Animated LSH news 34: Superboy's out?

According to a poster at LegionWorld, the team working on the animated series has gone back and reworked the show to remove Superboy due to the ramifications of the Siegel Superboy suit.

I met and talked to someone who works in connection to the show yesterday, and have some good news and bad news:

Firstly, the art style of the show is supposedly closer to the Bruce Timm DCAU style than the promo art we've seen so far. That's neither good nor bad for me, because I like both...but I'm sure some people will be happy.

The bad news is that due to losing the lawsuit with the Seigel and Schuster heirs, DC can't use the name 'Superboy' in the show. (Note: this is inaccurate, but was corrected below)

At all.

So all the episodes completed up to this point have had to be re-dubbed, calling the character 'Superman.' Apparantly, there is even some discussion as to whether the character now is even Superman as a boy...or if he will be an adult Superman who has been de-aged somehow. Yeesh, I hope that doesn't happen.

The good news is that we should be seeing the series around September. Also, there is a full toy line in the works from Mattel...can't wait for that.

He wrote in another post that he apparently misunderstood the bit about the lawsuit, correcting himself and adding more:

My impression was that they needed to move forward in order to get the show out on time, so who knows... maybe the name change is more of a 'better safe than sorry' thing, rather than them actually losing yet. (And yeah, you're right about it only being the Siegel heirs)

My source seemed reliable to me...he said that when it came up they were going to have to re-dub all references to 'Superboy', he had suggested they change it to 'Kal-El', which I think would have made a great middle ground...but I guess they felt it would not have the same level of public recognition.

Stay tooned for more.