James Gunn responded to accusations of "lack of a unified tone" in the new DCU films and series and pointed out that "it was the same in the comics"
DC Studios boss James Gunn has jumped to the defense of the DCU, pushing back against complaints about tonal whiplash between its various entries. The debate kicked off after the premiere of Lanterns, a show framed as a grim murder mystery rather than the cosmic superhero blockbuster fans might expect from the Green Lantern Corps.
A fan on Threads, who's been following the DCU since it launched, raised a common gripe about the studio overall approach.
As an Elseworlds story, this first episode of Lanterns is way better than the conceit of True Detective meets DCU. That said , and along with Supergirl, Creature Commandos, and the upcoming Clayface movie, I can't comprehend this slate toward building a shared narrative universe.
Gunn, never one to let a comment like that slide, disagreed and pointed to the history of DC comics itself.
In the same way DC comics have. Certainly the DC works of Alan Moore, Darwyn Cooke, Grant Morrison, Jack Kirby, Paul Dini & Tom King can't be considered "of one tone".
He went on to explain that this genre-blending was part of what made reading comics fun in the first place.
For me & others raised on DC comics, a huge part of the fun was enjoying a variety of stories in various genres & seeing inventive ways these tones interacted & interwove. For some of the authors - notably Moore & Morrison (& Tom King in Strange Adventures and more) that tonal interweaving became a part of the stories themselves.
His point lines up with actual publishing history. Moore twisted superhero conventions inside out in Watchmen and Swamp Thing, Morrison folded metanarrative directly into the plot in Animal Man and Doom Patrol, and King built Strange Adventures around the clash between two entirely different visual and tonal registers.
The DCU has clearly ditched the one-size-fits-all formula. Rather than churning out similar superhero films, the studio is spreading across genres, aiming to pull in as broad an audience as possible.
Audiences seem to be responding well to the show – it's sitting at 95% on Rotten Tomatoes right now. Critics have praised the pacing and the performances, with Total Film reviewer noting that "the DCU is back on track" thanks to the chemistry between Kyle Chandler and Aaron Pierre.
The first episode ends on an unexpected cliffhanger that sets up a fresh whodunnit, which has kept the show buzzing on social media. That grounded take on characters who normally deal in cosmic-scale energy constructs is exactly what sparked the debate over the DCU tonal consistency in the first place.
