GoFlash

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  1. Just to clarify - Raven's real name is in fact Raven. Her mother Arella was born Angela Roth, so in her third incarnation (at the beginning of the current Teen Titans series, in the team with Tim Drake, Bart Allen, Connor Kent, and Cassie Sandsmark), she began using the alias "Rachel Roth", but that was just because high schools get a little dubious about students who claim their only given name is "Raven".

    So, since this ran about the same time as season 3 of JLU, did Kole and Gnart live in Skartaris?

    Dr. Light will gain the power of the aurora borealis. Wow. He can now make green, blue, AND purple. But only if you're far enough north. Remind me why no one takes him seriously?

    Chris

  2. I actually thought Mike's big gripe with "Destroyer" (which he teased before in, I believe, Episode 69) was that Superman at one point goes up behind Darkseid, taps him on the shoulder, says "'Scuse me", then punches him in the face. I could see him doing that with some other villain, but not one he hates so much.

    I would say if we're looking for gripes with Destroyer, there's only 4 words.

    Five. Minute. Head. Start.

    Mr. Terrific is Fair Play. Batman is "I am vengeance!"

    Chris

  3. "Homecoming" is actually adapted from a story arc about a year into the run of the New Teen Titans. BB's friendship with Cyborg as it related to his previous association with Robotman was more explicit. At the end, BB actually kills Madame Rouge - and Negative Man and Elasti-Girl stayed dead (at least until the next Crisis). Mento wasn't the leader of the Doom Patrol - he was the 5th richest man in the world, and was in love with Rita "Elasti-Girl" Farr, so had his scientists build him a suit that let him harness his brain power thinking that being a super-hero would help him woo her. He and Elasti-girl then adopted Beast Boy. The side effects of the suit made him kind of loopy, but when you're that rich, you're allowed to be...eccentric. In the comics, wheelchair-bound Niles Caulder, "The Chief", was the leader of the Doom Patrol. Maybe they thought that a team of heros considered to be freaks and outcasts, led by a man in a wheelchair, wouldn't work in an animated series. Or four.

    Madame Rouge is French - in the comics, she was a schoolteacher in love with Niles Caulder whose mind was warped by the Brain and was given powers. She was killed by Beast Boy about New Teen Titans 14. Her daughter was the villain in the 4 issue Beast Boy miniseries.

    Monsieur Mallah was given his intelligence by the Brain, and is very devoted to him. Using the same voice actor for both could have been a nod to this - the Brain gave Mallah his ability to speak, after all.

    Mike, don't worry about the fact that Wonder Girl appeared in DCAU continuity before Wonder Woman. After the Crisis on Infinite Earths, Wonder Woman didn't arrive in Man's World until the Legends miniseries, which was the same point at which Wally West took over as the Flash - meaning that all of the Teen Titans and New Teen Titans stories with Wonder Girl happened before Wonder Woman arrived in Man's World in the comics, as well. This was reset by the Infinite Crisis!...or maybe it was Final Crisis!...or the Crisis After The Final Crisis Wasn't!...or the Crisis Of Last Thursday!...I lose track.

    As far as quantum black holes, they are still a theory. Our current understanding is that to form a stable black hole, you need a significant mass (I believe it's 1.44 times the mass of our sun). Anything smaller doesn't generate enough gravity to hold itself together that tightly. The theory is that during the Big Bang, there was enough pressure to compact mass enough to form quantum (i.e., smaller than the above mass) black holes, but that that's the only time stable ones could be formed. Brain's machine could have temporarily compacted mass to simulate a black hole, but it owuldn't be stable and self perpetuating, so once the machine is destroyed, the gravity generated by the smaller amount of mass wouldn't be enough to hold the mass together. Think of it like sitting on a bunch of cardboard boxes and tying them into a small ball with thread. Your weight is the pressure from the machine that compacts the boxes, and the thread is the gravity of that mass. When you get up, however, the thread's not strong enough to hold the boxes crushed down, and they spring back.

    And that's just the things I thought of from listening to your review of "Homecoming" on the way to work. I haven't even gotten to the other 5 episodes yet. Good thing I started posting at the forums rather than sending all of this in on e-mail like I used to...

    Chris

  4. Well, "Overdrive" finally established that the Robin in TT is in fact Richard Grayson. When Cyborg gets the chip, Robin makes a comment, with disgust in his voice, about putting a "chip in your brain." That's a great thing to say to your friend who was converted into a cyborg after an accident. He's clearly a Dick.

    James, the thought of giving a being that eats children to the Hive bothered me too. I guess we're not supposed think that hard about this episode.

    So, when Starfire got x-rayed by See More, I guess that means she now has a nudity taboo? (I think it was during Bart Allen's wake that she told the story of Bart trying to see her naked, and she just let him because it didn't mean anything. That was the longest anyone had ever see him stand still.)

    Chris

  5. I'm finally getting around to reading my way through The New Teen Titans - even in the first 15 issues, I noticed bits of things that got used for the show. The kid with the prosthetic arm in "Sum Of His Parts" who looked up to Cyborg because he was a hero with prosthetic limbs? Straight out of TNTT #8 - Cyborg actually started volunteering at his school. His working with handicapped children made in into the last season of Superfriends (The Super Powers Team: Galactic Guardians) as well. It is interesting, though, reading about Deathstroke - much less Bond villain and much more businessman. He even has a research department - headed, of course, by Dr. Bunsen Honeydew and his assistant, Bleaker. I am not making this up - Deathstroke the Terminator hired the scientist from the Muppet Show.

    Interestingly, my almost 6 year old saw one panel of one comic and immediately recognized it as the Teen Titans. She got even more excited, though, when she saw me reading some of the last of the Wally West run of Flash - her dad has reddish brown hair. Her mother is Asian and medical (Linda Park has medical training as well as journalism). She has red hair, and her little brother has dark hair and more Asian features. She was all set to have us dress up as the Wild Wests for Halloween.

    Among the many. Many. Many. references in the Control Freak episode was a non-TV one. In the 80s, when the New Teen Titans was launched, it was the analogue, and the best competitor, to Marvel's X-Men. I should say that the first time I saw a Fastball Special it was Rogue as the pitcher and Colossus as the pitchee, so when Control Freak was driving away in Starfire's car, and she threw a large metal man at him...

    One thing that I just picked up on this time - at the end, Raven asked Cyborg if he could get them out, and he gave her a nervous smile and sweated. We then flip to the Tower (built, by the way, by Silas Stone so that his son could spend time with the friends that were finally making him happy), where Robin, Raven, Beast Boy, and Starfire and sitting around drinking coffee - which they don't normally do. Then Cyborg comes up behind Raven - with his arm around a petite young lady with brown hair. They didn't actually get out of the TV by the end of the episode, did they - they were still in a sitcom.

    Cyborg the Barbarian was fun, but boy. After all of those references in the previous episode, what I wouldn't have given to have seen his sonic blaster break, so he had to replace it with a chainsaw. ("This is my boomstick!")

    For Employee of the Month, did anyone else get a bit of that Greatest Story Never Told/The Zeppo (Season 3 of Buffy) vibe?

    Chris

  6. As far as Cyborg's white cells being in his cybernetic components, there's no reason that he would need the blood to keep his mechanical parts running. It's probably the other way around - he's using his mechanical parts to keep his organics functioning (which is the whole point of his cybernetics) After all, we don't know how badly he was damaged. If his liver or kidneys were destroyed, he'd need an on-board replacement. (Of course, that starts me thinking - how many of his long bones does he have left? Human bones can't take the stress he exerts on them. Where is he making new blood cells?)

    James, I'm pretty sure this is the first time BB talks in...not-human form. (other than telepathically to Aqualad) - I remember them commenting that, unlike in the comics, they weren't going to have him talk when transformed because it looked too goofy when animated, but in this scene, since he couldn't transform back, they must have bent the rules so that it wasn't just Gizmo followed by a silent green blob. Here's another question - when an amoeba replicates, both daughters are genetically identical to the parent. Does that mean that all of the amoebae could all transform back and we'd have a horde of Beast Boys? It'd be like an irreversible version of Jamie Madrox's power.

    Adding one more aspect to Mike's interpretation of the message in the last episode - did anyone else pick up a "the person on the other side of the computer may not be who they tell you they are" message in that as well?

    Chris

    ...whose daughter has now decided that she wants to be She-Hulk with a pink lightsaber when she grows up. Oh, well, green and pink are a popular combination out here...

  7. (We have a new baby, so I'm a bit sleep deprived)

    Congratulations!

    Indeed! Now all you need to do is raise the child to be a crime fighter!

    Unfortunately, the last time we had a lightning storm in Hawaii was Christmas of 2008, and my wife made me move the rack of chemicals away from his crib. I never get to have any fun.

    "We can't change who he is. Not without dropping him in a vat of toxic waste. Steve...."

    "Now where would we even find a vat of..."

    "Steve!"

  8. Two points -

    First, as to the "dog's" prim and proper voice in "Every Dog" - it didn't sound like an impersonation or anything, but it really made me think of Mr. Peabody from Rocky & Bullwinkle.

    Second, about the "moral" of...that Cyborg and Atlas episode, whose name escapes me (We have a new baby, so I'm a bit sleep deprived). I'm not commenting on the episode as a whole, which was very ehh. The moral dragged it down, though. They're trying to do the "If you try hard enough, you can do more than you thought" by just having Cyborg WANT to be stronger, so...he is! Cyborg's powers don't run on will! He's not Green Lantern! If he was Green Lantern, his costume would be green, now wouldn't it?

    The thing is, Cyborg's design limits, and the frustration they give him, would be a great piece of characterization. It makes sense, and it would help establish him, even define him. The moral of this story would have been much stronger if they had kept that intact. After his initial defeat, he could have used his skills to redesign some components, or figure out a way to face Atlas that played to his strengths, and gotten the same message across while still keeping what could have been a cool (and logical) piece of characterization intact.

    Chris

  9. I'd never thought of it, but Mad Mod does work as a pastiche of Arcade, doesn't he...with some Austin Powers mixed in. I still look to Donna Noble for the quintessential "Oi!", though...

    I have to say, though, I was expecting Mike to dislike "Mad Mod" just because it seemed so very Scooby Doo-ish.

    I think one of the best things about Slade as the lead villain (besides the Perlman effect), is that he seems to be one of the villains who has actually read the Evil Overlord List.

    "I will instruct my fashion designer that when it comes to accessorizing, second-chance body armor goes well with every outfit."

    Check.

    "I will not send out battalions composed wholly of robots or skeletons against heroes who have qualms about killing living beings."

    OK, needs some work...BUT:

    "I will make sure only to communicate and rule through a suit of Animated Armor or other robot double, while I am somewhere else-preferably a bunker in the ass-end of Siberia or some other hellishly inhospitable place that would take a massive ammount of preparation to get to."

    One of his favorites.

    "I will not get involved in a gun or fist fight. My body double will do it. When the Hero and the double disarm to enter the ring, my expert team of snipers will blow the hero's head off of his shoulders from half a mile away. The body double will then use the explosive hidden in his cloak to blow up the body just to make sure. If the hero is really powerful, then I'll bring in the Kill Sat, which has the added advantage of killing any sidekicks who came to watch the fight."

    Sometimes, but he does forget during "Apprentice"

    "I shall never so much as talk in battle. It's a distraction and any moment I could spend thinking of something to say, I could instead be using to predict my opponent's next move and a respective counter. Cold silence is intimidating as well. Exceptions will be made if there is a brief lull in the fighting and I have something relevant to say. For the record: nihilism, ranting, or name-calling are not relevant; the people the hero killed to get to this point, the high quality of life in my subjects, and the contradictions in his life philosophy are."

    He's very good at the exceptions to this one.

    And, while it's not related to Slade, I thought I'd throw this one out in honor of the fact that we're expecting our second child any day now (so I may not be around much):

    "There is a time and a place for my maniacal laugh, and that is right after my adorable little granddaughter does something cute (such as pulling the lever on the trap door under an incompetent minion) because she thinks my special laugh is cute and she will start laughing herself and very few Heroes will attack a doting grandfather while his 6 year-old granddaughter laughs with him."

    Chris

  10. So, if you were floating around in space near Earth, you could get radiation burn from the Sun?

    Absolutely. I see a lot of families recently arrived on island from California, Texas, Kansas, Georgia - and always warn them about the sun. The irony is, it's cooler here in Hawaii (usually under 95) in the summer than a lot of places on the mainland, but you still burn faster here, because the light enters at a steeper angle, so goes through less atmosphere, and is less filtered than most places on the mainland - and we're still down at sea level. You can burn much more quickly up Haleakala on Maui (10,000 feet up) or Mauna Loa or Mauna Kea on the Big Island, because there's even less atmosphere to filter the UV. Think about all of the concerns with the ozone layer thinning - out in space, there is no ozone layer, so you can easily get a second degree sunburn (blistering immediately, as opposed to the first-degree burns most of us are familiar with, where you're pink for several days, then start peeling). I honestly don't know if you can get a third degree burn from the level of UV in space, but I would assume that you can, given enough time - although probably not in the 90-120 seconds before you can no longer be resusitated. I don't know if you'd get a second degree burn in that time either, but a first-degree burn is certainly realistic. And of course, being a ginger, Flash is likely to burn pretty easily anyways. Still, only a small area of flesh was exposed (Swim shirts, which are mostly spandex, are about SPF 50, and his costume is likely equivalent), and we can chalk the rest up to high-metabolism healing.

  11. I'm posting this e-mail in response to one of the e-mails in the ep. THis way, if it's too long to read, Mike and James can point folks here.

    Aloha, Mike & James

    I thought I'd answer the question about the Flash's vacuum exposure in an e-mail (I had chimed in on the forums earlier. I'll repost this if you want to forgo the long-winded explanation). As I've never heard James go by Jim, I'll forgo the Star Trek reference. I'm not an astronaut, but I am a doctor, which should qualify me as a science type. Short version - they got the science right.

    There are 3 issues - pressure, temperature, and oxygen.

    As far as pressure, you will not explode. Soft tissues can swell, but this is reversible. You may have some ruptured capillaries in your skin and eyes. Saliva may boil away. The most acute concern is that if you try to hold your breathe, your lungs will rupture as the air forces it's way out. Watch when Flash is blown out, though - his mouth was open the whole time, exactly what he should have done. Also, keep in mind that the pressure difference is about the same as that between diving at 33 feet and sea level, so the bends are a possibility.

    For temperature, space isn't technically cold, because temperature is the average heat in a substance. No substance. We lose heat 3 ways. Radiation (giving off infrared), conduction (hold a cold can of soda, and your hand gets cold as heat is conducted into the can), and convection (windchill is the best example). The only one that works in space is radiation, and that's slow. Other things kill you long before this will. Oh, and you can also get a nasty sunburn from exposure to UV with no atmosphere to block it - especially for redheads.

    Oxygen is the biggie. Loss of oxygen typically causes loss of consciousness in 10-15 seconds (this is based on a subject in a leaking pressure suit in vacuum at NASA's Manned Space Flight Center in 1965). From there, you can develop increasing swelling, sunburn, the bends, etc. Based on the little human data, coupled with animal data, if the subject is re pressurized within 90 seconds, survival is typical, with most of the damage being reversible.

    "Maid of Honor" had the science much better than most movies.

    Chris McEvoy

  12. The 84-85 Superfriends (The Legendary Super Powers Show) added Firestorm as the young interest character (the Wonder Twins Marvin & Wendy were gone). The next year, (Super Powers Team: Galactic Guardians), Cyborg was added as well. There was also a TT drug awareness ad in planning, but I don't know if it ever actually aired. Robin was replaced by a character called the Protector, due to licensing issues with Superfriends.

    Also, there were 3 Teen Titans episodes as part of the Superman/Aquaman Hour of Adventure. Robin was currently in a Batman comic, so he did not appear. Otherwise it was the classic lineup - Aqualad, Speedy, Kid Flash, and Wonder Girl - none of whom, of course, were regulars in the series we're actually talking about. (At one point, Wally West was grumbling to Linda Park about why Green Arrow's sidekick got to be Speedy, instead of Wally.)

    I do have to say, even though this series was based on the Wolfman-Perez lineup sans Donna Troy and Wally West, I was hoping there would have been one more character added. This show would have been such a great match for early Impulse (Bart, not Iris). Granted, the innocence (cluelessness) about how the world works was largely Starfire's thing, but I still think it would have been such a great match.

  13. My co host on TSOP asked me a very interesting question: In Twilight "Why didn't Brainiac go after J'onn instead of Superman?"

    I told him the only way I could explain it was that Superman and Brainiac are mortal enemies. He then pointed out that Brainiac is a devourer of knowledge so wouldn't he want the knowledge J'onn has about Mars?

    My only reply was that maybe because Mars is a dead planet already that it doesn't interest Brainiac.

    Of course, the counter to that is that by the time he's done with them, every planet Brainiac is interested in is a dead planet.

  14. I'm trying to remember the last time the cave was used but they might have reused the background from Batman Beyond to save a few bucks. I'll have to watch some Static to figure out.

    I think the first time Static was in the cave was in the Static 4th season opener, Future Shock, when Static went into the future and met McGinnis. Robin was there; however, that doesn't asnwer the question of when ROTJ took place, because 2 episodes later, in "Fallen Hero", Static meets up with GL, who had not yet shaved his head and grown the beard. Future Shock aired in Jan 04, and Starcrossed in May 04.

    Chris

  15. I just realized why Batman had to pilot the Watchtower. Though it's never outright said in Justice League, J'onn is weak to fire. So there's no way he could have survived long enough to crash it to Earth.

    The problem is, while there were times when a fire attack took out J'onn, there were other times it had no effect. I assumed that they intended that to mean that he can be taken down by a big attack, but it wasn't necessarily the fire. It certainly didn't seem to be like Kryptonite, like in the comics.

    I figured it was due to 2 things. In story, first, it would likely take too long, even telepathically, for Batman to bring J'onn up to speed on everything that needed to be done. Second, Batman is certainly not going to ask someone else to take that risk for him - even of J'onn may have been a better choice (not to mention, he may well have had some security measures in place to make sure that no one but him can access the piloting systems). After all, it's not just a question of what makes sense to us - Batman forced the decision, so it's really a question of who Batman would feel was the best choice to make sure it went off without a hitch. No doubt what his answer would be.

    Great review for a great episode. I noticed a lot of bits of body language that really conveyed emotions, which takes a lot of skill in animation. Mike mentioned the Flash just crumpling when Batman says "Gentlemen. It's been an honor." I also noticed when Flash hugs Shayera, that she's trying to hold herself straight, rigid, and tough, but then she just leans into him - she obviously needed that hug right then.

    Along the lines of Superman shedding his boyscout image, the other line that really stood out is when Superman, Diana, and GL pull up to face the flagship and see the forces arrayed against them.

    "Pretty bad odds."

    "Yeah. They don't stand a chance."

    The music during that battle is one of the 3 pieces of JL music that I most wish would be released in a clean form (along with the Wonder Woman and Green Lantern themes). I would include the Blackhawk theme, but it was included as a music video on the season set.

    Chris

  16. I don't know if you figure it out later in the podcast but Maria Canals, voice of Hawkgirl, voiced Livewire. and Corey Burton, voice of Brainiac, did Toyman (and i believe two other characters)

    I would not have guessed that was Maria Canals. To be honest, I thought that whoever was doing Livewire was doing a Harley Quinn impression (if Livewire had been in Wild Cards, I might have suspected that it was Arleen Sorkin).

    Lori Petty (Geena Davis' little sister in "A League Of Their Own") was the original voice of Livewire. Mike was trying to remember, but he may have been blanking due to not caring very much.

    Chris

  17. Mike, your explanation of Superman only seeing one bomb in Wild Cards is how I had explained it away, too - Joker said one bomb, Superman saw the first bomb and stopped looking. (Granted that this means he was trusting Joker to some degree, but no one's perfect).

    In Hereafter, a couple of things I noticed:

    Not just at the memorial, (the word you were looking for, by the way, is interred), but at the cathedral, the crowd seemed awful thin. 400 world leaders?

    Also, in the shot of the procession going down the street, the 5 remaining League members (minus Batman) are the pallbearers. When they're approaching the memorial, though, there's a sixth guy on the rear left position (if viewing from above). Gray suit, blond hair. No idea who that is.

    As to Lex being at the funeral and saying he's going to miss him, in the comics, Luthor (who was at the time thought to be Luthor Jr, a good guy), actually went berserk and started smashing Doomsday's corpse with a chair. Not because he would miss Superman per se, but because Luthor hadn't been the one to defeat him.

    Chris

  18. (Did J'onn shape-shift into Clark-form at some point in the comics? I think he did...)

    I know that J'onn did in the Justice League Adventures book. Starman (The alien one, not Ted Knight) transformed into Superman during the "Krisis Of The Krimson Kryptonite" and Supergirl (Matrix) did so at the end of "The Reutrn of Superman", but I think that was the only time around the Death Of Superman arc.

    The Kents (with Kara out of costume, and Barbara as well) being at the funeral always bothered me. I would have liked it much better if they had flashed (for the same length of time) on the Kents dressed in mourning, watching the memorial on TV at their home (which is what happened in the comics). Not a major point, but a minor annoyance.

    Chris

  19. I mean the colour. Kyle has black hair, and Hal has brown. But yeah, it's probably Kyle, cause that looks like Kyles mask in that pic.

    ALthough - in "In Brightest Day" Kyle did have brown hair, about that shade (like Mike said, the character was a bit of a pastiche of Kyle and Hal). He didn't have black hair in the DCAU until we see him again in "The Return". (Apparently, the Oa Walgreens stocks Just For Men).

    Chris

  20. Sadly, no one has yet addressed this. I suppose it falls to me, as the (likely) oldest person on this forum to speak to James.

    As to the scene wherein the Society and the League charge towards each other, which you found fault with: I realize, that as the original came out in 1978, this was not as much a part of your formative years as it was mine. However, there will be no disrespect offered nor tolerated to the Challenge of the Superfriends homage. None.

    Depressingly, I may be the only person here who actually watched Challenge Of The Superfriends as a first-run program.

    Well, that's out of the way.

    As to Terror, William Hootkins voiced General Ross. He was the fat, slovenly, Bullock stand-in in Burton's Batman, but given that Mark Hamill (Luke Skywalker, Red 5) voiced Grundy, it's a bit of a reunion - Hootkins played Jek Porkins, Red 6.

    In my second Niven reference in the last 12 hours, Larry Niven's Warlock series treats magic as a nonrenewable resource. Atlantis was unstable, and held above the waves by magic. One day, they had to use too much magic, and it sank. Looks like the crew had been pulling in references from all over.

    The other great Hawkgirl exchange was the one about standard interrogation technique. "I was bad cop." "You're always bad cop." "Why play against type?"

    For Society - ooh, sorry, James, I have to disagree again. You said that Batman had been far more highly trained than GL's program. Maybe, but it depends on the goal. I've been highly trained as a pediatrician - doesn't make me qualified as a surgeon. Batman has been trained as an individual, and relies on himself to a certain degree (like 359 of 360). The point of the training was to teach them to rely on each other. I agree that it looked banal, and GL was over the top drill sergeant. Still, the point of the training wasn't to defeat robots, but to work together.

    Mike, I think the things you dislike about the end were the things I liked. True, the fight was poorly staged. I liked it though, because if you were really at a superhero fight with a camera, that's probably exactly what it would look like. It's not what we usually see, but I like the fact that they pushed things - I think it gave it a more realistic feel. I see your points about it being harder to follow than what we usually see, but it kind of works for me.

    Also, I didn't think the "We say we're sorry and move on." was such as bad ending. Everyone's been rubbed raw, they're tired - saying in essence, we need to work on this, but for now, let's just say sorry and deal with this more once we're less frayed - seems pretty realistic to me. If they had come back to it later that would have been better (but in the real world, lets face it - saying "Yes, this is a problem. We need to talk about this later." and then finding excuses not to deal with it, and trying to pretend it never happened...also pretty realistic.) For both of these, I can understand where you're coming from as the typical way stories are told, but I kind of liked the fact that instead of using standard approaches, they tried something that feels or looks less right on television, but would seem a lot more right in real life.

    Oh, and as to Batman shedding a tear while hugging Superman, I believe part of Bruce Wayne's training involved the surgical removal of his tear glands. Pointy Ear Man no cry. (So when do we get Grundy Mike giving the synopsis?)

    About Shade's look at Giganta when he finds she's a gorilla - every time I watch this, I change my mind about what that look means. Although personally, I really like Giganta's portrayal - Ms. Hale made her very fun to watch.

    Chris

  21. #1: The warp drive would melt? Why's that? There are definitely metals in the DCU that can survive contact with the sun. Like, say, METALLO? The substance which can survive Superman's heat vision? (which, if you think about it, is probably about as hot as the sun's surface, considering how fast it melts through metal) And hey, for that matter, in the DCAU, we have cops with laser guns and superheroes with WARP DRIVES. I mean, really. Why couldn't that kind of tech, which can literally BEND spacetime, be possibly made of metal that can survive the sun's heat?

    For #1, though, it wasn't the warp drive that Mike and James were discussing, it was the AFD (anti-fusion device). The energy from fusion causes the sun to expand, while the gravity from its mass causes it to contract - the sun's size is due to the balance between the two. I suppose I could argue that the AFD stops fusion, at which point the gravity pulls the hot plasma further into the sun, causing a receding dimple in the surface of the sun near the AFD, which kept enough distance between the AFD and the plasma to prevent it's melting, and that it is meant to be deployed in a thermonuclear exchange, so may be designed to put up with that sort of temperature short term, but frankly, I'd rather just ignore the detail of it melting.

    Chris

  22. First, about Glorious Godfrey - he's actually a Apokolipsian (?) villain with the power of persuasion. He was sent to Earth by Darkseid during the "Legends" miniseries right after the original Crisis to destroy faith in heroes, both by the public and in the minds of the heroes themselves (Billy Batson in particular was really doubting himself). The miniseries both established Wally West as the new Flash, and introduced Diana to many of the other DC heroes. Godfrey fried his brain when he realized that just grabbing Fate's helmet and putting it on his own head was Not A Good Idea.

    Problem is, the episode never touches upon that.

    Naturally, not a European swallow. I agree with you there.

    I was just bringing up that discrediting superheroes via public opinion was the sort of thing he did in Legends, so it was another reference. That said, happy as I am with any Flash-centric episode, I agree completely that the Godfrey subplot (if that's not giving it too much credit) didn't add a thing (other than "And what's WRONG with the way I dress?!?"). If anything, the fact that his comics version was a minion of Darkseid may actually be a check against the episode - they took a Darkseid plot and jobbed it into meaningless filler.

    Speaking of references, the guy who wrote "The Seduction Of The Innocent was Dr. Fredric Wertham (in the episode it was by Dr. Fredric). Barry Allen built the cosmic treadmill, and was the main one to use it. Wally West used it as Kid Flash, but is fast enough now that he usuallycan bounce around the timestream without it. It was used by Hunter Zolomon to try to go back is time and change his biggest mistake; it exploded, turning him into Zoom, the latest Reverse Flash.

    Chris

  23. As usual, only got part way through in the car on the way to work, bat a couple thoughts:

    First, about Glorious Godfrey - he's actually a Apokolipsian (?) villain with the power of persuasion. He was sent to Earth by Darkseid during the "Legends" miniseries right after the original Crisis to destroy faith in heroes, both by the public and in the minds of the heroes themselves (Billy Batson in particular was really doubting himself). The miniseries both established Wally West as the new Flash, and introduced Diana to many of the other DC heroes. Godfrey fried his brain when he realized that just grabbing Fate's helmet and putting it on his own head was Not A Good Idea.

    The ancient humans fell victim to one of the classic blunders. (I've been noticing this about the denari in the Dresden Files as well). This object will possess anyone who touches it. We will a) raise a temple to draw attention to it, b) bury it as deeply as possible, or c) tie it to a rock and drop it in the Marianas Trench. Lord, what fools these mortals be.

    About Flash's light - I thought that when J'onn turned out the lights, he just destroyed the cables in that room. As to the light itself, could it have been a view port into the Watchtower's fusion generator?

    As to GL putting the ramp out in from of Flash, the usual explanation is that ring projections are "hard light" and do move at lightspeed. (Larry Niven, in Ganthet's Tale, used this in a typical hard sci-fi way. Hal Jordan flew away from someone using a Green Lantern ring at near lightspeed and fired behind him. His speed red-shifted the beam, meaning that by the time it hit the other ring-user, it had shifted to yellow). Flash's comment to Sinestro was that although the ring could move that fast, Sinestro couldn't react t Flash's activity fast enough. That's not happening in Eclipsed, though. John tells the ring to make a walkway towards the sun as fast as possible. Flash then follows the walkway - he's responding to John, rather than the other way around, so John doesn't need to react fast enough to keep up with Flash.

    I only got as far as Mike's summary of Terror. One thing I noticed, though, is that in "Paradise Lost" the pieces of the key were scattered to the "ends of the earth" which is apparently an American museum, an American mall, and a South American pyramid. Fate at least scattered combatants more evenly - Salem, Massachusetts, Egypt, and Rapa Nui aren't exactly evenly spread out, but they're a lot closer to it than some.

    Chris

  24. Here's the way naming goes in monarchy.

    -The successive monarch is to be the first born son, if the monarchy produces no male heirs then the first born daughter will become the monarch

    -If a man becomes monarch he is the king, his wife will become queen.

    -If a woman becomes monarch she is the queen, her husband will become a prince.

    Modern Day Example: Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Phillip of The British Empire.

    (The Commonwealth btw. No longer do we have an "Empire" as such)

    I may have an email for this ep, if I remember to do so, but I love the image of Jay Leno as Hitler! All I'd say though is that would mean Conan O'Brien was an immortal caveman villain....

    Isn't "The Immortal Caveman Villains" the name of that new band from LA?