Young Justice featuring Robin, Kid Flash, Superboy, Aqualad, Artemis and Miss Martian premiered this evening on Cartoon Network with a two part pilot titled
Independence Day. Jesse McCartney who provides the voice for Robin is a former member of the band Dream Street and is known these days as a singer - songwriter. His previous voice work includes Theadore in
Alvin and the Chipmunks as well as it's sequel.
He talked with CBR recently about
Young Justice and what it's like to voice Batman's protege.
From CBR... You’re playing Dick Grayson in “Young Justice” as opposed to Tim Drake or the current Robin, Damian Wayne. What do we need to know about your take on the original Boy Wonder heading into the pilot? These are only 22-minute shows, so they’re really just trying to re-introduce the relationships. You see a lot of scenes of him and Batman where Batman is encouraging him to step up and be a leader of this team and Dick Grayson is very reluctant to do that because he still feels that he doesn’t know enough, which you do see throughout the episodes. You’ll see that he’s still very young and still very green when it comes to leading a team like this. And they incorporate a lot of drama, as well, outside of the team. There is a lot of Superboy and Miss Martian. I was talking to the producer about this and how this show, this time around, they have a lot of outside drama that wouldn’t have been read in any comic. And I think that’s another cool appeal for the show.
Robin also learns pretty early on that no else is going to be able to lead this team. And everyone does get a shot. Aqualad has a huge episode where he tries to take on this team and essentially can’t do it, and there’s a nice scene between him and Robin where you see Robin realize for the first time: “I’m not that kid anymore. I can’t just be this cocky, brash little kid that can’t step up.” And then there’s this scene between Aqualad, Robin and Batman where Robin has to take the reins and that happens pretty early on in this season. Eventually he shows that he is a natural born leader. And that’s just part of what you’ll see from Dick Grayson. Do we get to see much of Robin teaming up with Superboy as kind of a World’s Finest 2.0? Actually, that’s probably the least amount of interaction that I have with any of the characters is with Superboy. For the first season, a lot of Superboy’s scenes are with Miss Martian. There’s definitely that sexual tension and in the writing, they play that up a lot. So except for when they’re fighting crime, there’s not a whole lot of interaction between Superboy and Robin. But Nolan North, who plays the voice, does an incredible of job of making him this real brooding, dramatic, emotional, hormonal character that really kind of brings another level to this team. Each person really has a job to do. Superboy is the guy who is very moral and he wants everything to be right. And he’s very dramatic. And he’s loud. And he’s ready to rip the head off anybody who gets in his way. And sometimes that includes even his own teammates. But everybody has their place and for me, I’m the guy who realizes this team won’t survive without a leader. And that I really have to keep everybody together and that’s one of the things that Robin does constantly, is try to keep everybody on the same page and stays on task and stays on mission. Because there are people constantly bickering with each other and if it wasn’t for Robin, my character, he would never get these people to work as a cohesive group. Are these primarily done-in-one, supervillain-of-the-week type episodes or is there is a larger mythos to “Young Justice”? Both. Some of the storylines continue week-to-week and then within each episode there is a new mission, a new supervillain, like you said, to conquer. But within the characters’ storylines, their personal storylines, that carries over episode to episode. Click on the link below to read rest of this interview at CBR. Hawksblueyes: I have to admit after watching the pilot episode, I am really looking forward to seeing more.
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