After striking it big on YouTube and toy shelves, Warner Bros. and Cartoon Network are bringing the DC Super Hero Girls to the small screen for a new series in 2018.

In October of 2015, the first DC Super Hero Girls short hit YouTube, and in the two years since, there have been dozens of new episodic adventures and other videos showing off the teen students at Super Hero High. While there have been a handful of direct-to-video films and specials, for the most part the DC Super Hero Girls have had their adventures restricted to the internet. Starting in 2018, that all changes when Cartoon Network will air an all-new DC Super Hero Girls animated series.

Announced in 2015, the DC Super Hero Girls were the first concerted effort to create a superhero toy line targeted specifically at young girls. While Barbie had been around for decades, and the Disney Princesses were old hat, the superhero genre had typically been seen as an area for young boys only. Of course, that kind of outdated thinking was still from an era when retailers arranged their offerings in Boys and Girls sections. Today, the crossover that kids have embraced as long as toys have been around is accepted more and more, though there are still some holdouts stuck in their old ways.

Fortunately, Warner Bros., DC Comics, Cartoon Network and its licensing partners have wised up, and created a brand in DC Super Hero Girls that doesn't conform to any specific ideals other than girls want (and deserve) heroes that look like they do. With characters like Wonder Woman, Batgirl, Bumblebee, Katana, Harley Quinn and more, there's already a good deal of diversity within the show's stars. It's also translated nicely to the action doll line, as well as the Lego sets, comics and novels that are also part of the DC Super Hero Girl experience.

The new animated show will be written by Lauren Faust, who you might know as one of the creators on My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic. She also developed Super Best Friends Forever, a short-lived DC Comics project on Cartoon Network that featured Batgirl, Supergirl and Wonder Girl teaming up to fight crime. Even though it only lasted for five episodes, Super Best Friends Forever is still beloved by DC fans young and old. Faust taking lead on revamp of DC Super Hero Girls comes as a bit of a surprise given that the brand itself is rather young to go through a reboot already. However, it's a change that is already being welcomed with open arms by existing fans of DCSHG and Faust's other works.

What exactly this means for the rest of the DC Super Hero Girls brand remains to be seen. New figures and dolls were shown off earlier this year at Toy Fair that were still closely linked to the first incarnation, though many of them have yet to actually hit retail. That includes Mattel's offerings along with the planned content from companies like Lego and Funko. I've covered the DC Super Hero Girls closely since the launch, and believe just like Warner Bros. does that this brand could be a billion-dollar franchise like its competitors. Hopefully this new direction can help the brand reach those lofty goals, and more and more, the DC Super Hero Girls will take up some of the space currently occupied by less empowering brands on retail shelves.

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