Adam Baldwin

LOOK UP IN THE SKY...IT’S A BRAND NEW SUPERMAN VOICE CAST

Of all of the recent animated DC shows to hit the small screen, I liked Superman the least. It had none of the stylish ambience of Batman and it only rarely had the widescreen kick-butt action of Justice League Unlimited. But one thing it had going for it over the other shows was its spot-on voice casting. It seemed like every character was matched with the absolute perfect voice choice from Clancy Brown as Lex Luthor to Malcolm McDowell as Metallo to Michael Ironside as Darkseid to Gilbert Gottfried as Mr. Mxztl....Mr. Myx...you know who I mean.

While these shows are no longer being produced, they are living on as feature movies for the direct-to-DVD format. There have been a few Bat-flicks already, and now Supes is next on deck. The world-changing (for all of a year or so) events of the Doomsday storyline from the comic books is going to be adapted for Superman: Doomsday, a new animated feature produced by Bruce Timm due for release on Sept. 27.

What’s weird about this, however, is that they’ve done away with all of the usual voice talent for the main roles. Dana Delaney’s Lois Lane is to be voiced by Anne Heche. Clancy Brown’s rather definitive Lex Luthor will now be voiced by James Marsters. Last, and probably least given that they’ve changed voices for this character once already, Superman himself will now be voiced by Adam Baldwin, instead of either Tim Daly or George Newbern.

I’m doing my best not to make up my mind before I get to see this, but the changes, especially Luthor’s, seem rather pointless. The Timm/Paul Dini versions of these characters have been voiced by the same people for dozens of episodes. I can’t imagine there were major salary or availability issues that couldn’t have been overcome, so why change now? Even odder, the continuity of the storyline has already been shot to pieces because - NERD ALERT! - 1) Steel has already appeared in the first Supes animated series, complete with an origin story that conflicts with the one in the Death of Superman comic and 2) Doomsday has already appeared on Justice League Unlimited in the same continuity that this movie would ostensibly take place in, and he was lobotomized by the Justice Lords’ version of Supes in short order. So how they’re going to pull this off will be something to see indeed. This baby is set to have a PG-13 rating from the get-go, so at least we should avoid any multi-versioning along the lines of Batman Beyond: Return of the Joker brouhaha.