James Tucker, on the LSH and Justice League

The new site Justice League on Film has a phone interview with Legion producer James Tucker in which he describes how working on the Justice League cartoons helped him prepare for the second season, and why they made changes. Here's a transcript, but go listen.

I hesitate to say it, but it's almost a whole new show. When I think of the Legion... I'm not a Legion fanatic, but I have followed the Legion sporadically and periodically over the years, and I've been equating the first season with the Silver Age Legion, the original stories in "Adventure Comics", at different times the stories were a little sillier, a little broader. This second season is more toward the late Shooter era, and then going into the Mike Grell, kind of the darker, more serious theme stories. So this second season, while it's connected to the first season, I kind of think of it as a whole new pass on the Legion. But because it's the Legion, it kind of fits in with the way the comic books have always been, which is they radically change from one run of the Legion to another, there are lots of changes, but yet the same characters evolved in different ways. This season takes place roughly two years after the first season, so a lot has changed. The characters have gotten a little older, they've gotten a little more of a well-honed machine as far as being a super-hero group in the 31st century.

Q: Was there a reason you made such changes?

Well, going the route we went with the first season, the first season was conceived as a combination of Justice League with the Teen Titans elements, it was supposed to be a hodgepodge of that, even to the point where the crew was almost roughly half Legion guys [he meant to say Justice League guys] and half Titans guys. Being the producer, I just lean more towards Justice League type stories, so for the second season, I thought for me, the kind of show that I know how to produce has more Justice League elements in it, meaning stronger plots, more adult-skewing themes, still hitting the demographic and appealing to a younger audience, but just more structured stories whereas the Titans kind of had their own kind of... their own aesthetic, and their aesthetic was "whatever sticks on the wall, anything goes, let's try it", and they leaned toward the comedy a lot more. The first season I tried that, and I just didn't think it particularly... there were things that worked and things that didn't. That, and the network requested that several elements be emphasized like more heavy-duty action, they wanted more, they wanted Superman to not be the neophyte any more, they wanted him more advanced in his career. And that necessitated making things later. We had to jump from where we were in the first season to the second season, so to me that meant two years later. When Superman shows up again, he's going to have been in Metropolis, and he will have been a super-hero. It's not like they have to teach him anything."

Interesting: the significant changes from season 1 to season 2 were mandated by the KidsWB suits, not necessarily by the show's producers. And from the credits, they changed the creative staff from nearly the top down, from a co-producer to writers, directors, and even the voice casting director.

And they tossed out one of the unique aspects of the first season with regards to Superman - here he was, with a group of super-powered teenagers who were basically his peers, they showed him how to use his powers and he showed them what it's like to be a hero. They still had that teenager mentality, I think, whereas now they're more adult and mature. As Tucker said, now he doesn't need to be taught. Superman has always been the teacher, it was nice having him be the student for once. Now it's Superman and the Justice League of the 31st century.