DC Animation

[Thad]

Wrapped Batman season 2; switching to Superman for a bit.

The most immediately obvious downgrade is the backgrounds. I don't think Eric Radomski gets enough credit for how goddamn good Batman: TAS looked. The backgrounds on Superman aren't in the same league. They're fine, they get the job done, occasionally they're interesting, but they never look as good as the ones on Batman: TAS.

It's always struck me how interesting a choice it is to spend the entire first episode on Krypton, but it's a good one. It makes you care about Krypton. It establishes stakes, the magnitude of what Clark lost, the magnitude of what Jor-El and Lara sacrificed to give him a life. And it gives him a personal connection to Brainiac.

Kicking the show off with a TV movie that was later split into three episodes is an immediate change from Batman, too; it signals that this show's going to be more serialized than that one, even if that doesn't really start coming together until season two. Batman has, what, one two-part episode in the entire series? (ETA: No, it's got several. Two-Face, Feat of Clay, Robin's Reckoning, and Demon's Quest, at least.) Superman kicks off with a three-parter, and you don't even see Superman until the last act of part 2.

Speaking of serialization, I forgot how early they introduced Ugly Mannheim. I remembered the Intergang/New Gods plot ramped up in season 2 prior to the introduction of Darkseid in season 3, but I forgot they introduced Mannheim before Turpin.

Think I'm probably going to wend my way through the DCAU roughly in order. Which I guess means I'll need to pick up Static Shock and Zeta Project at some point, but I've got a ways to go before I have to worry about that.

...is Gotham Girls available anywhere? Is it actually worth tracking down?

[Thad]

More serialization: "Feeding Time" picks up right after "A Little Piece of Home", with Dr. Hamilton continuing to experiment with the piece of Kryptonite he got in the previous episode and building Superman a suit to resist it.

Continuity error: the piece of Kryptonite Hamilton has in "Feeding Time" is much bigger than the one he had in "A Little Piece of Home".

[Thad]

I'd also forgotten how dark this show is. I mean, I remember how dark it gets in later seasons, once Darkseid shows up, but I forgot how dark it is right from the beginning.

The opening 3-parter ends with Brainiac slaughtering the aliens who have found him in monster-movie style; episode 5 ends with Luthor pretty strongly implying that Mercy is going to murder the scientist who snuck the kryptonite sample to STAR Labs and make it look like an accident. (This episode is Mercy Graves' first appearance, in any medium; this is how she is introduced to us.) In episode 6 Parasite discovers his powers by killing a rat. And as for episode 4? This show's version of Toyman is creepy as all get-out.

For a show that's supposed to be something of a bright, upbeat contrast to Batman, it really comes out swinging.

[Thad]

It remains absolutely wild that they put Lobo in a children's cartoon.

And this?



That is some premium nightmare fuel right there.

Lobo even rips the skin off an alien snake-thing, which I guess they got away with because snakes shed their skin, but it sure looks shockingly violent onscreen.

One of the things I really like about the DCAU is how tiny details, even one-off sight gags and Easter eggs, end up being things that they circle back to later and build stories out of. In "The Main Man" we see the Protector's menagerie, which includes Starro; Superman takes all those creatures back to his Fortress of Solitude at the end of the two-parter.

Then, four years later, Batman Beyond has a story, "The Call", where Starro gets loose and takes control of Superman.

That also introduces the idea that Bruce has been keeping a piece of Kryptonite onhand for just such an emergency -- and then, two years after that, there's an episode of Justice League that fills in the backstory of where he got it (at the end of "Injustice for All" he takes it from Luthor and slips it into his utility belt).

That's how you do shared-universe continuity right. The stories aren't about those details, but they use them as springboards. You don't have to have seen that Superman cartoon to understand or enjoy that Batman Beyond, or see that Batman Beyond to have a chuckle at the idea that Batman's so paranoid he's pocketing a piece of Kryptonite just in case. The frosting doesn't overwhelm the cake, but it's still some tasty frosting.

[Friday]

have a chuckle at the idea that Batman's so paranoid he's pocketing a piece of Kryptonite just in case.

I dunno, man. I sort of agree with Batman there.

If I existed in a world with an invincible do-gooder superhuman, and I had a chance to pocket the one thing that could kill him, I think I probably would, just in case.

This is also Waller's motivation, but fuck her.

[Thad]

And this brings us to another bit of continuity: when Bruce gives Terry the Kryptonite, he tells him "This isn't the first time [Superman]'s gone rogue." He's talking about "Legacy".

Superman is trustworthy, but he's not immune to mind control. And that doesn't even take into account that Kryptonite's useful to have around in case of Phantom Zone escapees, evil parallel-universe Supermen, or villains who absorb his powers but also his weaknesses.

All that said, "Batman has a paranoid contingency plan to take down his teammates" is itself a double-edged sword that's vulnerable to being compromised in more or less the same way Superman's powers are. That's the plot of Tower of Babel.

[Büge]

I've been watching Justice League recently too, now that it's back on Netflix. Hoo boy, the first season has some issues. They left the episodes in airdate order, rather than chronological, so "Fury" appears first, even though "Injustice for All" contains plot elements that are clearly supposed to occur before the former (and "Legends", which Lex has a cameo in).

You can tell the showrunners were doing their best, but there's still a lot of problems to shake off. It feels like the writers didn't know what to do with Martian Manhunter, so he kinda ended up like Deanna Troi: either redundant or a liability. He sure spent a lot of time holding his head and screaming. J'onn does a lot more than the Flash, though. He seems to trip, stumble, or fall at least once per episode. For a guy with super-speed, you'd think he'd watch his step more often.

I also have to wonder why every episode was a multi-parter. Did the showrunners not have enough faith in the ensemble cast? I hypothesize that multi-episode story arcs give it a more "epic" feeling, but it also seems to result in a much slower pace for the plotlines. Maybe it was intended to give them a little more wiggle room to get the series on its feet. I dunno. What I do know is that when an episode is a clunker ("Fury", "Metamorphosis"), it feels like a bigger loss to the series than a half-hour episode.

[Thad]

Yeah, I don't think they knew quite how to handle seven different leads, so we ended up with hour-long episodes that could be split into two-parters (and two 90-minute episodes that could be split into three-parters), and usually didn't feature all seven characters. They're pretty clearly still figuring it out in season 1. Season 2 is much better and more assured. And by the time they had to retool it for season 3, they had it together well enough to move hard in the opposite direction and feature a cast of dozens in half-hour episodes and managed to make it work.

[KingRoyal]

I seem to recall that first season also massively depowering Superman, who would show up to where trouble was only to get instantly clocked

[Büge]

I'm sure there's a theory out there connecting his weird Season 1 old-man face with him getting Worf'd by things he'd shrug off in his own series

[Büge]

A GAME THEORY

[Thad]

Speaking of serialization, I forgot how early they introduced Ugly Mannheim. I remembered the Intergang/New Gods plot ramped up in season 2 prior to the introduction of Darkseid in season 3, but I forgot they introduced Mannheim before Turpin.

I also forgot that "Tools of the Trade", the episode that introduced Turpin, Darkseid, and a bunch of other New Gods stuff, was written by Mark Evanier. Who, for those who don't know, was Jack Kirby's assistant when he did New Gods.

[Thad]

...wait, The New Batman/Superman Adventures debuted in September?

Well that just makes the choice to start the series with "Holiday Knights" even more inexplicable.

[Thad]

...and good Lord, SubZero was released six months after the beginning of The New Batman Adventures? And five months after "Cold Comfort"?

Yeah, the original airing order has some problems, yo.

[Thad]

SubZero

Which, regrettably, is Not Very Good.

It's fine. It's okay.

But I suspect the only reason it's included on the Blu-Ray collection at all, rather than relegated to "we're going to pretend this didn't happen" status like Mystery of the Batwoman, is that it introduces two bits of continuity that are important later (Dick and Babs are dating, and Nora is revived at the end).

[Büge]

That also introduces the idea that Bruce has been keeping a piece of Kryptonite onhand for just such an emergency -- and then, two years after that, there's an episode of Justice League that fills in the backstory of where he got it (at the end of "Injustice for All" he takes it from Luthor and slips it into his utility belt).

I just finished watching "Tabula Rasa" and I was about to well ackshully you on this point (Batman uses a piece of Kryptonite on A.M.A.Z.O. after the android copies Superman, but the second time he tries it, A.M.A.Z.O. adapts to the Kryptonite ad destroys it), but then I remembered: it's Batman. He's probably chipped off a dozen slivers and hidden them in as many lead-lined safety deposit boxes.

[Thad]

It would explain why he only has a sliver in Batman Beyond after taking a whole chunk in Justice League.

(Unlike in Superman: TAS where Hamilton's sliver grows into a chunk in the next episode; that's just a continuity error.)

[Mongrel]

I honestly can't imagine Batman NOT having redundancies to his redundancies.

[Thad]

Superman: TAS really is kind of an odd duck. Mostly it's John Byrne's Man of Steel, but also it's Jack Kirby's Fourth World, sometimes it's '90s AF with like Lobo or something and sometimes it's just a coat of '90s paint on a story from the '50s (Kyle Rayner with Hal Jordan's origin story) and occasionally there'll be some Silver Age silliness in there (and even an adaptation of an episode from the '60s Filmation New Adventures of Superman with a giant ape) but not too Silver Age silly because it still has to fit in with the Man of Steel framework (except for the Mr. Mxyzptlk episode which just goes full-on Silver Age silly)...it's really kind of all over the place and it's kind of a miracle that it feels as cohesive as it does.

Meanwhile, as I work my way through season 2 I'm trying to decide where I should start watching Batman again. I kinda feel like World's Finest is the real kickoff for The New Batman/Superman Adventures, so I'm thinking I'll stick with Superman through that and then spend some more time with Batman. (I intend to watch it mostly in order but I'm going to circle back and watch Holiday Knights after Little Girl Lost because that's damn-well where it goes.)

Tim's not in World's Finest, is he? Are there any overt signifiers as to whether it takes place after his debut in Sins of the Father?

[beatbandito]