Young Justice

Well, the first season is anyway. But the second season spent too much time on plot and world-building and not enough time on the characters, or rather, it introduced WAY too many of them without bothering to really flesh most of them out. But it's still a really good show.

Indeed. I mean I liked season 2 a whole lot more the second time around when I watched the episodes closer together instead of waiting for them, but I won't disagree at all that the season still had problems, they just bothered me less.

Ditto. So many characters we have to follow including the members of the team prior to the time skip, both Roy Harpers, Mal Duncan, Bumblebee, Beast Boy, Batgirl, Blue Beetle, Tim Drake, Wonder Girl, Impulse, Lagoon Boy, Static and his Amazing Friends. And so far among the new characters Blue Beetle has the most development as a character while Tim, Barbara, Wonder Girl, Beast Boy, and Lagoon Boy have the least focus out of them all.

I blame the fact second season was a lot shorter than the first as it doesn't have the twenty six episode deal so they have to rush it. But that doesn't excuse the fact that the loads and loads of characters pretty much brought the quality down. It's still a good season though, just not one for character exploration.

Hell, I didn't even think Blue Beetle was ever really that fleshed out. The only reason he got so much focus was because he was important to the plot, and we never really got to know him that well as a person before the Reach arc kicked in. He was a glorified plot device; nothing more, nothing less.

I really hope this next season has Tim and his own team as either protagonists or as the main characters of a major subplot that gives them development. I've wanted a Tim-led series for a long while, and this might be my only chance.

For all we know they might end up shoving Damian to the spotlight. Hope they don't, though.

edited 1st May '17 8:39:02 PM by Blueace

Why shouldn't they let best Robin have a go at being better than everyone else?

On a serious note, I do like Damien and I do hope he is the Robin this time round. Bonus points if we get a new Superboy in Jon Kent.

By this point, The Team is like three times bigger than the Justice League. In season 3, I want to see them push their mentors out of the Watchtower, leaving them to operate out of the Hall of Justice basement.

Question, why were the Light considered villain sues? Are they really any different from Xanatos from Gargoyles or Darkseid in JLU? Or Luthor most of the time?

edited 18th May '17 11:53:02 AM by windleopard

Do you mean the Light? The reason I personally called them Villain Sues is because so many of their plans ended up being "just as planned," with the good guys "winning" only for the audience to be told that that was the plan all along. And because a lot of the Light's plans are complicated, and the end results end up being less than impressive- mind-control the Justice League to draw in an alien invasion that ends up conquering the Earth in the un-altered timeline, anyone?

I guess people see them as Villain Sues due to them always coming out at top in the end of every episodes. Which I would argue that them always coming out at top is just building up to their ultimate downfall. This is shown perfectly well in the episodes before the season finale where their plan that they built up comes crumbling down mostly due to the sidekicks they are trying to manipulate ending up turning the tables on them.

If anything, Vandal Savage is the true Villain Sue member of the Light as he never recieved any karmic justice throughout the series. In fact in every season finale of the series he always win and creates a new problem that the heroes have to deal with in next season.

Xanatos was shown to have some flaws as well as legit losing every once in a while. There were also definitely ways to hurt him, albeit they were ones that the heroes never used as those ways generally involve getting to him through his family, as well as more than a couple of rivals that were sufficiently sold as actual rivals (Mac Beth, Thailog, Renard) or just beings that were more powerful (Oberon).

The Light didn't really have any of those occasional reminders of vulnerabilities to sell them as vulnerable, and it doesn't help that one of their members (Klarion) only doesn't win everything for them because he doesn't feel like it..

Someone like DCAU! Lex Luthor is rich and powerful, and he usually gets away in the end, but he avoids being a Villain Sue because he's beaten almost every episode, and he'll never get to kill Superman like he wants. He's also a bald angry jerk that no one likes, who drives his company into the ground by wasting so much money on poorly-thought out schemes.

I've thought a lot about why I consider the Light Villain Sues and not Xanatos. They share many similar traits- they're charismatic, rich, powerful, genius master manipulators. They get away at the end, even if their plans are foiled. They all have loved ones and personal codes, so they don't look like complete monsters no matter what shenanigans they get up to. But there are some important differences:

-Xanatos isn't the main villain. He's important, but he's not the Clan's worst enemy. The Gargoyles can go fight mobsters and magical critters without Xanatos being behind it. So much of Young Justice, on the other hand, revolved around the Light, or someone reacting to the Light.

-Xanatos can be beaten, and often is. He's got a talent for for finding the silver lining in defeat, he'll recycle failed weapons for the next plan, and he avoids holding stupid grudges. But even so, Xanatos loses even when he doesn't want to. He's just rich enough to soak up the loss, and he's smart enough to try and learn from it. So many of the Young Justice episodes ended being about how the Light planned for this "defeat" and how it advances their goals.

-The master manipulator can be manipulated. Demona does it, Thailog does it, and even Goliath gets in on the action, by forcing Xanatos to trade powerful magical items in exchange for the Gargoyles' help. It takes until Season Two for the Light to get a taste of their own medicine.

The thing about The Light is that most of the time, they don't necessarily "win". Either the Team's victory is short-term or is in a smaller scale compared to The Light's goals, or when they do suffer a setback, they learn from that mistake or situation, rather than whine and pout.

I think another part of the problem is that the Light never left their council room. Well, they didn't in season one anyway. Compare that with Xanatos, or for another Greg Weisman example, the Green Goblin from Spectaular Spider-man. Both those guys got out and actually DID stuff outside of sitting in a dimly lit room and saying "All according to plan." If we see more of the Light in this season I hope they'll get time to act as individuals, like how Luthor got all that screentime in that episode where Roy tried to kill him.

The Light: "All according to keikaku."^note keikaku means plan.

edited 18th May '17 7:08:42 PM by Nightwire

I'm not sure if I saw a comic about this, or I wanted to see this made into a comic so bad that my mind made it feel real: We see a shot of a bathroom door. Then we hear a flushing sound. Then Light bursts out of the room screaming "Exactly as planned!"

edited 19th May '17 10:42:52 AM by WillKeaton

I mean, all this can be excused by the fact that for most of the show, the heroes don't know who their enemy is.

That's hilarious. XD

I've seen this in some other shows too, RWBY comes to mind. That is, the antagonist by their very nature knows more about their plan than the protagonist, putting the antag at a hefty advantage. This is by nature, it logically follows itself.

Some antagonists take this a step further however, and the protag doesn't even know who they are. And this, lemme stress this, makes perfect sense. And the advantage this would give the antagonist, logically, is fucking huge. The amount of luck or skill needed to overcome a foe you don't even knows exists is a tremendous leap.

Again, this all makes sense. When you know nothing about your enemy, even to the extent that you are a bit nebulous that you even have an enemy, it's not an illogical thing that they're not even playing the same ball game as you and are turning your victories in theirs. Too me, this lines up naturally without too many leaps of logic.

It's extremely goddamn frustrating to watch.

The Light did leave their council room in season 1 (after a few episodes anyway), although it was at a time when we did not know that they were part of the Light.

The whole business with the Light in Young Justice never bothered me much, anyway. It simply required to wait longer to see them actually suffering a setback, and it was all the more satisfying when it happened. Granted, it happened in the next to last episode of the (then) last season, and it was only a partial one, so I can understand people to be frustrated.

And you just know that them getting in bed with Darkseid will blow up in their face.

That came out way dirtier than I intended.

It doesn't bother me because the only ones to get away are Vandal and Klarion.

Luthor and Bee are still free, and Ra's will probably also be once he's put in a Lazarus Pit. The only ones who were caught were Brain and Manta.

No new information that I'm aware of, sorry to get your hopes up. But I wanted to ask something I thought you folks could answer for me. What's the deal with Count Vertigo? As far as I know, he's not a particularly important or popular villain. Yet he seems to be a common pick for adaptations. I know he's appeared in Batman: The Animated Series, Arrow and Young Justice. What is it about him that seems to draw writers to him?