Next year, the rollout of a new cinematic and TV universe will offer a fresh on-screen start for DC, but in 2023, the old DC Extended Universe is still in its death throes. What with recent box office bombs like The Flash, Shazam! Fury of the Gods, and Black Adam, the transition from the former DC Films regime to the DC Studios era under the direction of James Gunn and Peter Safran has been a costly mess, with every misfire further diminishing the brand’s credibility. But even as the vast majority of DC’s live-action projects continue to flop in theaters, the DC Universe is thriving on the small screen in the world of animation, with the latest standouts being Harley Quinn and My Adventures With Superman.
Beginning with Bruce Timm and Eric Radomski’s Batman: The Animated Series in 1992, DC has had a rich history in animated storytelling under Warner Bros. Animation. The success of that series, which ran for 85 episodes until its conclusion in 1995, paved the way for subsequent animated TV shows like Superman: The Animated Series, Batman Beyond, Justice League, and Teen Titans. In animated films like Batman: Mask of the Phantasm, Batman Beyond: Return of the Joker, and Justice League: The Flashpoint Paradox, some of that success has also carried over to feature-length projects.
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Even though the Marvel Cinematic Universe has dwarfed the DCEU’s box office earnings and critical acclaim, DC’s achievements in the animated arena have long outshined Marvel’s. (Sony’s recent Spider-Verse movies aside.) Marvel Studios invested in its animated output with the establishment of Marvel Studios Animation in 2021, but in an inversion of the rivals’ theatrical records, Marvel is attempting to play catch-up, while DC has consistently delivered exciting animated stories even as its live-action counterparts have faltered. With new episodes streaming on Max on back-to-back weekdays (Thursdays and Fridays), DC’s Harley Quinn and My Adventures With Superman are combining to keep that trend alive. These animated series are taking two very different creative approaches, but both are bringing fresh perspectives to decades-old characters.
In recent years, Harley Quinn has become one of the most popular characters in DC’s massive roster of heroes, villains, and everyone in between. The character holds a unique place in the company’s history. Unlike the vast majority of her contemporaries, she originated not within the pages of the comic books, but on a TV show: Batman: The Animated Series. In fact, cocreator Timm told The Hollywood Reporter in 2016 that Quinn was always intended to be a “one-shot character in just one episode.” More than 30 years after Harley made her debut as a henchwoman for the Joker, her eponymous series showcases how much she’s evolved.
Harley’s first animated solo series, which premiered in 2019 and is now in its fourth season, chronicles her transformation from Joker’s sidekick and his manipulated love interest into a villain in her own right. With each subsequent season, her path has led her further away from the Clown Prince of Crime, leading her to become an antihero who’s found a much healthier relationship with Poison Ivy (a romance that follows the trajectory of the comics). Developed by Justin Halpern, Patrick Schumacker, and Dean Lorey, Harley Quinn pulls (almost) no punches in its treatment of DC’s beloved characters, playing off the audience’s familiarity with superheroes and their infamous nemeses to poke fun at and deconstruct their firmly established identities. As an adult animated series, it can push boundaries that most live-action DC productions have never crossed, incorporating a central queer romance and an abundance of gore and profanity.
In Season 4, which launched last week with a three-episode premiere, Harley (voiced by Kaley Cuoco) continues to grow well beyond her limiting, villainous role as Joker’s sidekick, as she learns how to become a full-fledged superhero as a member of Gotham’s Bat Family. Harley struggles with a life of waiting around to stop crimes—without killing anyone—instead of being a criminal. She also has to learn how to balance her new line of work with her relationship with Poison Ivy (Lake Bell), who’s busy herself as the new leader of the Legion of Doom. No matter what absurd direction the series takes, Harley Quinn always manages to maintain its balance of raunchy, self-aware humor and heartfelt sincerity.
Superman, meanwhile, is the foundational character of not only DC Comics, but the entire superhero genre. His debut in Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster’s Action Comics no. 1 in 1938 is considered the inception of superhero comics, and animated short films centering on Superman date back to the early 1940s. There’s a reason Zack Snyder opened the DCEU with 2013’s Man of Steel and—in spite of how the Snyderverse panned out—why Gunn is following suit with Superman: Legacy, which is slated to be the “true beginning” of the new DCU in 2025. Superman is the prototypical superhero.
After decades’ worth of comics, TV shows, and films, there are hardly any narrative avenues left that haven’t already been explored when it comes to the iconic Man of Steel—and yet My Adventures With Superman manages to breathe new life into one of the most familiar characters and stories in pop culture, as well as those in supporting roles around him. With the visual stylings and storytelling sensibilities of a shonen anime, the series is unlike any previous portrayal of Superman. Especially after the darker, “grittier” rendering of Henry Cavill’s Clark Kent in the Snyderverse, the lighthearted show is a welcome change that returns the character to his earnest roots as he navigates the early stages of becoming the world’s greatest superhero.
Despite the fact that each episode premieres on Adult Swim every Thursday at midnight (before appearing on Max the following day), My Adventures With Superman, unlike Harley Quinn, is perfectly suited for a younger audience. The story follows Clark (Jack Quaid) as he begins an internship at the Daily Planet alongside his roommate, Jimmy Olsen (Ishmel Sahid), and Lois Lane (Alice Lee), all while he’s learning the limits—and potential—of his powers as Superman. It’s as much about Clark honing his skills as a superhero as it is about his budding, fumbling romance with Lois and whether he can conceal his secret double life as the same person his friends are tirelessly investigating.
As different as these two shows are in style and substance, Harley Quinn and My Adventures With Superman represent the potential that animation holds—and has always held—for DC as an alternative to its big-swing blockbuster projects. Gunn has promised that DC projects in the new DCU will be more connected to one another than they were during the DCEU era. Animated series, video games, and live-action projects will all exist within the same universe, or will otherwise be branded with the “Elseworlds” label to illustrate when a story exists outside the main continuity.
My Adventures With Superman, for example, is set to have a second season at Max and would likely bear the Elseworlds imprint. Showrunner Jake Wyatt told The Direct that Gunn and Safran have been “very supportive” of the series, and that his creative team has been met with “no interference and a lot of approval” in their work on the two seasons. The clear demarcation between Elseworlds stories and the main DCU should (hopefully) afford individual projects greater creative freedom and prevent the sort of conflicts that have led to so many “creative differences” in past live-action productions.
DC animation has succeeded where live-action projects in the DCEU have often failed thanks in large part to the diversity of styles and narrative approaches that the animated realm offers. Series like Harley Quinn and My Adventures With Superman have distinct tones that are perfectly calibrated to the spirits of their title characters; the terrific Young Justice began as a lighter series about fledgling sidekicks setting off on their own and has grown darker and more dramatic over time as its characters have grown with it.
In the DCU, Gunn seems to be leading DC Studios in a similar direction, with a renewed focus on storytelling that brings something different to each project. “One of the things that is very important for me in all of these movies and TV series is that the director’s vision—and the vision of the writers, and all of the creators—is unique, and something special,” he said during his announcement video for the upcoming DC slate earlier this year. “Storytelling is always king. That’s all that matters to us.”
Gunn’s own DC film and TV projects, The Suicide Squad and Peacemaker, have illustrated the virtues of applying the irreverence and idiosyncracies of series like Harley Quinn to live action. Those projects point to a potential future in which the gap in quality between DC animation and the DCEU narrows as the latter assimilates some of the strengths of the former. Assuming, of course, that those sensibilities can be ported to a project like Superman: Legacy (which Gunn is writing and directing), and that other filmmakers will truly be afforded the same degree of creative freedom in their own stories.
Although we’re still in the twilight phase of the DCEU, Gunn and DC have already been teasing what’s in store for the future of DC animation. The first DCU project is slated to be Creature Commandos, an animated TV series written by Gunn that will be part of the main cinematic universe, with characters voiced by the same actors who’ll portray their live-action counterparts, including Frank Grillo as Rick Flag Sr., David Harbour as Eric Frankenstein, and Indira Varma as the Bride of Frankenstein. It bodes well for the future of animation at DC that an animated series is being entrusted to lead off the new era, and Gunn himself has hailed the medium as “a way to tell stories that are gigantic and huge without spending $50 million an episode.”
Other confirmed animated projects include a solo Beast Boy series called Beast Boy: Lone Wolf; a Harley Quinn spinoff centered on the one and only Kite Man, Kite Man: Hell Yeah!; a new Batman series from Timm, J.J. Abrams, and Matt Reeves at Amazon Prime called Batman: Caped Crusader; and a pair of direct-to-video movies based on iconic DC stories, Justice League: Crisis on Infinite Earths and Watchmen. Given the popularity of Harley Quinn, it seems like only a matter of time before we receive confirmation of future seasons, but even the show’s producers aren’t sure what lies ahead in the new DCU. What’s in store for My Adventures With Superman beyond its second season is even less clear, as is the fate of Young Justice, which concluded its fourth season last year and has yet to receive the green light for future installments.
There’s no telling what will happen to DC Studios’ live-action plans over the next few years as each leftover DCEU film bleeds money for Warner and as the ongoing WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes alter production schedules. (Projections for DC’s next live-action holdover from the DCEU, Blue Beetle, are not looking too good.) The future of the DCU may be uncertain, but DC’s animated universe is providing a present reminder of just how good things could be.
