Also the most awesome superhero game ever made.

I couldn't get into it that much--but I know others that really enjoyed it.

I think times do change on the way such things are perceived. Growing up in the '70s, I can remember "let's integrate the textbooks" methods that seem insanely bigoted today. I can't tell you how many math story problems had scenarios like "LeRoy, Carlos and Abraham are each buying 4 apples ..." The goal was noble, but use of stereotypical names cultural sensitivity did not make. So, in the '70s, I can see Black Vulcan being a great symbol, because previously a black superhero would have seemed impossible. I like to think maybe we've progressed to the point, though, that people would think some characteristic other than race would be the best identifier.

On the other side, one of the many, many great things Christopher Priest did when he wrote Black Panther several years ago was introduce Panther's brother/bodyguard/nemisis/loyal retainer/deadly enemy (usually all at once) - Hunter, the White Wolf. Among other things, once you took of his white mask, Hunter was actually white. It could easily have been lame, but was great.

It's not so much PC as it is dated. They've dropped alot of the goffieness in other forms.

Does ayone know why they're not showing JLU this weekend? They're really not giving this show a chance at all are they?

I like to know myself. I don't want to watch BooBoo, good thing I'll be out of town tonight and save some recording.

Not to be a bitch but you realise that only works if the person in question actually is American, right?

The thing is, there had been black superheroes before without the "Black" identifier. Sure, it was tacked on out of misguided sensitivity, but the Falcon, Storm, and hell, even Luke Cage seemed to manage ok with being called "Black Falcon". And they preceded Black Vulcan too. Since that era, most agree only Black Panther really made sense, because panthers are black, and he was leader of the Panther Clan/Tribe. So there was a reason for it. Black Vulcan? No other good reason for his name existed besides him being black. It's anachronistic.

Christopher Priest really did do great things with Black Panther that no one ever had before though. He recognized what being the leader of a nation in the modern world would actually mean, and that Wakanda is a first-world country. It was fascinating and sadly enough, totally new ground. In fact, I wish Aquaman would get similar treatment.

Back to the show -- I'm bummed there is no show tonight. Why must I go so long for my next fix? WAH!

There is NOTHING on tonight thanks to the JLU embargo. I'm pretty ticked.

Yes. That's why I think it's stupid.

TVtome.com has the next episode airing in January. The hell?

I saw that too. I read somewhere that they're still working on the episodes. By now they've finished with episode 6 and are waiting till a few more are done before airing. Can anyone confirm?
I hope we don't have to wait till Jan.

Man, that doesn't make any sense. They've only just now finished six episodes? And yet, they air them two at a time for the past two weeks, with no fanfare and no advance notice.

This is sad. I was really looking forward to the Flash's episode, becuase I recognized a lot of his rouges. Where did you read this, lurk3000?

Well, I took a week off from the thread. Fortunately, it looks like just about everything I would've said has already been covered. We even had an appearance by the ever-elusive ArthurCurry, which almost makes up for the lack of Aquaman. A few comments:

I also loved the Kubert-styled art and the homage to Lynda Carter.


I disagree. I guess I'm biased because I grew up with it, but I've always thought Black Manta was a cool name. I have nothing against Devil Ray, though.


You're mistaken. Barbara was definitely active in 1985, because she gave Kara's eulogy. IIRC, she retired as Batgirl only months before "The Killing Joke." Anyway, it's not like she became unpopular the moment she retired.


The idea of Marky Mark playing Aquaman could (and should!) also be a joke, because Vince of Entourage is loosely based on Donnie's younger brother.

No new eps for a while? Great Hera!

So anyone got any ideas on what Grodd's master plan is? Does he even have a master plan? And how does Luthor/Braniac fit in?

I think it was over at the toonzone DC animated forums. I'll do some checking.

ETA OK I did some checking and here's some info but it's nothing official or anything. I know that Dwayne McDuffie is a poster here maybe he can help clarify?

I'm about to go insane if I have to navigate through cartoonnetwork.com's seemingly impossible navigation system to find out when this show (JL or JLU) is airing.

Last Saturday night, by chance, I caught two episodes which started at 10pm.

Last night, I set my VCR accordingly.

This morning? I got an hour of some other crap.

Can someone dumb it down for me or point me in the direction of CN's scheduling for this show?

I emailed Mr. McDuffie and he doesn't know when they'll air until they show up on his TiVo season pass.
DiePhoebeDie I've given up trying to find JLU scheduling on the CN site.

Same here. I default to TVtome.com, for they at least seem to know when the next is always airing. That's why I got January.

I still want to know why. I mean, they payed for these episodes, you'd think they'd want us to see them, or something.

Anybody have any idea, any idea at all if we're ever going to see new episodes of this show again in Canada? I e-mailed YTV about it and got this response, which I regard as being so generic as to be almost worthless:

At this point, they should just release it straight to DVD. I'm sure people like myself will pay for them.

Might the delay in airing have something to do with what's going on in the comics beginning this month? Infinite Crisis is beginning and once it's over, in a few months, all the titles jump 1 year in continuity.

I'm with samsnee. I'll just buy them now to avoid the "are they or aren't they on" questions.

I vote we keep Infinite Crisis as far away from this show as possible.

So I guess this unexpected hiatus can be taken as another hint that this is the last season, huh?

I don't think the comics continuity has anything to do with the show. I highly doubt the execs at CN even know what Infinite Crisis is really.

What exactly is Infinite Crisis? Is it something ongoing or is it over?

Infinite Cri$i$ is the current OMGEVERYTHINGISGOINGTOCHANGE4EVAH!!! crossover event from DC. Issue 1 came out a last week, but there were 4 6 issue miniseries (well one of them was, in truth, a 10 issue series since there was a 4 issue Superman/Wonder Woman crossover that you had to read to understand what was going on in OMAC Project) that "led" into the event. It's also the "sequel" to last years Identity Crisis.

... as well as a thematic sequel to the original Crisis on Infinite Earths, which is celebrating its 20th anniversary.

Wikipedia has a description of Infinite Crisis that might explain.

Infinite Crisis

Okay, for those of you who read DC comics pre-1985 (Crisis) how in the hell did you keep all the various characters and their alternalte Earths selves straight? I just received my Crisis on Infinite Earths book and I'm afraid to read it because I have a feeling I'm going to be hopelessly lost because in 1985 I was 8 years old. Back then for all I knew the DCU was solely comprised of Superfriends, Christopher Reeve, Linda Carter and Adam West. And until a few years ago, I've never even heard of Earth-2, Earth-Prime, Earth-7...etc... So, I guess what I'm asking is, will Crisis on IE make any sense to a relative newbie?

I feel as if I should read it because I'm already invested in Infinite Crisis and as we've seen in the first issue of Infinite Crisis they're bringing back old multi earth characters. Hell, I didn't even know who that grey-templed Supes was until I found an online guide to IC. IMO, so far the series isn't very accessible to relative newbies.

Man, this is taking a lot of time and dedication. Seriously, I think becoming a scholar of ancient Greek mythology would be easier.

It was kind of like the several different kinds of kryptonite - as long as you knew the most frequent types, (red and green), then the rest was just for extra nerd credit (gold, gem, white, and blue, as I recall).

In the case of the alternate universes:

Earth 1: The "silver age" characters - Superman, Batman and the Flash all started in the 60s or 70s.

Earth 2: The "golden age" characters - Superman, Batman and the Flash all started in the WWII era (i.e., when the characters were actually introduced). Supes was grey templed and mostly retired; Bruce Wayne was retired as Batman and acting as Police Commissioner of Gotham City. The new generation, like the adult Robin, Power Girl, and the Star Spangled Kid, did most of the heroing.

1 and 2 were really all you needed, but the other big ones were, IIRC:

Earth 3: The "Justice Lords" universe, where Luthor was good and the League was evil.

Earth Prime: The actual earth where you were reading the comic, except there were some cross-overs, and they actually wrote Superboy into earth prime in a pretty cool story.

Earth-C: Where the Charleton Comics characters lived after DC bought them.

Earth-F: Where the Fawcett Comics characters lived after DC bought them.

Earth-Z(?): Where Earth was populated by talking animals, and justice was achieved through the efforts of the superpower rabbit "Captain Carrot" and his superteam, "The Zoo Crew."

Heh. That's an excellent and fitting analogy. Compared to other overly detailed descriptions of pre-Crisis Earths I've encountered, those brief descriptions of yours makes it a whole lot easier to understand. Thanks!

Crime Syndicate, not Justice Lords.



Earth-C was actually the one with Captain Carrot and the Zoo Crew.

Earth-4 had the Charlton heroes.

Earth-S is home to the Fawcett characters (S for Shazam, presumably).

There was also Earth-X, in which WW2 lasted 40 years and to which Uncle Sam led the Freedom Fighters from Earth-2 to fight the Nazis. These characters were all from Quality Comics, which had been purchased by DC.

Earth-6 was introduced in CoIE and was home to Lady Quark. It perished in the Crisis.

Earth-D was introduced in a special Crisis tribute issue of Legends of the DC Universe. It was populated by a more ethnically diverse set of heroes than any of the other Earths.

Some helpful links:
The Multiverse, lots of info on the multiple Earths
Alan Kistler's Guide To THE CRISIS, a recent (like, last week) discussion of the event and an issue-by-issue breakdown
The Annotated Crisis on Infinite Earths, good for when you're (re-)reading CoIE

Probably; also, they figured that 5 (the number it should have had) and S looked so much alike when hand-lettered that it was better to just forgo the confusion.

IIRC, Earth-5 was actually the Earth that was being destroyed in the opening pages of the original Crisis, the one where Pariah was pulling off his emo routine when we first meet him. I don't think they explicitly said it, but I've heard that's what Wolfman intended.

Obviously, I get low marks on the extra nerd credit portion of my test . . .

I was buying the books the first time around at 7 years old. Like everyone said, Earth-1 and Earth-2 were the most important. The only "problem" I had back then was trying to figure out the reasoning behind having the Golden Age heroes live on Earth-2 instead of Earth-1.

To be perfectly honest, the "big death" that affected me the most was Supergirl's and not the Flash's. I loved Barry Allen, but his death always struck me as a little weird and open-ended. I always felt like, since he could travel through time, he could always come back. What did I know? Twenty years later, that's probably the major long-standing death in comics history. OTOH, I wasn't a big fan of Kara's (probably due to my dislike of her cousin), but the cover to Crisis #7 is probably the most memorable one of my childhood.

Crisis #7 was the first DC book I ever purchased, specifically for the cover.

Kara's death in the Crisis is still, to this day, the most moving comics death I've ever read. (And I always associate it with Boston's "The Launch" for some odd reason. I refer to it as "The Supergirl Death Theme", in fact.) Twenty years later and I still choke up every time I read it. How lame is that, eh?

Followed by the Pocket Universe Superboy in Legion of Super-Heroes 38.

Conversely, I didn't much care about Barry Allen's demise. I wasn't a big Flash fan until after the Crisis when Mike Baron started writing Wally's adventures.

Kara died with a bang, and sadly, while Barry died doing something more heroic, the death itself was far more of a whimper.

Which is why I'm gravely disappointed in them bringing "Kara" back, aside from the facts that (a) she's the fourth Supergirl to emerge in the last four years (not even counting Power Girl) and nobody seems to notice how odd that is and (b) she looks like Tara Reid in a Supergirl suit. I can't take her seriously when all I think when I see her is "I wonder if she has STD vision."

Nobody got to remember Barry died saving the Universe. I believe he's remembered as dying heroically, but not to the scale it was. Did he still have kids that eventually lead to decendents in the Legion or did that storyline get dropped too?

Well, he did before the latest Legion reboot wiped them out. Which unfortunately leaves his grandson Bart Allen (formerly Impulse, now Kid Flash II) in something of a limbo state re: his origin. I imagine that's one of the things they'll be explaining during Infinite Crisis.

My most memorable comic book deaths from that era are all in Marvel. (Guardian and Jean Grey, and, man, just remembering Guardian's death gets me a little choked up). Supergirl was a big deal, but then everyone forgot about her, to the point where I was glad to see her in JLU, and to see Matrix show up in Superman. I'm waiting to see what the new SG is all about.

J'onn makes the Onion AV Clubs first ever Underrated List (2nd page). His JLU role is offered up as evidence of his importance.

Vercingetorix, which Jean Grey death (I assume it was the one on the moon, but then there are so. many.)?

I loved Matrix, because she brought a Supergirl back into the DCU without cheating Kara's death or the new rule that Superman was indeed the only survivor of Krypton (in this universe, at least).

I don't know why they felt the need to get rid of her, but I have flipped through the books recently whenever one of the "new" Supergirls has appeared, starting with the Kara that appeared in the final issues of Matrix's solo book. Then there was Cir-El (who apparently was a big enough splash that she got her own card in the "Vs. TCG", but not big enough to keep her around in the comics?)... and now the real Kara.

Ummm... what? I never figured out what happened to any of the others, and yes, as DMike said, even for comic books its stretching credulity when no one seems to think it odd that this has all happened in a very short space of time, speaking in terms of its passage in the DCU.

I always though Bizzaro was the inbred offspring of Kal and Kara trying to repopulate the Kryptonian race.

On a Cheap Seats sketch Patton Oswalt and Brian Posehn gave J'onn a shout out. "Martian Manhunter couldn't make this shot."

Martian Manhunter is the comic book equivalent of Velvet Underground.

When is Justice League on Cartoon Network?

Almost never. New episodes are on Saturday nights occasionally, and sometimes there's a rerun of past seasons in the middle of the night. It's like Toonami is trying to throttle the life out of one of their best products.

All of that drives me crazy. There should be a couple hours a week playing nothing but Timmverse reruns - Batman, Superman:TAS, Batman:Beyond, and Justice League. You can't tell me those eps wouldn't be at least as good as, and as popular as, Inuyasha, to say nothing of Scryed.