DC Universe Review: Should You Subscribe?

DC Universe officially launched on September 15 (aka Batman Day), and the new subscription service aims to be your exclusive hub for the best of DC Entertainment’s comics, TV shows, movies, and merchandise.

We got a chance to test drive the app while it was in beta (albeit without the full lineup of comics and movies available at launch), to get a hands-on experience of the service, which is arguably in the vanguard of an incoming wave of platforms that will attempt to draw fans further away from traditional cable subscriptions and broadcast TV.

With Disney also planning to launch its own subscription service that will combine the might of its most popular properties (including Pixar, Marvel and Star Wars) all in one place, Netflix branching out into creating comics alongside their original shows and movies, Amazon distributing new comics through comiXology, and content providers like CBS All Access, HBO Now, and WWE Network already offering members a deep well of current programming and classic titles for one monthly fee, it’s becoming increasingly clear that networks and studios will need to find ways to own and distribute a broad swath of their content direct to consumers in order to stay relevant, rather than relying on being bundled in expensive cable packages and hoping that viewers will find them.

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Netflix’s New Animated Series is Avatar Meets Game of Thrones

Time is going to be key in assessing what The Dragon Prince is in the realm of children’s television. At just nine 25-minute episodes, the show’s first season feels like a taste of whatever former Avatar: The Last Airbender head writer Aaron Ehasz has cooked up for this new world he’s created. But where Airbender felt like Nickelodeon’s response to the extreme popularity of Lord of the Rings and Harry Potter back in 2005 (and then became its own thing through masterful storytelling and aesthetic creativity), The Dragon Prince too feels like a response, this time to Game of Thrones. Similarly, HBO’s massive hit fantasy series’ first season also felt like a taste of a world destined to expand in its subsequent seasons.

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