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TIMM: I think on a kind of a primal level,
I think there's just something about having superpowered characters team up
with other superpowered characters is just very appealing.
All right.
DiDIO: Each one ofthem are true individuals
and they all have their own sense of right and wrong.
While they might not share exact same beliefs
they do share a common good and a common goal.
So they then have to adapt and change
and become bigger and better heroes,
to unite and work together.
WOLFMAN: And that's great drama and that’s great storytelling.
It is what has allowed the Justice League to continue
for the last 50 years.
JOHNS: There is a great history to explore in the Justice League.
The team and these characters live in all these different media.
Comic books, animation, video games, toys.
Every generation meet these characters
and a different take on the Justice League.
And now we are seeing the next generation
meeting the Justice League through this film.
DiDIO: If you wanna follow the history of Justice League,
it actually starts not even with the Justice League,
it starts with the Justice Society.
The Justice Society features a lot of the characters that existed in the 19405
and brought them all together in one big story. It was more a club
and an organization than a superhero team,
and it was more about sharing adventures
than actually going on adventures together.
Then you flash fon/vard to the late '503, early '603
when the Silver Age comics are starting,
they're reintroducing these new interpretations of our characters.
So it would only seem to follow suit
that the next interpretations of the Justice Society
is a new group and this was called the Justice League.
It was a smash hit.
LEE: Brave and the Bold number 28, Justice League number 1,
been around since 1960.
What is that? Carry the one...
Like, a long time. They've been around a long, longtime. (CHUCKLES)
They came together because of a giant starfish called Starro.
That was the big threat.
DiDIO: So you start to see Justice League now becoming
an integral portion of the DC Universe.
The Justice League becomes the book where all characters seem to appear.
So, if there's one comic you're supposed to buy that was the one.
My personal favorites are those stories which are the ones where they go out
and try to convince new characters to join the team.
The Atom joins later.
Green Arrow joins later.
They go out there and they search out characters like Zatanna.
They offer the position to Metamorpho.
He turns them down 'cause he doesn’t want to be a hero.
And they keep on introducing new characters.
MORRISON: The thing that really did it for me was the run of stories
that Len Wein wrote in the '703 which were just really great adventures.
What he would do, it wouldn't be
an adventure would finish and then there’d be a new one.
There would be a new one, but there was plot threads that ran through it
so it was very much like television today
where we have an individual episode
but there are massive plot threads that will run through and play out
and mysteries that you have to think about and solve.
So, his Justice League for me was real inspiration.
JOHNS: And then they did Crisis on Infinite Earths
which is the famous comic book storyline by George Pérez and Marv Wolfman.
Crisis came out in the mid ’803.
All the DC heroes, Superman, Batman,
Wonder Woman, Hawkman, Green Lantern, Flash, etc, etc.,
you can go on forever, were all created between 1938 and 1941.
Almost 50 years later, the best characters have been continuing.
Superman, Batman, and Wonder Woman were published non-stop.
Some of the characters were starting to get older.
They don ’t feel as modern anymore.
We needed something to make them special again.
Also, DC was too confusing for new readers.
It had a strange continuity, we had this Multiverse of different planets
filled with multiple versions of the superheroes.
You didn't know who all the characters were.
And my pitch was, let's start with getting rid of the Multiverse.
Let's bring it down to our basic characters.
Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, one of each.
Let’s think about what works and what doesn’t work
and how can we make it work now for 1985?
JOHNS: When Crisis came out, they relaunched a lot of titles.
Superman and Wonder Woman and Flash,
but also Justice League with Giffen, DeMatteis and Kevin Maguire.
It was not the usual team you saw and the tone of it was funny.
There was a lot of humor to it. It was this weird mix of characters
and from the outside it was like, oh, wow,
they're trying to do something new.
It was wonderful.
People really liked it. They were going against the trend
of grim and gritty comics.
It was a great take on the team. And it was cool
to see these strange characters together that we 'd never seen come together
and form the Justice League.
And so for years and years and years,
the Justice League was never the Big Seven, as they called them.
Then you flash forward to Midsummer’s Nightmare
which is really a standalone, independent story.
And that’s the first time you see the seven interacting again.
And lo and behold, the reaction from the fan base is very strong.
Then ultimately that gets you to the big launch point which is JLA.
When Grant Morrison takes hold of the book and really takes
all the primary characters, puts them together,
creates villains and situations that really
are worthy of bringing those seven characters together.
MORRISON: When I committed to it,
I said, can we bring back the Big Seven Justice League?
Can we focus on giant scale adventures that only they could deal with?
The big idea I had, though, was that the Justice League
was so close to the Greek pantheon of gods.
Let's make a point of that, let's actually assign them, you know?
The Flash is Hermes. Superman is Zeus. Batman is Hades.
And it really ﬁts beautifully
'cause the DC characters are such big archetypes.
What I could then do was go back to the Iliad or the Odyssey
or to Celtic or Norse myths and there was such a great wealth of stuff
that could be adapted or science fictionalized or recreated.
So I think that was what I brought to it,
a sense of grandeur, a sense of scope
and the fact that these characters could reach out to every single corner
of the DC Universe and explore it in a new way.
LEE: If you go back to the earliest stories of the Justice League,
there wasn't a lot of conflict between the characters.
It wasn't until later that modern creators came in
and decided if we bring more conflict between these characters,
even though they're heroes,
it makes for a more interesting story. It makes for a more interesting team.
Because it more resembles real life.
MORRISON: We tried to position them as professionals
even though they would sometimes disagree or fall out.
It was all about, "Let's get the job done. "
And I used to love the interplay of using all those powers together
to defeat an enemy that seemed undefeatable.
But if you combine those skills,
and if you're smart enough to get the recipe right,
then the Justice League can pretty much solve any problem.
You do this and you do that
and you do this and we’ll save the world.
That's probably my favorite run of all time.
It was really a special time for Justice League.
LEE: The New 52 was a big publishing initiative we launched in 2011,
where we basically looked at the entire DC Universe and said,
if we could start over, how would we do it?
And so one of the ﬁrst things we could do was redefine the Justice League,
what brought these characters together, and really show readers
the first glimpses of the interactions of the world’s greatest superheroes
and do it in a realistic way
where we showcase the differences between the personalities.
We were back to the team. It was Batman, Superman, Wonder Woman, Flash, Aquaman,
Green Lantern. And that's the first time we brought in Cyborg.
That's the core team we started with and kind of went back to the basics.
Over the years there's been a lot of changes but it always comes back,
no matter how many changes happen in the comic books,
it always comes back to, these are the original characters.
JOHNS: My love for DC Comics,
and speciﬁcally superheroes ’cause I’m all things DC,
comes from Super Friends which was this Saturday morning animated series.
LEE: Back then all we really had was animation
so the Super Friends was the closest thing we had
to seeing the Justice League come to life
'cause you could see them move and they talked
and they interacted and they had a theme song and that’s what made me
go outside and put a towel around my neck and run around like a dork.
It was done under really restrictive TV broadcast standards and practices.
They were not allowed to show characters punching other characters,
so any kind of action they had, it was more like,
Superman would ﬁght a tornado rather than fight another villain.
There were things like that which kept it from its full potential.
TIMM: When we came along and did
our Justice League show in the early 20003...
It gave you a chance to take something that was like a static image on a comic
and bring it into cinematic kind of storytelling.
After we had done two seasons ofJustice League,
Cartoon Network said, "Yeah, we would like you guys to do another season.
But we want to rebrand the show somehow."
I came up with this name, Justice League Unlimited.
And I thought, what does that mean? And that basically means
instead of having just seven superpowered characters,
now we've got 50 some odd superpowered characters.
Basically, any character in the DC Universe is now
automatically a member of the Justice League.
But it allowed us to kinda dig deeper into the DC bench,
so that we could use characters like The Question,
and Hawk and Dove, and Captain Atom.
Characters who are interesting to us as comic book fans.
And they weren't necessarily household names as the other characters.
But it was something that allowed us to expand the scope of the show.
And it turned out to be quite a big hit with the fans.
I always say it was my favorite show of all the shows I’ve ever worked on.
Because every episode was different than every other episode.
And then, doing the Justice League as a series of feature-length movies,
it's interesting, it kinda gives us a little more of a narrow focus
in terms of, instead of having season-long story arcs,
we ’re basically telling movie-length stories,
with still a pretty large ensemble cast.
So, it's tricky from a storytelling standpoint
to make sure that each character is there for a reason.
It’s really tough to accommodate seven lead characters.
We always do try to balance it out.
You wanna make sure they at least get one
really good action sequence in the film.
It’s a juggling act, it's a challenge.
-How many of you are there? -Not enough.
SNYDER: It's challenging to have all these amazing superheroes
together on the screen to tell this big, epic story
with action and spectacle,
but also a lot of character.
And I think Zack does an amazing job balancing all of that out.
Wait until the camera comes around Ben.
SNYDER: It is super exciting to finally bring
all these superheroes, the Justice League,
to the screen for the first time.
-This is amazing. -This is crazy.
FISHER: The day we were all up on the wall for the first time,
it was like watching my 8-year-old dreams come true.
It took me back to those days watching the cartoons,
I almost shed a tear, I will say I held it together pretty good.
It's groundbreaking.
Wow, it's like a cave!
Like a Batcave.
MILLER: lswearl've been blacking out and entering comic frames.
Barry.
MILLER: And living in the world of this invented universe,
and then coming to like, "Whoa, where am I?"
It's very hard to describe the feeling,
when you look out and you see thatAlex Ross painting.
And you see it in front of you, and it's these real people.
It's so amazing!
He's back!
I had this moment the other day on set where I looked up and I saw
Jason, Gal, and Ben, and Ezra, and Ray there,
and I thought, "This is a piece of history happening right now.
And I'm lucky enough to be a part of it."
Well, I knew you didn't bring me back 'cause you liked me.
I don't not...
AFFLECK: It's interesting, because pop culture has chewed up and spit out
so many pop icons over the years.
That's part of what pop culture does,
is sort of consume characters and icons and ideas.
And you start with them looking cool and interesting,
and when it's done with them they seem retro,
then they seem just absurd and goofy and hopelessly dated.
And lot of these core DC characters still don ’t seem dated.
They somehow still work in stories today.
And I think that's just the mark of characters that are very well drawn,
that they still have this kind of resonance.
LEE: The fun and beauty of comic books is that,
when it’s a shared universe,
you're really standing on the shoulders of these creative giants before you.
And everyone acknowledges and understands
that their ideas will be used, and change and evolve
to kind of further this giant storyline that we're all creating.
My man!
DiDIO: As comic book storytellers, we 've been telling the stories
for these characters for over 50 years.
So there '3 so many stories out there,
so many great touchpoints for people to tap into
and pull the ideas out
and mold and create it to what works best
for whatever medium. What works best for television.
What works best for the screen,
so I’m gonna be interested where they take them.
We should always have new versions,
we should always make the books relevant to the current generation.
Keep the characters up-to-date.
Don't let them become your granddaddy's superhero.
You need characters who will reflect the modern age.
-S|owpoke. -Oh, it's on.
CHARLES ROVEN: I’ve been really blessed
to be part of the evolution of the DC Universe.
You have these characters,
and you get to play with their motivations.
And as long as you honor the canon, there's still a lot left that you can do
and that’s a lot of fun.
Big round table.
Six chairs, right there.
But room for more.