TV saves the day

By Brian Lowry

July 6, 2003 12 AM PT

Times Staff Writer

With comic book characters staging another invasion of the world’s multiplexes, this summer might be christened “Revenge of the Nerds” -- conferring cachet on that unique breed that can identify the radiation transforming Bruce Banner into the Hulk or buzz in on “Jeopardy!” about the strange metal that makes the X-Men’s Wolverine nearly indestructible. (“What is ‘adamantium,’ Alex?”)

“Spider-Man,” after all, swung off with more than $400 million in domestic box office, and the “X-Men” and comic-like “The Matrix” sequels each flew past the $200-million threshold. That kind of advanced math gets Hollywood’s attention.

But while the big-screen treatment of these fantasy worlds is enjoying unprecedented respectability, comic heroes long subjected to indignities in film have been thriving in television -- not live-action series, mind you, but TV animation, a genre normally aimed at children and dismissed as kids’ stuff.

From “X-Men” to “Justice League,” “Batman Beyond” to the animated version of “The Incredible Hulk” in the mid-1990s, animation has provided the most logical medium for adapting these characters -- and has generally done a better, more satisfying job of it than prime-time TV or feature films, the brawny box office notwithstanding.

Despite advances in computer-generated graphics on feature films and live-action series such as the WB’s popular teenage Superman show, “Smallville,” TV animation has consistently provided some of the most visually arresting and narratively complex versions of these caped crusaders. Still, such programs are frequently overlooked, playing in venues where the target audience hasn’t reached puberty.

“Animation is the best way to present superheroes,” says Bruce Timm, executive producer of Cartoon Network’s super-team series “Justice League” and before that of “Batman: The Animated Series.”

“Even in feature films, it doesn’t really compare to the kinds of things we can do in animation. You still watch it and go, ‘If this was a comic book, there would be a whole lot more action.’ ”

Yet as live-action feature films plunge further into this realm of gamma rays and skin-tight costumes, often with mixed results, animation has mostly stayed in the shadows. Few prime-time adventure series employ animation -- usually a more cost-efficient way of creating a Krypton or Gotham City -- and feature films, looking for eye-popping imagery that will galvanize teenagers, also eschew the form.

Part of that is because American audiences, for whatever reason, have never warmed to more adult animation. Despite programs such as “The Simpsons” or “Beavis and Butt-head,” which don’t really exploit the medium’s visual possibilities, only the core comics crowd turns out for superheroes, and younger women -- a vital component of the prime-time audience -- are especially resistant.

Studios have also grappled with this reluctance in feature animation. Disney’s “Atlantis” was coolly received, while the studio’s “Treasure Planet” and Fox’s space adventure “Titan A.E.” -- all three rated PG for action violence -- were box office disasters. DreamWorks is testing those turbulent waters with “Sinbad: Legend of the Seven Seas,” but in terms of action-oriented animation finding success in theaters, it’s a long way back to the Max Fleischer-produced “Superman” film shorts of the 1940s, which still put most versions of the character to shame. Given those dynamics, it hasn’t taken many animated failures to scare off TV programmers, from the WB’s short-lived sci-fi entry “Invasion America” in 1998, which counted Steven Spielberg among its producers, to HBO’s rendition of Todd McFarlane’s returned-from-hell antihero “Spawn” the year before.

Yet these have been niche projects, a hard sell to the masses lining up to see “Spider-Man” or “X-Men.” “Most people don’t care about animation, and most people in this business think it’s for kids and don’t want anything to do with it,” says Jean MacCurdy, former head of Warner Bros. Television Animation.

Whether the popularity of live-action comic heroes can alter that mentality remains to be seen, but more animated prime-time renditions are on the way -- including MTV’s take on “Spider-Man,” which premieres Friday, and Cartoon Network’s anime-like version of D.C. Comics’ “Teen Titans,” arriving July 19.

THE BATMAN MATRIX

Charting the modern path of superheroes beyond the tattered pages of comic books, all roads lead to Batman, the solemn avenger created by Bob Kane in the 1930s.

The “Batman” TV series of the 1960s, starring Adam West, established the campy tone and cut-rate production values that characterized prime-time shows mining comics for decades to come. Even programs that dealt with characters more seriously, such as “The Six Million Dollar Man” and “The Incredible Hulk,” faced budgetary constraints that dictated cheesy, slow-motion special effects -- allowing the latter to “hulk out” twice each episode, which usually amounted to tossing someone across a room, roaring and crashing through a tear-away wall.

That “Hulk” premiered in 1978, the same year “Spider-Man” (starring Nicholas Hammond, one of the Von Trapp kids in “The Sound of Music”) enjoyed a less successful prime-time run and the “Superman” franchise soared into theaters with Christopher Reeve in the title role. Dazzling effects (by the day’s standards, anyway) fulfilled the clever marketing slogan “You will believe a man can fly,” yet even those films felt compelled to camp up the villains and overplay the romance.

Part of that had to do with discomfort that networks and studios clearly brought to the challenge of making such characters believable beyond the printed page, leading to misguided revisions in established characters.

“The people who were in a position to make decisions were generally ignorant as to what the material was, and there was an arrogance attendant to that ignorance,” says Gerry Conway, a veteran comics writer who transitioned to TV and movies, most recently on the “Law & Order” franchise. “When you start trying to over-think these things, that’s where you get into trouble.... Either you buy in at the very beginning, or you shouldn’t be in the theater -- or behind the camera.”

It took Tim Burton’s dark take on “Batman” in 1989 to remove the “Biff! Wham! Pow!” mind-set and energize the idea of taking comics seriously -- both in terms of their commercial potential and a more ambitious brand of filmmaking.

That also emboldened Warner Bros. to introduce “Batman: The Animated Series,” a project that essentially launched the TV animation renaissance.

Featuring Kevin Conroy as Batman, Efrem Zimbalist Jr. as Alfred, and actors such as Mark Hamill, David Warner and Roddy McDowall voicing the rogue’s gallery of villains, the 1992-95 Fox Children’s Network series offered drama, stylish visuals and all the emotional baggage Burton’s film brought to the character. The show even aired in prime time for a stretch.

According to producer Timm, the “Batman” series was possible because Warner Bros. had “gone to great lengths trying to erase the Adam West version of Batman from people’s heads.”

For the first time, says Paul Dini -- a producer on the animated 1990s WB network series “Superman” and the 1999-2001 series “Batman Beyond,” a futuristic version in which an elderly Bruce Wayne takes a teenage hero under his wing -- writers were encouraged to make the best show they could and not dumb down the material.

“When superheroes are done well in animated form, there’s nothing that beats them,” he says. “Things that are questionable in live-action are easily accepted.... You just have to create a world where all of that is plausible.”

Also in 1992, Fox introduced a Saturday-morning version of “X-Men,” the top-selling Marvel title about mutant heroes. Aimed at an equally sophisticated audience, the show had feuds, love triangles, multiple-episode story lines, and elaborate time-travel plots that made the “Terminator” and “Planet of the Apes” films appear simple by comparison -- in some ways setting the stage for the big-budget feature film that followed eight years later.

DARK DAYS ENDURED

Clearing the way in part were Margaret Loesch, a former head of Marvel Productions who had become president of the Fox Children’s Network; and MacCurdy, who oversaw Warner Bros.’ TV animation unit when “Batman” and “Superman” premiered.

Both survived what they call “the dark days” of the 1970s and ‘80s, when network officials, mindful of criticism from children’s activists, kept their programming tame and inoffensive. The result was toothless heroes, from the limited animation of “SuperFriends” to an adaptation of Marvel’s signature quartet “The Fantastic Four” that replaced an original character, the Human Torch, with an irritating comic foil, H.E.R.B.I.E. the Robot.

Loesch remembers a network executive telling her that comic books were for “dysfunctional 18-year-old men,” and MacCurdy says an early 1980s proposal to create a more challenging Batman was summarily nixed. “We wanted to make it really dark, and the networks would have nothing to do with it,” she says.

Even after “Batman: The Animated Series” landed, there was little emphasis on attracting adults, since children’s TV advertising is sold based on the 2-to-11 age bracket.

“We did have a huge adult following, and that was not where the advertisers were,” MacCurdy says. “Our average viewing age was something like 18, and that was not considered good. We got punished for that.”

“Justice League,” by contrast, principally plays in prime time on Cartoon Network, where young men and teenagers represent a significant component of the audience but kids under 12 still account for the lion’s share. Of the 2.1 million watching an average episode during a recent week in June -- small by broadcast standards, but a success for cable -- more than half were children, while roughly 200,000 men ages 18 to 34 tuned in, based on Nielsen Media Research estimates. The show features squabbling, conflicted heroes and complex galaxy-hopping story lines -- including one that involved traveling back to an alternate world much like Nazi Germany.

Stan Lee, the Marvel Comics mastermind who helped create such characters as the Fantastic Four, Spider-Man and the Hulk, sees a fundamental shift from the days when comic adaptations were “low-budget quickies” and the management then at Marvel exercised no control over how its properties were handled -- signing them over, as he put it, to “anyone who had $1.98 for the rights.”

“It’s so easy to adapt something from another medium and omit the one quality that made that thing successful,” Lee says by phone. At 80, he remains as vibrant and colorful as any of his creations.

Along those lines, former comics writer Conway suggests the big-screen “The Hulk” suffered from a desire to infuse the story with psychological underpinnings that detracted from what made the comic fun. “You put all that weight onto something that’s very fragile, and it just collapses,” he says.

Animated series have benefited from a more direct relation to comics and the respect and affection writers and executives harbored toward them. Now, the big money that studios are throwing at movies, Loesch theorizes, could legitimize animation beyond the limited adult audience that will watch.

MTV will test that premise with “Spider-Man,” which employs a computer animation technique and approaches the material seriously enough to include a beheading in the first batch of episodes.

Morgan Gendel, a “Law & Order” and “V.I.P.” alum who is the series’ executive producer, says the goal was to be “wilder” than past incarnations and exploit the visual parameters of animation. With expectations raised by the movie’s success, he describes the creative mandate as: “If you can do it in live-action, then don’t even bother.”

Still, conquering prime time would be only a first step. Some question why studios can’t market top-quality animated films capable of competing with live-action blockbusters -- and put to rest the notion that animation succeeds by appealing to children without so offending their parents’ intelligence that they flee the theater.

“Why does everything have to do with singing animals and princesses?” Dini asks. As for attracting adults, “it can be done. If I were running a studio, I’d tell the marketing department, ‘Sell this movie. Get the people who want to see ‘2 Fast 2 Furious’ to see it.’ It doesn’t have to be something that looks good on a child’s lunchbox.”

Getting animated

The show: “Spider-Man: The Animated Series”

The gist: A new animated take on the Marvel character, with Neil Patrick Harris voicing Spider-Man/Peter Parker

Where: MTV

When: 10 p.m. Fridays, premiering this week

The show: “Teen Titans”

The gist: A team of teenage heroes, led by Robin, living in their own T-shaped tower

Where: Cartoon Network

When: 9 p.m. Saturdays

What else: Will air on Kids WB starting next year

The show: “Justice League”

The gist: Superman, Batman, Green Lantern and others fight crime and wrestle adult issues