Young Justice S01E02 Review: The Boy of Steel

Young Justice, Season 1, Episode 2: Fireworks

Part two of the pilot is over, and it's... okay? I'm a little miffled to find out that out of the main six characters, two aren't even introduced in the pilot. Feminists will have a field day noting that the two excluded characters are the only women in the main cast. And while Artemis's introduction actually requires a brief arc of herself, there really isn't much excuse to exclude Miss Martian other than the fact that she'd probably be able to take down Superboy and Blockbuster by herself.

Anyway, the two-parter pilot ends in a relatively decent conclusion and setup to the status quo of The Team (we never hear the actual name of the Team -- 'Young Justice' is never used anywhere in the show to the best of my knowledge, and 'Teen Titans' was unavailable due to the concurrently-running Teen Titans Go) for the majority of the first season. We get some nice foreshadowing, which, while it might get tiresome for some viewers down the line, I did like how it's established relatively early on that Cadmus is but a subsidiary of a larger group. We don't actually see the members of the enigmatic organization known as the Light (even if smart DC fans will probably guess who's in the organization relatively early on), but dr. Desmond was pretty scared of them.

One of the things I kind of wish they did was not to tie up too much of the pilot trying to explain the Cadmus project, because none of it ended up really being satisfying enough, due to the pilot understandably focusing more on developing Superboy as the confused clone tries to figure things out and understand what's going on. He's basically a grown weapon who's never seen the outside world, and has some anger issues -- which isn't portrayed super-well. Nolan North, Superboy's voice actor, does angry and confused amazingly well but the script for this episode doesn't give him really that much to work on.

It's clear from this bit that Desmond is the only real villain in this piece, though. Superboy is made sympathetic quickly when he's receptive to being told that he can go to the moon, or meet Superman. The G-Gnomes are near-brainless, Guardian is mind-controlled half the time, and Dubbilex is silent and mysterious. Superboy, of course, decides to be a hero when Aqualad asks him the question 'what would Superman do', and goes wild, rescuing the three sidekicks.

The action scene of them just tearing through waves of geno-morphs is a bit repetitive, though we do get to learn Superboy's powers. The biggest part being the fact that he can't fly, and while he's more powerful than anyone present he still has a ways before he becomes as powerful as his 'father'. Dubbilex shows up and claims to be an ally, shutting down Superboy's restrictions and putting a significant number of the genomorphs to sleep. There has been some nice foreshadowing that the genomorphs are mind-controlled like Guardian, but I don't think it's actually delivered the best that it could. Dubbilex's cool, though. Guardian also recovers at the end of the episode, promising to make Cadmus great again. It would be cool if we actually learned a bit more of Dubbilex and Guardian's backstory and why the other superheroes trust Guardian at his word, though.

Of course, we needed a final villain and that final villain is Mark Desmond, who transforms himself into the hulking brute Blockbuster (who is appropriately hideous as fuck), with enough strength to go toe-to-toe with Superboy. The fight is... not bad, with your generic teamwork-triumphs thing. Blockbuster is conveniently dumb now so no one can really interrogate him. And, well, their parents and mentors show up as the entire force of the Justice League of America (and hoo howdy boy there's more than just seven) show up, including Superman. There's some nice awkwardness between Superman and Superboy, and we get some nice Batman stuff where he shuts down the sidekicks' day out, causing Robin, Kid Flash and even Aqualad to take a stand.... causing even Batman to be taken aback.

(Can I just say how much I like the fact that there are two Green Lanterns in this incarnation of the JLA?)

And, of course, the Team is formed. We get a brief introduction of their base, the Sanctuary, and we learn that two adult superheroes -- Red Tornado and Black Canary -- are going to train them. The Team is basically their black ops team, going on covert missions with hopefully minimal risks. We also get introduced briefly to Miss Martian... not much to note about her at this point, really.

Overall, it's a decent conclusion to the previous episode and a decent pilot. I thought the pacing was slightly off and the 'escape from Cadmus' bit ran on for a bit too long (how many freaking systems did Robin hack and Desmond discovers?), but it did manage to establish four of our six heroes right off the bat, giving significant origin story goodness to Superboy as well. I'd actually rather the Cadmus genomorph thing be either explained more or left super-ambiguous, because at this point it's a bit confusing because while we know Dubbilex and Guardian did these things they're still relative caricatures and plot devices for someone unfamiliar with the source material. Still, I'm not criticizing too much -- it's a decent pilot and a while not perfect, an acceptable start to this Young Justice amazingness.

Roll Call:

• Heroes: Superboy, Robin, Kid Flash, Aqualad, Guardian, Dubbilex, Superman, Red Tornado, Captain Marvel, Martian Manhunter, Zatara, Captain Atom, Hawkman, Wonder Woman, Hawkwoman, Green Lantern (Hal Jordan), Black Canary, Aquaman, Batman, Green Lantern (John Stewart), Green Arrow, Flash, Miss Martian
• Villains: Blockbuster, Members of the Light, dr. Amanda Spence, 

DC Easter Eggs Corner: 

• Superboy, a.k.a. Conner Kent, a.k.a. Kon-El, is the most iconic bearer of the 'Superboy' title. He first appeared in the 90's after the death of Superman, and one of the four Supermen (alongside Steel, Eradicator and Cyborg Superman) that operated adjacently and trying to reclaim the mantle before the real Superman returned. Superboy was created by Project Cadmus in a manner relatively similar to how we see here, albeit less angsty rampaging. Superboy's appearance in Young Justice reflects the bulkier, more adult makeover with a black T-shirt and jeans when he joined the Teen Titans, whereas his Young Justice (the team, not the show) era costume looked more like a motorcycle racer. 
• Blockbuster, a.k.a. Mark Desmond, is one of Batman's earlier enemies, a chemist who created a serum to increase his strength, turning him into a mindless giant brute, who commits crimes at the behest of his sinister brother, Roland Desmond. After Mark's death, Roland would inject himself with a perfected version of the serum which allowed him to retain his intelligence, becoming the second Blockbuster and is chiefly an enemy of Nightwing.
• Guardian, a.k.a. Jim Harper, is one of DC's oldest superheroes, a guardian of the little people working with a bunch of kids called the Newsboy Legion. In the 70's-80's, it's revealed that the young children would grow up to fund Project Cadmus and transfer the old Jim Harper's brain into a younger cloned body, explaining why Guardian was affiliated with Cadmus for the majority of the 80's. This backstory isn't actually used for the cartoon because they went in a relatively different direction with Guardian -- which we'll see later on. 
• The Secret Sanctuary is actually one of the earliest Justice League bases in the Golden Age, and was used by the comic-book Young Justice team (which, I again reiterate, had no members in common with the show's team beyond Superboy, and features successors to Dick and Wally). Likewise, similar to how Young Justice operated, Red Tornado is assigned to them as an adult mentor. 
• Kid Flash throws in a 'leaping tall buildings in a single bound', part of the introduction used to Superman in the Golden Ages.
• Kid Flash also calls Blockbuster "you incredible bulk", a reference to Marvel Comics' Incredible Hulk.
• While she quickly adopts a predominantly black suit to mimic Superboy's shirt, Miss Martian's initial appearance, with a white-and-red shirt, is similar to her initial comic-book appearance.