Going Through The DCAU Part Seventeen

And we’re back with more cartoon superhero talk with Tom and Jimmy.

This week, we’re covering “Zatanna,” “The Mechanic,” and “Harley and Ivy”.

Going Through The DCAU Part Fifteen

Yup, time for more cartoon talk with Jimmy and Tom.

This time, we’re covering the Batman The Animated Series episodes “What Is Reality?” “I Am The Night,” and “Off Balance”.

Slightly Misplaced Comic Book Heroes Case File #57: Icon

Not everyone call pull off green and red combos when it isn’t Christmas.

In 1993, DC Comics tried an experiment.  They created a line of comics dedicated to giving minority writers and artists a chance to create their own superheroes.  Dubbed “Milestone,” the initial comics had some success, the most noteworthy being Static, a teenage boy with electro-magnetic powers that managed to gain his own animated TV series and has been popping up around the DC Universe ever since.

A little less well known was a guy called Icon.

Slightly Misplaced Comic Book Heroes Case File #56: Secret

Smoking kills.

Think about it:  Casper the Friendly Ghost is really creepy.  Not for the whole “wanting to be friends with people” thing, or even how the guys on Cheers observed that Casper must somehow lose all his friends between cartoons, or that one really warped episode where Casper befriends a fox pup that gets killed, only to have the fox’s ghost show up to immediately pick up where it left off with Casper (that’s some demented stuff right there).  No, the fact is Casper is a kid, always will be a kid, and he’s a ghost hanging around for some reason.  That’s some prime potential horror right there.

That sort of thing was realized a bit better with Secret.

Tom Recommends: Young Justice (Animated Series)

Animator Greg Wiseman has had a long string of animated series that have pleased fans but have always seemed to be cut short due to other factors.  He was forced off Disney’s Gargoyles and saw his Spectacular Spider-Man cut short due to the Spider-rights going to Disney.

Then there was Young Justice, an animated series set in the DC universe about a team of superhero sidekicks going on covert missions for the Justice League.

Slightly Misplaced Comic Book Heroes Case Files #30: Snapper Carr

The JLA was mostly looking for a human sacrifice to appease Starro when they met this clown.

Kid sidekicks are a thing for many heroes.  Usually they’re supposed to be someone for the young reader to identify with.  And while not every superhero has had a kid sidekick, on the DC most of the major ones did.  In fact, the Justice League had one once for some reason.

His name was Snapper Carr.  And oh man, was he painful to read about.

Going Through The DCAU Part Eight

Continuing Jimmy and Tom’s rewatch of the DCAU.

This week, we cover the Batman the Animated Series episodes “The Clock King,” “Appointment in Crime Alley,” and “Mad as a Hatter”.

Slightly Misplaced Comic Book Case File #23: Arrowette

These guys need to learn to read signs posted on trees.

The comic book version of Green Arrow is best known as being one of the few heroes with a distinctive political point of view.  Who does Superman vote for?  Who knows?  Green Arrow is an out-and-out bleeding heart liberal, and that’s probably one of his defining characteristics.

Except he wasn’t always that way.  The character existed for a good twenty years before his political perspective came up at all.  Prior to that, he was the standard white bread DC hero who did good because it was good and if he ever had a thought deeper than which arrow to use at any given moment, he sure didn’t share it.  In point of fact, the guy was a Batman rip-off, living as a millionaire playboy with his sidekick and ward in a big mansion with a cave and a car and a plane underneath his home.  It’s not much of a memorable era for the Emerald Archer.

This era also gave us Arrowette.