This week marks the release of a new collection of animated shorts from DC Comics and Warner Bros. Animation. Anchored by a new adventure featuring Matt Ryan as John Constantine, the collection explores several exciting and previously unseen corners of the DC Universe.
The collection also includes three further shorts, all previously released as backup features to DC animated movies. One of those shorts, The Losers, puts the focus on the World War II era team of heroes fronted by Johnny Cloud, Sarge, Gunner, Henry “Mile a Minute” Jones and new original character Fan Long.
The Losers was written by Tim Sheridan, a name which should be familiar to many DC fans. Tim has worked on previous animated movies Superman: Man of Tomorrow and Batman: The Long Halloween as well as penning comics such as Teen Titans Academy and Flashpoint Beyond.
Neil recently sat down with Tim to discuss The Losers and here are some of the highlights of their chat.
Neil Vagg: Hi Tim, how are you doing today?
Tim Sheridan: I just got my coffee in my hand right now. Just getting warmed up!
NV: So let’s talk DC Showcase shorts, this is a really brilliant platform to bring some lesser known characters to the screen. But what attracted you to working with, with The Losers specifically for this film?
TS: These are my people. When I was growing up and I was picking up Batman and Justice League International, war comics were not sitting on the spinner rack ready for for my greedy little hands. So, I didn’t really get a lot of exposure to these guys. I had only seen the name but I had never really done a deep dive. When I was doing research for Sergeant Rock, Jim Krieg called and said “hey, what do you think about doing a short with The Losers?” I said let’s do it.
NV: You’ve written for for TV, you know, animated TV shows before where your runtime is closer to 20 minutes. But when it’s a standalone short like this is there an added complexity to trying to tell a well rounded story, particularly with a group of characters as well?
TS: Yeah, exactly! Look had this has been one character I can do a lot of damage in just 15 minutes. But when you put a team on the page it can get much more difficult. It’s something I’ve learned the hard way with Titans Academy and DC Comics which I’ve been doing. It’s tough to only have 15 minutes in which to do it, especially when there’s a team. One of the things that makes it easier though, particularly in sort of war movie genre, is the characters are very archetypal. I think that even if you’re not a big fan of that genre you know who these characters are almost at first glance.
NV: Then you go and complicate things even more by making it a timey wimey story and then you throw in dinosaurs as well? So how do you then balance all of that on top of all the rest of everything that’s going on?
TS: When you read these books there are often these fantastical sci fi horror elements. There’s other genres, there’s mystery, and romance, there’s all sorts of genres that sort of come together into these, you know, war books and war movies throughout the ages. In the way that Dinosaur Island in this story is like a nexus between time and space and realities. I mean it’s a war movie, but it’s a sci fi movie and it’s a horror movie. It used to have more of a romantic angle to it. But we had to lose some of that part of the story. But it’s just a big meet up and a nexus of genres which I think is very true to what comic books are and what war comics were.
The full interview is coming very soon to the latest episode of our podcast.
The shorts collection is available now from Warner Bros. Home Entertainment on Blu-ray and on Digital Download.
