Yep! This Friday a new Young Justice and new Thundercats.
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I've been enjoying this show a lot. The more coherent feel they seem to be going for, and the implication of a lot of backstory that we just weren't witness to (e.g., most first appearances of a villain are not that villain's origin story) are an interesting change of pace from other DC animations. It doesn't hurt that the lineup reminds me of the 2003+ Teen Titans, which I also enjoyed. So far the only place it's really dropped the ball for me was the "skeptic Kid Flash" episode (and Kid Flash in general being... well, more of a creep than I think we're supposed to think he is). Well, and I thought their Joker was a bit weaksauce.
Captain Marvel as a big kid is awesome. And two episodes in a row now I've mistaken two different superintelligent gorillas for General Grodd. What is it with the DC universe and superintelligent apes? Don't any apes ever get uplifted to average intelligence?
They're called... wingdings. Yeah. (Actually, that might only be for Nightwing's gadgets.)
SpoilerI think the implication of that scene was that Aqualad and Robin see Kid Flash and Artemis as a couple who aren't aware of it themselves yet - just as Aqualad said "I believe I knew it before they did" of Megan and Conner.
I'd say it's entirely fitting for the Joker to be a very scary guy who does horrible things to people using very simple tools with a smile on his face all the while. Superpowered gimmickry can work, but isn't necessary. He just shouldn't be trying to use a knife on Superman. And he didn't, IIRC (or Superboy or anyone similarly inadvisable).
But it's not effective. He can do better. Part of being a great character is being effective. Making an impact on their rival. How's he gonna do that with a knife against guys with actual powers or super high tech gear? Wouldn't it be all the more satisfying to see him pull out a huge ray guy and just blow up a building with a smile on his face. I mean, realism is not part of this series (we got aliens and robots) so why is he carrying around a realistic weapon? Sure, it's creepy, but it's only creepy in a gritty realism sense. You don't get that feel when he goes up against Robin who has a hologram computer built into his gloves. I'm just left thinking "this fight would be so much more intense if the Joker had some high tech of his own."
That's not how realism works. The presence of aliens and robots does not mean that a knife is not a lethal weapon (though perhaps not to an alien or robot). The absence of aliens and robots does not mean that a knife is an ideal weapon - never mind Superboy or Miss Martian, had Joker been facing a few soldiers with rifles and body armor his knife would have been quite sub-optimal. Joker was effective with the knife, unless I'm misremembering the scene - you say he doesn't seem threatening when up against Robin, I recall Robin seeming pretty threatened. If a knife was his only trick and he was trying to fight the entire League then yeah, he'd be ineffective, but that doesn't mean he shouldn't use a knife when it works.
Joker is not a tech or gadget guy. Joker's schtick is lethal comedy. I agree he should have ways to fight powerful enemies, but I'd say cleverly crazy plans and zany traps work better than ray guns or the like, and the lower-tech the better - don't blow up a building with a ray gun, bring it down with pre-placed demoltions charges that send up smiley-face fireworks. The fact that Joker doesn't need advanced resources to be dangerous is part of what makes him scary - and when you think about it, an overclocked joy-buzzer or acid-spraying lapel flower aren't exactly high-tech either. What Joker is capable of pulling off in total is not the same as how he chooses to endanger people face-to-face.
The **** Grayson article on wikipedia mentions wing-dings (Nightwing), but Robin's gadgets are more fully detailed on the Tim Drake article, which confirms that Robin does use batarangs as Batman's sidekick.
Totally agreed on this, 100%.
I'll add that while the Earth-16 Joker is, perhaps, weak when compared to the DCAU's, he is still very much Joker and a very effective Joker at that. He's just different. (I admit I was thrown for a loop though, when I saw he was voiced by Commander Data. :smalleek:)
*Fondly remembers the spring-loaded punching bag gun*
He should have thrown some Puck in there.
Or they could have just had Alan Tudyk, who voices Green Arrow, do his Alpha from Dollhouse.
I hated Poison Ivy's voice. It sounds JUST. LIKE. MISS. MARTIAN. :furious:
Shockingly, Wikipedia has an article about the prevalence of gorillas in DC comics.
So, we actually got a new episode this week.
SpoilerWell, it was pretty obvious from early on that those beams weren't actually killing their targets. Even if I might have had a very slight sliver of doubt about whether they'd kill off the Justice League and leave the team as Earth's only heroes, the moment Artemis got hit, the jig was up there. Not sure why they tried the fake-out with Martian Manhunter "remembering" that the beams were disintegration, not teleportation, especially after Aqualad and Superboy's deaths had been added to that.
Still, didn't think they'd go the "it was all a dream" (or psychic coma/training exercise, as the case may be) route, so I guess there was that surprise. Still, it ends up feeling a bit like an excessive way to spend an episode basically just to tell us that Miss Martian's powers are far greater than they appear. Well, and to make the Kid Flash/Artemis pairing even more obvious I guess, given how much they focused on his reaction to her demise.
So yeah, eh. An okay episode I guess, but those kind of endings always leave a bad taste in my mouth.
Zevox
SpoilerI was expecting them to be teleporting (or time travel, personally) beams, like in The Death of Superman JLU episode(s). I was also expecting it would be the "all a dream" kind of ending as soon as... well.. the first 3 minutes, but the "Martian Psychic Powers=Screwy Mental Training" was a nice way to make the "dream exercise"-thingey seem almost-plausible. :smallbiggrin:
But them apparently NEEDING to tell us the emotional teenager (in martianyearsmaturity level) has stronger emotions than the guy who has made a living out of being almost as cold as Batman in every animated DC thing ever was uneccesary. :smallannoyed: Seriously, SHE CAN PICK THINGS UP WITH HER MIND. Manhunter NEVER does that.:smallmad:
SpoilerWell, if she wasnt so emotional about everybody she knows dying, then she probably would have never overidden everybody's "This is training" thoughts. And in most things with telepathy I know of, emotions and telepathic ability tend to be linked in a really big way. Though that was my minor rambling, my main ramble is that she lifts things with her mind and Manhunter never does that in any DC thing I've seen, ever. :smalltongue: /can never decide to be serious or not
SpoilerYes, that was why the latent strength of her powers came into play. The point there wasn't that she was emotional, but the strength of the powers that those emotions revealed.
And, er, why exactly is her having telekinesis a problem? That's a power that is often linked with telepathy in comics. And she isn't Martian Manhunter - it's not even clear if she's actually been changed to be a green Martian in this continuity, after her remark about white Martians a few episodes ago.
Zevox
SpoilerI wouldn't rely on this sentiment that they won't kill/remove the main cast in some way or another. I remember one the producers/director/something from the show stating in an interview that the team is actually going to be fairly fluid and there's likely to be at least one big 'death' this season.
This information came from TVTropes though so...grain of salt.
"Superman has a Fortress of Solitude!?"
I don't know why, but that line really cracked me up. Also, I love there was an "S" on the front entrance to it. Like who else could it be? Guess he had to put it there so people would stop think it was Santa's workshop.
As for the episode as a whole:
SpoilerCliche, dumb it-was-just-a-dream endings are cliche...and dumb...and redundant statements are redundant.:smallannoyed:
So, disregarding the...plot...of the episode. Here's something that I was wondering the whole time;
The group's telepathy. Actual thing? Or simply an excuse for lazy animation? I feel that they used telepathy a little bit too much in the recent episode and it just felt lazy.
My dnd group will only ever talk if they are mentally connected somehow. So I don't find it odd at all. I liked this episode the team got to be very heroic.
:smallconfused: Lazy animation? What? How does that make sense?
In any event, no, I don't think it's an an excuse for anything. It's one of Miss Martian's powers, it only makes sense that they'd make extensive use of it, especially considering they're more of a black ops type of superhero group than a traditional superhero team.
Zevox
Yeah, telepathic comms make sense, especially with (as pointed out) a "black ops" team.
SpoilerAs for the plot...I didn't really buy that they'd killed everyone off like that, so I wasn't totally shocked.
I think making it a training exercise gone wrong was an interesting angle; I was expecting "just a bad dream", or maybe some sort of dream-based superhero.
Incidentally, I didn't catch all the quick young hero cameos, but they were still fun! Maybe we'll see the Teen Titans popping up too?
As for Miss Martian, re-watch the episode. Martian Manhunter says that Miss Martian's telepathic mind was stronger than his. That's a fairly specific thing to say. Recall, J'onn's typically shown to have a lot of powers, sometimes up to the point of being "Green Superman". Even lacking things like eyebeams, YJ MM seems to at least have the "flying brick" powers down, and perhaps has better shapeshifting. M'gann's definitely not as physically powerful, but consider how easy it is for her to psychically link a half-dozen minds, two of which aren't human (Aqualad and Superboy), one of which is a hyper-accelerated human (Kid Flash), and two of which (Robin and Artemis) likely have a fair bit of mental discipline (good luck breaking into Batman's brain, or the brain of his apprentice). She acts like it's no trouble at all, and is basically a psychic switchboard. That's pretty impressive.
My guess? We'll see her develop a lot more mental-based tricks, and if we see Martian Manhunter more often, he'll be more physically powerful. That's how I'd approach it, were I on that writing staff, anyways.
SpoilerStill, it was a really weak and cliche twist. And as you say it wasn't that big of a shock and fairly predictable, they could have established it earlier on in the show. So rather than the drama and tension be destroying the aliens, it could be escaping the dream.
That's pretty much what I was getting at. I understand that telepathy is amazing. Still seems lazy though.
Especially since at one point is was just one frame of Robin for a few seconds. Then one frame of KF, then the same frame of Robin again. It felt more like a Voice Over than Voice Acting.