“Cornered” is how the producers of this show probably feel.
Here’s how “Cornered” is described:
The team is trapped inside the Hall of Justice for a cage match against a brutal alien gladiator!
I look forward to your thoughts, opinions, gripes, live-blogging, etc.
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Captain Marvel on Young Justice is amongst the best adaptations of Captain Marvel yet. I love it! I look forward to this episode.
This is one of the best shows on.
For once I think GL was the better show this week. YJ was good too, but the brawl between everyone and Despero kinda bored me. I loved that Virgil Hawkins showed up, tho it’s weird not having Phil Lamarr voice him. I’m also wondering why the show hasn’t touched on the League while they’ve been away trying to clear their names. Also, who is Malcolm (dude dressed as the Guardian in this episode) supposed to be exactly? Is he an existing character who becomes a certain hero or a new character created just for the show?
Mal is a rather obscure Teen Titan from the 70s who went by various names, but most people might recognize him from his bit role in the Teen Titans animated series as The Herald.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mal_Duncan
The pertinent bit for this episode is that Mal joined the Teen Titans when they were going through a “we’re not going to wear our costumes or use our powers” phase, which wasn’t long before the series got cancelled. Then during the brief return in the late 1970s, Mal took on the identity of the Guardian to battle Dr. Light for exactly one issue (there’s some story behind why they didn’t let him continue that way but I don’t remember it at the moment).
So having him dress in the Guardian’s duds this issue was definitely a shout out to that.
Ok, that explains why i don’t know Mal because I haven’t read any classic Titans stuff yet. That is cool how Mal was the Herald and appeared in the “Teen Titans” cartoon.@Glennism, maybe back then DC was afraid of replacing Guardian with a black character? I’m not sure how progressive DC was back in the 70s but that could have been it. I can’t see how it would make a big splash, it’s never seemed to me that the Guardian in the comics is anybody important.
Apparently it came down to the new editor not liking it:
http://goodcomics.comicbookresources.com/2013/01/10/abandoned-love-mal-duncan-as-the-new-guardian/
I suppose it’s worth mentioning that the reason the Titans had the Guardian stuff is because Roy Harper turned out to be the nephew of Jim Harper (which I’m pretty sure was just somebody at DC realizing they had two characters with the same last name and deciding to use it). This was back when “modern” DC characters could still be feasibly only one generation from the WWII heroes, and it kinda ignored the whole Earth 1/Earth 2 concept. The Speedy/Guardian connection was followed up in Superman Family as Jimmy Olsen and the Newsboy Legion tracked down Speedy to help them find the clone of the original Guardian.
Ah, so I was right in a way. It sort of irks me how so many characters in the DCU have similar names like that (Martha Wayne, Martha Kent, not related but still). When they had the episode of the League giving clone Speedy (who I guess is just Speedy now that the original Roy Harper is Arsenal) an intervention, I thought Guardian was an older Wally West. Then both of them had the same last name and nobody said anything, I was just “what?”. But back to Malcolm Duncan not being Guardian, both Mister Terrific and Steel were white legacy characters until they became the incarnations we know (i-forget-his-name and John Henry Irons respectively) so I wonder when that stopped being an issue. Although Mister Terrific and Steel were might have been acquisitions from other companies instead of original DC characters. My DC history book is under a huge stack so I can’t fact check this stuff off the bat.
The Mal Duncan thing was in the late 1970s. Mr. Terrific and Steel were in the 90’s, so it was a different world.
I’ve never necessarily heard anything about Julius Schwartz being racist or at least having any issue with black characters replacing white ones. Since he wound up becoming a completely new character (Hornblower at the time, later reconned to Herald), it might have just been that he was planning on exploring more with the old Guardian over in Superman Family and therefore didn’t want two Guardians running around.
Yea I checked my DC encyclopedia and youre right, both modern versions of Mr.Terrific and Steel came up in the 90s. I’m not sure but wasn’t Julius Schwartz editor during Green Lantern/Green Arrow when John Stewart was introduced? I can’t believe anyone actually had “Hornblower” as an alias. Seriously, it’s so on the nose and opens itself so wide to innuendo I have to wonder if someone didn’t get fired for that (might be over-reacting, it was a different time). Well hopefully Mal becomes “Herald” or something because for the longest time I wondered what his purpose on the team was, I know he was friends with Connor and M’Gann when they went to that high school but still. I’m also loving that the Young Justice team is becoming more diversified (Bumble Bee, Static, Blue Beetle, Rocket, hopefully more to come).
I’m convinced now: they should just cancel out the New 52 continuity and replace it with the Young Justice continuity. For anyone who complains about how random the DC Universe seems, Weissman and Vietti have just done a really spectacular job at making all the elements of the DCU merge together. I mean Blue Beetle at the center of the universe?! That’s just loaded with awesomeisms!
Seconded! This show is so much better than anything in the New 52. They’ve done an incredible job of staying true to the characters, honoring what has gone before and streamlining disparate elements into a cohesive story without taking a dump on 75 years of continuity. Dan DiDio, take a lesson!
Third!! Listen to the masses Dan!!! Reboot the reboot!!!
It occurs to me that hindsight is 20/20. I believe that this show started around the same time that DC was doing “Brightest Day”, and I’ve always felt that DC pulled the New 52 out of it’s ***. Maybe they were trying to replicate YJ continuity somewhat? Both have the 5 year thing going on, compressed timeline, younger characters… Although I do believe that the New 52 erased alot of the sidekicks (Robin, Kid Flash, notwithstanding).
Totally agree. This show is how you make a universe with a vast catalog of characters that are both old and new work. I really hope it goes more than two seasons.
Two weeks in a row now that my DVR did not record these shows. I’ll have to catch the replays tomorrow.
I know I got caught off-guard at one point because my Tivo was looking for “Young Justice” and the show is officially named “Young Justice: Invasion” now.
This didn’t record for me as well. Then looked at the “original air date” for this episode which said october 2012, and I have my DVR set to record new shows, so that could have been the problem for me at least.
@glennsim: Yeah, they changed the name for the second season, I had to reset my DVR when they did that. But I think that cromulent found the problem–the episodes are still tagged with their original air dates which means they aren’t tagged as NEW so the DVRs don’t record them. Hurm.
It did sorta dawn on me this week that the reason for the whole “Justice League needs to go resolve issue on Rimbor” this is essentially just to get them out of the way so the remaining characters can have more to do.
Probably true, but I’m hoping they’ll touch on how the League is doing or something because it seems like it could be important. Plus the Justice League going to jail for a crime they DID commit could be kinda cool to watch unfold (not being in jail, but the trial or whatever).
Is it sad that I got excited that L-ron was in this episode?…It’s probably a little sad.
Phil Lamarr is doing the voice for Baxter Stockman on the new TMNT series. Might be why he wasn’t doing Virgil Hawkins.
I am so glad this show finally got out. It sets a new standard in animation/writing imo.
OMG. How did I miss that Rimbor is the planet that the rest of the League is on? That’s a big Easter Egg since, about a thousand years from know, Ultra Boy from the Legion of Super-Heroes is from Rimbor.
My DVR only caught a little of that amazing Chinese Kung-Fu Classic Batman short, where cat woman fights some Kung fu guy, but from what lIttle I did see, OMG someone do an hour and a half movie of THAT please!
Episode was great, as usual!
Here you go, Bub:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Gbs67ApxL4
You, sir, deserve a cookie. THANK YOU! That was AMAZING!
Still think this all going to lead to Infinite Crisis
If someone told me back when I was reading DC that I was going to get an animated version of the Legends and Invasion! events wrapped up in one fantastic show with great writing and great animation, I would have had that person committed. This stuff is great!
This show makes me want to read Blue Beattle.