S:TAS reviews: Little Girl Lost

Little Girl Lost opens with Superman in a mode of alienation scouting through a cavity of space in the hopes of finding some remnant of his people. Almost five minutes are spent in a limbo of the universe, decorated with stars and asteroids, and then on an abandoned planet, as Superman wanders slowly, listlessly, and almost hopelessly. The score is soothing and somber and, with the gradual emergence of the ravaged planet Argos, powerful in communicating the notion of the galaxy as graveyard of haunted subspaces. Superman finds one survivor, whom in the very next scene we find soaring the sunny skies of Smallville in a sweeping pan across a gloriously disorienting landscape that hammers home the bewilderment of the experience of flight.

Little Girl Lost ends with the completion of a videogame objective, wherein space is effortlessly traversed and human stakes are ignored in favor of brisk action. Soon after the initial images of atmospheric grandeur, we find ourselves trapped in a stage-by-stage, connect-the-dots spy thriller, Supergirl no longer a stranger to Earth basking in its unknown wonderment, but a perky youngster eager to solve a mystery. Suddenly all shortcuts about how to convey gender and adolescence are embraced without a second thought. As if drawing from some theoretical crossbreed between Dickens and sci-fi fan fiction, Granny Goodness (delightfully played by Ed Asner), a mainstay of Darkseid’s echelon of evildoers on Apokalips, collects runaways and lost teenagers and dupes them into becoming her tech-savvy minions. Meanwhile, Superman and Lois Lane act the part of curmudgeons out to deny Supergirl, who goes by Kara, and Jimmy any fun, leaving us with popular fiction’s perennially unconvincing stereotypes of teenagers, adults and the supposedly irrevocable line that divides them.

In the vein of The Cat and the Claw, female heroes and villains are treated with special curiosity that denies them any sense of dignity as their own characters. Granny Goodness commands a squadron of ‘Female Furies,’ a gang of vicious warriors banded together solely on the basis of their gender. Supergirl is Superman-lite but with female sex appeal; instead of being afforded her own unique characterization, the writers give her the unexplained schoolgirlish desire of emulating her manly and heroic ‘cousin.’ As with the early appearances of Batgirl, the episode is anchored by the patronizing concept of a young woman awkwardly trying to live up to her adult male counterpart, but while Barbara Gordon acted on impulses and motivations tailored especially for her character, Kara has all the distinguishable qualities of an imperfect clone. Little Girl Lost is essentially the story of how Supergirl comes to be like Superman, and right before hesitantly solidifying her achievement, she reassuringly says to herself, “You always wanted to be a hero.” Given the mystery of her origins and the truncation of story information detailing her assimilation on Earth, the questions I’d like to know the answers to are ‘why?’ and ‘since when?’

These questions are suppressed by axioms about the recklessness and idealism of youth, the end-all justification for why Supergirl is the way she is, so that more time can be spent on the Darkseid subplot. Unlike Apokalips…Now!, a transformative episode for the series that permanently altered continuity and daringly mingled the tenets of grand epic storytelling with tender humanism, Little Girl Lost is inconsequential as a segment of the Darkseid story arc and worthless as an account of human feeling. Darkseid, though never a complex character, can no longer fulfill his obligations as a basic archetype, retreating from the gnashing evil of Superman’s amoral counterpart to a placid warlord content to play villain of the week. His plan to destroy the Earth all but contradicts the long-term schemes we learn about in Legacy (which are also implied in Apokalips…Now!), and does little more than conveniently present Supergirl with an arbitrary mission, the accomplishment of which will validate her worth as a new addition to Earth’s growing roster of super-powered heroes.

Besides the possession of a lot of visual strengths—in addition to the opening scenes there are plenty of fastidiously animated fights, moving background shots and periodic instances of exceptionally good storyboarding—the only positive purpose Little Girl Lost serves is to rest as a continuity bullet point.

S:TAS reviews: Apokolips...Now!

Superman: the Animated Series has never been particularly complex as character drama; its complexity stems instead from its interweaving of massive set pieces and how it exploits the immensity of the geographical expanse that serves as its backdrop. The best episodes are tour-de-forces of crosscutting between various spaces, each housing its own character interactions or action scene, and the sum of all these plot strands translates into an intricate urban network that usually carries political, sociological, or mythological baggage.

Apokolips…Now!, a two-part episode awash in mythology, lacks the adroitness or formal ingenuity of Ghost in the Machine or The Late Mr. Kent. Rather it announces itself as a masterpiece by closing the spatial gaps that comprise the Metropolis for a single, concentrated vision of chaos, and then creating an even larger intergalactic system of interplanetary diplomacy that cuts the minutia and idiosyncrasies we’re so accustomed to down to size. After Apokolips…Now!, Metropolis looks decidedly small compared to the added forces of Apokolips and New Genesis, each of which has its own richly detailed history and full-fledged design scheme. In this regard, Apokolips…Now! opens the door for imaginings of the universe itself as a network of multifunctional dimensions and planetary units, which in turn lays the groundwork for Justice League and for the image we now have of the DC Animated Universe as a gigantic, all-encompassing phenomenon.

Ignoring the episode’s importance as a precursor to greater things to come, it is also a triumph of Manichean epic and apocalyptic vision, indulging its moral extremities without a trace of self-consciousness and wearing its Biblical allusions on its sleeve, not to mention its blatant titular pun on one of American cinema’s most thunderously nightmarish war films. Given Superman’s history as a salvation figure for the masses and the series’ history of crafting mythical archetypes, Apokolips…Now! somehow feels genuine even though it borrows from a compendium of different texts. It charges head-forward into the restless waters of the portentous epic and filters every plot contrivance and line of potentially campy dialogue through fully committed writers, artists and voice actors, so that when Darkseid, for example, predictably seals his betrayal of Bruno Manheim with the declaration, “and so you are: a king of fools!” it can’t arouse anything but our gravest attention.

Dan Riba dresses it up with extravagant backgrounds and dynamic poses, almost all of which hark back to Jack Kirby’s brand of simple but bold illustrations. Almost every shot is a feat of careful craftsmanship. The first alone includes both a tilt down and pan across a hi-tech police outpost, a shift from static monumentality to horizontal action that succinctly encapsulates Riba’s brilliance at framing and camera movements. In the climactic battle scene, one of the most ambitious any cartoon series ever attempted, pans are actually distinguished from tracking shots (a distinction rarely attempted in animation), as Riba creates a semicircular camera trajectory to mirror Superman’s turning his head to witness the coming onslaught, replicating the feel of a camera’s rotation. The rigorous designs and direction are also thematically pertinent; the first battle scene lingers on a shot of a ravaged, debris-strewn street and the first part ends with an act of nuclear warfare, both premonitory signs of the coming apocalypse, all as the red color schema that subtly infuses the first part slowly becomes more saturated.

If Apokolips…Now! has a flaw, it is the overload of mythological information and rapid augmentation of new characters. Part one’s expository centerpiece is a ravishing widescreen historical overview of both Apokolips and New Genesis via Orion’s Mother Box, nuggets of comic book knowledge cropping up rapidly with little time for adjustment. When Orion, who only moments ago crash-landed on Earth, solemnly tells Superman that he is Darkseid’s son, already coloring in the cold and objective alien history with dramatic content, it is difficult to attune our emotional reaction to the grave tenor of the acting and score. The expansion of characters, information, and set pieces almost threatens to overwhelm the human aspect (promised at the outset by Maggie Sawyer’s hospitalization), but a last-minute bravura brushstroke shockingly yanks us from the delirious swarm of stuff and into a moment of deep and intimate human feeling.

The climax of part two has Superman crucified and paraded through the streets of Metropolis as Darkseid announces the impending dictatorial takeover of the planet. In the face of such heavy-handed symbolism pointing to Superman’s individualistic role as Earth’s savior, inspector Dan Turpin leads an uprising that puts a populist spin on the Biblical tale of Christ’s suffering and death. Superman is saved not by divine intervention but by the actions of an ordinary man, and in the midst of this celebration, which entails a squadron of New Gods prepared for battle, Darkseid, in a matter of seconds, vaporizes Turpin without leaving a trace of him behind.

Suddenly the notion of apocalypse has transferred from an avoided global catastrophe to a very real and piercing human tragedy, as Fogel and Riba transition from an enraged Superman at his most Herculean pounding away at Darkseid’s abandoned vessel to a still, serene funeral rendered with the utmost authenticity. The site modeled on a real cemetery and the Hebrew verses sung by an actual rabbi, Turpin’s funeral is a model of reverence that ends in a visual rhyme that complements the end of part one. To the lyricism of a wistful piano, Superman stands solemnly over Turpin’s grave with the same emotional burden as Orion and says, “Goodbye old friend; in the end the world didn’t really need a Superman, just a brave one.” It is a line that veers on the edge of platitude but that makes all the sense in the world.

As the episode closes, there is a dedication to the great comic book artist Jack Kirby, whose artistic sensibilities rub off everything in the episode, who is responsible for the creation of Darkseid and the New Gods, and whose personage had been channeled through Turpin’s character throughout the series. It is a metafictional conceit that equates artistic integrity to everyday courage, Superman’s mourning of a fellow hero standing for Timm and company’s mourning of a fellow artist. The humility that Timm exhibits whenever he acknowledges Kirby, one of his key inspirations, becomes Superman’s humility as he downplays his own virtues to honor the heroism of a simple, but courageous man. It is this very humility that completes the picture of Superman as a Christ figure, his superhuman power giving way to an all too human love for his brother.

This scene is a radical tonal departure from the body of Apokolips…Now!, which consists of so many operatic confrontations and colorful action sequences, and yet it is all the more poignant for it, reminding the viewer of the very human reality of death in the face of so much escapism. Superman: the Animated Series bravely flaunts its genre underpinnings, here in the most histrionic genre of the space opera, but only on the condition that we don’t scoff at its often scoffed-at precepts of undiluted heroism, and in Apokolips…Now!’s illustration of human loss it more than accomplishes this mission.

S:TAS reviews: Warrior Queen

In Warrior Queen, Hilary Bader retreads a lot of the same ground already covered by Paul Dini in his exemplary The Main Man, an intergalactic adventure that comically accommodates outrageous science fiction phenomena into familiar types and genres. But unlike Dini’s loose, fun simplemindedness, Bader deviates from the whimsy of her subject into a bloated lecture on the ills of dictatorial rule.

At first, the episode strikes a cord of Star Trek-like sci-fi silliness, filter-feeding us the political and marital dynamics of a planet called Almerac in campy declarations that spell out in no unsubtle terms that fight and flirtation are one and the same. Maxima is the hotheaded, boy-crazy queen, De’Cine the power-hungry monster who strives to conquer her (the one prerequisite for matrimony), and Sazu her duplicitous right-hand maiden. In the effort to obtain a mate, Maxima goes to Earth in the hopes that Superman will defeat her in battle.

This amusing premise is cleverer on second glance, given that Maxima is simultaneously a hormonal woman hungry for a lover and a masculine warrior ready for battle. Her stint on Earth concludes with a bit of hilarious irony, as after her girlish excitement that Superman has defeated her, she immediately knocks him over the head and forces him homeward upon his refusal to be her betrothed. Other smile-inducing moments include Maxima’s nonchalant assault on several forthcoming, salivating males, Angela Chen’s soon-to-detonate sit-down with Maxima on the morning news, and a grouchy old couple straight out of Bewitched who provide a running commentary on Superman and Maxima’s confrontation. The last of these yields the funniest moments and most closely approach the genius of The Main Man, as the last corny aside cleverly undercuts Superman’s idealism and most concisely encapsulates Bader’s wit in approaching gender (Double Dose is rife with similar examples).

Sadly, Superman’s naïve idealism extends to his ultra-moralistic spiels about just rule and fair governing in the episode’s latter half, only by that point the subversive humor has been all but abandoned. When De’Cine’s mutinous takeover develops into a matter of serious concern, the story has capsized, the campy fun has worn off, and all that’s left is obligatory action. The giant monster Superman and Maxima must defeat bears comparison with the creatures from The Main Man, although the kind of raucous humor on display in those battle scenes is nowhere to be found here, Lobo’s gasp-inducing exhibition of alien-skinning a far cry from Superman’s lengthy tactics. Curt Geda is at his most by the numbers in the ensuing scuffles, replete with silly affronts against the minimal standard for cartoon physics and an overdose of stiff long shots.

Just when all the fun seems drained out of what is now a synthetic political thriller, Lobo comes blazing into Maxima’s palace on his flying motorbike. But Maxima, having learned the ways of responsibility and leadership and now lacking her warrior-like edge, is now all hormones, and this last-minute cameo does little to remedy the third-act nosedive.

TNBA reviews: Over the Edge

Over the Edge is in some ways the DCAU’s most horrific nightmare, because even as a dream it permanently taints how we perceive our heroes in their own reality. It is the fallout of an inevitable collision between two factions unable to coexist, the most perverse effacement of Batman and what he stands for, and the ultimate vision of apocalypse made manifest in any superhero cartoon.

It takes but one misstep in embedding a flashback into its dream narrative in order to open the show with the total destabilization of the established Batman mythos, Gordon and Batman locked in violent pursuit interspersed with the obliteration of several series touchstones before the Bat Cave as a whole is left a ravaged wasteland. The purpose of this opening, in addition to its throat-grabbing shock value, is that it almost dryly states outright that the conflict is irresolvable, and that there can only be a progression toward cataclysm, not reconciliation. In this sense, the only-a-dream structure is forgivable, because perceptive viewers are alerted outright that there is no other logical way out. And yet in depicting the dream in conventional narrative mode without a surplus of egregious surrealist techniques makes us buy into the reality of the dream world, so that what we take seriously what it has to say about our characters and observe how the truths presented bleed over into the real world.

After this fireworks opening is a momentary relapse into flashback, where we see Barbara Gordon knocked off of a skyscraper into the Gotham abyss, a sly cut across to her unsuspecting father in a squad car, and the inevitable, and all too symbolically pertinent, collision. Gordon sits in the street with Batman overlooking, inviting a reading of the scene as a mirror inverse of the Wayne tragedy, a depiction of a father with his dead daughter in his arms. Just as Batman turned his personal vendetta against his parents’ killer into a war on crime, so does Gordon immediately direct his rage-filled eyes toward vigilantism. Yet unlike the breadth and anonymity of the underworld, Batman towers above the city as the vigilante, the indisputable fosterer and propagator of all masked heroes who dwell in Gotham.

At the center of this dualistic reading is the reality of Batman’s culpability. At the helm of TNBA is a grim Batman whose cold-heartedness the writers often dubiously employ as an attractive benchmark of cool, anti-hero behavior. There is nothing to smile about as this streak in Batman that we often implicitly take for granted becomes grounds for his arrest, his having spent years coolly betraying his most trusted companion inside the law by systematically preparing his daughter for combat missions. Of the three comrades that Batman has taken under his wing, Dick and Tim were in need of a father figure because their parents were taken from them. Examining his relationship to Barbara under a similar lens, the situational ethics are less clear-cut, Batman’s assumption of the role of surrogate father housing the subliminal action of wresting her away from her real father. By the time we learn of Bruce’s romantic tryst with Barbara later in DCAU history, the morality becomes even more mystified.

With Gordon going the obsessive route of Batman, and in the process casting a dark shadow on our hero’s own ‘noble’ quest, Over the Edge soon enters into apocalyptic territory, with Bane, now infinitely more intimidating than in his debut, as the foreboding harbinger of destruction. The climax, a metaphorically overstuffed three-way fight to the death, is less shocking than it is visceral, an apotheosis of everything the TMS animators ever learned about fight animation. Beginning with an eerie dual-purpose funeral, proceeding to turn the Bat Signal from a beacon into a searchlight, and even throwing in a surprisingly suiting Vertigo homage, this reckless but fastidious third act is as full of buried stakes and rampant symbolism as any action climax I’ve seen in either film or television.

And then Barbara wakes up. This is a character who has been relegated to quips and comic relief since the beginning of TNBA, and one might criticize her objectification in Over the Edge as well, a mere catalyst who sparks a dramatic reshuffling of Batman’s and James Gordon’s relationship without any observance of her own character. The scene that follows her awakening defuses these criticisms and also initiates a rethinking of the events witnessed in the dream. If the credulousness of the portrayals of Batman as a manipulator of the young and Gordon as going too far in his rabid initiative for vengeance is horrific, then Barbara’s scene with her father makes us reconsider this horror as born of our own marginalization of her character, as the war waged between her two guardians is one that largely factors out the reality of her own choices. As Barbara comes forward with her confession, she takes on the burden of responsibility implicitly placed on Batman, and as Gordon accepts and respects the freedom she has been granted as an adult, we learn that a future in which he might revoke the trust he has put in Batman and be driven to madness is an impossibility.

This dream episode winds up telling more about our heroes than most episodes do. If Over the Edge is already a masterwork, albeit a disturbing one, for its tendency to throw our idealistic images of Batman and Gordon into flux, then the new image offered of Barbara in the last minutes, as a character every bit as tortured as these two men and as a master of her own destiny, elevates it to an even higher status, ameliorating our fears without eradicating them and forever changing the way we think about this series.