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~

Day Ninety-five - Justice League: Season 1, Episodes 1, 2, and 3, "We go from Bruce Timm's Batman/Superman to THIS?"

To say that the Justice League cartoon started off on shaky legs is a bit of an understatement, I think.

Hot off of the Bruce Timm era of Batman: The Animated Series, which returned the animated DC universe to glory after years of cheese and fluff with the likes of Superfriends and Scooby-Doo teamups, Justice League promised to keep the feel of the late 90's cartoons.

It did this, in part, by retaining Kevin Conroy and Tim Daly as the voice actors for Batman and Superman respectively. That alone guaranteed a return audience as they were fan favs from their respective series.

Unfortunately, the production team wasn't quite sure how to bring DC's top team together without things getting awkward. It tries by lampshading everyone with a pair of tights coming together to back Clark and Bruce up via an off-screen telepathic suggestion by J'onn, the Martian Manhunter, in a similar way to how he reached out to Clark throughout episode 1.

I'd almost believe it, but we never see J'onn make contact with the other Supers we were treated to with brief sequences early in the episode, Wonder Woman and Flash, for their little intro bits. I find this to be very lazy writing on behalf of the team.

There's also the problem of the enemies being too strong in the beginning and too weak at the end. This happens several times in later episodes, but it's never more obvious than here and in the next mini-arc with the Manhunters.

All throughout episodes one and two, we're shown just how indestructible the shapeshifters who destroyed Mars are... even so much that Superman cannot easily deter them. Then, all of the sudden, most of the destruction they've wrought has been reduced to a tiny area around their factories (when it was city-wide just a few minutes previous) and they're vulnerable to just about everything... and this is BEFORE it's revealed that they're SUPER-vulnerable to ultraviolet radiation.

Let me tell you, that's an amount of cheese that even I find hard to swallow.

Graphically, I'm not all that pleased with the subtle stylistic changes they made for both Supes and Bats. The cowl's ears in particular and Clark's sunken cheekbones really annoy.
 
Eventually, once the series morphed into Justice League Unlimited and started telling smaller, more personal stories instead of grand, multi-episode punch fests, I really started to enjoy it... especially when they went with the minor leaguers like The Question. But we'll get there eventually.

For now, I can't really recommend these episodes for anything other than backfill for JLU... and that's a bit sad. They didn't even have Lois Lane doing the reporting on the invasion! Ugh.

Until tomorrow, Potatoes~

Day Fifty-eight - Justice League: Doom, or "Ze Voices... Zey do nutzing!"

I wanted to like JL:DOOM... I really did.

It had pretty much exactly what I wanted from DC in terms of casting... Tim Daly, Kevin Conroy, Susan Eisenburg, Michael Rosenbaum and Carl Lumbly all reprise their JL era roles and that's great! What's even better? Nathan-freaking-Fillion comes on as Hal Jordan continuing his tenure from Emerald Knights! Add to that Claudia Black, whose sultry voice never fails to send chills up my spine, and I'm sold.

Then the movie actually starts.

Now, don't get me wrong, it's not terribad. As far as recent entries go into the DC Animated Universe, it's actually decently high on the list considering the misses that were Superman vs. The Elite and Batman/Superman: Apocalypse, but it definitely wasn't as good as New Frontier which really, really grooved on the retro vibe even if it didn't have the regular cast.

There's just something about the art direction that seriously bugs the heck out of me. It's so far removed from my expectations concerning Bruce Timm's era of Bruce, Clark, and the rest that hearing Kevin and Tim, et al's, voices coming out of these alien faces ruins my suspension of disbelief right quick.

Then there's the story. Loosely based on the Tower of Babel storyline, it tells the tale of Vandal Savage's attempts (instead of Ra's al Ghul's in the orignal) to rule the world by having the Justice League be taken out using Batman's own plans against them.

Let me say that I would've much preferred to see the War Games storyline with the same thing happening in Gotham without the JLA than I would Tower of Babel. Especially since several of the plans are utterly ridiculous.

I mean, dosing Wonder Woman with nanites to make her attack everything on sight? Especially since it's obvious what is happening from the get go as she can HEAR what the fake-Cheetah's are saying and it's not threatening at all. Why on earth would she attack? Diana is no fool. And trying to sap GL's will by putting him in a no-win scenario? On the off chance a sorta-lookalike for his lost love, Carol Ferris (who has become the villain, Star Sapphire), dying would drive him insane? I might have bought it if they had laid ANY groundwork earlier for the Scarecrow fear toxin working its mojo on him, but that little tidbit shows up only AFTER Bats reappears to save the day. Total Deus Ex and annoying as all get out.

I do like Cyborg's inclusion, but it feels out of place considering the casting choice implies we're operating in the DCAU where there should be plenty of heroes in the continuity. Their absence makes things all weird for me, especially in the conclusion where it feels like, due to this one adventure, Cyborg is added to the Core Seven... er, excuse me, SIX (since Aquaman is conspicuously absent) while Batman is being kicked out. I preferred the JLU way of Bats bowing out to become a part-timer as opposed to this.

I want to give this feature more credit, due to the fact that it was written by the late Dwayne McDuffie, who died shortly after finishing the script... but the art style and, unfortunately, sloppy writing bug me to no end.

It doesn't meet the standards set by the Justice League series that I've come to expect save for casting... and that makes me a bit sad.

Until tomorrow, Potatoes~