Well it’s been a pretty long break; between episodes of my favourite toons airing as well as an entry into the blog. I knew this was going to take a while before I got into the swing of it… not to mention got good at it.
So, in order to get the ball really rolling, the next few entries may be somewhat lacking, but then again, I love reading those reviews of Outlaw Vern that end in, ‘why didn’t I finish this review?”. Also, the format will be different to last time, but I’ll figure it all out eventually.
“Welcome to Happy Harbor” starts off in Star City with our Young Justice team dropping in on Speedy to try and convince him to join the team. Speedy just so happens to be in the middle of dealing with Brick at the Dockyards (in quite the dynamic action scene to boot), which is indicative of the way Young Justice does business. It’s not content to do one thing at a time, and I mean that in the best way.
So often an animated show is content to simplify scenes both in terms of themes, content and animation. This opening scene could have simply been Robin, Aqualad and Kid Flash having a conversation with Speedy in an alley. Animation is expensive, so it’s both surprising and impressive that this character moment occurs during a fantastic action sequence worthy of any of the DCU animated movies.
There are a number of sweet action beats, in particular I love the parkour style movements they’ve given to Speedy and Robin. There are lots of fantastic grace notes in the action scenes, like when Brick kicks the sliding gun up from the ground, or Speedy running full speed then kicking his leg out onto a crate in order to stop and steady himself quickly to fire a few shots. The ‘high-density poly-urethane foam’ arrow seems a bit more hardcore than it looks. I’m pretty sure I heard Brick struggling to breathe in there. Does he get air holes?
I love the attitude Speedy has, the strong continuity that it brings between the Pilot and this episode and the ‘show-don’t-tell’ effect at work. We know that Speedy is determined and aggressive in his crime fighting, because we see it, rather than have the other characters point it out.
It’s also nice to spend time with these heroes out of costume. That’s one thing I always thought was a bit silly about Teen Titans (and JLU for that matter), a group of heroes hanging out, who know each other’s names, but prefer to stay in costume. Do they ever get washed? Do Robin’s tights start to smell, or has he got dozens of outfits? Hmmm, I digress.
We learn that Mount Justice is the JLUs first hideout, but was exposed. Could this play into things later down the line? So far every second beat on this show seems to be laying the seeds for future story lines. On that note, Superboy is an angry bastard, and it was during one of his outbursts that I recognized Nolan North. He does a good job, but Superboy is seriously pissed off. At least it gives a drastically different version of Superman, who is so boringly good.
The bio-ship is an interesting concept. Avengers have Quinn Jets. The JLU has some sort of ship (can’t for the life of me remember the name). Even Ben 10 has ‘Ship’ (creatively named… that show is a wealth of original names!). The scene aboard the bio-ship displayed more of the wonderful character dynamics between the group. They all have fairly distinct personalities and Robin and Wally have a great interplay in their competitiveness for Miss Martian (dudes and green chicks… those sci-fi writers keep going back to that well, don’t they?).
So Red Tornado gives them their first mission and they meet Mister Twister. I’ve never heard of this character, but I’m not really a DC aficionado, so this is going to happen a lot on this show.
The ensuing action scene serves the sole purpose to demonstrate the groups lack of teamwork. There’s a great line from Twister who finds ‘the lack of adult supervision quite disturbing’. I also love Robin’s propensity for wordplay based around backtracking words. Last week it was all about being ‘whelmed’ and now it’s taking 'disturbed' to '‘turbed'. Twister’s rebuttal after the smack down was priceless though; ‘Indeed, that was quite… turbing.’. Good stuff.
Predictably (but still executed marvelously nonetheless), the gang learns to fight as a team, learns to let M’Gann in with the telepathy and trust her instincts, as well as reveal another ongoing plot. Once again, I’m not familiar with the characters (I’m assuming the scientist at the end is Red Tornado’s nemesis), but echoes the foreshadowing at the end of the Pilot episode with Cadmus, and I like this sort of story seeding very much.
Every moment of this show is extremely well storyboarded. It’s not groundbreaking and extreme in its’ style, but it is consistently strong, well thought out and fluid. Dialogue and exchanges seem to get as much attention to detail in the animation as the action scenes.
Of course, the action scenes really go for broke in this show. There were some great scraps in the Pilot, particularly the final showdown against Blockbuster, but the final fight against Mister Twister is impressive in it’s display of destruction.
I’m not normally into the presence of sidekicks in comics. I think having kids on the front lines of crime fighting raises more questions than they ever take the time to answer. This show looks like it might get around to tackling that eventually. Of course I’m just guessing, based on a few lines of dialogue here and there, as well as a more serious tone.
Overall, loving every minute of it. I can’t wait for next week’s episode with team’s first proper stealth mission.
Now tell me that doesn't look cool. I'm actually a little surprised that when Batman said 'covert' missions he wasn't joking. Neato!
But not just a stealth mission, it's one that takes them to a more recognisable villain (but still one of the D-listers for the JLU); Bane as voiced by DANNY TREJO!
See you next week!
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