Alex (aka Aldrius) writes...

Arc 5 "Rocket" Ramble

Another really great arc for me. Loved Rocket, loved the family angle, loved the way the New Gods were handled, I liked seeing Lor-Zod and his team as sort of an "anti-team", the Metron stuff was great, I LOVED the Green Lantern stuff, it pretty much single-handedly got me to watch the entirety of the Green Lantern Animated Series, and that was good too so. All around great arc.

I love the take on some of the New Genesis stuff here. This is sort of a difficult subject to incorporate because it's been done quite a few times before, and I think very successfully in terms of the Superman: The Animated Series. The New Gods mythology also requires a *plethora* of lore and exposition. I watched this with my cousin, who knows very little about the New Gods. And he was a little confused, we watched the Superman: The Animated Series episodes featuring Orion & Apokalips & Darkseid, and they opened up their New Gods storytelling with the Mother Box showing Superman a little short infotainment video about the history of Apokalips & New Genesis and I think that helped a bit.

Not a big issue for me, though, all things considered. I've honestly always liked that Young Justice doesn't hold hands about arcane comic lore, a lot of it is pretty easy to just infer from visuals and personalities. White-haired man dressed like a shepherd is good, man with fiery eyes who looks like he hangs out in hell is bad. It all works.

M'Comm continues to kind of be an issue for me. I feel like he hits a weird spot. He's not sympathetic or humanistic enough for me to sympathize with him, and he's also not really outright vicious enough for it to be much fun when he gets taken down. He just leaves me feeling kind of ambivalent unfortunately. And I really *want* to like him. Having said that, I thought his dynamic with Lor-Zod and Mantis was great. Lor-Zod makes a good impression, I think the character was a *little* young for Phil Morris's baritone, but he does a great job with the character.

I can't quite remember which arc had the Superboy stuff where, so I'll just talk about it now. I really liked this for Superboy. This was a cool way to introduce the Phantom Zone prisoners, who have been a bit hokey as far as villains go over the years. They're kind of weirdly archaic in theory. Mostly because they're so associated with Terrence Stamp's portrayal from the second Superman film I think. Beyond that, what do you really do with a team of all-powerful supervillains who want to conquer the world. Well... this. I love the use of cult imagery here, the song is great. I love how Superboy is seduced by Zod, Zod is genuinely persuasive and compelling.

Superboy's mindset is also really clear here and it works really well.

Rocket is another character here who's just kind of like a catalyst or sort of centrepiece for this wacky outer space story about near immortal gods and aliens and space ships. I'm kind of, of two minds on her arc really. To an extent. On the one hand I like how sort of normal her arc is. She's just struggling with life. She's a single mom, trying to co-parent with her ex for a kid who has particular needs that she doesn't necessarily understand. And the opening scene really just sets up that she's not good at it. The closest thing she has to a moment of crisis is that a subway station is closed and it upsets her son.

I LOVE it, because it's so normal. There is no dramatic impetus, there is no light switch that Raquel needs to flip to become a good mom, she's going to go back and keep living her life, but maybe now she'll have a better attitude, some perspective, a bit more understanding of her situation because of her experiences. It's simple, it's nice. But because it's not very dramatic, there's no real engine to drive her story here. There's no clear arc necessarily. It's just kind of a bunch of stuff that happened. Which, as I've mentioned before, I'm really fine with. There's enough other things going on to make up for it.

Orion I liked a lot. I'm sort of unfortunately comparing it in my mind with other versions of the character (in this case, the Superman:TAS/JL/JLU version played by Ron Perlman), which isn't fair, but there's a lot to like about this version honestly, so it's not like he compares badly anyway. I think there was a tone to the New Genesis characters in the DCAU where they felt sort of grand and elegant and truly super-heroic. The boom tube effect in that show was pure white, and it always felt like rays from heaven or something. And the characters themselves felt like characters out of a bible cartoon or something. And they have a lot more grit in Young Justice (and to be fair *everything* has a lot more grit in Young Justice). It's not worse by any means, just different. In regards to Orion, from my limited understanding of Autism I don't think interpreting Orion as an autistic character is even a stretch frankly. He's a lot more brusque in Young Justice than he's been in other shows I've seen him in, but the sort of core of the character is still very much there. Also I'm a sucker for a story where a character overcomes their mental health struggles. Maybe that's not the right terminology or framing exactly, but when a character who has mental health struggles succeeds. It's nice to see.

The Green Lantern episode we got was so cool, as I said it got me to watch the entire series that was based on. This is one of the episodes which felt refreshing because it was such a stand-alone story. I watched it, it was satisfying, it didn't leave me feeling ambivalent. And I sort of missed those strong self-contained stories a bit with this season. Even if it was setting up Metron and some other elements for other stories. Also Razer was a total smoke-show. That's not really substantial, or important, but it made watching the episode more fun.

I was a *bit* surprised Dee Bradley Baker was playing Tomar-Re when he was played by Jeff Bennett in GL:TAS and Jeff Bennett has been a major cast member in YJ as well, but Dee Bradley Baker was cool and I suppose Bennett may have just been unavailable or there was some good ol' cost-cutting double-casting going on with Baker.

Oh, and the Foragers... I'm indifferent. It was cute. Reciting Shakespeare with third person pronouns was cute. I really liked that femme Forager became a Green Lantern. That was a cool surprising twist.

I think that's everything. It was great. Thoroughly enjoyed watching all four episodes.