Animated show Premiere!
Wow. The show was a lot better than I expected, and a lot more mature (meaning "not kiddie"), for the better. I'm not sold on Transformer Brainy, but I think Bouncing Boy will be the breakout character (no pun intended). Good explanation of how the Legion goes back to get Superboyman, and I couldn't tell anywhere that the Superboy/Superman swap was detectable.
My TiVo and I noticed a whole bunch of Legionnaires in the Mission Monitor Board and at the end of the opening credits - we know that Blok, Chameleon Boy, Chemical King, Colossal Boy, Cosmic Boy, Dawnstar, Dream Girl, Element Lad, Karate Kid, Matter-Eater Lad, Polar Boy, Quislet, Shadow Lass, Shrinking Violet, and Ultra Boy will be in it (although I'm not sure if that was Dawnstar's symbol or Star Boy's, but Star Boy in his current black and white costume did appear in the credits). Truly a Legion!
Interlac! They used Interlac correctly! The board read 2947 TONS (I think that was the number).
Apparently I wasn't the only one to catch Booster Gold and Skeets as the janitor of the museum as Clark rushed in to get the Superman costume.
Two huge thumbs up from me to producer/showrunner James Tucker, series story editor Rob Hoegee, director Ben Jones, and writer Amy Wolfram (not to mention all of the animators and designers who put a lot of work into making this look good).
From around the blogosphere:
- Character designer Derrick J. Wyatt posted drawings of some of the characters he created, ordinary denizens of 31st century Metropolis (who look suspiciously like some Green Lanterns!).
- Episode director Ben Jones has a sketch of Validus. Ben's a cartoonist in his own right too. He's also retroactively updating an earlier post with some animation samples.
- The animated show's Wikipedia entry has been updated as of this morning's episode (by me!).
- Rokk Krinn at the Comic Book Revolution liveblogged the episode. He's very enthusiastic, and says pretty much the same things that I was saying.
The first episode of The Legion of Super Hero cartoon was fun. It had plenty of humor and action. Plus, the cartoon quickly established the personalities of the various Legionnaires. I liked it. A fun story that moved at a good pace plus some nice animation. This is going to be an enjoyable animated series.
- Johnny Bacardi caught the last 10 minutes but really liked the battle with the Fatal Five.
- SF author Chris Roberson thought it was "splendid".
What was nice about this show was that it felt like the Legion to me, much like Glen Murakami's Teen Titans had the feel of Wolfman-Perez's early eighties comics, even if the idiom was something aimed at an anime-friendly eight year old audience.
He also comments on Wyatt's characters and names their origins. - Here's the ToonZone talkback thread for this episode. Lots of comparisons to Teen Titans (mostly favorable), and an overall positive reaction. More positive thoughts from the LegionWorld forums, the ComicBloc forums, the Television Without Pity forum, and the Legions of Gotham forum.
- Davey, Andres, Van, Scott, Mark John, and Duo Damsel all liked it, while seaphilo didn't.
Rob Alstetter of Comics Continuum also writes a comics blog for the Detroit News. Here's his preview from Thursday.
And of course, for those of you who missed it and can't wait three more weeks to see it on TV, here's the torrent link.
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13 comments:
Thanks for the torrent link, Michael, I've been looking for one all day.
Loved the premiere episode! (With the minor exceptions of Transformer Brainy and what I take to be the Legion cruiser in the opening.) I definitely need to pay closer attention to the credits; I didn't catch half of those characters you mention. Quislet? That's awesome. I've always thought it would be great for a cartoon.
The Interlac was an unexpected bonus. I actually cried out happily when I saw that.
Here's hoping the show goes at least as long as Teen Titans did.
The monitor board showed the old Legionnaire monitor symbols! Hurrah!
Yeah, I liked it. :-)
The symbols for Dawnstar, Star Boy, and Wildfire were long susceptible to being confused, anyway.
I'll believe Dawny is there when I see her feathers, and not before. The disappointment over her limited presence in "LSH" v5 n15, after that Kitson cover, has made me wary.
Thanks for the notes. You must have seen more with those scrunched ending credits (onto the right side of the screen, along with a Kids' WB promo) than the rest of us were able to see.
I should have also said above: Yes, I did enjoy it. The story flowed smoothly and got everyone introduced well, even the five villains. It was almost strange to see them tiptoeing around the word "Superboy," but I've been a Legion fan for 25 years, and that contrast was inevitable. Their bringing Clark into the 31st was framed plausibly. (When were the Time Bubbles ever that trouble-free, though? {g})
The character stylings were, well, a bit stylized, but not as extreme as early promo art had led me to believe. In these days of Pokemon and overexaggerated anime, I'd say that this much stylizing was inevitable. At least it wasn't nearly as overdone as "Teen Titans," which I really couldn't watch.
Bouncing Boy was delightful! From voice to demeanor. Saturn Girl was a touch ethereal, which worked with her abilities. (And were those anti-grav earrings?) Brainy the sorta-cyborg was a logical buildup of his paper-book character, given that ultra-intelligence is hard to visually dramatize. Triplicate Girl split into three subtly different bodies, fixing a long-term bit of strangeness, at least to me.
I'm glad to have a place to put these thoughts, LegionWorld being ... well, far less than heroic these days *sigh*
I enjoyed it. I'm not so sure about the Brainy transformer business, but that was more than offset by the effective use of Triplicate Girl's powers. My god, I never thought she could do that:)
All in all, I was very pleased. You wouldn't happen to know where there are screen caps, do you?
Glad you liked it, but I have some bad news. Not every character whose logo appeared in the main titles will appear in the show (first season, anyways). I just like the way it looks with lots of logos. I know some people will be disappointed their favourite character isn't in the show (not me, my favourite Legionnaire shows up in episode 10), but we packed as many Legionnaires in as we could.
In the good news column, there are some characters appearing whose logos are not in the main titles. That's all I can say!
There are some screen caps (with off-color commentary) at Scans Daily.
KINETIX! I WANT KINETIX!
(crumples into a sobbing heap...)
:)
If I knew she would be in an eppy, I'd get up at 8:30 just so I wouldn't miss it!
Anyoe notice who was cleaning the floor behind Clark Kent at the Superman Museum?
Look closely.
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Yes, it's BOOSTER GOLD.
I liked the show.
Thanks, Mike! I now got to see Booster Gold, which I missed.
A belated Happy New Year, btw:)
I was sorta hoping to find the screen caps where I could see the Legionnaires flying in the opening credits. I suppose I could fight with my videoplayer and look for it myself, but that's kind of difficult due to our new television that I'm not totally familiar with yet. If you wander across it, let me know.
That commentary on the first screen caps was just WRONG...but awfully funny:)
I quite enjoyed it as well. Well worth the grief of finding out if Kids WB was going to air in my area. Praisy review here, written almost immediately after airing.
And can I say how much I appreciated that we can finally see Tri-jitsu in action? Flinging her extra selves - that's brilliant.
I would also like to join in with Greybird in saying that it's nice they didn't do those way-too-overused-and-overboard anime expressions that Teen Titans did. They were nothing but a sure-fire way to distract from any sort of tension or drama. Here's hoping Legion never falls into the trap of using them.
Sheryl: LegionWorld has some of those credits screencaps here, hopefully that's what you're looking for. Here's the video clip of it.
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