Day One Hundred and Eighty-three - Justice League: Season 1, Episodes 22 & 23, "Closer... but still just dumb slug-fests."

Busy day, today, as I still had to watch The Hedgehog for the radio show/podcast... so I didn't have much time to dive into anything new. Instead, I decided to plow through some more of the horrendous Justice League cartoon.

If you've followed previous entries for this series you'd know that I have an extreme dislike for how the show is written.

Unnecessary multi-part episodes, barely any real characterization, forced narrative, and the loss of that certain je ne sais quoi that was present in the Batman: The Animated Series and Superman: TAS. That feeling occasionally showed up in Justice League: Unlimited and Batman Beyond, but it hasn't been the same since the Millenium turned.

This particular episode is a bit closer than those previous to trying to recapture it, but is still mostly an exhibition of brute force as opposed to style and subtlety.

Centered around the creation of Metamorpho, an old Bob Haney hero from the 60's, the two-part episode is a revisit to the classic silver age hero/villain creation story that we've seen so many times before. Instead of a mystic artifact changing Rex Mason (voiced here by Tom Sizemore) into a shape-shifting pastiche of texture, it's a "mutagenic" experiment that his megalomaniacal boss traps him in as revenge for quitting and attempting to marry the man's daughter.

Talk about a jerkoff of potential father-in-law.

Of course, Rex reacts badly to being turned into what amounts to a monster and, after his hot fiance faints at the sight of him and her father aims him at a jealous friend, Metamorpho acts as a villain and goes after Green Lantern with murderous intent.

The majority of the second part is Rex coming to terms with his situation and finding out who the real culprit is, his prospective father-in-law, Stagg. 

Honestly, this all could've been done in a single episode... just like it's been done countless times before in both the Batman and Superman animated series. Instead, it's stretched into forty minutes thanks to copious crime-fighting padding and superfluous conversations. 

What the Batman and Superman series did in just a few seconds with minimalist dialogue, lurking eavesdroppers, and subtle twists, Justice League hams up with cheesy lines and unnecessary violence.

It's like every single one of the main heroes has to take an ineffective swing (or several) at whatever big bad manages to manifest just so we can see them do it. Instead of what should be a thirty second fight scene, we're forced to suffer through a five minute sequence of useless effort by powerhouses of the DC universe... all to pad time.

Guh.

At least this was a story that felt worthy of the effort (unlike Fury and plenty of other previous JL episodes I've watched in recent months). It's nice to see a classic character given their due origin story. I just wish it had been done with a modicum of class.

Until tomorrow, Potatoes~

Day One Hundred and Twenty-four - Justice League: Fury, "And Woman Shall Inherit the Earth."

Is it weird that I watch so much animation?

I mean I consume everything from Anime to My Little Pony to Adult Swim, as I think is typical for my particular demographic of geekdom, but sometimes I think I spend too much time with cartoons and not enough watching real people perform jests and fakeries and dramas.

Then again, it's getting painful watching BONES.

Today's animated entry is the two-parter Justice League tale entitled Fury, in which an Amazon unleashes an allergen on the world that incapacitates all men... ALL men, everywhere it spreads. She does this to empower womankind to reclaim the earth from their barbaric brothers.

Granted, Aresia (the vengeful adopted Amazon) has no qualms using men to further her agenda, taking quite a few male villains into her gang to join Star Sapphire and Tsukuri. Well, until she unleashes her MacGuffin toxin that drops them cold.

As I mentioned in my previous viewings of Justice League, these episodes in the first two seasons before JLU are just terrible. Even though they're extra long, spanning multiple half-hour blocks, they are decidedly lacking in plot cohesion, character development, and emotional range.

Seriously, the closest that Fury gets is a weird moment where Sister Power is displayed by all the female firefighters and paramedics who are helping round up the comatose wounded and mitigate the damage they've unwittingly created. It's supposed to be a "women are just as awesome as men" moment that falls entirely flat.

Especially when one considers that half the planet's population has just dropped into comas.

Even with the sterling efforts of all the women professionals, hospitals, police, et al, would still be drastically overwhelmed by the crisis.

Then there's the weird pseudo-moralizing where Wonder Woman speculates that a world without men wouldn't be so bad and Hawkgirl defends the male gender with the barest of innuendos.

Really, there's no actual argument as to why men have to be destroyed or saved. Aresia never goes on any monologues about the men who destroyed her life and neither Wonder Woman, Hawkgirl, or Hippolyta ever discuss exactly why it's wrong, just that it is.

I want to think that the executives and censors were responsible for watering down the story, but I think it's really the fault of the writers. These seasons just have no teeth. The jokes are puerile, the action and adventure just one step up from Superfriends levels of terribad. Really, the only redeeming grace is that the voice actors are intact from the Batman:TAS/Superman eras of the DCAU.

For my part, I feel that Justice League is the same level of wrongness that the first season of the new Dr.Who is. Painful and only worth watching to get to the good stuff later (JLU and Tennat/Smith respectively).

If you're looking for a much more realistic take on this type of story, I suggest reading Y:The Last Man. It's a much more thorough, emotive, and believable take on "Women Inheriting the Earth" than this ever could be.

Until tomorrow, Potatoes~