DC Super Hero Girls is an all-new animated action-comedy series from Warner Bros. Animation and based on characters from DC Entertainment. Featuring fresh character designs and storytelling from Emmy® Award–winning producer Lauren Faust (Super Best Friends Forever, My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic, Foster’s Home for Imaginary Friends), DC Super Hero Girls will be coming soon to Cartoon Network.

The world may know them as Wonder Woman, Supergirl and Batgirl, but not-so-typical teenagers Diana, Kara and Barbara, alongside their Super Hero friends have much more to deal with than just protecting the citizens of Metropolis from some of the most sinister school-aged Super-Villains of the DC Universe.

After all, being teens is tough enough, what with school, friends, family and the chaos that comes with managing a social life. But add super powers and a secret identity to the mix, and things can get a lot more complicated.

The new series is a global initiative with Cartoon Network and builds on the successful DC Super Hero Girls global franchise, including direct-to-video movies as well as digital webisodes launched in 2015 and viewed by millions of fans on the DC Super Hero Girls YouTube channel, as well as the DC Super Hero Girls mobile app.

Lauren Faust is executive producer with Sam Register (Teen Titans Go!) also serving as executive producer.

https://www.newsarama.com/40038-dc-s...n-tv-show.html

As someone who has watched just about everything DC Super Hero Girls related with my 8 year old daughter, I don't like the new look of the characters. But of course, i'm not the age group this show is aiming for either.

Ugh, more ugly as sin character designs that ruin any chance of us watching it.

My daughter loves Supergirl and Batgirl and as a result loved the DC Super Hero Girls web series and the movies that came from it. She's 4 years old... and even she said this is terrible.

Well, I wanted more Super Best Friends Forever anyway (which was also from Faust), and my older daughter loves Teen Titans Go, so I'm ok with this. Now if the rumors are true that Justice League Action are cancelled, however...

Also it seems like Harley is actually a bad guy in this, which I feel better about.

This "franchise" is apparently a merchandising bonanza for DC. The designs do look a little off but these things are now heavily focus-grouped and tested with children before seeing air.

Looks fine to me. I love the concept and anything that aims super heroes at girls, I'm ok with.

Wow, yeah, my 5-year-old daughter has watched everything, so I'm not sure how she's going to take to the new designs. Her first experience with a reboot/reimagining!

Still no launch date for the series?

I've been catching up on this on one of DC's youtube channels and I love it. I'll be cheking out the new version.

In the 80s, 90s, and 00s, DC had better TV shows, movies, and toys than Marvel, and were more culturally relevant. Now, Marvel has better movies, cartoons, probably better toys and comics (I'm not as informed), and are more culturally relevant. I'm tired of their brand being associated with lower and lower quality. My daughter was into Justice League Action, lasted like 20 episodes. It's like if they put out a cartoon and it turns out to be good it will be dumbed down and cheapened. I clicked on this thread expecting "redesigned" = crappier and why wouldn't I. There's a lost generation of fans now that look at DC characters like RC cola.

Marvel does have better toys, DC (post Rebirth) probably has better comics right now. DC arguably has better live action shows. Movies is a slam dunk. Cartoon, I really believe that the main reason Marvel has a leg up is because they have Disney backing them and an outlet for their cartoons, while DC has whatever 2am timeslot CN deems to give them.

Justice League Action was fantastic (and I still haven't seen an official report of it's death, but I'm pretty sure it's coming). Young Justice, Brave and the Bold, Green Lantern, etc. were all great but moved all over the lineup (even JLU was kinda moved around a lot IIRC). CN seemed like they were going all in on DC with their DC Nation block and shorts but killed it and TTGo is like the last remnant from that. CN's main thing is that if it's not Star Wars, action shows won't work without a heavy dose of comedy and lots of toy sales. Disney XD doesn't seem to care about that.

The good news is that, with the DC Universe streaming service, there will be a dedicated outlet devoted to anything and everything DCU.

The bad news is, who will pay for it?

If the streaming service has all the DCAU titles (Batman: TAS, Superman, JLU, Batman Beyond), all post-DCAU (Teen Titans, Young Justice, The Batman, Batman Brave and The Bold, Legion of Super Heroes, Static Shock), the Arrowverse, heck even the 60s Batman TV series, Lois and Clark, 90s Flash, the old Superboy syndicated TV show, Superfriends iterations, 60s/70s DC cartoons... along with their original programming? Sign my ass up.

I've actually turned around on this a little.

If CN has indeed cancelled Justice League Action, and they think that action cartoons are no longer worth showing, I will subscribe to the DC streaming service for YJ and watch it in the first week (assuming they measure these things similar to how Netflix does). I probably won't keep the subscription long term but I'll repeat whenever a new action cartoon comes out. Probably won't make much of a difference but I'll reward them for putting out stuff that I (and my kids) will like.

I like Legends of Tomorrow a lot but Legion is the best comicbook live action show ever by such a large margin for me, then you've got he Netflix shows and again, all the DC shows get worse year after year (except for Legends which was buoyed when they got rid of Rip).

For the cartoons, yeah promotion is definitely a factor, and Cartoon Network is the likeliest channel to make your season pass irrelevant because the schedule is wrong. But imagine if you were working on one of those shows that went 1 or 2 seasons, you never saw a single internet ad or commercial for your show, you tried to DVR it and it recorded the wrong thing, you saw the toys based on your show and they were of the lowest quality, then your show doesn't get picked up and it's because they didn't sell enough toys. Their model is fatally flawed. Disney has a million things to promote, but I'm aware when Guardians of the Galaxy is coming back on the air or if they're doing a spinoff, and when they retooled Avengers and Spider-man it's clear they were trying to build on the previous ones to look more like the movies, it wasn't like they went from Young Justice to Teen Titans Go.

Eh, Marvel definitely has the live-action movie field owned.

I also believe Marvel's TV Shows on Netflix are superior to DC's Arrowverse, because of shorter seasons, allowing tighter plots and less filler. Arrow and Flash both were great for the first 2 seasons, but since then have mostly been bad to mediocre. Supergirl was only good for it's first season, then they opted to use it to push political agendas rather than tell a good story... and Legends of Tomorrow didn't really start shining until it's last season. Black Lightning was great so far, but I'm sure most people, including myself, didn't know about the character until the show was announced. While Legion has been solid.

As far as cartoons go, I'd give it to DC, because we like the DC Animated Movie Universe and my daughter loved DC Super Hero Girls. But we don't watch any Marvel cartoons currently running.

However with the redesign of DC Super Hero Girls, my 4 year old daughter, said it's terrible and doesn't want to watch it. Shame they're alienating the very people they're aiming to please with that show.

Where is this coming from? It's a complete misreading of the popular zeitgeist. Marvel's movie dominance and Disney's marketing machine for said movies seems to be disrupting your perception of the market. The Marvel movies are far more popular, that much is true. Marvel has pretty much failed in every other market since Disney acquired them.

Most avid comic book readers think DC is doing much better these days than Marvel Comics. Sales were slipping so bad at Marvel Comics they had to reorganize their editorial staff and change leadership. Marvel basically doesn't have an animation department left, it's folded in under Marvel's TV division.

Super Hero Girls has been a sales bonanza for DC Comics in all mediums. Check your local retail store's toy section. They are loaded with DC Super Hero Girls dolls and action figures. The annual report estimated the entire line may eventually gross a billion in sales.

Just to be clear, when I said movies are a slam dunk I meant that Marvel is winning there.

I bought my daughter the 3 girls clearanced at Target for like $12 total. I’ve seen them a bunch I guess but if they are completely redoing the show they couldn’t have been that successful, I mean there are 2 guys with disappointed kids on this page.

I get the impression that Marvel is better situated online than DC. The comics seem better promoted, I’ve been meaning to read the Coates Black Panther, Fraction Hawkeye, and the Vision Little more than man. They have these blowout kindle sales and gave away those 3 graphic novels in newsletters. I assume print sales are horrible for everyone.

Marvel apparently didn't realize that amazon was blowing out their titles with the 99c sales and put a stop to it (I still don't understand what the heck happened, but hey, cheap comics). They certainly have incredible runs by great creators but the past two or so years have been pretty dismal for them, compared to the DC Rebirth era.

Also keep in mind that the "old" Superhero Girls series was basically a bunch of web videos and direct to DVD stuff. Reinventing it might have been their only choice to get CN to bite.

This aired last week, a one hour special basically introducing the team. My kids love it. They have a pretty diverse cast and diverse personalities, and I kind of hope this catches on like Faust's last show, MLP (they even have a Fluttershy in this).

The plot is garbage, though. Like absolute garbage. I guess when you have WW, Supergirl, Zatanna and a green lantern all on the same team, you can't just have them overwhelm the bad guys with sheer power all the time but man.

The main thing is if CN is going to treat this like TT Go or like Justice League Action.

Cartoon Network's entire corporate structure has been changed in the past couple of months and been reorganized under new leadership. Ratings have been in freefall for all children's programming (Nick, Disney and CN) aimed at the pre-teen market since younger and younger kids these days feel comfortable watching YouTube content and the like on tablets. Younger kids just don't like sitting through long-form tv content as much as they once did.

Supposedly the DC stuff is going to get much better treatment under the new Cartoon Network.

I am not a huge fan of the new character designs for this updated Super Hero Girls show, preferring the originals, but I know the creator has a gigantic fan following from My Little Pony.

I really don't get DC's Super Hero Girls line. They only made 3(?) direct to video movies but marketed the hell out of the designs with toys and costumes to the point where the merch way exceeded the media and it was perfectly poised to launch an ultra popular TV series but now they reboot it without giving it a proper series? My 7 y.o. loves Harley but as the DC super hero girls good guy.

They also had a bunch of short webisodes, a lego line, and a few lego direct to video movies along with a comic with the old designs.

I can only assume that in order to sell a series to CN, they had to revamp it, and Lauren Faust being attached to it coming off of MLP helped a ton. I mean, these are basically MLP-like personalities grafted onto a superhero group. And the short that played before Teen Titans Go To the Movies was basically an adapted Super Best Friends Forever skit from the DC Nations shorts.

As far as merchandise goes, the one I don't get is the Marvel Rising Secret Warriors show, the one with Squirrel Girl, Quake, Spider-gwen, Ms. Marvel, etc. They basically have a complete toyline out for it (and costumes for Halloween) but it was basically a few shorts and one special, and no ongoing show in site. It's already fading from the toy aisle. You figure they would have launched this right after Spider-verse to take advantage of the Spider Gwen exposure, but nope. So maybe the previous Super Hero Girls line basically sold what it could and needed a marketing refresh for retail stores as well.

Basically what happened was that the original line became a billion-dollar merchandising juggernaut (literally, it made more money than the rest of DC in one year) and the original designs were never expected to become that successful, so they used them in a few cheap DTV movies. Realizing they were sitting on a goldmine and could hook an entire generation of young girls onto DC properties, they went hard after Lauren Faust to supervise this cartoon adaptation. It's a gambit to enshrine these characters into the next generation of female consumers.

So that is why the original designs all got tossed and they got a prominent female creator to "head" this line.

Interesting, do you have an article with an in depth look or is that insider knowledge?

I guess I'm surprised that they didn't at least keep the toyline going and instead they have somewhat of a gap.

Thanks for the information that's fascinating. It's hard to believe they didn't think it would be that successful. They pushed those designs hard. Basically every product imaginable...except a stable ongoing TV series that would have kept interest high. I guess you don't really need that to sell toys but instead of a successful consistent cash cow they could have milked for a decade or so they basically had a goose that laid one golden egg. Didn't they learn anything from toy makers of the 80's? And I think it's a huge gamble. I think they risk alienating a lot of the fanbase (let me clarify the fanbase of the previous iteration of DC super hero girls consisting of girls 4-10) by changing the design. With so many choices for toys these days it's really risky doing that.

I probably came across the info on one of the many Reddits devoted to animation and cartoons - there's an entire niche sub-culture built around the Western animation industry. They link all sorts of places. Cartoon Network is a hot topic of discussion and insider gossip.
This would be my speculation, but DC is likely hoping that Lauren Faust does for girls and DC superheroines what Bruce Timm and others did for Batman back in the 1990s with Batman: The Animated Series. It's about building a brand in a certain age group and demographic that will last for years.