Son of Batman, JLA Adventures, Iron Man & Captain America, Assault on Arkham

For some reason, I have this need to comment on virtually every superhero cartoon or movie I watch. Actually, I could’ve sworn I wrote up (and possibly posted) reviews for Son of Batman and JLA Adventures but I can’t find any proof of that. None of these movies are fresh in my mind anymore but I’ll briefly give my thoughts on these animated Marvel & DC movies for the record books. :)

Son of Batman
2014, Warner Home Video

Instead of randomly releasing direct-to-video movies set in their own universes in order to adapt certain stories from the comic books, it looks like DC is finally having many of their recent animated movies set in the same ‘New 52’-inspired universe. Son of Batman shares its world with Justice League: War (which itself will have its own sequel in the form of Justice League: The Throne of Atlantis).

Son of Batman is still based on a storyline from the Batman comics called “Batman and Son”. This was during the Grant Morrison era of writing the Batman comics and I think he’s one of the worst and most overrated comic book writers of all time. That probably explains why I wasn’t that big of a fan of this movie.

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G.I. Joe: A Real American Hero – Season 2.0 DVD Review

G.I. Joe: A Real American Hero – Season 2.0 (2010, Shout! Factory)
Originally Aired on TV:  September 15, 1986 – November 20, 1986)
Run Time: 660 minutes

Special Features
* Greenshirts: The Legacy Of G.I. Joe
* Knowing Is Half The Battle: PSAs
* Archival Hasbro Toy Commercials

So I’m late on talking about this one but I’ve been kinda busy and I just recently bought it, okay? Of course, that’s not to say I haven’t owned part of Season 2 on DVD before…

So anyway, in 2010 Shout! Factory had the license, desire and know-how to finally give us the complete second season of the original G.I. Joe series. They could’ve been jerks and split the season up but I like to think that they were making up for Rhino’s error and building goodwill throughout the Joe community by giving all 30 episodes to us in one volume.

I was surprised when watching this just how few episodes I remembered. I remember just about every episode from the first season but during this ’86 season there were only a handful I could recall. Plus, just the fact that the first season was around in syndication longer is probably why I was more familiar with it.

Of course, I remember the epic 5-part season opener “Arise, Serpentor, Arise!” though. After that, “Once Upon a Joe” is my next most remembered episode from this season but “Cobrathon”, “Last Hour to Doomsday”, “The Spy Who Rooked Me”, “Sink the Montana!” and “Grey Hairs and Growing Pains” also brought back memories. Much of the rest was almost like watching for the first time (though I’m sure I probably saw most if not all of these episodes as a kid).

Without the benefit of nostalgia on the majority of Season 2, I have to say it is quite inferior to Season 1. The whole series is goofy and held some far out there schemes by Cobra and solutions by the Joes but the 1986 season holds some pretty bad episodes and just goes over-the-top with the brainless plots. Episodes like when Lifeline, Dial-Tone and Shipwreck are all promoted to colonels in “The Most Dangerous Thing in the World” and run the Joes into the ground while General Hawk is away or “Second Hand Emotions” where Dr. Mindbender basically makes a keyboard that can play with people’s emotions don’t do the series any favors.

And while I’m on the subject of characters, this was a new season with new toys to promote so while a lot of the previous season Joes get cameos as background characters, they are no longer the focus and very few have dialogue. The only real holdouts from Season One with any significant screen time are Flint, Lady Jaye, Roadblock and Shipwreck with Duke and Gung-Ho to a much lesser extent. Much to my chagrin, personal faves like Duke, Quick Kick and Spirit are seriously down-played. Duke does have some lines but has basically been reduced to a supporting character while Quick Kick and Spirit (who were prominent characters in the first season) don’t utter a single line and are barely seen.

This season definitely focuses on the new characters: General Hawk, Sgt. Slaughter, Beach Head, Dial Tone, Mainframe, Wet Suit, Leatherneck, Lifeline, Sci-Fi, Low-Light and Slip Stream basically ARE the Joes at this point in the series and appear in the majority of the episodes with a few others like Ice Berg and Cross Country being featured at times. The good thing is — the 1986 line of Joe toys is my favorite year. Duke will always be my favorite Joe but all of the characters mentioned above I love (except Slip Stream… Why’d he get so much face time?!) and I have great memories of playing with their figures when I was a kid.

Cobra was going through some change this season as well with the exception of Zartan and the Dreadnoks (they are still heavily featured). Storm Shadow, who I always loved, is practically non-existent (making only two appearances by my count with one line of dialogue) while Cobra Commander, Destro, Baroness and Tomax & Xamot have extremely reduced roles on the show. Even Serpentor, the great new big bad guy, doesn’t seem to show up as much as you would think. A lot of the season seems to focus on the Dreadnoks carrying out missions for Cobra or Dr. Mindbender’s crazy inventions.

There is a loose story arc throughout the season of Cobra Commander wanting to overthrow Serpentor. In fact, in what ended up being the original series’ final episode (“Into Your Tent I Will Silently Creep”), Cobra Commander (with Storm Shadow and Destro at his side and Tomax & Xamot too, I believe) is seen lording over a secret cult called the Coil whose sole purpose is to destroy Serpentor. Would’ve been really cool to see where Sunbow Productions could’ve taken the third season as the plan was G.I. Joe vs. Cobra vs. The Coil.

From what I understand, the show was getting to be too expensive for Hasbro  and that’s why after G.I. Joe: The Movie, the license rested for a few years before returning in 1989 with DIC Entertainment producing the show on a lower budget.

Overall, Season 2 is a fun ride but I wish it featured a smoother transition from the characters of the first season to the new class. The show is a lot more silly and at times I think the animation was actually slightly inferior to Season One. It’s been a few years since I’ve watched Season One though so maybe it’s actually on par. I was hoping the special features would be something new but from what I can tell, they are just recycled from the Rhino releases. What a pity.

This is a no-brainer pick up for fans of G.I. Joe. Now here’s hoping Shout is going to release the DIC series (as sad as it is) like they’ve hinted at.

Buy ‘G.I. Joe: A Real American Hero, Season 2’ at Amazon.com!

Happy New Year, Charlie Brown, have some Chex party mix!

Did everyone watch Happy New Year, Charlie Brown last night on ABC? I’ve been wanting to get that I Want a Dog for Christmas, Charlie Brown DVD because it has Happy New Year as a bonus feature, but luckily I saw it was going to be on TV last night so I made sure I sat down to watch it. I should’ve made some Chex party mix to go along with it.

Happy New Year, Charlie Brown is yet another animated special my family had on VHS recorded straight from a television airing (in fact, I think it was recorded from the 1986 premiere). Yet again, like many specials we had recorded, that VHS copy is lost somewhere in time & space. I haven’t seen this special since probably 1990 or so, but once songs and gags starting popping up it was like “Oh yeah! I remember this!”

Snoopy sniffing Lucy’s root beer and Rerun blowing up square balloons still made me laugh and I help but feel sorry for ol’ Chuck as he fell asleep and missed the girl of his dreams coming to the party. My girl wondered why he was the only one worrying about the book report when everyone else had the same assignment and were partying like it was 1999 and I told her its because worrying is what Charlie Brown does.

I’m pleased to say this classic from my childhood has held up well and I’m glad to see it making it to TV again. I don’t remember it being on TV for a long time, but maybe I’m wrong.

HAPPY NEW YEAR, everybody!!!

Superman/Batman: Public Enemies DVD Review

Superman/Batman: Public Enemies (2009, Warner Home Video)

I caught this one last week thanks to Netflix and loved it. While Marvel usually has the market cornered on movies, DC has always blown away any animation Marvel came out with. This fact remains unchanged in this day and age as the animation wars are being waged on shows on Nicktoons, Cartoon Network & Toon Disney and through direct-to-video animated movies.

The latest from DC is Superman/Batman: Public Enemies, which is based on the first story arc written by Jeph Loeb from the Superman/Batman comic book. Ed McGuinness was the artist for the comic and I really love that the animation is styled after his artwork because I’m a fan of his square-jawed muscular and cartoony superheroes.

Though I don’t believe this story to be canon in the DC Animated Universe (which includes Batman: The Animated Series, Superman: The Animated Series and both Justice League series), it is produced by Bruce Timm and Warner did a great job getting some of that cast to reprise their roles here: Kevin Conroy (Batman), Tim Daly (Superman), Clancy Brown (Lex Luthor) and C.C.H. Pounder (Amanda Waller) all return.

I vaguely remember the original Public Enemies plot. To be honest, I read the collected version of the story in sections at Books-A-Million back when I used to take breaks while working at a pest control company. Honestly, I almost didn’t even bother with this movie as I think Jeph Loeb (despite giving us the awesome Commando and Teen Wolf movies) is one of the worst comic book writers around alongside Grant Morrison and Bruce Jones.

As a comic book fan, I ended up enjoying it so much more than I thought I would. Luthor is just a great villain who played a major role in the movie and even though it is voicework, Brown, Conroy and Daly display some of the greatest portrayals of their respective characters.

Would I buy this? No. But I don’t have much use for owning DVDs anymore. Definite rental-worthy movie though so get down to the video store or add it to your Netflix queue because this is well worth the one hour and fifteen minutes of time it will take up in your life.

He-Man and She-Ra: A Christmas Special DVD Review

He-Man and She-Ra: A Christmas Special (2005, BCI Eclipse)
Original Release: 1985, Television Special
45 minutes

BCI’s collection of the original He-Man and the Masters of the Universe, She-Ra: Princess of Power and The New Adventures of He-Man were obviously labors of love. From the special features, to the collectible art cards, to the packaging and menu design everything was done perfectly. These releases are shining examples of and should be the template for any animated release.

As the distributor was just starting to release the original MOTU show in 2005, just two months after the release of Season 1, Volume 1 BCI fulfilled the dreams of every He-Man fan everywhere by giving us He-Man and She-Ra: A Christmas Special on the special’s 20th anniversary. It had been released on VHS back in the ’80s, but this was the first ever DVD release.

To be honest, it took me awhile to warm up to He-Man when it came to DVD. I bought S1V1, but wasn’t yet drawn back into it for whatever reason (my rediscovered obsession would start in 2006), so the release of this Christmas special totally slipped by me. It wasn’t until a year or so later that I remembered this special and started longing for a DVD release… only to find out it was already on DVD!

Though I remembered that it existed, I wasn’t aware of any of the details of it, so when I watched it a few years ago, it was like watching it for the first time all over again.

With a shimmering title screen like this, you just knew this was going to be awesome.

The cast of characters is really cool. Obviously, you’ve got He-Man and you’ve got She-Ra in all of their transformation montage glory, and of course Skeletor and Hordak tag along, but with this special being released in 1985 just as the original He-Man show had ceased production, we get tons of appearances by later MOTU characters like Webstor, Rattlor, Spikor, Two-Bad, Moss Man, Snout Spout and Sy-Klone. Some of those characters never made it onto the MOTU show before cancellation, having to settle for appearances on She-Ra, but they were released as Masters of the Universe figures.

I won’t get into the plot (basically, it’s an adventure triggered by another Orko screw-up but on a larger than usual scale), you can find that elsewhere or better yet, go watch the DVD yourself but suffice to say this is an awesome He-Man special and it’s an awesome Christmas special. It’s really great to see both shows and their characters interacting  and my favorite thing about this special is when the Spirit of Christmas begins wearing off on Skeletor and he find himself in the role of hero for once. Hey, it’s the holidays — even Skeletor has to get mushy hearted sometimes! Skeletor is one of the greatest cartoon characters every created in my opinion thanks to the character’s ability to flow so freely from evil to comedy to the rare kind-hearted act without any of it ever seeming out of character.

If you’re a fan of He-Man and/or She-Ra and you haven’t seen this special yet, you owe it to yourself to do so. It’s a great Christmas special all wrapped up in a perfectly BCI-designed bow.

Special Features:

We get the standard (i.e. “excellent”) assortment BCI extras: TWO new documentaries, two 4×6 art cards, a few video clips, character profiles, fun facts and a PDF file of the show’s script.

Cartoons From the 1980s That I Want On DVD, Part 2

Like Ratt, I’m back for more!

Chuck Norris: Karate Kommandos (1986)

With tongue firmly planted in cheek (Ooh, sounds scandalous!), Adult Swim aired all five, yes there were only five, episodes of this show a few years ago. With the pop culture phenomenon that is Chuck Norris, quite frankly, I’m extremely surprised we haven’t gotten a DVD release already. Make it so! I’m not sure why the show didn’t last or there weren’t more episodes produced. Usually a syndicated cartoon like this would’ve had tons of episodes already in the can in order to keep up the 5-days-a-week schedule. There was even a comic book and toy line to go along with it.

Chuck Fact: The show premiered the exact same day as Rambo and the Force of Freedom and both shows were produced by Ruby-Spears Productions.

Cartoons of the 1990s? They weren’t so bad.

I’ve talked a lot about cartoons from the 1980s, but believe it or not, there were actually some decent cartoons that came out of the 1990s. ABC, CBS, NBC and FOX were still putting out a variety of (non-anime/card game-driven) cartoons every Saturday morning and FOX struck gold with their weekly afternoon FOX Kids block.

This list will be skewed towards the early-mid 90s, because that’s when I was still safely in the “it’s okay to watch cartoons” age. By the late 90s, I had to use discretion when it came to watching cartoons. This list is also by no means the ultimate list, but a collection of a lot of ‘toons that come to mind when I think of what I enjoyed watching in the 90s.

Batman: The Animated Series (1992-1995, FOX)

One of the greatest animated series ever and it’s mine all mine on DVD. It would later be repackaged as The Adventures of Batman & Robin for the 2nd season. Then, the show was given a slight makeover as The New Batman Adventures (1997-1999) when it made the jump to The WB. Some would argue that’s a totally different series, but it was Volume 4 of the Batman: The Animated Series DVD sets. Nonetheless, the original FOX run was the best and features some of the greatest Batman stories ever told.