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11/25/2003: Tuesday? already?! *blink* also: some thoughts on the latest JL episode
I just stopped myself from posting a totally boring, whiny entry. The couple of paragraphs I deleted boiled down to that basically I'm just incredulous that Monday's already passed in utterly unproductive ways, with me feeling wrung out and demotivated for no good reason -- and how did it happen that it's been Monday again so soon anyway?
Whatever. On to brighter topics! Like the latest Justice League episode:
Spoilers for Justice League Secret Society...
I like Shade more with each of his appearances. Not only has he cool lines, he also has one of the saner approaches to villainy. It's not that I always dislike the freaks and psychos bent on world domination, it's just refreshing to have villains like Shade too. Grodd worked for me, his plan was devious and as far as these things go quite successful too, though I'm curious how he escaped. Wasn't he locked up in Gorilla City? The resentment and friction within the Justice League, that Grodd caused to surface, was believable, I could see most of their points. On the opposition's side Grodd's trust exercises with his villain group were priceless, like a new-agey villain seminar.
Something that didn't quite work for me was the JLA's first training session. I mean it's all well and good when Superman slices evil robots with his heat vision, but slicing evil robots representing Darkseid(?) and Luthor? Not so much. I mean, he couldn't (or rather wouldn't) act like that in the field, so what's the point of training lethal tactics? That seems more like a hindrance than a help to me.
But how cool was Batman disabling that bunch of robots and then walking away? Especially of course as a backdrop for later when he did call for backup. And I'm getting really fond of Cartoon!Batman's dry, deadpan sense of humor (like his line "You overplayed your part. Yo." when he confronted Clayface pretending to be Flash) though it's not quite like the Comic!Batman character whom I love.
Flash still needs to work on his sinister intimidation tactics, when he has to drop the crook to frighten him, though at least he can do that and still stop the guy's fall at the bottom. It was fun to watch though. The fight Flash vs. Sinestro as well.
When the League fought the Secret Society I didn't quite get Parasite's powers. He seemed to suck out the life energy (?) of his victims, at least it seemed to me like he killed the bat he touched early on in the exposition section, but draining Superman didn't seem to give him more of a boost, and everybody of the Justice League seemed to recover rather quickly from his touch too. Well maybe a bat just has much, much less to suck out, or something like that.
Also, was there a reason why J'onn took out Green Lantern and waited until the sports stadium to make his move instead of fighting in the cave? Surely it would have been safer (if less dramatic) to fight without all those innocent people nearby? The only reason I can think of is that the flying Justice League members can maybe work better out in the open with more room to maneuver.
Finally, I really liked that the damage Grodd's scheme did to their group wasn't easily undone in the end.
