Warner Bros. Animation continues to glean beloved characters from DC’s expansive library for their DC Showcase line of animated shorts, this time opting to elevate Constantine, Kamandi, The Losers, and Blue Beetle in their 2021-2022 compilation release.
While Kamandi: The Last Boy on Earth!, The Losers and Blue Beetle have previously appeared as enhanced content on past DC Universe Movies, the extended-length Constantine – The House of Mystery makes its debut as the anchor for this shorts compilation. The quartet are produced by Rick Morales, Jim Krieg and Sam Register.
Ahead of the DC Showcase’s release, STARBURST spoke with Milo Neuman about directing two of the shorts: the first is The Losers, a story about a rag-tag team of World War II outcasts who find themselves marooned on an uncharted island overrun with dinosaurs; the second is Blue Beetle, an incredibly fun homage to 1960s Saturday-morning cartoons about Ted Kord (alias Blue Beetle) as he teams up with Captain Atom, The Question and Nightshade to battle Doctor Spectro.
You’ve worked as a storyboard artist for many years, but these shorts mark your directorial debut. How did you find the transition, and what attracted you to directing?
Milo Neuman: Before being offered the job, I hadn’t really thought too much about directing anything. A lot of storyboard artists go on to be directors at some point, so I assumed at some point I’d be doing too – but at the time, I’d only been storyboarding for three of four years. So, I didn’t really feel I was ready for that yet; maybe if I’d been boarding for ten years, then I’d start directing. But our producer Rick Morales, who I was working on the second Mortal Kombat with, just one day came to me and was like, “We need a director for one of the shorts, and do you want to give it a shot?”. I felt very unprepared for it but I wasn’t going to say no! And it was an amazing experience. You’re still doing a lot of the same jobs as you’d be doing as a storyboard artist, only on a larger scale and with a bit more overseeing – but fundamentally, the skill set is similar, which is nice.
Would you do it again?
Milo Neuman: I’d love to! I mean, I was working on these in 2019 and I haven’t directed since then, but I hope I get the chance. I’m not pursuing it too eagerly – I like doing storyboards and I have no complaints about that. But yes, I hope so!
Coming from an artistic background, what were your stylistic inspirations for each short?
Milo Neuman: As far as the design of the shorts, most of those decisions were made before I was brought on to either of them; the character designs, the general look and style had already been decided. Even for Blue Beetle we did a very old-fashioned Spider-Man cartoon style, and that decision was made before I was even hired to work on them. My brief was to take these styles – in the case of The Losers, it’s more of a pulp adventure story – and try to capture that essence.
When you were first approached, how knowledgeable were you about these respective characters?
Milo Neuman: Not very. I mean, I kind of knew of the Losers from the beginning of The New Frontier, which has always been one of my favourite DC comics. I hadn’t really read any of their old stuff, so I went back and read a bunch of their comics in the lead-up to directing the short. Interestingly, those comics weren’t about WW2 soldiers fighting dinosaurs like we did in the short, or like Darwyn Cook did in New Frontier – they were more a team-up group going around having very WW2 adventures fighting Nazis. And it was Darwyn Cook who mashed them up with these other comics about generic soldiers fighting dinosaurs [The War That Time Forgot], to create the alternate-universe The New Frontier series, which we decided to use in the short.
It’s funny how you can watch The Losers without batting an eye and it takes actually hearing it described out loud to realise how batshit it is.
Milo Neuman: [laughs] It’s a very pulpy concept, and I think that’s what’s fun about it. Personally, I really drew a lot of inspiration from George Lucas and Steven Spielberg in the 70s and 80s, who were doing these family adventure films that were rooted in this old-fashioned, pulp aesthetic sensibility, but revitalised and modernised for their generation. I was thinking about those films a lot when I was working on the short, as far as shot choices and the editing.
When you first read the scripts and saw the initial storyboards, what elements were you most excited about in either project?
Milo Neuman: What we decided to do with Blue Beetle, I was so excited about. I think The Losers was a little bit more traditional, more the type of storytelling that I’m used to. But with Blue Beetle, we had this style we were going for that was really trying to evoke the classic Spider-Man cartoons of the 60s or the old Batman cartoons. And that entailed us making a lot of very deliberate mistakes to mimic the organic mistakes that they would make with those cartoons. It was a crazy thing to do, so I was very excited about it.
Do you feel like the short format gives you more or less freedom with the direction?
Milo Neuman: It’s probably more freedom than I would have had if I was working on a direct-to-video movie or something like that, because of the small scale. I didn’t have a lot of say in the story, just because the scripts were finished before I came in. We stayed very close to the script with Blue Beetle, and I think on The Losers we ended up having a few discussions with the producer to fix some story issues, but I think we ended up doing a pretty good job at the end of it! But again, I had some individual freedom but mostly it was a very collaborative process.
What kind of changes did you make in The Losers?
Milo Neuman: It’s been a couple of years, so I don’t remember the original script. I just remember that it felt like there wasn’t enough tension in the third act, so we did a first pass on the boards and tweaked the script a little bit. That was the part that we probably worked the hardest on as a team, particularly trying to put more tension into the bit where the T-Rex chases the main character and corners them. I think all the hard work paid off, but that was definitely one of the trickier elements.
You really see that Spielberg influence come through in that scene.
Milo Neuman: I think that was one of the bits where I wanted it to be like a live action movie as much as possible, even though it’s animated. I think a really quick way of making something look like a cartoon is to have characters running side by side on a flat plane, like Super Mario Brothers or something. That’s the stuff I try to avoid as much as possible, so any time I can have big foreground elements that are a little out of focus, that makes it feel like there’s space and things aren’t two-dimensional. Any time I can have characters running towards or away from the screen, that gives it depth, and that’s what I really love. That scene with the T-Rex was about creating a space that’s really claustrophobic and that makes you feel like you’re in there. That’s what I want, to transport people and make them feel like they’re part of the action.
You’ve said you’re not actively pursuing directing at the moment but, in the future, if you could pick any lesser-known DC character to make a feature film about, who would you choose?
Milo Neuman: I would like to do more stuff on Blue Beetle, specifically the version we did in the short. Whether it be a DTV in the style of these old cartoons, or a series, I think that would be a blast. I don’t think it’s happening, but I keep going back to that in my head. It’d be really fun.
And do you have any projects lined up currently?
Milo Neuman: I’m making a webcomic, so there’s that, if anyone wants to read it! That’s my main project at the moment. I’m not actually working out of a studio right now; I’m just working on my comic.
Check out our interview with The Losers screenwriter Tim Sheridan here.
DC Showcase Animated Shorts 2021-22 releases to Blu-Ray on May 2nd, Digital Download on May 3rd.
