I expect you liked the premiere of the new Legion of Super-Heroes cartoon on Saturday. There wasn't much to dislike.
The fight was not impressively choreographed. The vocals were edited with very clean separation between speakers, but I suspect that the script was more Altmanesque--there were a number of occasions when A stopped as if interrupted but B didn't start talking until A was well clear. The dialog was not what I would call naturalistic, of the "it doesn't make sense to say it that way" sort. The scene at the fair was plotted very badly. Mano didn't disintegrate anything and the Persuader didn't cut anything. And Tharok should be the leader of the Fatal Five.
But it was basically the right Legion and the right Fatal Five. The lower-powered characters, especially Bouncing Boy and Triplicate Girl, showed themselves to be effective. The voices were good. The character designs were quite good. Did they say what year it was?
On the whole, I find, doing the right thing imperfectly is significantly more attractive than doing the wrong thing very well.
Take, for example, Saturn Girl; in Waid's LSH, Titanians don't speak, because they're telepathic. That's potentially an interesting and SFnal way of integrating a telepathic humanoid race into the universe of the 31st century. But it's dopey to do that with Saturn Girl in the LSH, because I already know who Saturn Girl is, and she's not a weird alien chick who never talks, so it doesn't matter how well you do the Titanians-never-talk thing, because I'm probably not going to like it.
So I liked the premiere of the cartoon quite a bit, and there's still room for improvement.
Kids' WB, which is probably on your local CW station.
On the whole, I find, doing the right thing imperfectly is significantly more attractive than doing the wrong thing very well.Take, for example, Saturn Girl; in Waid's LSH, Titanians don't speak, because they're telepathic. That's potentially an interesting and SFnal way of integrating a telepathic humanoid race into the universe of the 31st century. But it's dopey to do that with Saturn Girl in the LSH, because I already know who Saturn Girl is, and she's not a weird alien chick who never talks, so it doesn't matter how well you do the Titanians-never-talk thing, because I'm probably not going to like it.
Turning Brainiac 5 into Inspector Gadget is at least moving into the boundary of that territory for me, though I can probably deal if the show shapes up well overall. I was pleasantly surprised that the character designs of Saturn Girl and Phantom Girl didn't portend their being forced into the perky/goth dyad that seems to be de rigueur for cartoons these days (cf. Starfire and Raven in Teen Titans, Jody and Ophelia in The Life and Times of Juniper Lee, Azula's sidekicks on Avatar, the Last Airbender, etc.)
Superman does risk crossing over into Greatest American Hero territory at times. Making him inexperienced is a good way to prevent him from overshadowing the rest of the Legion, but the show does establish that he's been doing some rescues and feats on his own. Not knowing all the applications of super-breath or how to fly straight is fine, but he should at least have a comfort zone of things he knows how to do.
Still, while thus far I'd still rather have the Legion from JLU's "Far From Home", this one seems worth giving a chance to. (Though I wonder if kids in the target demographic will observe that Krypto seems to have figured out his powers and his place with the Dog Stars quite a bit faster than Clark does his own powers and team. :-) )
Oops-- a little bad quoting in the last post. In case it's not obvious, everything up to "...I'm not going to like it." is Greg's, not mine. [fixed--gpm]
I'm similarly trepidatious about Brainy's mechanization, especially the warmachine form he morphs into to defeat Tharok (and why didn't he do that in the first part of the combat), but enough else was right that it was only a yellow warning.
(I will note, in addition, that in the future, when Earth is a crossroads of an advanced interstellar nation, the only Earthlings on Earth will hold menial jobs. This strikes me as suboptimal. What, Earth is Singapore?)
I really enjoyed it and it was the little touches that did it for me. The symbols on the monitor board in the opening credits, the Interlac (apparently properly used; I haven't frame-by-framed it to check), the DCU alien races, the Superman museum that looks like the one seen in Bronze Age comics, the cameos for Booster and Skeets (yeah, anachronistic, but still)...
This felt like the 30th/31st century I "know." Robo-Brainy bothered me, but even still, the setting won me over. Even Smallville felt more like the old Smallville. Some people have said that the new Waid/Kitson series has the feel of the Levitz stories (I am not one of these people), but I got more of the classic LSH feel from this one episode than I have from the entire new series.
Oh yeah, I can't wait for next week! :-)
How many main characters? Can we have a roll call? Any heros obviously relegated to supporting roles and will not be seen consistently?
Thanks for answering the questions.
Core characters: Superman, Lightning Lad, Saturn Girl, Triplicate Girl, Phantom Girl, Brainiac 5 and Timber Wolf (who doesn't show up until next week). Huge hordes of Legionnaires will apparently make occasional appearances, including Cosmic Boy, Blok, Element Lad, Star Boy, M-E Lad (yes!), Colossal Boy, Shrinking Violet and others. Info, including comments from one of the show's directors, can be found here: http://adventure247.blogspot.com/
I don't think they gave us a definite year, although they did say "31st century". (Which still feels weird to me; I imprinted on "30th".)
It wasn't until I was thrown off by Mecha-Brainy that I realized just how much the show was getting right. I hadn't realized how much I was fearing and expecting a train wreck.
I'll want to see a few more episodes before I give it a solid thumbs up or thumbs down; but early indications are this is going to be the Legion cartoon I hoped for. "Right thing imperfectly" is a good way of putting it.
Theres not much I can say really, but i love this show. My most favorite character is Brainy.
WHY DID SUPER MAN GO BACK IN THE PASS. AND ARE THYER GONEING TO BE SOME MORE SUPER HEROES