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SHERMAN OAKS, Calif. -- As Elmer Fudd might say, it's "vewwy quiet."

The facilities at Warner Bros. Animation are next to empty. Cubicles that normally house the folks who help create some of the most colorful characters on television are stripped. No one's about.

Walls that would be plastered with model sheets, storyboards and various forms of inspiration are blank, except for scattered Justice League coloring book pages and a kid's drawing of Spider-Man.

It's downtime for the studio. This season's episodes are in the very final stages of completion, and the animators are awaiting word on what shows the networks will be picking up for next fall.

Keep walking, though, and you finally see signs of life, the row of producers' offices, where the likes of Bruce Timm, Alan Burnett and Paul Dini oversee their projects.

That's where we find the subject of the intended interview -- James Tucker -- arriving back at his office.

As part of Timm's gang of creators, Tucker has been an important part of such shows as Superman, Batman Beyond and the two Justice League series.

This past year, Tucker became a show-runner, guiding DC Comics' beloved Legion of Super-Heroes into their own animated series for the first time as one of the stalwarts on Kids' WB!'s Saturday morning line-up.

With seven new episodes yet to air this season and a good possibility of a second season, The Continuum sat down with Tucker last week to talk about his Legion experiences and hopes for the next year.

Following is the first of a two-part interview. Look for the second part on Thursday.

The Continuum: This place is basically barren. You're done with the first season?

Tucker: Oh, yeah. We had an order of 13 and generally that takes about a year. Last year we started around this time. So when we know about our second season, we will be starting around this time.

The Continuum: Are the episodes completely done?

Tucker: We mixed the next-to-the-last one yesterday and we mix the last one tomorrow. They just have to show them now. (laughs)

The Continuum: On Legion, you're the show-runner. How has that experience compared with what else you've done?

Tucker: In the past, I've been a co-producer with Bruce Timm, and then Dwayne McDuffie and Bruce Timm on Justice League Unlimited. The division of labor was different then. Bruce was in charge and we all kind of pitched in and divided up everything. When you're the sole show-runner, a lot more is on you. It's been grueling. It's very intense, especially to do a team show.

Legion is like compressing three years of Justice League into one year. All the decisions came through me, as opposed to me or Bruce.

The Continuum: Did you like that responsibility?

Tucker: I liked parts of it. Other parts were a little overwhelming. I thought I knew what being a producer was having been on Justice League. It's a whole other thing when the buck stops with you.

My job on Justice League, I knew what Bruce would want and so it was to save him time. Anything he didn't need to see, I saw. There's millions of decisions a day and basically it was my job to cut his down to...

The Continuum: Half a million.

Tucker: Half a million, yeah. That's basically what a co-producer does, at least that's what I did on Justice League.

On this one, I get all the decisions. Everything that goes through, I'm asked. It's overwhelming. If it would have been a single-character show or a single-focus show like a Batman, I think it wouldn't have been quite as overwhelming.

But it was fun. I enjoyed it. I'm really happy with the way the season ended up. And I think, really, the best shows are to come and haven't aired yet.

The Continuum: Obviously, you're aware of the Legion fan base...

Tucker: Oh, sure.

The Continuum: And generally, the reaction has been really good.

Tucker: Yeah, I was shocked. Working with Bruce on everything, usually the first gut reactions to a show are negative -- even if the show goes on to be very popular and well-respected.

Starting with Superman ­ there wasn't a big Internet for people to glom on to back then ­ but a lot of people were comparing it to Batman: The Animated Series. And they were disappointed it wasn't Fleischer. The first reactions are always negative, same with the New Batman Adventures, same with Batman Beyond, same with Justice League, same with Justice League Unlimited. When Justice League Unlimited was first announced there, was a barrage of negativity.

So when Legion didn't get that, I was like, "Uh-oh, I must be doing something wrong." (laughs)

I look at Legion as a great franchise and there's only a few things that needed to be changed to suit the intended audience. So why throw it all out if I didn't have to? It just makes my job easier. I didn't have time to reinvent it, and I wouldn't have wanted to. I tried to keep the gist of what the Legion was.

The Continuum: You didn't reinvent it, but it's still kind of yours. How would you describe your Legion?

Tucker: A little bit country and a little bit rock 'n roll. (laughs) I just thought what I wanted to see when I was a kid and what did I like when I was a kid. That's all you can really do when you're doing these things. If the Legion were on as a cartoon when I was a kid, how would I want to see it? And just given my particular tastes and things...

I didn't have full control over every aspect of it. I didn't write every one of them. But I thought that with the style of it, I didn't want it to be heavy, I didn't want it to be sterile science fiction. I want to mix a lot more fantasy into it. Basically, the era I was born into was the Mike Grell/Jim Shooter era. So I kind of wanted to have a little funkier edge to it, a little more mod, for lack of a better word. Something that boys could tap into, but it wouldn't scare off girls and it wouldn't be too adult-skewing.

Although I hear it is adult-skewing and I don't know how that happened.

The Continuum: I would think because of the fan base.

Tucker: I would think so, too. The fans have been great. Legion fans are awesome.

I've been accused on this show of gearing it to fandom and not really thinking about kids, but kids adapt to whatever you give them as long as you make sure there's enough interest there and it doesn't go over their heads.

Kids liked Justice League Unlimited. I can't tell you how many times a parent would say to me, "I watched Justice League Unlimited with my kid and he loves it." Even though that was very adult-skewing, there was stuff in there a kid could watch. And the stuff that went over his just went over his head.

Working with Bruce, we like to do entertainment that grows with you. So you really don't outgrow it, you go to another level and then there's something you understand more that maybe you didn't understand earlier on.

Like I said, I could only make the show that would interest me.

The Continuum: Your instincts seem to be working.

Tucker: Well, thank you. I'm glad the fans like it. Our ratings have been picking up lately, and I think that had to do with the fact we're on a new network for all intents and purposes and people didn't know how to find it. Now that they're starting to go up, I'm really happy about that.

The Continuum: With Teen Titans, the characters seemed to quickly grow to be very defined and likeable. Only six Legion shows have aired, but do you see the characters doing that?

Tucker: With the types of characters the Teen Titans had, they were, not stronger, but more easily defined. And Glen Murakami really pared them to their essential elements. And I didn't want to do that with Legion because we didn't want Legion to be as young-skewing as Titans. I wanted the stories to be a little more complex. But having said that, you still need that level of character. And when you're doing complex character studies, that takes a little more time to build up.

I definitely think the second half of our season, things definitely start to fall into place. But because people who have watched the show have only seen these same six episodes, things are getting put into place, but they haven't gelled yet.

I think ours is a slower build, whereas Titans came out of the gate running because their types were clearly defined almost immediately. Robin was the leader, the strict cop. Beast Boy was the goofball. Raven was the Goth, Starfire the airhead, etc.

Our characters aren't that clearly defined with one sentence. For good or ill, I thought we could be more complex than that.

With Titans, you had that instant in because you know who Robin is. And once you know who Robin is, everything falls off of him.

We kind of have that with Superman, though this Superman is a Superman no one has every seen before because he's a novice. Apart from Smallville, no one has really done that. This is the point where he's starting, he's just put on the costume. So it's almost the point after Smallville. Which I thought was an interesting hook for the show.

COMING THURSDAY: In part two, Tucker talks about working with DC Comics on the show, a second season and building a future world.

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Posted by Awesomegirl on :
 
Thanks Lightning lad, I can't wait for part 2
 

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Posted by DrakeB3004 on :
 
Two new members - cool! I'm guessing one of them will be Ferro Lad. The other? Dawnstar! (random guess)
 

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Posted by Lightning Lad on :
 
Part two is up already. Not as exciting as I had hoped, no real revelations. But I am looking forward to Tucker's comments on the yet-to-be aired episodes the CC is promising.

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SHERMAN OAKS, Calif. --The Continuum today continues its two-part interview with James Tucker, producer of the Legion of Super Heroes animated series on Kids' WB!.

The Continuum: Talk about how much DC Comics is involved with the show.

Tucker: Well, they give notes. We send them our outlines, they give us notes on it. They have approval power over characters and stuff. And if there's something that feel that doesn't fit right with the Legion, they'll tell us. We've had a few instances where we had to change some characters around. And we've have some issues that deal with licenses. You would think that if Superman is in the Legion, then everything that is Superman falls into the Legion, too, but it doesn't work that way.

It was a challenging year, figuring out what we could and couldn't do. But it all worked out, and they've been great.

The Continuum: Is it safe to say, in today's animation, a second season of a show is usually better than the first?

Tucker: All things considered, yeah. I can't speak for anyone but myself...(pauses) I don't know if I can say that actually. Because the first season of Batman Beyond was dynamite, but through circumstances the successive seasons got a little watered down -- even though there were gems in those other seasons. But that first season was really stellar.

But with other shows, the first season of Justice League didn't hit its stride. In the second season, suddenly things were playing a lot better. And in Justice League Unlimited, it was great.

So, sometimes it does. Sometimes, it doesn't.

I definitely say for Legion it will because there are things we want to do and that we've talked about that I'm really excited about. I think setting up all the characters in the first season has been done. And that's something you can't get around. People just have to have patience with you. Hopefully, while you're building up these characters, you're telling good, interesting stories about them.

People only warm up to characters when they think they know them. And it takes a while, sometimes, to get to know a person. And sometimes, characters don't work out. You have to learn that this character is gelling better, so therefore you pull him or her forward, and that this character isn't, so you recede them.

The great thing about The Legion is that there are so many characters to pick from, if one doesn't work, you can re-shuffle them pretty easily without affecting the show. With Titans, those five characters had to work because it wasn't opened up to a lot of other characters until the later seasons.

With me, I could have gone that way with Legion. But I just thought that it says "Legion" in the title and you just have to have more than five characters. You just have to. And even if there's just cameos, the idea is that it's a legion of super-heroes.

On Justice League Unlimited, we didn't have to know every single hero you saw in the Watchtower. If you were a comic-book fan and you saw them and you knew them, that's fine. But if you were just a casual viewer, you could just look at it as a guy in the background who has a cool costume on. It was not important that you knew his back-story or anything.

The Continuum: You're hoping for a second season and you should know soon, but it definitely sounds like you will be back if there is one.

Tucker: Yes.

The Continuum: So you've been thinking about what you would do? I've heard stories are already being worked on.

Tucker: We have to proceed as if we're doing it. You have to be ready. You leave all that stuff up to the people in charge. You have to act as if it's happening and change course if it doesn't.

The Continuum: So you're excited about the prospects of a second season?

Tucker: I'm excited about the stories we've talked about and the direction we're taking with it. The great thing about Legion is that reboots are kind of built into the history of it, and I think Legion fans are flexible enough where if things are changed, it won't feel so radical. If we get our shot, things will change. That's what I like about Legion. You're not fixed to one specific continuity. It's open to change.

The Continuum: I just got a new HDTV and the first thing I saw on it was the "Timber Wolf" episode. It was really impressive-looking -- maybe because of the TV -- but I was also impressed with the backgrounds on that one.

Tucker: They were awesome. That was mainly Craig Robertson and Richard Kim, who were background painters on Justice League Unlimited. Everyone mentions that episode for the backgrounds. They're very colorful. It was supposed to be a scary story, but I wanted it to feel more alien, and I just thought their color choices were awesome.

I think that was one of the best-looking episodes of the six that are airing. There's more to come.

The Continuum: I think that with the look of the show, it must be challenging because you're creating whole new worlds.

Tucker: Yeah, there's no stock that we can use from Justice League that would carry over into this. In animation, especially in this building when you have five shows going on, if you need a cityscape, we have a computer, you can go it and say, "I need that city" and it's from another show. Static Shock used to use Justice League backgrounds.

With this, there's nothing. There were a few Justice League shows that took place in outer space, but not many. So we pretty much had to create it from scratch.

The Continuum: It's pretty much a certainty there will be Legion toys.

Tucker: I don't know how much I can say. Definitely, we were in talks for toys. That kind of talk starts the minute the show is green-lighted. I don't know if there actually will be toys, but there were talks and prototypes.

The Continuum: Judging from your office, you're someone who likes toys. Is there anything you want to see?

Tucker: From this season? Actually, I would like to see a Starfinger toy, but I know they're not going to do that. Just from the Justice League mold, if they do all the Legionnaires that we've designed, even if they've just been in a cameo. If they do like a three-pack where you have Superman and Lightning Lad as the mains and they throw in an extra one, that would be great.

The Continuum: Do you like being part of the DVDs, like the Justice League ones?

Tucker: Sometimes. The last few Justice Leagues, I was in the middle of production on Legion and my head was really scattered.

But I love the DVDs. You work on these and the excitement of making the shows and all the things that went into the making of them, there's a story behind every episode. We quickly forget the information, and I know there's lots of stuff that fans would love to hear or know about. You're on to something else and you don't have time to reminisce or think about. So I think as a document of our process...

We made Justice League to be a perennial classic. Hopefully, it will stand the test of time. It's the best animated action show I've seen. And I'm saying that just as a viewer; there isn't an ego involved at all. If I was a fan, I would have loved it.

It really needs to be documented, the process and what went into it. It wasn't easy. It wasn't an easy to show to do. There were lots of arguments and gnashing of teeth to get it there. So I'm glad we do have the DVDs to at least document what happened, even though we're only scratching the surface on a lot of them.

THERE'S MORE!: Tucker also commented on each upcoming individual episode in Legion's first season. Look for those comments soon here in The Continuum.

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