The Johnny Bacardi Show

Okay, so this time I got up earlier and caught an entire episode of Legion of Super Heroes. My impressions?

Not bad. I liked the re-imagining of Timber Wolf's origin, this time setting him up as the unwilling beneficiary of Island of Dr. Moreau-style experiments by his father. At least I think it's a re-imagining; my knowledge of late-60's -early 70's Legion lore is somewhat inconsistent. If you've got to redo a character's origin story, you could do worse, I suppose.

Other likes:

Bouncing Boy as Jack Black. I didn't hear him speak in last weekend's eppy; that's a neat idea.

The back-and-forth between BB and Brainy was as amusing as it's supposed to be, especially the "snooping" remark.

Saturn Girl's boots. I have always been puzzled about the necessity, besides the obvious sex appeal that is, of putting high heels on superheroines- especially when they're called upon to brawl occasionally, and I suppose the closed-heel approach is as good as any. The animators tend to depict her standing kinda knock-kneed a lot, and heaven help me, it works.

I liked seeing the other Legionnaires at TW's swearing-in ceremony, especially Shrinking Violet, who is just damned cute in that Esurance commercial way. No Kinetix or XS, however. But I wasn't expecting them. Nice to see Gim Allon aka Colossal Boy alive and well in this version.

Dislikes:

SG's eyes. They do make her look alien, but they also are just creepy.

Sometimes the animation dragged a bit, most noticeably in the scene where Brin's father was confessing all, and he shifted from condescendingly smug to threatening...but his expression went from smiling to frowning way too late to match the inflection of his voice. Gotta tighten that stuff up, CW!

The theme song. BORING, bland and anonymous. I know that Andy Sturmer can't do every cartoon theme, but if ever a series needed a punchy, catchy, cool tune it's this one. And this ain't it.

The writers and producers would do well to remember that the REASON why he's called LIGHTNING LAD is because he harnesses and blasts with ELECTRICAL LIGHTNING and not anonymous force beams. A lot of the stuff he did in this eppy would flash fry people, except of course Superboyman.


Overall, I liked this episode, although it did bring out the nitpicker in me. I'll try to get up again next Saturday to see the next one. At last, a reason to get up on Saturday morning!