Initial Reaction to Young Justice

This was pretty much just an hour them repeating that they aren't sidekicks

In case you were wondering I’m thoroughly enjoying Avengers: Earth’s Mightiest Heroes. It’s a good chunk into its first season and I can honestly say it’s one of the most entertaining Marvel cartoons I’ve ever seen…so far. I’ll be doing a season review once it wraps up though when that will be I have no idea. Fair’s fair though, so I figured I’d watch the premier of Young Justice and post some initial thoughts like I did with EMH last month. As I understand it this was the first two episodes, “Independence Day” parts 1 and 2. Obviously it’s hard not to draw comparisons to the Avengers cartoon but there’s an important difference between the two shows: technically EMH’s season premier was the sixth episode of the series where this one was the first. Character development as well as exploration of the world had already begun with EMH where in this cartoon everything starts here at once. As a result things felt more jumbled here. Anyway here’s some thoughts and notes I took while watching it.

-My sister says that Robin was stealing lines form 10 Things I Hate About You

-Speedy is a jerk. I hope we never see him again

-I like how the characters have distinct personalities, but where are the ladies?

-Zatara? Really? What is this, 1941?

-Dear DC Comics: Kid Flash is a horrible name. Please stop using it. Love, Beta

-Robin needs to lay off the jokes...for all our sakes

-BlAqulad’s powers sometimes seem a bit too much like Green Lantern. I guess that’s okay, there’s no “Teen Lantern” after all, but even so I think I’d prefer a power ring over “vague water powers”

-I should point this out while I’m thinking about it: the animation is great! It’s a more realistic style than the Avengers. I dig it a lot

-Robin calls Kid Flash “KF”? That’s not clunky and awkward at all

-Holy crap, Superboy is nothing like his comic book counterpart. Not even close

-Superboy is not only different he’s annoying. He’s like a teenage Wolverine with half-ass Superman powers

-This show is the opposite of Teen Titans cartoon in terms of structure,style, and tone. The lesson: be careful what you wish for

-I am not enthusiastic with the character design for Blockbuster

-Two Green Lanterns on the Justice League? Why?

-Hell yeah Captain Marvel!

-Seriously, go to hell Not-Suberboy. You’re awful

-Jesus Tap-dancing Christ on a Sofa, these main characters really seem to enjoy displaying how “rebellious” they are

-Red Tornado being here is so far the only thing that feels familiar to the original comic

-Let’s send teenagers on covert opts missions. I foresee no problems with this

-Why the hell was Miss Martian only introduced in the last two minutes of the episode? Why wasn’t there any female character along with the four guys running around on the adventure? Why do none of the female Justice League characters have any lines? I know a lot of character didn’t get lines but still this seemed like a Boy’s Club to me

Okay so after watching the premier episode I’m not particularly impressed. The animation is good and the dialogue is mostly without major problems (But minor glitches made me roll my eyes several times) and most importantly doesn’t feel like its talking down to its audience. However the characters are not very compelling and seem sort of flat. Robin is annoying with his Mary Sue-like ability with hacking (Which seems more like a Tim Drake thing rather than a Dick Grayson trait), BlAqualad doesn’t seem to actually have a personality and Not-Superboy is a rage fuel asshole that bares almost no resemblance to his comic book counterpart. The writers need to flesh out the cast big time but truthfully Justice League/Unlimited had a very similar problem with its season premier and that show ended up being fantastic so there’s no need to condemn anyone yet. However shame on the writers for apparently forgetting to add women to this episode. I can forgive the fact that despite seeing no less than three female members of the Justice League on screen none had any speaking lines but why did they decide they didn’t need Miss Martian to take part in the first adventure? With her traditional power set she would have been more useful than BlAqualad was. Or did we need more time flesh out Not-Superboy’s psychotic rage issues and thus couldn’t be bothered with a fifth member at this time? In any event there are some unfortunate implications there.

Bottom line is that this show didn’t exactly floor me with excitement. There are some pretty cool things about this show, and BlAqualad wasn’t the annoying problem I was worried he might be, but at the end of the day I was more bored than interested while watching the pilot, which was the opposite reaction I had with EMH. When the series starts proper in January I hope the kinks are worked out. Also the writers couldn’t have picked a worse personality to give to Not-Superboy. I’m sure he’ll be pissing me off all season long. The Avengers cartoon is officially winning the war.