DC Super Hero Girls

I hope it is alright to discuss about my new theories, as well as the Super Villain Girls, due to Diana and Barbara finding out about Harleen being Harley Quinn.

What does anyone think might happen after the events of Mayhem In The Multiverse?

Not much of a surprise, but according to Lauren Faust, the show is officially cancelled.

At least the movie wrapped up as many of the plot points as possible.

That's a damn shame. I would've loved to see more characters show up in this series, like Volcana.

Though, I saw the show's cancellation coming a mile away.

Edited by IvanovTroping97 on Aug 7th 2022 at 8:43:35 PM

I wish it wasn't cancelled, not to mention that there a few storylines that could have been used, like three episodes having the villains' identitites (Catwoman, Poison Ivy, and Giganta).

Including Casey Krinski vowing on revenge as well as exposing the Super Hero Girls' secret identities.

Edited by Meistro2021 on Dec 20th 2022 at 3:21:52 AM

The show has been labelled a tax write off and will be sealed away once it leaves Netflix

Well, damn.

Let the age of piracy begin again!

What? No epic speech or challenge to get a great treasure in a mythical place? Lame...

Edited by Blueace on Jun 22nd 2023 at 4:47:49 AM

I watched the first season on Netflix with hopes that the second season would eventually be there too. I knew that wasn't happening later, but I had no idea they'd completely rip it away from (official) existence.

Man.

I just took notice of this show's existence this year. I'm sure I've seen evidence of it before hand, but the moment I took notice I was informed it had been scrubbed from all viewing services, shorts aside. Incredible!

I'm not the target demographic, but a setting where the amazons are eight foot tall isolationists who mature slower than Greenland sharks, Diana ran away from home and inspired a media franchise that never actually understand who she was before she was dragged back to her island? That was too good an idea not to use. It makes me happy it actually managed to bleat out two seasons before being slaughtered on the alter of tax write offs. It puzzles me that I did not hear more about it though. It's such a boldly irreverent parody of DC Comics, like a PG version of that Harley Quinn show. This joker took all the negative traits of two Kara Zor-Els, blended them into one character and removed the most positive semi shared thing about them! I'd be letting everyone I could know I was airing such Canon Defilement while cackling like a hyena, but I see the show was met with inconsistent time slots, minimal reruns, bare minimum advertising and so many episodes out of order the creator felt the need to release a "continuity guide" where 5 is really 13 and 9 is to be avoided until 26! With dolls already made for the show and three(!) games, one Nintendo published(!!) there must have been some right hand versus left going on. I refuse to believe otherwise!

Still, glad it got made and has some lasting legacy. An unrelenting New Mutants parody could have been alright too but Marvel couldn't be bothered to even weigh in with how Generation X would be more obvious. A show about Donna Troy living in the shadow of her literally legendary foster mother and more successful sister while trying to reign in two partners who don't care about the embarrassments they are to their predecessors, that could have been a treat too. DC teased us with a measly three minutes! Still, one of Faust's zany ideas almost got its just due. I'd understand if she gives up on parody, goes full Mainframe/My Way and only does original comedies, or at least no more superhero spoofs, but who know? Maybe someone secures the rights to DC and or Marvel dolls, pushes for a revival and or successor to promote sales? I doubt it, but I wouldn't have believed anything would have risen out of those three shorts seven years after the fact if I hadn't seen the proof.

I read some of the comics and they were really cute. It reminded me of Supergirl's Adventures In The Seventh Grade but for an older audience. Sad to see it so underused. :(

I know someone who has most if not all of the episodes, who knows I have a soft spot for Wonder Woman things, but doesn't have any of the comics. I know a fair bit about Wonder Woman comics too, so I'm still being surprised about how much of this just flew under my radar until it was all thrown in the vault.

The show's version of Wonder Woman is an Adaptational Wimp, but I don't mind it too much in this case. Most comic book versions would be similarly wimpy in equivalent circumstances, but the Wonder Woman antagonists I've seen so far, Cheetah and Giganta, they're weakened far less than she is. Seeing Wonder Woman flat out lose to Giganta one on one with no trickery, no handicap, no "out" to preserve her reputation, it almost did not register. On the other hand this is the second time I've seen one of the DC Cartoons let Giganta beat a kryptonian. That along with the Batgirl bowling took some of the sting out of it.

Having watched most of the series, it's definitely an interesting experiment on how much accuracy to previous media affects your ability to enjoy an adaptation. You look at any of the characters, and the only thing they seem to to actually get accurate is the origin and mechanics of their powers, their superhero character design, and maybe some minor bits of surrounding lore. Everything else like personality, character dynamics and relations, relative power scaling only are taken as much as the creatives care to, in order to fit in what they want with the whole teenage high school dynamic. You could make a game out of the changes made to the characters that weren't strictly necessary to fit into Superheroes aged down in high school dynamic.

But it's not a lazy or mean show. From the episodes I saw, there definitely was a lot of effort and heart placed into it, though it felt a bit derivative, like they basically took MLP:Fi M as their foundation and slapped a DC-themed house over it, but still, I found the overall writing top notch, with a lot of quality episodes that couldn't have been made if the creatives weren't at least sincere in the work they were producing.

Some of the changes I can reconcile with my knowledge of previous stories. The biggest change with Wonder Woman is she physically develops twice as slowly as a Greenland shark, but that was part of the appeal to me. She can't fly, but post crisis Wonder Woman couldn't truly fly until she earned it, the original Golden Age couldn't fly at all. Her strength seems a little less than Hercules, definitely not more, her speed not up to Mercury, definitely not greater than the god literally capable of being in two places at once, but in the Golden Age Wonder Woman's daughter Fury had less than half of Wonder Woman's power, suggesting this Diana just hasn't peaked yet. Does she have the sisterhood with fire? Can she command animals? Expel toxins? Maybe, maybe not. So far those details haven't hurt the plot. One of the shorts I've seen has her invoking Zeus while fighting what she thinks are thralls of Hades. That's a little eyebrow raising but not a real annoyance, yet.

The one thing I can't rationalize about Supergirl is how dumb she is. Her anger issues are a bit of a stretch. Post Crisis Supergirl only had that because of a blood poisoning induced chemical imbalance. Post Crisis Power Girl had a rebellious attitude stemming from a lot more trauma than this show's Supergirl, but you know, there is basis for those things, however flimsy. Supergirl is consistently a genius of the sciences, however and Power Girl's supposed to be an inventor and entrepreneur...a business woman who struggles to make money, but still, there's none of that intellectualism here. It doesn't bug me, because I'm not a Superman/Supergirl fan and I think the humor is a worthy tradeoff, but I could see why that might be a deal breaker if someone was only watching for Superman family stuff the way I was for a new spin on Wonder Woman.

Bumblebee's a shrinking violet. I know pretty much nothing about the character beyond "Teen Titan", but I know that's not grounded in anything. I don't know Jessica Cruz too well either but know enough about the Green Lantern Corps to know this JC would not have been recruited. They definitely wouldn't be pressuring her after she said "no". Zatanna's many things. A smug diva isn't one of them. I think the two Batgirls who work for Barbara Gordon as Oracle are goofy nerds, but other than the immature slang(Omigosh) I never got that impression from Barbara. But to me, the other five are bonuses. I know this is supposed to be an Ensemble Cast but I'm watching it as if they're Wonder Woman's wacky supporting characters. They're serving that role just fine for me.

Edited by IndirectActiveTransport on Dec 23rd 2023 at 1:24:13 PM

The character changes are because they were re-imgained to fit highschool archetypes.

• Diana is the foreign exchange student/Class Princess.
• Kara is the punkrock rebel jock.
• Zatanna is The Fashionista, showwoman.
• Karen is the introverted, smart, shy girl.
• Jessica is the Granola Girl activist.
• And Babs is the hyperactive fangirl.

I always thought it was a weird choice for Kara to be a dumb jock when they kept the backstory that she lived on Krypton before being sent to earth, so she would have been entrenched in that Kryptonian super science culture.

I have seen the characterization compared to that of the Mane 6 from MLP Friendship is Magic (even sharing the same showrunner in their first season in Lauren Faust, voice actors Tara Strong and John de Lancie, and animated by Boulder Media).

• Wonder Woman is the Twilight Sparkle
• Supergirl is the Rainbow Dash
• Green Lantern/Jessica Cruz is the Applejack
• Batgirl is the Pinkie Pie
• Bumblebee is the Fluttershy
• Zatanna is the Rarity

Makes you wonder how much Faust was thinking of MLP when coming up with the personalities of the girls in this show.

And we even do see the Mane 6's human counterparts in high school in the Equestria Girls spin off (granted Faust has no involvement in that but still).

I'm vaguely aware of the My Little Pony franchise, but I gravitated more towards the "boy" half of Hasbro's Xeno Fiction. The toys that turned into cars were a little more appealing than...different colors?

Still, I've heard good things about Friendship Is Magic. One day I might watch it to see what all the fuss was about. I don't know if Hype Aversion is the right phrase. I was happy for the show's success and the resurgence of the My Little Pony brand. Happy to see it considered and equal to Transformers, but my attitude was basically "well, it certainly doesn't need my help." Still, that it's the foundation this show's house is built on that is intriguing. How did we go from horses to comic book super heroines?

I can easily rationalize Kara being a book dumb punk, because people sometimes fail to understand that a general culture or even the advances of its best does not mean an individual within knows it or is a paragon of it. Kara was a child when she was sent to Earth. By her look, she could have been anywhere from kindergarten all the way to pre-teen. Even in a technologically advanced age, she may have not have the aptitude for it. For instance, Calculus was invented in the late 1600s. A lot of Western technological advances are based off having a firm grasp of Calculus. How many middle schoolers and below know Calculus? Would it be unusual for a child, even under say engineer parents to not know Calculus? Or how about the field of Computer science? A lot of our technology depends on advances in such fields. How many kids know programming? Add into the fact that trauma can be incredibly inhibiting to childhood development and Kara just had to say goodbye to all of her family save an infant cousin, and watch them all die. Given such a context, I don't see an issue with Kara being book dumb. The only issue I could see with it is if you have an emotional attachment to previous iterations of Kara, and the DCSHG Kara is not like them, though she does remind me of the Kara that would go on to wield a Red Lantern ring.

But again, pretty much all the girls are not like their standard personalities. Jessica Cruz's standard personality is closer to Bumblebee's than what she received. Bumblebee has what I've heard described as a very smart cheerleader personality, smart, but very strong-willed and driven and very amicable around her teammates, not a shrinking violet. Zatanna is not really a diva. She sometimes has a bit of flair for presentation, but not a diva. Babs feels very bombastic and hyperactive compared to other versions I've known of her.

There's something to argue that this show goes way too archetypical with its characters.

Like I understand the characters are supposed to fit into an archetype, but it kinda is too rigid and constraining about it so they wind up feeling rather one-note.

Its why I'm not a fan of Jessica's character here as she is literally every single cliche of the granola girl character including all the negative stereotypes associated with the archetype. So she just winds up incredibly simplistic and unlikable.

IDK if I'm off-base (I'm more familiar with Marvel characters than DC characters in general), but it feels like the DC Villain Girls are actually closer to their comic counterparts in personality, while the superhero girls (except for maybe Diana) have had... many liberties taken with their personalities.

And yeah, it is very weird to me to see Kara characterized as a dumb hothead when in the comics she's meant to be a science genius even by Krypton standards. And Jessica Cruz's personality in this show really rings as off to me because I'm so used to her personality in the comics, and the Soapbox Sadie Granola Girl characterization seems to come from nowhere to me.

I do enjoy the show and I think it's got very top notch humor and plots, but I can't help but be bothered by how it feels like the main characters' personalities were warped to make them Mane 6 knock-offs.

I think this show has probably the best adaptation of Livewire into the modern day. It feels like a take of what her character in Superman TAS was but transported to modern media culture.

All of the villain girls get really cool moments, especially Catwoman.

In addition to the Super Hero Girls sometimes getting the vibe of being similar to the Mane 6, one could say there are some other characters on this show that parallel the MLP characters like:

• Aqualad parallels Spike
• Hawkman parallels Big Mac
• Steve Trevor parallels Flash Sentry (though he was created after Faust left MLP)
• Flash parallels Cheese Sandwich (though he was created after Faust left MLP)
• Harley Quinn possibly parallels both Sunset Shimmer/Starlight Glimmer as the redeemed villain who joins the main team of six (though both were created after Faust left)

I enjoy show Green Lantern, but I mentioned before, this is a shamelessly irreverent parody of DC. So far the part where I've found that aspect of the show outright grating is #CrushingIt. It's basically a long stretch of oblivious Cringe Comedy where no one adjusts their behavior for the better. That part where Karen decided to beat the crush out of Diana and Jessica protected Diana though? I liked that. This Green Lantern has a lot of touching and funny moments, but in addition to butchering the character of a Green Lantern Corps member for comedy, I can see where stuff like the pacifistic character teaching the love power supervillain to self love and not realizing why that's just a temporary fix that is only going to make things worse in the long run is a turn off. I can see why some might see the vegan character's hair brained attempts to befriend the violent antivegan are eye rolling.

She's a deeply flawed character Played for Laughs and some people might be laughing, but I've found her more likeable than not since the first episode when she defended Karen Beecher from three "bullies" apparently harassing the little one for no reason and laughed out loud when Karen attacked her again for trying to break up her fight with Diana. I really like the detail where she announces her intentions to protest Zee Zatara's show and Zee offers to share a cab to it with Jessica.

Edited by IndirectActiveTransport on Dec 23rd 2023 at 2:15:35 PM