Very pleased with this ep. Had actually thought they’d sidestepped the Death of Superman question with the Justice Lords storyline. Good to see that’s still open.
Good tension, and I wonder if we’ll see Batman’s plans for neutralizing the rest of the League.
And I loved one of the closing lines:
‘You don’t get to joke. Not today. I took a bullet for you!’
I have never watched the JLA:TAS since the first episode of the first season (I thought it was cheesy). But because of the promise of a rotating cast and a few regulars (which is reminiscent of M.A.S.K. and Mission: Impossible), AND a nealry three year old son who suddenly LOVES superheroes, I began watching this season.
I couldn’t disagree MORE with Just Some Guy that these are bad stories. I have been annoying my friends left and right telling them this is how they should write superhero comics! There have been a few stinkers, but that happens. For the most part we’ve had a nice over-arcing subplot but each episode is largely self-contained.
We see lesser known supporting characters playing big roles in the overall story (General Eilling!) and we see what could be annoying fanboy nods (and I am an annoying fanboy) turned into interesting plot developments. This show, with all its little touches, has become the greatest loveletter to the DCU that I have ever seen. And it has done so without being geekish or self-aware (a problem I have with shows like Star Trek). My wife, who thinks I am a total dork for still reading comics, even thinks the show is decent.
A few other random thoughts:
Rarely do you notice good DIRECTING in cartoons. But the scene with the parrallel table discussions was well done. The way the director “shot” that scene REALLY helped heighten the drama.
Though I didn’t watch the first two seasons, it was still cool to see the “original” league as a sort of “Board of Directors” of the massive league. That scene reminded me of a Giffen Era JLI Annual. The JLI/JLE are somehow shrunk and sent back in time. I forget their mission, but they wind up in a meeting of the original JLA. They are all in awe, like they are looking at a meeting of the Gods of Olympus. I really got that same buzz from this scene. Like we were privvy to something special getting to watch a meeting like that. Again, good directing.
Lump me in as someone who thought the Batman speech at the end was forced. It seems like Superman sending Doomsday to the Phantom Zone was the only non-lethal solution. I was disappointed because my exposure to Batman (based on this season alone) was VERY positive. I thought it had dark (Disturbed) without being over the top (“I hate everything.”) Here, he slipped into comic book Batman. Shame. I thought the episode where WW became a pig should be a primer on HOW TO WRITE BATMAN. This seemed to take a step back. (At least WW gave him a special look as she left. I am LOVING the WW/Batman angle).
Don’t you think the forced ending was a direct effort to set up a Tower of Babel episode?
I loved the Question groan.
If they are going to keep referencing past seasons, they either need to release FULL SEASON DVDs or break all the hour long episodes into half hours segments and run them every day!
I think you may have misunderstood me. My complaint was the first season was almost completely junk. Bland writing was the hallmark of that first season and the characters (both heroes and villains) had to act incompetant to allow the plot to work. During that period I occasionally saw an episode, realized that the quality was in the dumpster, and moved on (though I eventually saw most of them).
The second season changed all of that. The writing picked up impressively, each episode featured a threat that allowed all the characters to be used to their fullest. The only episodes that I thought weren’t that great were the Desparo and Eclipso epsidoes (there’s so much that could have been done with them that wasn’t). It was impressive.
And then season three came along, the format changed, and and it was, as I said, like half the time they were using scripts from season one again. I stuck around then because the half the time it was on it was really on. Now as we’re entering season four the quality is back. Episode after episode in the past few months has been great.
But however good it is right now, there have been some very low points in the past. Hopefully this means that it just takes them a season to get up to speed.
My son is 10. He’s so impressed when I can rattle off who (almost) all of the heroes are.
It took me a good half hour to explain the connection between The Atom and Atom Smasher. (Atom Smasher? But the Atom is small, how come he’s big?)
Nope, definitely the current Hourman. Yellow and black costume, face covered, no big silly looking clock-thing on his chest. Screencap (cropped down to just the characters).
I liked this one a lot. The Cadmus board is interesting.
Hamilton and Waller we knew about. Eiling could easily be assumed. Dr Milo and Dr Strange were surprising additions. Tala I’m not familiar with, but searching for a DC character named Tala brings up a character named Tala, Queen of Evil, who’s been known to come into conflict with Phantom Stranger. Is this her?
I noticed the private phone Waller had in her office seemed to be Dark Heart technology.
Strange point - they seem to have given Doomsday Superboy’s origin (with the added twist of being trained to hate Superman). Also…Waller claims that it was the Justice Lords who prompted the creation of Cadmus and other anti-JL measures. But Cadmus created Doomsday (if anything at all in Milo’s monologue can be taken as true), who is lobotomised by Lord Superman in the Justice Lords’ first appearance. Is she lying, or out of the loop? I’d be absolutely unsurprised if both Waller and Hamilton were out of the loop, with Strange, Eiling, and Tala being the real brains behind the project.
Batman seems to have forgotten that his double was a Justice Lord, too.
Reading Tengu’s new post in the previous week’s episode thread made me dislike Batman’s little hissy even more.
Bats is upset with Superman for putting Doomsday in the PZ. But just before that, he put Chronos in a time loop that created eternal distress.
Which is worse?
Now, if they establish that Batman’s tirade is tied in somehow with guilt of that incident, I’ll but otherwise, it makes him look like a whiney hypocrite.
(Was it modern Batman that did it or OLD Batman? Not that it matters…)
Hmm…somehow part of my post didn’t make it to the final cut. Between “incident, I’ll” and “but, otherwise” toward the end of my post was supposed to be the phrase " actually like it."
…
Man, I watched them almost back to back, and I didn’t make that connection. Well, there were two episodes between… (Glad I helped someone make it, though…) Damnation, Bruce… What makes it worse was the grin on his face when he’s talking about what he did to Chronos.
(And it was ‘our’ Bats, not crotchety old Bruce that gave Chronos belt the glitch.)
In this episode and the Justice Lords episode there were references to the death of alternate Flash. What Flash are they talking about? Barry Allen or Wally West? In a technical sense ‘our’ Flash died, it is just that the JL had the Teen Titans as a farm club and they just called up Wally. Perhaps the alternate universe didn’t have a Teen Titans to replenish the Justice Lords.
Any thoughts?
One thing to remember is that the animated continuity isn’t the comics continuity.
There’s no indications that Barry was ever Flash in the animated continuity. (Unless there were in the Superman episode Flash appeared in. I never saw it.)
Either way, Wally was the first Flash in the Justice League, which was founded in the pilot movie, the title of which I can’t remember.
There’s no indication that there was ever a Teen Titans before the one that Tim joined (according to Batman in the JL/Static crossover) (which may, or may not, be the same one we see in the Teen Titans cartoon). And, given the lack of a Justice League, it’s entirely unlikely.
(This is the second discussion I’ve had on the topic of multiple continuities…this one’s way less hostile, though…)
But earlier this season, Teen Titans pretty much resolved that Robin is Dick not Tim. The Titans were vistited by a alternate Robin (I thought that all the alternate universes were supposed to be gone). The real name of the alternate Robin (who the Titans called Larry) was Dick Grayson spelled and pronounced backwards. A previous JLU thread showed the lack of continuity between the comic and animated universe - specifically Static Shock- but now it seems that there is no real continuity in the animated universe at all.
Even though I don’t really care about all this, I can adopt a more jerkish attitude if it will make you feel better. 
They’ve also mentioned the existance of Jason Todd, which means it has to be Tim. They’re quite deliberately giving contradictory clues.
Bastards!
Todd was only mentioned as a quick joke (and never out loud).
Besides “Larry” there was also the Titans episode in which Robin was going a bit crazy and Raven entered his mind, briefly, we saw a flash of two siloutted acrobats plummetting. It’s Dick. Teen Titans isn’t supposed to tie in with the animated Batman-Justice League continuity.
But, and here’s the cool part, are the other animated DCU shows (Batman: The Animated Series and its sequel shows, Superman, Batman Beyond, Static Shock, and Justice League) have been keeping a tight continuity amongst themselves. We saw guys in this episode from first season Batman! The interior continuity is great, but they’ve never tried to directly match the comics (they hinted that the pre-crisis multiverse existed way back in Superman when they introduced the Phantom Zone), which is for the best, I think.
The Animated U uses continuity as a story-telling device and not a weakness.
I thought I remembered hearing that Batman mentioned that “Tim’s with the Titans, Now” in a Justice League episode—not to say, however, that it’s necessarily the same Titans that have their own show. (Especially with TT giving the strong hints that it’s Dick Grayson as Robin)
My money’s on the “separate continuities” angle. But I’d guess that, if push came to shove, we’d find out that the anime-style Titans have close “counterparts” in the DCU proper.
So, basically, if JLU (or Static Shock) crosses over onto Teen Titans, it’ll be Dick as Robin. But if the Titans appear on JLU or Static, it’ll be with Tim as Robin, even with the rest of the group seeming exactly the same. Clear as mud?
I think that was a Static Shock episode. From the top of my head:
Static: Where’s Robin?
Batman: He’s with the Titans.
Static: The who?
Batman with a slight smile: You’ll meet them some day.
That was Obisidan! I have a feeling that Alan Scott is out of the question, but any chance of seeing Jade on JLU? Considering the, er, adjustments made to Zatana and Supergirl I’m curious as to how Jade would come out, even if she was only there as a background character.
I haven’t spotted her in any of the group shots so far, but that doesn’t mean a whole lot. I sort of suspect she won’t, though, due to the power overlap with GL, and potential appearance confusion with Fire - yeah, they look significantly different, but Fire’s lucky to get half a minute screen time in an episode (mutter Fire and Ice need an episode where they actually DO SOMETHING! mutter), Jade probably wouldn’t fare much better, so…
I did find another shot of Hourman and Obsidian, though (not much better than the other one, but you can see Hourman’s hourglass, and a clear look at his cowl, if not his lower face.)
An anti-metahuman Tomahawk with a force field, no less. (It’s about time superhero technology made it into the hands of the conventional military.)
