Photo-Illustration: Vulture; Photos by The Powerpuff Girls/YouTube, Warner Bros. Entertainment/YouTube, Cartoon Network/YouTube, and Disney +/YouTube
This article originally ran July 29, 2022. We’ve updated it with additional shows, including the Emmy-nominated X-Men ‘97 and the new Batman: Caped Crusader.
Live-action superhero efforts are a precarious balancing act. How does one translate what’s effective on a comic-book page to a world of flesh, blood, and Chris Hemsworth? In short, it’s a constant battle of: “Is this gonna look dumb?” Cartoons, on the other hand, might be the most natural format for the superhero adaptation, providing a more liberating canvas and allowing for all manner of fantastic derring-do without the limiting…
