A man dressed as The Guardian Ganthet made reference to "The Timmverse" and a room of 2000 knew what he meant.
That was the scene at the Green Lantern Animated Series panel at Comic-Con. We were there to catch most of it (there's a lot to fit in here) and as hungry fans of the GL mythos, we were impressed. As animation fans, we're a little tempered. We'll explain:
The show seems to be embracing the rich world of the Green Lanterns just as much as Batman: The Animated Series and Justice League Unlimited embraced theirs. Case in point, the big baddies in this show will be the not-exactly-classic villains the Red Lanterns.
We applaud this choice, though the show's top creative dog Bruce Timm may have implied that the more obvious pick of Sinestro and his Sinestro Corps may have been "off limits" due to the development of the Green Lantern films. Either way, it looks like we'll be doing a lot of hissing at Atrocitus and Zilius Zox. No one would confirm of the mean ol' kitty Dex-Starr would be there - but we interpret that as an absolute yes.
So we were amped as all hell to see some footage and, faster than you can say Krona, we got hit with a little reality check. The animation looks cheap. It's got that overly smooth computer look to it - more suited to a video game. It looks NOTHING like the recent run of DC Animated Original Movies. Maybe the budget needs to stay low on a show that is, let's face it, a little niche. It's the price we pay for having this new expansion of the GL Universe.
In the footage we saw Hal Jordan (a little more on the cocky/Ryan Reynolds side than you might expect) save a train from derailing by ejecting from his fighter jet and constructing a set of tracks for the train to ride upon. Just as all seemed well, we tilt up to see the jet crash into a mountain. "Carol's gonna' kill me." Okay, so there's some humor here.
Next Hal (in GL uniform) flies to Oa. It looks a little more like Tron: Legacy than any version of Oa I've seen. He meets up with Kilowog and Salaak, and gets taken to task by the Guardians for punching a diplomat in the face. It wasn't the face, Jordan protests, but the stomach.
Next we meet an important new character AI - but pronounced Aya. She is the artificial intelligence on a ship that Hal and Kilowog take to go save the day, much to the Guardians' chagrin. The way it sounded, AI was almost a love interest for Hal (he was REALLY coming on to her) but she is, alas, a computer. Curious to see how this plays out.
We saw some of the Red Lanterns in action - the two I mentioned above, plus one I didn't recognize. I have a hunch that was Razor, who, we were told, would later switch sides and become a Green Lantern.
Other details on the show were short, but we were led to believe that if you have Red Lanterns, you are probably going to have Manhunters and Black Lanterns, too. The entire Blackest Night arc would be difficult to work in, though, "because you'd have to introduce a bunch of characters, then kill them so they could come back to life."
Also: the Red Lanterns will have an oath, but one different than in the comics. This is, after all, a show for kids.
