Breakfast Club- Young Justice "Revelation"

This past Fridays Young Justice "Revelation" was almost too hard to swallow how incredibly delish and geektastic it was in not only pitting the Joker and the rest of his Injustice League against YJ, but also filling the show with more cameos than we have ever seen in almost all of the past 13 episodes combined.  This felt
like the climactic final episode that we never got in Season 1 with the build-up from past stories and all the show stoppers to make yo mouth water.  Ahh!

The Injustice League stage an attack by cobra-venom induced Giant-plantlife in metropolitan cities across the globe
which The Justice League handle and Batman sends in his covert ops team to infiltrate and handle Joker, Poison Ivy,
Inhumanite, Count Vertigo, Black Adam,Wotan and some creeper villain that shoots laser beams (why didn't they use Dr. Light?) 

During the global monster mash we are treated to appearances from Leaguers like-- Superman, Captain Marvel, Hawkman, Hawkgirl, GL John Stewart, GL Guy Gardner, Blue Devil, Plastic Man, Vixen, Green Arrow, Red Arrow, Black Canary, Captain Atom and Icon-- as they do their superhero thang.  
Aqualad and the crew find the Secret Society and get utterly pawned.  Great to see Black Adam do his thing, slapping around Conner and his Wolf with not even a word spoken.  Count Vertigo rocks with his Count Chocula accent and who else thought there was a reference to Austin Powers with his ransom request for one billion dollars?  The animation and character designs throughout were solid.  I can't recall a more impressive episode since Kalder's return to Atlantis in "Downtime." 

YJ get a second round against Joker, Ivy and the gang which looks to be another quick defeat until Aqualad busts out the helmet of Dr. Fate and becomes one with the mystic Naboo.  The short but sweet Joker/Robin matchup was so damn cool.  Dr. Fate along with the arrival of some of the Justice League makes the Society say "uncle" except for of course Joker.  A definite must watch Young Justice episode for even the most casual of DC readers.  A lot to love.





Breakfast Club is a regular column where I kick up my feet on a Saturday morning with a big bowl of cereal and run through the DVR to play catch-up on recorded cartoons, animation or break open new/old blu-ray releases that keeps me nostalgic on this classic, American weekend ritual. 




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Breakfast Club- Batman: Brave and the Bold "Time Out for Vengeance" & "Sword of the Atom"

Breakfast Club is a new feature where I kick up my feet on a Saturday morning with a big bowl of cereal and run through the DVR to play catch-up on recorded cartoons, animation or break open new/old blu-ray releases that keeps me nostalgic on this classic, American weekend ritual.  This weeks queue of animated flicks I ate up were the last 2 weeks of Young Justice and Batman: Brave and the Bold.  Since I had so much more fun with the two episodes of Batman: Brave and the Bold-- I will just rock philosophic on those two shows.  

Last weeks episode, "Time Out for Vengeance" opened with a great cameo from Catman and as Batman was about to hand him over to the Gotham police, Bats mysteriously vanished ala Marty McFly.  We are then taken to the Justice League International's satellite headquarters in space with hilarious ragtag comedy and nice easter-eggs like Guy reading a Brother Power the Geek comic.  Time Master, Rip Hunter enters the

scene and informs the JLI how they need to help save Batman from being erased entirely from the time continuum.  

Hunter's approach is to break up the JLI into various teams to simultaneously save all of the Batmen through history (inspired by Grant Morrison's Batman: Return of Bruce Wayne arc).  

Guy and Ice are first up by getting dropped off in the Jurassic age and after being chased around by a T-Rex are saved by Cave-Batman.  After hanging out a bit in his tree house (not Bat-cave) they are attacked by some robot on the hunt for Batman.  They easily take out the bot and we enter Booster and Blue Beetle on a Pirate ship with..surprise, Pirate Bats!!  So great to have these two iterations of Bats re-purposed from the books, while the next two are not.  Aquaman, who definitely provides the biggest laugh tracks-- works with Fire to join up with Bat-Man-acus and FIGHT ROMANS!!  Easily the funniest bit.  Finally they all combine forces and port to the future where they face the major baddie behind it all, Equinox.  Robot-Batman brings in the rest of the Bat-Men from the past to help out and HUZZAH!! plain old Bats is restored to his solid self.

The following show, "Sword of the Atom" is fab but easily overshadowed by the opening short of "The Currys of Atlantis" which is a gut-wrenching spoof of any TV Land 50's sitcom ala Leave it to Beaver. 

From Manta attempting to place a bomb in their mailbox to Aquaman planning a "fighting crime with Batman" night (guys nightout) on his anniversary.

Funny shit. 

As usual we see Bats hating on his fellow heroes

The feature episode opens with an introduction to the Atoms- Ray Palmer and Ryan Choi.  Afterwards, the entirety of the show minus the adds of Aquaman, Choi and Bats is largely adapted from the classic 80's mini-series of Sword of the Atom.

We get to see Palmer in his savage-jungle garb (that was ingeniously used during his stint with the Indigo Tribe in Blackest Night).  Again, Aquaman steals the thunder of the show by slowly suiting up Choi to resemble his hero-look in hopes of bringing him back from civilian status.

Soon after, Bats reveals that the Chancellor of the Katarthans is planning to overthrow the Princess and Palmer then Bats is thrown into a pit with a bigass Spider to his death.  Aquaman, Choi and the silverfish trackdown Bats, saves his ass then helps the Atom overthrow the giant-size Chancellor.  Aquaman successfully convinces Choi to return to his life as the Atom and Palmer continues his life as a 6" savage.    

Thanks for chomping into our first run of Breakfast Club and keep those tasty animations coming WB!!!



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big O

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Breakfast Club- Season Premieres of Young Justice & Batman: Brave and the Bold

We got some serious double-duty of season premieres in comics animation via the cool kids at the Cartoon Network.  First is the long delayed return of Young Justice with episode 10: Targets.  The episode worked as a nice solo story for the rebellious, non-conforming Red Arrow (Roy Harper)-- who is working incognito to help foil plans to assassinate politicians from Rhelasia.  Roy calls into Aqualad for help with

intel and ends up playing back up to him once he finds out that the Rhelasian hit-squad is not only Cheshire and Sports-Master but ultimately backed by Ra's Al Ghul.

A plus to see Lex Luthor finally brought forward in the story rather than only being a voice for the mysterious Illuminati known as "The Light" (looks like the Legion of Doom to me!)

Along with giving Arrow some real shine, we also see the beginnings of what will most likely be some ill-fated relationship between Cheshire and Arrow.  Which is covered with a lot of connections to the books and obviously adds to how legit Young Justice has been so far.

The arc also covers some of Conner and Megan going back to school with a seriously funny scene that includes J'onn J'onzz & Red Tornado acting out as their parents saying oh, look how much they have grown.  Awkward!

As Luthor is working as negotiator between the North and South of Rhelasia-- Roy is brought in to help protect both dignitaries as Cheshire attempts to finish her job.  Fantastic potrayal of Luthor as he utterly manipulates the hell out of the outclassed young hero to support him.  Some crazy-action packed scenes between Cheshire/Arrow and Sportsmaster/Aqualad-- especially with Kalder's water constructs.  We later see that Ra's and Lex were working together towards bringing more countries under their influence and power.

The topic of a potential mole within the team is brought up again and Kalder asks Roy to keep things quiet as they both agree to work together on seeing if there is any truth to it-- along with Red Arrow looking to be more included within the team dynamic.  Loved how the title of targets works as a double meaning between the Malaysian politicians and the Young Justice via "The Light."  One of the more smarter articulated animations out there for kids and their parents to share together (though a bit on the violent side).  Amped to have the animation back on the regular with another incredible series- Batman: The Brave and the Bold.

Don't know if there is any linkage at DCE between starting the season with a Bats/GL story in the same way they opened with Justice League #1 in the books with their two major DC heroes as a centerpiece, but hey at least we noticed!  Famed hero-humor scribe J.M. DeMatteis rocks this episode with a great introduction to Star Sapphire and the Zamarons.

"Scorn of the Star Sapphire" starts with a confrontation between Bats/Steve Trevor against the Baroness and her Nazi cronies where the heroes look to be done for.  And to the rescue is Wonder-Woman in her invisible jet and 70s theme music.  Bats starts hating on Trevor for winning over the love of the Amazonian princess and this works as a pretext for the main story between GL, Star Sapphire and Bats as relationship counselor. 

Hal Jordan and Carol Ferris work together with Batman to test pilot some of his latest vehicles.  A part of the agreement between GL and Bats is that while he is testing the new Bat-tech-- Bats is to watch over Coast City.  A nice rumble takes place between the Tatooed Man, Bats and eventually GL and we get to enjoy the creative face-off of GL's constructs of will and Tattoed Man's deadly ink.  The human flashlight gets some haterade thrown his way by the Dark Knight on what Carol is doing with him while the badassery of Tatooed Man battling the two ends.  Real fun stuff and fabulously animated.

The story pushes forward with a reporter who is looking to uncover the connection between Carol Ferris and the Green Lantern when Star Sapphire makes her entrance and though a lot of the action is pretty quick it is great to see that it's Geoff Johns/Ivan Reis' re-imagined Star Sapphire with her power ring and all thats represented.  With the shows heavy use of more golden age-Dick Sprang-ish art and stylizing it was nice to see how they kept things modern (makes sense especially with Sapphires' potential appearance in the GL Animated Series and movie sequel in the future).

Bats and GL are being served up by Star Sapphire and her Zamorans when Bats finally tells GL he needs to defeat her by reaching out to Carol.  Hal professes his love for Carol--a rarity to see in the comics these days-- and Carol exercises the spirit of the Zamoran entity (Predator) from her.  GL finally confesses his only fear is to lose Carol--ahhh, some touching shit for a hardcore GL fanboy.

The episode was superbly written with a flare for showing the many faces of Batman through the ages and a wonderful means of highlighting the many fave & obscure characters of the DCU.  Continually this is the best of comics animation out there and fingers crossed it will be Black Dynamite that rivals Brave and the Bold for me.


Breakfast Club is a new feature where I kick up my feet on a Saturday morning with a big bowl of cereal and run through the DVR to play catch-up on recorded cartoons, animation or break open new/old blu-ray releases that keeps me nostalgic on this classic, American weekend ritual. 

This post was written by:
big O

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Missed Connections- Batman Inc. / Batman: The Brave and the Bold

With all the excitement and interest C&D  peeps have had in Batman the Return and Batman Inc. last week-- I decided to wax philosophic on things I know on the background of Morrison's concepts-- that for many who have been reading and following story threads, can still be a bit confusing.  First, we know that Morrison is a big fan of the Batman mythos, especially the obscure stories of the 50's thru the 70's that in his own words are like psychedelic trips gone bad.  Okay that sounds about right.  And we have seen some of his
interpretations of such musings like Zur-En-Arrh in the Batman R.I.P. arc to the Club of Heroes/International Batmen in one of the most compelling reads of his works to date in Batman #667-669 that shines the masterful visuals of J.H. Williams III. 

In each of these stories Morrison ties together complex, mutli-faceted content that showcases the Dark Knight's ability to be a tale that can effectively be told through any medium whether cosmic, pulp-noir, horror, sci-fi and be accepted (not to say we all quite understand it all) by a mainstream audience.


I recall Morrison and David Finch (who will be busting writer/art duties in the forthcoming Dark Knight book) at SDCC talking story on the key influences of Batman's new direction and cited how the Batman Family-- features some of the greatest of DC's cast of characters and are the more popular and easily recognizable heroes/villains by fans of all ages. 

On top of that another one of Morrison's key influences for Batman Inc.-- Batman: The Brave and the Bold animated series-- you have the whole of the DCU on board to team-up with the timeless, legendary hero.

As I was watching a re-run of the two-part episode of The Starro Invasion- you can count off to yourself at least 20+ DCU characters-- Booster Gold, Guy Gardner, Kilowog, Tomar-Re, Captain Marvel, Atom, Fire, Huntress, Black Lightning, Hawkman, Firestorm and so on.



I can see how many of the die-hard Batman fans are to say the least turned-off by what is perceived as a capitalist, Tony Stark-onian approach to franchising out the Batman brand of justice through the world, but with nearly 10 books that bear the Batman logo-- I am sure we can be fulfilled by what we perceive as Batman canon in one of them.

And again, how can we not get excited about this approach on Batman that we have not yet experienced, by Morrison no-less!!??  With the many directions and character inventory avail for Batman Incorporated, I can't see how and why heads wouldn't want to jump on it.




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big O

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