Animated Legion exclusive news!

Update: April Fool's!

• "Avril van de Dwaas" is Dutch for "April Fool". Thanks to Babelfish.
  
• Gabe Dell (Mordru) died in 1988. Kind of tough for him to be in the show.
  
• Lirpa Sloof - this was supposed to be the giveaway in case someone fell for it up to this point.
  
• Freedonia is a fictional country.
  

Every link in here is legitimate, though.

Here's a huge list of April Fools hoaxes perpetrated today, from Google Romance to Slashdot's "OMG Ponies" theme to http://wideurl.com/.

Scott at Legion Clubhouse worked with me on our co-hoax, but thehutch at Monitor Duty was a lucky coincidence.

I made Warren Ellis' "Link of the Day" list. No doubt if Mark Waid, Jessica Alba, or Harvey Fierstein had blogs, I'd be in their lists too.

(Now, I wonder how my hit rate will change now that I have "Jessica Alba" as a search term?)

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Update 4/1, noon: Scott at Legion Clubhouse has more news...Melissa Joan Hart reprising her role as Saturn Girl and Michael Rosenbaum as Cosmic Boy, with the pilot scripted by none other than Keith Giffen and Tom & Mary Bierbaum (aka "TMK"). I'm not sure what to think about that last one - Five Years Later on TV? I was not a fan of their v4 comic.

Also, thehutch over at Monitor Duty, while getting a few of the details wrong (he says it's Timm and company with a spinoff from the upcoming JLU episode), says:

There will be a 90-minute movie (essentially the first three episodes shown all at once, like they did with Superman and Justice League's pilots) which will be shown in late 2006, but the series itself won't launch until early 2007.

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Imagine Mark Waid on a Legion project with Warren Ellis. Then throw in Jessica Alba. Interested?

Through a friend of a friend of a friend, I was able to talk via email with Avril van de Dwaas, whose job at Cartoon Network includes shepherding the new Legion series along. She agreed to answer some of my questions and passed along some exclusive new names to add to the list of actors and staff already known.

They haven't officially decided on the series title yet, by the way, they're still deciding between Superboy and the Legion of Super-Heroes (SLSH), Superboy and the Legion (SatL), or Legion of Super-Heroes (LSH). She said the pictures we've seen so far - and they've seen them too, on the various web sites - are indeed early concept art but they're not the final version (which she said would "knock [our] socks off").

Avril gave me two Legionnaire voices and three villain voices, and one writer who will provide at least a couple of episode scripts. With her permission, here are the voices and what she had to say about them:

Warren Ellis (IMDB, official site), writer

Warren did an episode of Justice League for us and at the time he expressed an interest in writing other scripts in the future (no pun intended!), so we were able to convince him to contribute to the Legion series.

Jessica Alba (IMDB, Wikipedia), as Phantom Girl

Jessica is a big fan of the Legion, and when she heard the rumors last year during the Fantastic Four publicity tours that a Legion series was in the works, she had her representatives contact us to see if she could do a voice on the series. We're trying to work out a recording schedule that fits her filming schedule, so you may see several Phantom Girl-less episodes and then a bunch where she's in it. We're really excited to have a big name like her on board.

Mark Waid (IMDB, Wikipedia), as Bouncing Boy

This is going to shock a lot of people, but Mark Waid has a really good actor's voice. He practically begged for an audition and on a lark we let him, primarily because he's the writer of the current series and a long-time fan himself. He told us he has been trying to get Bouncing Boy into the comic book and if he couldn't give a voice to Chuck in print, he wanted to try to do it on the small screen. His readings blew us away, they captured what we wanted to hear (and see) in Bouncing Boy.

Gabe Dell (IMDB), as Mordru

Most people won't remember the Legends of the Super-Heroes show from 1979, but someone on the staff did. That was a show in the 1960's Batman show style, a two-parter called "Challenge of the Super-Heroes" and then a "Roast" show. Well, for some reason, Mordru was one of the villains on that series, and we were able to track down Gabe Dell who portrayed Mordru to see if he wanted to reprise his role on our new series. Dell was an actor in the Golden Age of Hollywood in the 30's and 40's, and while he's in his late 80's and mostly retired, he still has what it takes to be a voice actor. We're proud to have him on board.

Harvey Fierstein (IMDB), as Grimbor

We wanted to camp up this character and bring him into the 21st century (or should that be 31st?). He's going to come out of the closet. When you see this great big man in leather and chains, we thought that Harvey would do him justice.

Lirpa Sloof (IMDB, official site), as Validus

Lirpa's agent got him an audition, and we're pretty happy with the results. He's new to this country, but in his home country of Freedonia, he's a minor celebrity. He does voiceover work for animated shows in his native tongue and he's good with vocal sound effects. Fortunately Validus doesn't speak English, but Lirpa is great with the growls. If you close your eyes and think of how Validus would sound, this is it.

So, what do you guys think?