they're part of the central DNA of comics.
Don't get me wrong, I love goofy shit in comics. I can tell you what every color of kryptonite does without looking it up. I've read every Howard the Duck comic, even the awful one from the 00's where Steve Gerber was trying way too hard to be edgy. I can even spell Mxyzptlk's name correctly!
My problem with Teen Titans Go is not that it's goofy or campy or whatever. I loved watching old Superfriends reruns back when I first got a cable package that included Cartoon Network. I actually prefer the more whimsical DC cartoons like Batman: The Brave and the Bold, Justice League Action, and DC Super Hero Girls to more grounded takes like Young Justice or the direct-to-video movies. As much as I love Superman: The Animated Series, it still bothers me to this day that it was so deeply rooted in the John Byrne version of the character that was still canon in the comics at the time instead of the much wilder pre-crisis stuff that came back later.
But Teen Titans Go is not a silly superhero show. It's just not a superhero show at all. Because it doesn't want to be one. And you don't have to take my word for it on that. The show is self-aware enough that the characters frequently make jokes about how they never fight any crime.
On its own, I could forgive that. But what I can't forgive is that it was the only DC Comics cartoon to get more than a single season for seven years. Now, I'll grant you, that's not entirely the fault of the show itself. Cable television is dying and networks need inexpensive content. With it's five voice actors, drastically simplified art design, and impressive commitment to nothing happening ever, Teen Titans Go can be made on the cheap. But you'll have to forgive me if I don't really care about the financial burdens of a multibillion dollar media conglomerate. I just want my DC cartoons!
And of course, as mentioned by others earlier in this thread, the show is now infamous for portraying its critics as entitled and out of touch. But that kind of slander is fine, because I can do it too! So to reiterate, the people behind Teen Titans Go are bitter that they have to work on a children's cartoon that is nominally about comic book superheroes and would rather be making absolutely any other kind of show.
It's fine to not like TTG but you should really avoid making assumptions about the people behind it.
They're just putting the Comic back into Comic Book, which is absolutely part of comic tradition. Bat Mite, Myxlplyx, Howard the Duck, Plastic Man, Captain Carrot and His Amazing Zoo Crew, What The!?, Slapstick, the various hyper-campy cartoons and TV series, and so on, are kind of a big deal. Also tons of mainstream comic issues were goofy as hell. Superman comics are full of ridiculous nonsense with weird versions of kryptonite.
If you don't like goofy comics, that's fine, but they're part of the central DNA of comics.
Don't get me wrong, I love goofy shit in comics. I can tell you what every color of kryptonite does without looking it up. I've read every Howard the Duck comic, even the awful one from the 00's where Steve Gerber was trying way too hard to be edgy. I can even spell Mxyzptlk's name correctly!
My problem with Teen Titans Go is not that it's goofy or campy or whatever. I loved watching old Superfriends reruns back when I first got a cable package that included Cartoon Network. I actually prefer the more whimsical DC cartoons like Batman: The Brave and the Bold, Justice League Action, and DC Super Hero Girls to more grounded takes like Young Justice or the direct-to-video movies. As much as I love Superman: The Animated Series, it still bothers me to this day that it was so deeply rooted in the John Byrne version of the character that was still canon in the comics at the time instead of the much wilder pre-crisis stuff that came back later.
But Teen Titans Go is not a silly superhero show. It's just not a superhero show at all. Because it doesn't want to be one. And you don't have to take my word for it on that. The show is self-aware enough that the characters frequently make jokes about how they never fight any crime.
On its own, I could forgive that. But what I can't forgive is that it was the only DC Comics cartoon to get more than a single season for seven years. Now, I'll grant you, that's not entirely the fault of the show itself. Cable television is dying and networks need inexpensive content. With it's five voice actors, drastically simplified art design, and impressive commitment to nothing happening ever, Teen Titans Go can be made on the cheap. But you'll have to forgive me if I don't really care about the financial burdens of a multibillion dollar media conglomerate. I just want my DC cartoons!
And of course, as mentioned by others earlier in this thread, the show is now infamous for portraying its critics as entitled and out of touch. But that kind of slander is fine, because I can do it too! So to reiterate, the people behind Teen Titans Go are bitter that they have to work on a children's cartoon that is nominally about comic book superheroes and would rather be making absolutely any other kind of show.
Again, you don't have to enjoy TTG any more than I have to enjoy that terrible Thundercats cartoon, but that is the beginning of end of your authority on the matter. A lot of comic book fans are absolutely way too serious and entitled - comic book writers have been making fun of them for decades for that very thing. The No Prize exists for this very reason!
Again, you can hate the show because you hate the show. You don't need to decide that the people who work on it are evil and hate comics because they respond to them differently than you do. The TTG Tooth Fairy is inspired compared to a lot of mainline DC characters.
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ShadowenSnores in the morningLoserdomRegistered Userregular
edited February 2021
Too many people look for rational reasons for their like or dislike of things because that's what media criticism has become, and too often that attempt at rationalization ends up at factual inaccuracies. It's okay to just like or dislike things because you enjoyed it or it rubbed you the wrong way.
Too many people look for rational reasons for their like or dislike of things because that's what media criticism has become, and too often that attempt at rationalization ends up at factual inaccuracies. It's okay to just like or dislike things because you enjoyed it or it rubbed you the wrong way.
To expand on this, it's perfectly fine to like or dislike things for reasons that can be articulated. Where I think the line stands for me is once intent is applied to the people working on the show, positive or negative. It's a fuzy line, to be sure, but I don't think it's fair to state that the showrunners "don't want to make a superhero show" without strong evidence to that.
Mocking haters and having a basic episode formula or little cross episode storylines doesn't meet that metric for me personally.
Edit: Saying one doesn't like the show for those things is totally fine, to be perfectly explicit.
I am in a 2000's YouTube nostalgia mood today. Have some nockForce videos, co-created and co-starring Ian Jones-Quartey long before he married Rebecca Sugar and created O.K. K.O.!
I wonder if the new episodes of Close Enough were made back when they were still intending them to be 22 minutes long, or if they were made to be 11 minutes to begin with.
I'm also wondering if we'll ever get to see the full versions of the episodes that were made to be 22 minutes long. I (and J.G. Quintel, apparently) think the show works better in the 11 minute format, but I can't help but be curious about all that missing content.
Like TTG or not it’s kind of ridiculous to say the creators aren’t comic book fans and don’t like their jobs considering the insane amount of DC comics Easter Eggs they hide in the show all the damn time.
Like TTG or not it’s kind of ridiculous to say the creators aren’t comic book fans and don’t like their jobs considering the insane amount of DC comics Easter Eggs they hide in the show all the damn time.
I mean, the fact that they even acknowledge the Challengers of the Unknown is an insane deep cut (and hilarious). They're so obscure most comic fans don't even know who the hell they are.
Like TTG or not it’s kind of ridiculous to say the creators aren’t comic book fans and don’t like their jobs considering the insane amount of DC comics Easter Eggs they hide in the show all the damn time.
I mean, the fact that they even acknowledge the Challengers of the Unknown is an insane deep cut (and hilarious). They're so obscure most comic fans don't even know who the hell they are.
The Robins episode is so deep a cut you'd need stiches. Everything with Speedy too.
Also if you dont laugh at Robin knee capping Wally West to win a race youre dead inside
I have a podcast now. It's about video games and anime!Find it here.
Like TTG or not it’s kind of ridiculous to say the creators aren’t comic book fans and don’t like their jobs considering the insane amount of DC comics Easter Eggs they hide in the show all the damn time.
I mean, the fact that they even acknowledge the Challengers of the Unknown is an insane deep cut (and hilarious). They're so obscure most comic fans don't even know who the hell they are.
The Robins episode is so deep a cut you'd need stiches. Everything with Speedy too.
Also if you dont laugh at Robin knee capping Wally West to win a race youre dead inside
You mean winning a race against Wally West by "Believing in Himself" and to a lesser extent knee capping him.
I mean, Teen Titans Go is also explicitly not a superhero show. It's a show with superheroes, but it's absolutely just a comedy cartoon. Pretending that means the writers hate superheroes is kind of weird when it is obviously not that type of show.
Also, the two Teen Titans Go movies are fantastic, and are only not top-of-the-field super hero movies because Into the Spiderverse exists.
And if you're really, really jonesing for superhero stuff, Teen Titans Go vs. Teen Titans has a more traditional superhero setup. With plenty of goofiness thrown in of course. Though people forget the original Teen Titans show is MUCH goofier than we remember.
Also, the two Teen Titans Go movies are fantastic, and are only not top-of-the-field super hero movies because Into the Spiderverse exists.
And if you're really, really jonesing for superhero stuff, Teen Titans Go vs. Teen Titans has a more traditional superhero setup. With plenty of goofiness thrown in of course. Though people forget the original Teen Titans show is MUCH goofier than we remember.
Honestly I didn't much care for the original Teen Titans show because I thought it was often too goofy for a superhero show, and usually not in an entertaining way.
In contrast, Teen Titans Go has given me an entire episode where Robin explains how to be a (scummy) landlord because if they're being expected to teach a lesson in their show, he believes it should be one that isn't something banal like sharing or whatever. That episode alone elevated my overall opinion of the show by a good amount.
Like TTG or not it’s kind of ridiculous to say the creators aren’t comic book fans and don’t like their jobs considering the insane amount of DC comics Easter Eggs they hide in the show all the damn time.
I mean, the fact that they even acknowledge the Challengers of the Unknown is an insane deep cut (and hilarious). They're so obscure most comic fans don't even know who the hell they are.
Like TTG or not it’s kind of ridiculous to say the creators aren’t comic book fans and don’t like their jobs considering the insane amount of DC comics Easter Eggs they hide in the show all the damn time.
I mean, the fact that they even acknowledge the Challengers of the Unknown is an insane deep cut (and hilarious). They're so obscure most comic fans don't even know who the hell they are.
The Robins episode is so deep a cut you'd need stiches. Everything with Speedy too.
Also if you dont laugh at Robin knee capping Wally West to win a race youre dead inside
Either I'm overestimating the knowledge of your average comic fan or vastly underestimating my own. The idea that Carrie Kelley from Frank Miller's The Dark Knight Returns, one of two comics from the mid 80's that changed (and arguably ruined) the direction of superhero comics for decades afterward, is now considered an obscure character is mindblowing to me.
I can buy that the Challs are obscure. I don't buy that the Teen Titans Go staff knew who the Challs were, or even know who they are now. There's nothing from their appearance on the show that couldn't be gleaned from a quick phone call to the DC offices and five minutes on Wikipedia. Is that supposed to impress me?
The later seasons of Batman: The Brave and the Bold are really the gold standard when it comes to deep cuts. Tons of undeniably obscure characters, sometimes making them the the butt of jokes, but usually letting them do something cool too because deep down you still love them no matter how lame they are.
I mean, Teen Titans Go is also explicitly not a superhero show. It's a show with superheroes, but it's absolutely just a comedy cartoon. Pretending that means the writers hate superheroes is kind of weird when it is obviously not that type of show.
It's explicitly not a superhero show, but for seven years it was also the only DC cartoon that wasn't strangled in the cradle. That's going to create some resentment, whether it's the show's fault or not.
Remember when everyone was super mad about Metroid Prime: Federation Force? Same phenomena. People weren't angry about what the game was, they were angry about the perception that they getting it instead of a proper Metroid game after years of asking for one.
Also, the two Teen Titans Go movies are fantastic, and are only not top-of-the-field super hero movies because Into the Spiderverse exists.
And if you're really, really jonesing for superhero stuff, Teen Titans Go vs. Teen Titans has a more traditional superhero setup. With plenty of goofiness thrown in of course. Though people forget the original Teen Titans show is MUCH goofier than we remember.
Credit where it's due, TTGVTT is a legit good special that wouldn't have been possible if TTG wasn't such a radically different take on the franchise. In these kinds of Turtles Forever style crossovers, the contrast between the two interpretations is the whole point of the story. My one criticism would be that I wish the '03 TT had behaved more like themselves instead of just being a grumpier version of the '13 cast, but I understand that the movie wasn't really long enough to establish all their individual characters.
I do take umbrage with the insinuation that Teen Titans Go's critics are edgelords who misremember all past DC cartoons as way grittier than they actually were. That's a dismissive stereotype that Teen Titans Go apologists use to deflect legitimate criticism. Sure, some of the critics are like that, but most are not. Krypto the Superdog was literally a show for preschoolers, and I greatly enjoyed watching it. Plus, it had the Space Canine Patrol Agents as regulars. Now that's a good example of what an actual deep cut looks like.
The average fan just watches things they enjoy and doesn't watch things they don't enjoy. Obsessing over comics is not how most people do comics. Or cartoons, for that matter. The average fan doesn't know that Green Lantern used to be vulnerable to wood or that the original Human Torch was an android.
I mean, Teen Titans Go is also explicitly not a superhero show. It's a show with superheroes, but it's absolutely just a comedy cartoon. Pretending that means the writers hate superheroes is kind of weird when it is obviously not that type of show.
It's explicitly not a superhero show, but for seven years it was also the only DC cartoon that wasn't strangled in the cradle. That's going to create some resentment, whether it's the show's fault or not.
Remember when everyone was super mad about Metroid Prime: Federation Force? Same phenomena. People weren't angry about what the game was, they were angry about the perception that they getting it instead of a proper Metroid game after years of asking for one.
So I don't disagree with you here, but that doesn't make those people less stupid. Getting frustrated with a show because DC sucks just seems strange to me. I get being annoyed that there were no real superhero cartoons available, but that is neither Teen Titans Go's fault nor the fault of the writers of that show. That's all I meant.
I mean, there's nothing wrong with not liking a show, but getting legitimately angry at its mere existence is a little baffling. Especially since we're drowning in great DC superhero content (animated or no) at the moment.
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FencingsaxIt is difficult to get a man to understand, when his salary depends upon his not understandingGNU Terry PratchettRegistered Userregular
edited February 2021
As established earlier in the thread, some of the people who did the show you liked (Batman: Brave and rhe Bold) are the same people who did/do TTG.
I mean, there's nothing wrong with not liking a show, but getting legitimately angry at its mere existence is a little baffling. Especially since we're drowning in great DC superhero content (animated or no) at the moment.
Yeah, I may come off as someone who hates Teen Titans Go as much as a person can, but to be honest, I don't actually hate it nearly as much as I used to. Young Justice was resurrected, DC Super Hero Girls is cute and cleverly written, and Harley Quinn has some really interesting lore despite being a pretty drastic reinvention itself. (Side note, Jason Praxis from that one Harley Quinn episode was a cut so deep even I didn't know who he was. Looking him up to find out after the episode was over gave me a dopamine rush like I haven't felt since I first started getting into comics.) It seems we might finally be coming out of the desert and into another golden era of animation based on DC Comics.
But all those shows are on hiatus right now, presumably due to coronavirus. I've been feeling the withdrawal pretty bad. I was trying to stay optimistic about the new Aquaman show they announced a few years ago, despite the fact that I knew it had a lot of Teen Titans Go and Thundercats Roar alumni working on it. But the first few screenshots of that show surfaced (no pun intended) three days ago, and let's just say I can no longer maintain my optimism.
So I was already feeling pretty down when I came to this thread and learned that Teen Titans Go's running gag about 80's album covers is getting its own spin-off. Felt like a gut punch, so I probably reacted more strongly than I should have.
For a while there, it was finally starting to look like there might be a light at the end of tunnel. But I fear Hollywood will double down on shit and fuck it all up again, as usual.
Did no one catch the "live action Fairly Oddparents series" thing at the end of the article? How are they gonna pull that off?
Theyve done several live action Fairly oddparents movies
I'm aware of that, but those were movies that I'm assuming didn't have Timmy regularly making wishes that could substantially affect the entire Earth in visible ways.
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Call me crazy, but when I watch an animated adaptation of a comic book franchise, I want to feel like the people making it actually like the original comic book stories. Failing that, I'd like to at least get the impression that someone who works on the show has at least read one of those comics once in their lives.
Teen Titans Go is a series that absolutely revels in being both ignorant and disdainful of its own source material and the people who love it. It desperately wants to be about anything other than its own premise.
Someone who works on the show clearly has a passion for 80's album covers, considering they made first an episode, then multiple specials, and now an entire spin-off series on the topic. But you know what I'm passionate about? DC Comics. So I don't think I'll be giving this spin-off a chance just because the tone is coincidentally a little closer to what I like. The people behind Teen Titans Go have never been anything if not petty and spiteful, so I don't see any reason why I shouldn't give them the same treatment.
That's what happens in Sylvester and Tweety Mysteries though. The title is a bit of a misnomer. It's really a show about Granny solving mysteries while her pets get up to their usual hijinks in the background.
It is also one of the worst Looney Tunes series. The same stale slapstick gags from the 40's, repackaged without innovation. The actual mysteries themselves are Scooby Doo tier, either painfully formulaic and obvious, or unfair gotchas that are impossible to guess, with no middle ground. And to top it all off, a shoestring budget that only got worse in the second season, to the point where most of the show's backgrounds started looking like they were drawn in crayon.
Considering how many episodes seem to be built specifically around making fun of the haters, I think this is a fair hypothesis.
One of the creators of Teen Titans Go was a producer for Batman: The Brave and the Bold.
The deepest cut I've ever seen on that show was the Challengers of the Unknown, and the writers didn't even read far enough into the Wikipedia page to learn the characters' names or even their modus operandi. Their entire appearance is just one prolonged joke about the name of their team. "These guys call themselves the Challengers of the Unknown! Doesn't that sound awkward and archaic? What does even mean, hyuck hyuck?" I'm sorry that comic industry legend Jack Kirby isn't up to your high standards, Teen Titans Go writers.
What few times there are that the show references something from the comics, it's always that. The time they were forced, I assume at gunpoint, to make an episode about Shazam! as a promotion for the then-upcoming live action film, they did the same thing. Five minutes browsing a Wikipedia page so they could make an eleven minute cartoon shitting on the characters.
The 2003 Teen Titans cartoon made an episode about a supervillain trying to reclaim America for the British Empire on the 4th of July. The villain of the episode was an obscure character from the 60's comic books named Mad Mod. Teen Titans Go remade this episode, using the same high concept premise, but without the message about compromise that was the heart of the original. (TTG has done this to TT '03 a few times to remind people that the latter had silly filler episodes as well, as if that fact somehow absolves their show of all its other faults.) Among the changes they made was replacing Mad Mod with a caricature of Queen Elizabeth. They actually removed a reference, because they didn't even know it was a reference.
So no, I don't buy that anyone who works on TTG is a comic book fan.
Here's a portion of his filmography:
He was also a writer for Jackie Chan Adventures and the co-creator of the short-lived Thundercats reboot from 2011.
They're just putting the Comic back into Comic Book, which is absolutely part of comic tradition. Bat Mite, Myxlplyx, Howard the Duck, Plastic Man, Captain Carrot and His Amazing Zoo Crew, What The!?, Slapstick, the various hyper-campy cartoons and TV series, and so on, are kind of a big deal. Also tons of mainstream comic issues were goofy as hell. Superman comics are full of ridiculous nonsense with weird versions of kryptonite.
If you don't like goofy comics, that's fine, but they're part of the central DNA of comics.
Don't get me wrong, I love goofy shit in comics. I can tell you what every color of kryptonite does without looking it up. I've read every Howard the Duck comic, even the awful one from the 00's where Steve Gerber was trying way too hard to be edgy. I can even spell Mxyzptlk's name correctly!
My problem with Teen Titans Go is not that it's goofy or campy or whatever. I loved watching old Superfriends reruns back when I first got a cable package that included Cartoon Network. I actually prefer the more whimsical DC cartoons like Batman: The Brave and the Bold, Justice League Action, and DC Super Hero Girls to more grounded takes like Young Justice or the direct-to-video movies. As much as I love Superman: The Animated Series, it still bothers me to this day that it was so deeply rooted in the John Byrne version of the character that was still canon in the comics at the time instead of the much wilder pre-crisis stuff that came back later.
But Teen Titans Go is not a silly superhero show. It's just not a superhero show at all. Because it doesn't want to be one. And you don't have to take my word for it on that. The show is self-aware enough that the characters frequently make jokes about how they never fight any crime.
On its own, I could forgive that. But what I can't forgive is that it was the only DC Comics cartoon to get more than a single season for seven years. Now, I'll grant you, that's not entirely the fault of the show itself. Cable television is dying and networks need inexpensive content. With it's five voice actors, drastically simplified art design, and impressive commitment to nothing happening ever, Teen Titans Go can be made on the cheap. But you'll have to forgive me if I don't really care about the financial burdens of a multibillion dollar media conglomerate. I just want my DC cartoons!
And of course, as mentioned by others earlier in this thread, the show is now infamous for portraying its critics as entitled and out of touch. But that kind of slander is fine, because I can do it too! So to reiterate, the people behind Teen Titans Go are bitter that they have to work on a children's cartoon that is nominally about comic book superheroes and would rather be making absolutely any other kind of show.
Again, you don't have to enjoy TTG any more than I have to enjoy that terrible Thundercats cartoon, but that is the beginning of end of your authority on the matter. A lot of comic book fans are absolutely way too serious and entitled - comic book writers have been making fun of them for decades for that very thing. The No Prize exists for this very reason!
TTG is perfectly in line with comics history, including Jack Kirby's own work: https://kirbymuseum.org/blogs/kirby/archives/1176
Again, you can hate the show because you hate the show. You don't need to decide that the people who work on it are evil and hate comics because they respond to them differently than you do. The TTG Tooth Fairy is inspired compared to a lot of mainline DC characters.
To expand on this, it's perfectly fine to like or dislike things for reasons that can be articulated. Where I think the line stands for me is once intent is applied to the people working on the show, positive or negative. It's a fuzy line, to be sure, but I don't think it's fair to state that the showrunners "don't want to make a superhero show" without strong evidence to that.
Mocking haters and having a basic episode formula or little cross episode storylines doesn't meet that metric for me personally.
Edit: Saying one doesn't like the show for those things is totally fine, to be perfectly explicit.
I'm also wondering if we'll ever get to see the full versions of the episodes that were made to be 22 minutes long. I (and J.G. Quintel, apparently) think the show works better in the 11 minute format, but I can't help but be curious about all that missing content.
I mean, the fact that they even acknowledge the Challengers of the Unknown is an insane deep cut (and hilarious). They're so obscure most comic fans don't even know who the hell they are.
The Robins episode is so deep a cut you'd need stiches. Everything with Speedy too.
Also if you dont laugh at Robin knee capping Wally West to win a race youre dead inside
You mean winning a race against Wally West by "Believing in Himself" and to a lesser extent knee capping him.
Steam: Elvenshae // PSN: Elvenshae // WotC: Elvenshae
Wilds of Aladrion: [https://forums.penny-arcade.com/discussion/comment/43159014/#Comment_43159014]Ellandryn[/url]
And if you're really, really jonesing for superhero stuff, Teen Titans Go vs. Teen Titans has a more traditional superhero setup. With plenty of goofiness thrown in of course. Though people forget the original Teen Titans show is MUCH goofier than we remember.
Honestly I didn't much care for the original Teen Titans show because I thought it was often too goofy for a superhero show, and usually not in an entertaining way.
In contrast, Teen Titans Go has given me an entire episode where Robin explains how to be a (scummy) landlord because if they're being expected to teach a lesson in their show, he believes it should be one that isn't something banal like sharing or whatever. That episode alone elevated my overall opinion of the show by a good amount.
Notably the first one is the only DC movie to have a Stan Lee cameo
Either I'm overestimating the knowledge of your average comic fan or vastly underestimating my own. The idea that Carrie Kelley from Frank Miller's The Dark Knight Returns, one of two comics from the mid 80's that changed (and arguably ruined) the direction of superhero comics for decades afterward, is now considered an obscure character is mindblowing to me.
I can buy that the Challs are obscure. I don't buy that the Teen Titans Go staff knew who the Challs were, or even know who they are now. There's nothing from their appearance on the show that couldn't be gleaned from a quick phone call to the DC offices and five minutes on Wikipedia. Is that supposed to impress me?
The later seasons of Batman: The Brave and the Bold are really the gold standard when it comes to deep cuts. Tons of undeniably obscure characters, sometimes making them the the butt of jokes, but usually letting them do something cool too because deep down you still love them no matter how lame they are.
It's explicitly not a superhero show, but for seven years it was also the only DC cartoon that wasn't strangled in the cradle. That's going to create some resentment, whether it's the show's fault or not.
Remember when everyone was super mad about Metroid Prime: Federation Force? Same phenomena. People weren't angry about what the game was, they were angry about the perception that they getting it instead of a proper Metroid game after years of asking for one.
Credit where it's due, TTGVTT is a legit good special that wouldn't have been possible if TTG wasn't such a radically different take on the franchise. In these kinds of Turtles Forever style crossovers, the contrast between the two interpretations is the whole point of the story. My one criticism would be that I wish the '03 TT had behaved more like themselves instead of just being a grumpier version of the '13 cast, but I understand that the movie wasn't really long enough to establish all their individual characters.
I do take umbrage with the insinuation that Teen Titans Go's critics are edgelords who misremember all past DC cartoons as way grittier than they actually were. That's a dismissive stereotype that Teen Titans Go apologists use to deflect legitimate criticism. Sure, some of the critics are like that, but most are not. Krypto the Superdog was literally a show for preschoolers, and I greatly enjoyed watching it. Plus, it had the Space Canine Patrol Agents as regulars. Now that's a good example of what an actual deep cut looks like.
Yeah, I may come off as someone who hates Teen Titans Go as much as a person can, but to be honest, I don't actually hate it nearly as much as I used to. Young Justice was resurrected, DC Super Hero Girls is cute and cleverly written, and Harley Quinn has some really interesting lore despite being a pretty drastic reinvention itself. (Side note, Jason Praxis from that one Harley Quinn episode was a cut so deep even I didn't know who he was. Looking him up to find out after the episode was over gave me a dopamine rush like I haven't felt since I first started getting into comics.) It seems we might finally be coming out of the desert and into another golden era of animation based on DC Comics.
But all those shows are on hiatus right now, presumably due to coronavirus. I've been feeling the withdrawal pretty bad. I was trying to stay optimistic about the new Aquaman show they announced a few years ago, despite the fact that I knew it had a lot of Teen Titans Go and Thundercats Roar alumni working on it. But the first few screenshots of that show surfaced (no pun intended) three days ago, and let's just say I can no longer maintain my optimism.
So I was already feeling pretty down when I came to this thread and learned that Teen Titans Go's running gag about 80's album covers is getting its own spin-off. Felt like a gut punch, so I probably reacted more strongly than I should have.
For a while there, it was finally starting to look like there might be a light at the end of tunnel. But I fear Hollywood will double down on shit and fuck it all up again, as usual.
https://variety.com/2021/tv/news/rugrats-revival-paramount-plus-original-cast-1234914459/
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Did no one catch the "live action Fairly Oddparents series" thing at the end of the article? How are they gonna pull that off?
Well, Disney has established the precedent to call good looking CGI with no live actors "live action" so maybe that.
Can't be worse than what's been done before
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Candice: "Dad! We watched this really old movie today called King Kong. It had Jack Black in it!"
Theyve done several live action Fairly oddparents movies
I'm aware of that, but those were movies that I'm assuming didn't have Timmy regularly making wishes that could substantially affect the entire Earth in visible ways.