

This weekend, we finally got a look at the DC Nation project that I've been most excited about, Lauren Faust's Super Best Friends Forever. In the debut short, Faust -- whose previous credits include Powerpuff Girls, Foster's Home for Imaginary Friends and My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic -- brings about as much charm and cuteness as it's possible to cram into 76 seconds, and the end result is pretty darn fun. Read more for the full animated short!



For such a short, uh, short, there's an awful lot of stuff to like about SBFF. My favorite bit is how well the characters are immediately formed, from the serious, honor-bound Wonder Girl to the excitable Batgirl to the surprisingly mischievous Supergirl. It's even reinforced in the character designs themselves, with Wonder Girl's face being all right angles and Batgirl's being round and bubbly and frequently host to truly gigantic eyes.

It's also worth noting that Faust manages to boil down Wonder Girl, one of the most improbably complex characters in the history of comics, into a pretty simple all-you-really-need-to-know form that works pretty well. "You know Wonder Woman? Well, this is her sister. Let's move on."

It's also a nice switch from what you might expect. Over at io9, Lauren Davis makes the comment that she "expected Batgirl to be Twilight Sparkle, but she's totally a Pinkie Pie," which is a pretty fair assessment. For me, though, the character archetypes on display are most closely related to the Powerpuff Girls, with the hair colors swapped. Wonder Girl is Blossom, Batgirl as Bubbles and Supergirl as Buttecup. If they end up fighting a fast-talking Gorilla Grodd who refers to himself in the third person a lot, the connection will be complete.

I'm honestly curious as to whether or not each one will be a stand-alone gag or if the next one will continue the story of the Invisible Plane Burrito Run. Either way, it's a great little piece of animation, and I can't wait for more. And if you feel the same, keep an eye on Cartoon Network's DC Nation block, every Saturday at 10 AM.