They do some dumb things, as does Adult Swim. Anyone who watches will recall that Venture Brothers and Tom Goes to the Mayor debuted at roughly the same time.
They couldn’t stop pimping TGTTM, every bump was about how much they loved it. (granted, it was developed in-house) and it was a hideous pile of crap, as hard to watch as The O’Reilly Factor. Meanwhile, Venture languished with rumors of cancellation and non-renewal, and it was one of the freshest, funniest cartoons on. All of these sentiments were reflected by ratings and their own forum community.
From what I understand, this season of JLU is being made for the international market and cartoon network gets to air it at a reduced cost. This will probably the last TV show/season of the Dini universe but direct to DVD movies haven’t been ruled out.
I don’t know, has the sheer goodness of last season sabotaged the expectation of this season that anything short of greatness makes me go, “eh”
I still think that its the best superhero cartoon television, but the first of tonight’s plots seemed strung together by plot cliches, moved by faulty logic, topped with saccharine sweet moments. Nice to see the star-spangled kid get some screen time though.
The Warlord episode was indeed bursting at the seams with cliches. An evil wizard trying to aquire an ancient, magical doo-dad of power? Ugh, come on. At least the interaction between Star Spangled Kid and Supergirl was fun. I never really did understand what was going on with Supergirl’s powers, but her skirt seemed to retain its fantastical ability to defy gravity, wind, and um, sliding down a rock slope.
I actually enjoyed the second episode. Some nice character development with the Martian (a meta plot for this season, for sure), and the more I see of Green Arrow the more I like him. I love how he, a regular human, was able to release the clamps on the ship while WW was unable to. In some ways, he’s being written the same way Batman used to be --using smarts, gadgets, and stealth to overcome obstacles. Also, Prince Valliant’s sendoff at the end was cool.
Yeah, it was cheesy, but the Warlord episode was pretty true to the original comics from the 70s. According to Wiki, the original run lasted 133 issues. Dang. And was it just me, or was there a lot of death in this episode? Dinosaurs killed by gunfire, a lizardman getting incinerated, corpses strewn across the battlefield…
Overall, a B despite the silly fantasy trappings, thanks once again to the character interactions.
As for the second episode, I’m wondering who did the still shots seen when Grodd was discussing Prince Valiant’s origin. I could swear they look like the work of one of the Buscema brothers.
Right now, I think King Faraday is my favorite character of this new season.
According to TV Tome, the next episode airs on October 8th and sounds like it was written for Houngan: “The Flash must handle an onslaught of super-villains during the opening of a museum in his honor.” I saw members of the Rogues Gallery during the closing credits of this last episode, so it looks like you’re in for a treat.
Don’t forget Phantom Menace, too, though why anyone would want to rip that off is beyond me. The giant dinosaurs with energy blasters mounted on their backs are totally Gungan.
I don’t watch the intro or trailer anymore, it’s practically a spoiler for four episodes fore and aft. But hey, go Flash! Although I don’t think it will enhance him too much; he’s always had one of the cheesier Rogue’s Galleries.
Two weeks running with no JLU now. Scheduling at Cartoon Network is seriously screwy. Anyone know when we can expect more new episodes? Or has Bobobo-Bo-Bo-BoBo perma-dumped JLU from the lineup?
