Oh, thanks. That is funny.

Thank god our show's script writter really does have a sense of humor and quick wit.

I'm actually down with being PC, but since it's become apparently uncool to be such (or be well-mannered), I was softpedaling my hunch. Thanks for clearing that up!

As you say, it's moot. But to answer Schroeder, Black Manta was first established in Aquaman's stories as a mysterious guy in a diving suit, and then it was eventually revealed he was, in fact, black. He was also known as just plain "Manta" at one point, but I don't know when that was in relation to his identity being known.

Heh...you are kidding, right? That's just an Entourage plot, isn't it?

Anyways, Black Manta/Devil Ray was very much an African American in the comics (at least until he turned into a blue monster thing) and definitely sounds like he's one on the cartoon. I don't know mind it so much, except for this guy I knew named Ray, who was a huge Jersey Devil's fan. We called him "Devil Ray". He never tried to to defile the corpses of vikings or drown Wonder Woman, but he would insist we all split the bill, when he clearly ordered the most expensive thing. Whichever one is more sinister, I'll leave to you folks.

Good call on Warlord's part. There, he's a king who gets to hang out with scantily clad babes. On the Surface World, he'd be some military guy Eclipso blew up just to prove how evil he is.

I don't see J'onn going undercover (he already did that after a fashion) I actually have my theories on who J'Onn would go in disguise as, but a certain episode of a caped crusader's cartoon has led to me to that train of thought.

Oh, well, there you go. So he really is African-American, and Dwayne reasons it's manners to not call him that anymore. Which means he was actually called Black Manta because he was black and not just that he happened to be black. And therefore, manners.

Which I'm down with. I just always thought it was an assumption he was African-American just because he was called Black Manta.

I used to love Aquaman, but from what I gleened over the years, he's a really annoying loaner. So his city was sent back in time 3,000 years. Get over it. You know?

Well, I really can't say as to whether that was the original intent for the character or not in the comics. I think the revelation of his racial identity came years if not decades after the introduction of the character, and then someone got the bright idea, "A-ha, he's named Black Manta, therefore he must be actually black." Then again, I might be misremembering and the "Black" got tacked on to "Manta" after the racial revelation. Either way, it was done in such a way as to be unecessarily forced the way Black Goliath and Black Vulcan were named.

Going back to the episodes tonight, I just loved the inclusion of the Viking Prince story, especially with the Sword and Sorcery style of art used to tell it. I hope that was modeled on Joe Kubert's work?

Neither a borrower nor a lender be... 8-)

As I believe I've said, virtually all of my DCU knowledge comes from the animated serieses. I've grown to like them a lot. And so my impression of Aquaman is: a king seriously pissed off at the rest of the world. And with enough might behind him to stay pissed off. I had not heard that his city was sent back in time; that would explain the technological advantage they have, wouldn't it?

The interesting thing in tonight's episode was the similarity between both Aquaman and, uh, whatever Diana's mother's name is, and a (perhaps inferred rather than implied) hint of an alliance between them. (And the thought of Themyscira alone going a military route seemed to scare everyone in the room.)

Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha -- pltttbt!! So I misspelled. I'm at work right now making sure sports stories are spelled correctly. Correctly spelled sports stories vs. correctly spelled TWoP posts. I'll go with the one that won't get me fired.


Oh, yeah! That was killer. I love it. Great idea and a way to tell a story set in Viking times.


Hippolyta. I always (before hearing it on here) thought it was "hip-po-light-uh" or "hip-paul-leh-ta". I think it's the second.


It was in the comics, JLA, back a few years ago. I only know about how they got sent back, but not returned to our time. The local library only has the first half of the TB series. Heh.

Who was Frosty the Snow Girl in the Wonder Woman episode? She was the only baddie I couldn't place and they didn't name.

That would be Killer Frost, and she was introduced in the last Injustice Society arc.

Considering Grodd's mental powers, I assumed it was him. Methinks the price for being in the Legion of Doom is that Grodd gets to monitor stuff like that in order to prevent anyone from leaking the information.

Having read a couple of Warlord stories it was always nice to see him and even more surprising that Mariah and Machiste were in the episode too. And the beginning of the big battle in that episode reminded me a little bit of Pelennor Fields rather than Helm's Deep if only for the shot of Deimos riding up on that beast-thing like the general in RotK. [/geek]

I brought that up two pages back, Musex.



Thanks, Lantern, for getting to it for me.

Sorry guys. I'm a total noob when it comes to the DC universe. I only know what they air on TV. I do have a few questions for YOU, though. First, what is this PC you guys keep mentioning? What does it stand for? And is this Dwayne Mcduffie guy really a member of the Justice League staff? Or is he just some jerk BSing us? And is Aquaman really not a part of Justice League this season for license reasons? And are they really making some Aquaman movie? Or did I read wrong? Anyway, I am a bit tacken aback by the fact that the Deathray guy sounds like he's from the ghetto. I remember him being Aquamans archnemesis. Lame. But now he's kickass. And I am a bit worried by the fact that they aired 2 new episodes this and last week. It only kills off the new season faster. As much as I hate cliffhangers, I hate reruns even more.

It's already been said but - Gamera! That, plus Supergirl's otaku fangirls were hilarious. As for the rest of the episode, eh. I wasn't familiar with the other characters, and it didn't come through clearly that they were actually in a pocket universe and not under the Earth. That, and I was rather irked at how every woman there was dressed like a cheesecake calender. It was even worse than the usual female heroes and villians costumes. It does seem that things actually got killed in this episode, which was a bit different.

Diana doing Lynda Carter's twirl to transform was kind of cheesy. Cute, but cheesy. And how exactly was she going to use her lasso on somebody when she wasn't even carrying it?

I'm actually kind of astounded by the high body count in the Warlord episode. How much guff did the execs at Cartoon Network give you, Dwayne?

For some reason both of these episodes seemed very "talky". It worked in some places, and not in others. The first episode also had some weird act breaks: from commercial to commercial in one act all we learned was that kryptonite was the big stone and that the bad guys were attacking.

The second one was a bit overlong with the global warming talk, although considering what's been happening in the world it's very timely.

Plus, they've finally given J'onn something to do. Hopefully we'll still see him in action.

Thats' really interesting to me, that DC would not let you use the rights to its own character on a show that the character has already appeared in. I assume you're joking about Mandy Moore, though....wasn't there a Hollywood-themed movie recently where the lead was promised a role in the new Aquaman movie ("He's like Spider-Man, only underwater!") Is this just more evidence that this may be the end of JLU and that they're just burning off these episodes? I hope not.

As for a UN appearance, Diana's made sense; Aquaman's would not have, unless he was addressing the assembly. Atlantis should have their own ambassador.


Touche. It's funny that what one generation considered "equal time" is now considered crass and rude. WHy someone would be offended by a team called "The Atlanta Braves" and not by a character called "Apache Chief" is a mystery.


Killer Frost was one of the greatest villians ever when she first appeared in the old Firestorm title. She was an ice villian who was freezing to death and she had to siphon heat off people by kissing them, which was kind of hot, but also a different slant on an icy villian, I thought.


Well, they live in a dimension where all the women have 4% bodyfat


What I really thought was interesting was that there was actually a character that said, on-screen, that they didn't believe in global warming.

(Edited because, to the best of my knowledge, there is no DC character named Firestork....although, maybe there should be...)

Is Black Manta (or Devil Ray) the same guy as Ocean Master (i.e., Aquaman's brother)? If not, what's his story?

On the subject of Black Manta: "In his pants."

Stupid ass tivo didn't record the first ep.Would it kill Cartoon network to do one less Inuyasha a week?

ETA:McDuffie I just noticed you were the one who answered my Schillinger post. Thanks.

No completely different. Black Manta was a boy who had sever autism but the doctors couldn't diagnosis him right because when he was put in water he feel at home and safe. After seeing Aquaman he tried to be like him, created his own suit and tried to fight injustice but thanks to his condition it drove him insane that Aquaman wouldn't except him, so he murdered Aquaman's son. Branding them enemies forever. Over the years, Manta mutated himself to combat Aquaman causing him to lose his humanity more and more. Recently, Aquaman reversed Manta's mutation and his autisum but in doing so, Manta finally saw himself clear for the first time in years and saw him as the real Aquaman.

PC means "Policitally Correct". You know, where you don't call some one deaf, you call them hearing impaired. (Which really, deaf means total hearing loss and hearing impaired means they can hear to a degree, but not well. But it's "rude" to call someone deaf, or blind). Or African-American for black. Or American Indian for Native American. Or vertically challenged for short.


He's not a superhero, if that's what you mean. But he is part of the show's staff.


I read on Ain't It Cool that they were indeed considering a Aquaman movie, and I saw the name Marky Mark attached to it, but Mandy Moore is a joke from the movie Entourage, about an actor in Hollywood.


I don't understand why you'd be taken aback that a bad guy is black, but to each his own. He still is one of Aquaman's archnemisis. This version, while not givng him much of a back story, still made him seem cool.

The Kryptonite was hurting her. She was just trying to put on a brave act to fool Metallo.

As for what Skartaris is, it's a little tricky to explain. If you've ever watched Doctor Who, it was explained that the reason why the Tardis is bigger on the inside than the outside is because it's a 'tesseract construct'. Meaning it's physical dimensions on the inside expand beyond 3 dimensions.

Skartaris exists in a kind of mystical tesseract, and the only way to leave and enter it is through the access point in the North Pole.

Did the lodge that was hosting the world assembly summit remind anyone else of Blofeld's spa/lair in On Her Majesty's Secret Service?

Not really, but now I'm thinking Telly Savalas would make a great Lex Luthor.

On topic...um...I'm looking forward to the episode with Flash's rogues.

I haven't heard anything about a real Aquaman movie, but I do remember reading that the casting for an Aquaman movie was used as a joke on HBO's Entourage (though I haven't seen it).

Thanks, Lantern7 and Schroeder, for answering my Killer Frost question. I tried looking at the big ole list of JLU villians but still wasn't sure who she was. I... um... need it to be illustrated to me via diagrams and big pictures. :)

I thought it was a nice touch to have Flash be the one to hug J'Onn J'Onzz and show that he's the one in the group who's the most emotionally open, even more so than the women.

McDuffie is a very accomplished Comics and TV writer. You should check out his homepage and see his credits. http://www.DwayneMcDuffie.com

He has three Eisner Award nomations under his belt for his work on Icon.

The creative staff shared your opinion, which is why Luthor was modeled after Savalas when STAS first aired.

I hate the fact that CN only shows new eps on Sat nights and doesn't re-run on Sunday anymore. Some of us do go out on the weekend on occasion, so it's so wrong for them to assume the only fans are those who sit at home on the weekend. That being said, anyone care to recap?

First ep:GL, Supergirl, Stargirl and S.T.R.I.P.E. are magically summoned to a barbaric world in the "center of the Earth" Warlord to fight off this evil wizard Demos, (who is voiced by a guy doing a damn good Christopher Lee impression btw). Demos is helped by technology brought by two LoD members, Metallo and Silver Banshee, who want a huge chunk of kryptonite being used by Warlord's people to heal injuries.

Second ep:Gorilla Grodd wants the body of a legendary Viking warrior(whose story is told in some awesome Joe Kubert-style drawings) recently found in the ice to find the secret of invulnerability. He sends Devil Ray(aka Black Manta), Giganta, Killer Frost and Heatwave to get it. They fight Wonder Woman who is attending a peace conference on a chalet above the ice floe where the warriors ship is. G-man King Faraday and his agents, along with Green Arrow and Martian Manhunter assist WW.

Huh? That makes no sense whatsoever. Not only is Inuyasha part of the Adult Swim block, which is practically its own entity on the network by now, it also airs half an hour into the block.

I'm going to spoil why Aquaman rights are probably unavailable:

He's going to show up on Smallville.

Loved both episodes.
More than once I went "oooh, that's so-and-so".

I took the WW spin as a shout out to the old people like me who watched Lynda Carter do it on TV.

I know. That's why I loved it. It was hommage. We all love hommage.

So if the League members took Metallo with them on their way out of Skartaris and then sealed the portal afterwards, did they also take Silver Banshee with them or is she now trapped down there?

Except The Flash still appeared on JLU last year when he guest-starred on Smallville

Doesn't really count, bigmonster, as that was Bart, not Barry/Wally. Also Wally was MIA for a large chunk of time leading up to Bart's appearance on Smallville, but I'm not sure if the one really had anything to do with the other.

Related, I just have to say that this spoiler from AICN? Genius.

5.8 THE GREAT BRAIN ROBBERY (TBA) With perhaps a nod to Michael Rosenbaum’s role on “Smallville,” Wally and Lex switch brains.

I don't think there's any problems of availability for Aquaman. He just doesn't have any desire to join the League.

For one thing, he has an empire to run and to protect, plus he's not exactly the most "sociable" person in the world, so I can't picture him hanging out on the Watchtower for any extended amount of time.

But he has shown the willingness to help out the League if he's asked.

Zerowing we're all talking about Dwayne McDuffie's statement that they didn't have the rights to use Aquaman for whatever reason.

My two cents on the latest episodes:

I was amused by Supergirl trying to lift rocks in the background while other things were happening in the foreground. I like it when people make use of three-dimensional space in the picture frame.

I also like that we're getting both character and long-term plot development from the beginning of the season. I hope that J'onn's sabbatical is the start of a character arc (whether we see more of it right away or not until later in the season). In any case, I'm glad that someone finally brought up on the show that one of the League's most powerful members rarely left The Watchtower.



I think Silver Banshee disappeared when Green Lantern (who had covered her mouth with his ring's power) was distracted by an attack, but I'm not sure what happened to her after that.

Ah, I missed that. Sorry. Although I think the storyline reasons I mentioned are still valid. :-)

True. Though you have to admit, the lack of Aquaman did kind of stand out.

"Well, we're fighting this guy who, you know, has a sub, in a big chase underwater. Shame we don't know anyone who, like, specializes in this sort of thing."

Maybe it's because Aquaman sucks?

He does not!

He's completely misunderstood.

And blonde! And wears orange! And he was my first cartoon-crush, dammit. He rocks!

I hate this new loner, water for hand, fishhook for hand guy that's been in the comics forever. I want my SuperFriends Aquaman.

Wild idea. Maybe McDuffie was joking about White Fish's embargo. Er, I mean, Aquaman. Have to be "PC", after all. Or, does that obnoxious term only get raised when someone is upset at having to treat African Americans with respect. I forgot.

Look, they name dropped Aquaman in this episode. Or at least, Atlantis. Sucks that he seems to have gotten caught up in an Embargo issue, but it was a packed episode as it was. Including a big gun like White Fish would have only drawn attention away from its more important issues. A shame he won't get some play later on in the season, though.

Oh, and kudos on the Mr. Terrific cameo. I assume that was because a black actor was already going to be around to play Devil Ray and union rules allow doubling up parts. No complaints from me. Hope we get to see Mr. Terrific again this season. He always struck me as an intriguing character, both in his Golden Age and modern day incarnations.

Wow. Big weekend on the thread:



IIRC Grant Morrison proposed a storyline where she steals Orion's Mother Box in order to heal herself, with the 'consequences' payoff being that it ignites a war between Earth and New Genesis, but DC editorial vetoed it.



You forgot Black Canary (who became Silk Spectre) and Booster Gold (Ozymandus).



And don't forget that Batgirl had actually been *retired* at that point. Babs had hung up the tights in a story about four years previously and hadn't made an appearance since. Far from being a crippling of the number 2 superheroine in the DCU, it was a cull of a character nobody gave a damn about.

In fact, without TKJ and the idea it gave Ostrander Barbara may have quietly disappeared from the DCU altogether.



Originally, it was an unexplained coincidence. Years and years and years later, they did a story in an annual (this was after Nightwing had moved to Bludhaven) explaining it as a Kryptonian fairytale Supes once told Robin.



It's really just to make Mr.Terrific II look as 'modern' and 'edgy' as possible - to wipe out memories of Mr.Terrific I's hilarious "Fair Play" stomach logo.

I assumed she had lesser powers because of the lack of a yellow sun. I was okay with them never explaining it -- although I was curious how she seemed to have varying strength.



According to what I've read, the Timmiverse Supergirl is *less* affected by Kryptonite than Superman but it does still affect her. While it could kill Superman in minutes, her cousin could hold out for an hour or so.



"Political Correctness" is a term that was invented by the US Supreme Court in 1793 in order to describe the use of words that are impolitic or inappropiate - specifically, in that first case, that toasting or praising "the United States" was politically incorrect and that the politically correct term is always to praise "the people of the United States".

People are sometimes derogatory of PC - claiming it's against the First Amendment - but, as Dwayne says, it's really just *manners*. You can still legally say what you want, but whether or not you call people "negroes" is just a measure of how nice a person others think you are.

And really, PC goes waaaay back. What's "the Holiday Season" other than a PC way around accidentally asking a Jew what his Christmas plans are?

I don't think Kara is immune to kryptonite at all - she says in the ep. that the other dimension is affecting her powers and reducing her vulnerability to kryptonite, in the scene where they first see the giant rock. Later in the ep., she tries to bluff Metallo that she's not vulnerable to green K.

Ozymandus is modelled on Peter Cannon: Thunderbolt, IIRC.

Well the reality is probably that Marv Wolfman stuck two words together that sounded cool and only later on realized that they had an apocryphal connection to Superman, but in the DCU, Dick Grayson made a little speech (to the air in his bedroom) the first time he put on the tights that taking on the name was also partly to honor Superman. (this was in "The Judas Contract" I believe).

And just to get my two cents in on the "PC" discussion: I'm all in favor of being polite, of course, and I don't mind side-stepping around certain terms, but like anything else it can get pretty extreme. There's a big difference between calling me a "cripple" because I use a wheelchair and calling my dog a "Canine American".

Edited to add: I don't mean to mislead anyone, I was just using an example: I don't really use a wheelchair. Or have a dog.

My two cents on the PC discussion is that Dwayne has earned the right to run JLU by doing years of great stories, so if he wants to call Black Manta "Devil Ray," that's fine with me. (I would draw the line at "Superperson" and "Batperson," however).

Other comments:

1) Maybe I'm stereotyping, but I would have expected Grodd to have a much deeper voice.

2) The "Legion of Doom tries to acquire some MacGuffin, but the League foils their scheme" is already getting old. I hope the Legion succeeds in some of their plots, just to mix things up, or the interactions start taking some other form.

3) I thought Viking Prince was invulnerable, and kept expecting him to revive. Did Wonder Woman kill him by throwing him into the sun, or just give him a Viking burial?

4) Gamera!

Gamera is really neat,
He is filled with turtle meat,
We all love you, Ga-me-raaaaah!

The only thing that bothers me about the PC issue in relation to character names is that maybe Black characters chose specific names because of an intense pride. Especially when you think about the 70s and the Black Power movement. My dad who was in his 20s at the time, always tells me he loved characters that were Black X and Dark Y. It was a time where many young African Americans were looking for heroes that represented that cultural moment. My dad was like "for the first time I felt like they actually knew I spent money on their comic." I know that it was primarily white authors who created these names...but at the same time I would like to imagine that the comic characters themselves chose their secret identities and chose them with a purpose. So I say, leave them as they are. I mean they ARE Black, why pretend otherwise.

That's a bit missing the point, though. Superman and Batman are men. Firefighters, for example, are not necessarily men so it's incorrect to call them "firemen". And, really, that's mostly what PC deals with. It's incorrect to call a woman who fights fires a "fireman" because she's, like, not a man. It's kind of obvious.

And, IIRC, "superpeople" is a phrase in a lot of comics these days when 'civilians' are talking about super-powered beings.