Saturday Morning Cartoon Reviews for 5/4 – 5/8

Batman: The Brave and the Bold Ep. 16

“Night of the Huntress!”

Review
When it comes to the Batman franchise Warner Bros. and DC Comics are in an interesting position. Batman has already gotten a definitive animated TV show and movie version with Batman: The Animated Series and The Return of the Joker, respectively, and when it comes to live action there is no getting better than The Dark Knight, well that is until the next Nolan Batman film that is. So really there isn’t much more Warner Bros. and DC can do with how they present Batman and that is why Batman: The Brave and the Bold is such a fun change of pace for the character and the universe it is in. What also makes this series fun is that for anyone that is currently reading any DC comic right now knows that the DC Universe as a whole has taken a much darker turn with all of its characters (ala Marvel Universe) so a series like Batman: The Brave and the Bold, that pays homage to the Silver Age, is needed to show how light and fun these characters used to/can be. Also this show is a fun call back to anyone who is a fan of the old Superfriends cartoon.

But even though this has been a fun series so far “Night of the Huntress” wasn’t one of its better episodes. This was still a fun episode that involve Blue Beetle (Jaime Reyes), who has become sort of the Robin of this series, and the introduction of Huntress, who in here is a combination of Earth-2 Huntress costume with the personality of the current Huntress. The thing that brought down this episode was the main villains that Batman and his partners had to fight in this episode: Babyface and Mrs. Manface. The villains for this episode just gave this a creepy feel with not just their names but how they actually looked and acted like.

Still even with that creepy factor this was still a fun episode with the creators continuously having fun with having Batman an unlimited amount of weapon possibilities as shown by the transformer-like batmobile. Also it was fun to see that this version of Batman had a little playboy in him as he flirted with both Black Canary in the opening and Huntress during the main part of the episode.

Episode Rating – 7.2/10

Iron Man Armored Adventures Ep. 4

“Cold War”

Review
Not to sound repetitive but this concept of a teen Tony is still not a very interesting concept. Just like with the previous episodes all the teen drama and having Tony sound like Peter Parker just does not fit with who the character is. While the creators of this series do seem to be trying hard to make this show more interesting by having a military industrial complex underlying the battle between Tony and Obidiah the teen stuff is taking away everything that should make Tony trying to get back his fathers company interesting.

Still as this is an Iron Man cartoon aimed at children under the age of 8 I will say this was an improvement on the first three episode. Though that is not saying much as the previous episodes were just so bad that there was nowhere to go but up for this series. This can be attributed to this episode staying away from the high school drama stuff and stuck to more of an action oriented episode. Even though the Blizzard isn’t a big villain in the Marvel Universe the animators of this series did a nice job with his character design in order to make him much more of a threat. And really outside of how stiff the animators continue to animate people and the scar on Blizzard’s face that looked more like a bruise they did a good job with all the action stuff in this episode and the one thing that they seem to excel at is the background of New York City and other locations that look nice.

While this episode wasn’t much an improvement from previous episode it was still an improvement none the less. And still for Iron Man fans like me who are looking for a true Iron Man series than we can look forward to the Avenger series that Chris Yost explains in an interview with Comic Book Resources he and Marvel are working on. But till then I guess we are stuck with this series for now to get our Iron Man fix on TV.

Episode Rating – 4.6/10

The Spectacular Spider-Man Ep. 7

“Catalysts”

Review
After dealing with mostly the mid-tier class of villains from Spider-Man’s vast Rogue Gallery we are finally introduced with the #1 Spider-Man villain, and currently the #1 villain in the Marvel Universe: The Green Goblin. And creator’s behind this series do a great job introducing the biggest villain in Spider-Man’s Rogue Gallery. Sure it is hard to get used to a more Joker-esq Green Goblin in context that the series points to Harry being the first one one to be Green Goblin and not his dad it is not such a bad thing. Plus it is a nice change from Spider-Man’s previous fights as he finally fights a villain that can go quip for quip with him which makes the first fight between these two long time rival much more enjoyable.

Even though the character designs of this series do look real simple at first glance once the action starts it is clear that the creative team behind this series put more of their budget on the animation side than anything else. As this episode shows the fight between Spider-Man and Green Goblin was the kind of non-stop action that I would love to see happen in the films. There was a lot of energy behind the fight that puts it up there with Spider-Man’s fight with the Lizard earlier in the series. But what made this fight even better is that it had the addition of Spider-Man having to actually save Tombstone, also known as the Big Man, life. I liked that at the end how Tombstone just tells Spider-Man how he just did the job he was offered at the end of the last episode for free. Just through these two episodes with Tombstone the creators are doing a nice job building up the Spider-Man/Tombstone rivalry.

And not to leave out the high school part of this episode, we finally get the Fall Formal in this episode as well. It was a fun to see the reaction on everyone’s face when Peter came to the dance with MJ. We got the obviously stunned Flash and Harry for the girl Peter brought, the jealous Liz, Glory and Sally for how not only gorgeous MJ is but also that she was voted Queen of the dance even though she doesn’t go to their school, and then their was Gwen with how disappointed she is that Peter looks like he just didn’t want to go to the dance with her. All of the stuff at the dance was done well and did a nice job being balanced out with the fight between Spider-Man and Green Goblin.

Overall another entertaining episode of this series and I highly recommend anyone that is a comic book fan to catch up and watch this fun series as it has everything that Spider-Man show (and comic and film) should have.

Episode Rating – 9.5/10