Justice League

Morrus · May 5, 2004

Ah, OK. So I guess I have to see Season 2!

Villano · May 5, 2004

takyris said:
Well, Superman pretty much follows the rules for dramatic tension. He has to get knocked around for awhile, and then he gets angry or determined and then smacks the bad guys down. This is alluded to in the fight between Supes and Grundy, and in the fight between Supes and King or Ace or whoever the strong Royal Flush guy was. He trades punches for awhile, holding back and rolling with the punch (ie, getting knocked around), and then he eventually raises the level of force used.

I wonder if the people who complain about the same thing on Dragonball Z condone it here.

Regardless of what excuses the writers give, it's still bad writing. The "now I'll use my true power" during the last minute of the episode is just a sign of what I've been saying: The solutions are handled as an afterthought.

It's kind of like some of the bad episodes of ST: NG, where Geordi will suddenly realize that they can reverse the polarity of the superframistan and send it out through the deflector dish. All the build up is handled in 30 seconds of technobabble with absolutely no sense of suspense.

Didn't notice the issues with Hawkgirl on the show, but given that her mace uses electricity, I can imagine some kind of resistance to electricity on her part.

That same mace knocked back a "planet destroying laser" in the War World episode. That's some damn strong electricity. :lol:

That actually goes towards the "all powerful" Hawkgirl syndrome. For another example, in the WW2 episode, Wonder Woman and another hero (possibly Superman) are unable to tip over one of the War Wheels (or whatever they're called) until Hawkgirl helps.

Hawkeye may be a writer's favorite member of the Avengers, but you don't need to have him deflecting death rays with his bow or trading punches with the Hulk to make him interesting.

As for it getting Supes, well, it was a room made by the bad guys specifically to knock their other selves out. I'm sure that Red Sun radiation or Kryptonite was involved at some level.

Good theories, but, when the writers expect the audience to fill in the plotholes, that's bad...

MulhorandSage · May 5, 2004

Morrus said:
Ah, OK. So I guess I have to see Season 2!

Definitely. By and large, it's a much better show.

Scott Bennie

Pyrex · May 5, 2004

Now if they would only air Starcrossed.

Word has it it's a pretty good set of eps.

Felon · May 5, 2004

Klaus said:
Superman in the JL cartoon in much closer in power-level to the John Byrne Superman from the 1986 Man of Steel relaunch. Since then, writers have begun increasing their powers to absurd 1950s levels for no good reason.

Oh, the JL toon version of Supes is much weaker than Byrne's. In Byrne's own words, his version of Superman could "easily lift the combined weight of the great pyramids". He just wasn't infinitely powerful, like the pre-Crisis Superman.

The reason the toon version is a wimp goes back to the Warner Brothers cartoon that Superman starred in solo back in the mid-nineties. The writers decided to emulate the power level that Superman had back in the Max Fleischer cartoons of the 1940's. At that time, crimefighters were mostly just acrobatic boxers, so a guy who could shrug off bullets and knives and run at 70mph was plenty powerful. Basically, they couldn't devise a way to crank out 60 or so episodes about such a phenomenally-powerful character, so they made him more vulnerable. Hence him getting knocked on his butt by machine guns and grunting with severe strain any time he lifts anything heavier than a toaster.

I hated those WB Superman cartoons for that very reason. The way I see it, you want a vulnerable hero that you can empathize with as he gets smacked around, well go work on the Spider-Man cartoon. Superman is the guy you call in when a meteor about to come down on your head, or when an army from Apokolips is about to storm the planet. And sure enough, when the Apokolips army showed up towards the end of the series' run, Supes was easily subdued and the forces of New Genesis had to come save the earth's bacon.

Now, since they made that bad decision for the solo Supes series, they had to carry it over to the JL toon. And that also meant watering down all of the other characters. You think Supes is weak? The Martian Manhunter's abilities are tremendously subdued. The first three-part storyline with the invading martians had them clomping around in big tripod mechs (a la War of the Worlds). In the comics, the invaders sure as heck didn't need any vehicles.

Then again, they get beaten by cigarette lighters in the comics, and it's unclear if the Manhunter still has that weakness in the toon. Maybe he caught a break.

Villano said:
And Hawkgirl may be a great character, but the fact that she's a favorite of the writers comes through in the how she's portrayed as The Tick of the team. She seems to be able to do anything the writers want her to do.

It's not so much that she's a writer's favorite, it's that the writers are trying to get the viewers invested in her as a cool character, and that is definitely an uphill battle (the mega-mace helps a lot). When I was growing up in the early 80's, everyone thought Hawkman and Hawkgirl were a joke, and they had no business being in the league. My Marvel-phile friends would watch the SuperFriends and say "So all they can do is fly? Why doesn't someone just shoot them?" Of course, it's all perspective: nobody says that about Batman, who can't even fly and his only weapons are his fists and the occasional batarang.

But yeah, they are overdoing it. For what its worth, the version in the comics is not an alien, and is much cooler.

drnuncheon · May 5, 2004

Clearly the writers were using point-basewd construction and Superman's player tried to spread himself too thin.

Only slightly more seriously, this is (IIRC) sometimes called the "World's Finest" syndrome.

Earlier (mostly pre-Crisis), Superman was among his other powers a super-genius. But whenever he teamed up with Batman in the World's Finest comics, he inexplicably forgot his entire knowledge of science, criminology, etc.

Why? Because if he hadn't, there'd be no reason for Batman to be there - Supes obviously overshadows him physically, so Bats has to be the skilled one. I suspect that soemthing similar is going on with the cartoon. Supes has to work with a team, so he can't be 'the best at everything' the way he is in solo books.

This is just goofy though:

GL says "You were taking a lot of needless hits out there," and Superman flatly says something like, "We're not all created equal. I take those hits because I can, because it's one more hit that one of you doesn't have to take."

Apparently Supes doesn't realize that if he takes the guy out immediately, nobody has to take the hits...

J

Chimera · May 6, 2004

drnuncheon said:
Apparently Supes doesn't realize that if he takes the guy out immediately, nobody has to take the hits...

J

"Hmm...The bad guys have (1..2..3...) 12 attacks. I'll jump in and take all of them against me (AC 12, HP 1000) so that they don't make any of them against Batman (AC 30, HP 100)."

Yeah, kinda faulty logic there.

takyris · May 6, 2004

Hey, by M&M rules, it's perfect -- Supes has AC12 or 14 or something and Protection 20, and a Damage Save of +7 on top of that. He can get punched around by ordinary machine guns all afternoon, and can get a ziggurat dropped on him with no long-term health issues, while one punch to Batman could be seriously health-affecting.

frankthedm · May 6, 2004

I personally don't mind Supes being battered around by true demons and cthulouid spawn [Karrakull and Icthulthu's extradimensional minions],the show just has too much of the 'save superman for backup so others can shine'