At Annecy Animation Festival, it’s all about celebrating the different corners of animation. DC Studios might’ve just released Supergirl, but they began their DC Universe (DCU) with Creature Commandos, which was an adult animated original series.
For the first time, DC Studios attended Annecy, and with the help of Sam Register, Peter Safran, Peter Girardi, Jake Wyatt, Matt Beans, Josie Campbell, Rick Morales and Tom King coming together on stage to provide a heap of updates on already announced shows and some brand new announcements on what’s to come.
Creature Commandos Season 2
The first show that DC Studios began discussing was the second season of Creature Commandos. At the end of the first season, we got a tease of the possible characters that would be included in the new team, and some of its new members also appeared throughout Season 1 as background characters.
The new members joining the Creature Commandos, which will now be led by The Bride, will consist of Khalis, King Shark, and Nosferata. We got a look at some concept art designs of their characters and details on their involvement in the upcoming season.
Khalis has been described as a 1000-year-old mummy who has a great relationship with Weasel, although Weasel continuously eats his ribcage. His power set has been teased as having the ability to resurrect himself, which will play a part in the storyline for Season 2.
King Shark returns after not just appearing in the finale of Creature Commandos Season 1 but is yet another character to be brought back from the deceased DCEU. His character will be explored further in Season 2 as he’s given more backstory.
Nosferata is a very young vampire, but she’s not like your traditional vampire. She was experimented on and became a bloodsucking creature. She has a tragic backstory that will be explored in the second season, similar to how the first season went through the backstories of each of their members. She’s snotty, has attitude problems and has a contentious relationship with The Bride, which is the complete opposite of the relationship The Bride had with Nina in Season 1.
As Nosferata was transferring from a background character to a main character, they had to give her a redesign that fitted her new role. We got a look at concept art that showcased futuristic, gothic, and rave girl looks, but none of them were right. Dean Lorey, who was showrunner on the first season and will be writing for the second season, had a writing assistant who mentioned that Nosferata looked like Charli XCX, which they’ve now based the final design off of.
Batman: Caped Crusader Season 2
Next up, was Batman: Caped Crusader Season 2. Peter Girardi spoke about how Caped Crusaders came to be, joking with Sam Register about how Bruce Timm is “terrifying”. Timm never got to explore the more adult storylines with Batman: The Animated Series, given how quickly it rose in popularity and the toys they sold. Warner Bros. Animation gave Bruce Timm exactly what he had always wanted with Batman: Caped Crusaders, working alongside Matt Reeves, who was heavily inspired by Timm for his own Batman, and James Tucker, who is now the sole showrunner of Season 2.
The trailer for Batman: Caped Crusaders Season 2, which has been released online, was once again shown to attendees at the panel.
Batman Knightfall Trilogy
The Knightfall comics have always been a dream project for Rick Morales, and finally he gets to work on a trilogy that’s true to the story and Kelly Jones’ covers and designs.
The main highlight that Morales touched on was getting to adapt Knightfall’s Bane. “We get to do Bane in a way that he’s never been done before. A comic-accurate version of him. He’s not just a big brute like he’s sometimes portrayed. He’s methodical, he thinks through things, he’s got a plan.”
Batman: Knightfall – Knightfall: Part 1 was also screened to audiences at the Annecy Animation Festival on Tuesday. Below, you can see our social reaction to the movie to see what we thought about it.
Get Jiro!
This project might feel like the odd one out, as it’s based on Anthony Bourdain’s comic for Vertigo. It’s not your average DC story. It’s set in Los Angeles, where everyone’s senses are so corrupted that the only thing people get pleasure from is eating. In Get Jiro!, there are three layers to LA: the inner ring is the hardest place to get reservations, the middle ring is the easiest place to get reservations and the outer ring is essentially a wasteland.
It’s a world where there’s no police, but instead, health department officials are the law and fake vegans operate. It’s adapting the first book and parts of the second book, while also expanding beyond the books.
A few slides highlighted a prison where a handful of celebrity chefs will cameo, and we got a look at José Andrés, David Chang, and Eric Ripert, whom we’ll be seeing all of in episode 7, which was also revealed to be a “oner” episode that was described as “crazy… painful… great”.
A sizzle reel was then shown which features shots of Jiro cooking, and in between those shots were action set pieces where we saw fights taking place on buses, heads being decapitated, law enforcement being killed, and people jumping from roofs.
Mister Miracle
It first got revealed last year at the Annecy Animation Festival, and now Tom King has arrived to talk about Mister Miracle, which he describes as a “love letter to Jack Kirby.” He went on to say “Jack Kirby is almost like a god in comics. He’s the founding father of my entire industry. His imagination launched something called the Marvel universe… it also launched something called the Star Wars universe, although they don’t credit him.”
For those unaware, Mister Miracle #1 opens up on Scott Free surviving a suicide attempt. King described the show as a “story about what happens after trauma… recovering from trauma… about living again… about how you get out of that, and it’s the biggest cliché and the one that works… which is love.”
DC Studiosʼ Mister Miracle is a love story at its core but has this grand cosmic war in the foreground of it all. It’s why animation was the only way to tell this story, as it’s a medium that allows for all creative opportunities, unlike live action, which is why DC Studios is so supportive of continuing to produce animated projects.
It was officially announced at the panel that Mister Miracle will be set in the DCU, with Peter Safran confirming the news on stage.
Tom King also said the actors that have been cast are “brilliant” and are the actors going forward for the DCU. While they didn’t announce the cast, they did play a clip where Barda and Scott spoke. In the clip, we also saw images of both Scott and Barda together, Mister Miracle, a war with parademons attacking, and the iconic “Darkseid is” panel from the comic quickly glitching onto the screen before we see a comic-accurate Darkseid sitting on a throne. The entire sizzle reel was played to Frightened Rabbit’s “Death Dreams”, a fitting choice for Mister Miracle.
Mister Miracle will also be animated by the lovely people over at Titmouse.
My Adventures With Green Lantern
Jake Wyatt came onto the stage, celebrating My Adventures With Superman‘s third season, which is currently airing, and shared a sizzle reel which showcased what was happening next in the season, which showcased Superman struggling against Cyborg Superman, and also featured a look at a shirtless Superman. Trust Jake, it’s for plot reasons, and we can confirm that.
In Season 2, a Green Lantern appeared to show what they’d look like in the adventure-verse which was designed to look like a “kung-fu space monk”. The main goal with My Adventures With Green Lantern was to achieve the magical girl look. Key art was shown which featured Jessica Cruz, the show’s Green Lantern front and centre in her suit which screams ‘magical girl’, and around her are allies and also the enemies she’ll be facing, which are a mixture of red and yellow lanterns.
Jessica Cruz was chosen as the Green Lantern for the show because she’s the one who “struggles the most with her own personal fear and anxiety” and they wanted the “character with the most room to grow, because to have a magical girl, you need to have a really normal girl”
Wyatt explained that while My Adventures with Superman introduced audiences to the show’s version of the Green Lantern Corps, the new series would fully embrace the magical girl genre, both visually and emotionally. Jessica’s journey begins at Hal Jordan Memorial High School, where she is surrounded by familiar DC faces, including Kyle Rayner, who serves as the school’s art club president and baseball star, while Alex DeWitt is positioned as the seemingly perfect student Jessica constantly compares herself to.
It must also be noted that with the name “Hal Jordan Memorial High” that Earth has likely already seen one Green Lantern pass away. There’s a possibility that Hal Jordan never became a Green Lantern in this world and instead was a renowned pilot who was a member of the U.S. Air Force that unfortunately lost their lives but no details were revealed on Hal Jordan as a character and what his involvement with this show would be beyond the name of the high school.
Beyond school, Jessica’s training will see her mentored by Kilowog at a specially designed Green Lantern temple, where she begins learning what it truly means to wield a Power Ring. The creative team also teased an array of Red and Yellow Lantern villains, alongside what Wyatt jokingly described as “hot evil people”, promising the series will lean into the weirdness and imagination that made magical girl stories such a natural fit for the Green Lantern mythology.
A clip was shown that featured Jessica Cruz saying the Green Lantern oath before proceeding into the most magical girl transformation that you can imagine. As Cruz transforms, the talented Auli’i Cravalho has transformed the oath into a song which plays over the transformation. If you’re aware of Cravalho’s singing skills then you can imagine how majestic it sounds and how it amplifies the scene.
DC Super Powers
Executive producer Matt Beans then took to the stage to unveil DC Super Powers, a new preschool animated series following a class of young heroes attending the Alliance School for Heroes.
Instead of leaning into the familiar Justice League roster, this version features a group of kids who find out they have powers for the first time-main characters include Lighting, Plastic Man, Aquagirl, Green Lantern, and Terra. Beans described the show as being about “finding the hero inside yourself,” with each young hero entering the academy carrying different fears and insecurities.
An exclusive clip showed them cooperating during drills before confronting large robotic tigers, mixing superhero spectacle with team-up action.
Starfire
The biggest surprises of the presentation, however, were when there was a lot more focus on the new, forthcoming Starfire series.
Producer Josie Campbell announced that Hayden Walch will be returning as Starfire herself in the new series, which will follow Princess Koriand’r after she makes a dramatic escape from her home world of Tamaran in an ancient space craft dubbed the Starblaze, forming a bond with a group of young alien girls, as she ventures across space. They draw influences from magical girl anime, space fantasy, and coming-of-age stories.
In their preview footage we saw her battling giant aliens and slowly learning to control the incredible powers within her; Campbell herself described the series as one centered on empathy and hope. It’s also worth noting that this isn’t a spin-off to any pre-existing Teen Titans project and instead stands alone as its own show within its own continuity.
Looking Ahead
A few surprises closed out the presentation. DC Studios first announced Krypto, an animated show aimed at kids. It’s a show that will follow Superman’s dog as he tags along with a group of wannabe misfit criminals who live in the neighbourhood and along the way assists them with redemption.
Next up was DC Studios’ first original anime production, which the studio is making in conjunction with Warner Bros. Japan. It follows Joker as he launches a ruthless crusade on Gotham as he searches for Batman’s killer. An interesting concept as we begin to learn who Joker really is when there’s no Batman.
Details are slim as of writing, but those in attendance learned it will be a completely original property from kōgi Morimoto’s one-time partner in katsuhiro otomo anime development, Koji Morimoto’s own contemporary Mamoru Aoki (Steamboy).
The final announcement was an adaptation of Scott Snyder and Nick Dragotta’s Absolute Batman. Snyder will be executive producer/showrunner while Dragotta is producer on the show. It’ll be a fully CG show, and attendees at the Annecy Animation Festival were shown some early previs looks from Stellar Creative Labs, which showcased Absolute Batman’s look in front of a burning city landscape.
From mature comic adaptations like Mister Miracle and Batman: Knightfall to magical girl adventures, preschool superheroes and ambitious anime projects, Annecy made one thing abundantly clear: animation isn’t simply supporting DC Studios’ future. It’s becoming one of its most exciting creative playgrounds.
