Superman TAS S02E15 Review: Scion of Darkseid

Superman: The Animated Series, Season 2, Episode 15: Father's Day

So, the back half of the second season would try its best to move into a more serialized nature, or at least dropping hints towards the Apokoliptan invasion. While Superman: The Animated Series and Batman Beyond would take steps in heading to a more serialized nature, it wouldn't be until Justice League Unlimited where we actually do have it done properly. Superman: TAS tries its best at keeping each part of the Apokolips episodes separate, though they do keep relatively perfect continuity with each other. 

So, this episode is themed around father's day, which, of course, refers to Kalibak seeking his father's approval. In a relatively weak attempt at tying this to Superman's own father, we have Jonathan Kent be trapped under rubble for... shit, nearly the entire length of the episode's runtime, yet somehow doesn't fare much worse and can walk perfectly afterwards. It's nice to see Ma and Pa Kent hanging out with Lois, although understandably it didn't last long.

We also get to see the inner workings of Apokolips. We've glimpsed Darkseid slightly at the end of last season, but other than he's the man-behind-the-man for Kanto and Bruno Mannheim, there's scant little we know of Darkseid. We get to see him as the large and in-charge ruler that he is here, who brokers no bullshit from anyone, has eye-beams that teleport people to slave pits (also an indication Kalibak survives?) and takes down Superman without much of an effort.

Oh, and Darkseid is planning an invasion of Earth, but he needs Superman alive because of... reasons!

The villain entourage in Apokolips all have their time to shine. Bruno Mannheim gets some brief lines, reminding us that he's still allied with Darkseid before he mouths off at the wrong time and gets omega-blasted into the slave pits. We get to see that Desaad fights by controlling inventions such as a giant tentacle robot, and is enough of a sycophant to both Kalibak and Darkseid in trying to get Kalibak to 'fix' Desaad's mistake... while at the same time having enough plausible deniability when interrogated by Darkseid, and at the same time Kalibak going off on his own to kill Superman isn't too far-fetched. 

Kalibak himself is the villain with the biggest screentime, and boy, what a story he tells! DCAU milks unacceptance as a driving force behind villains for what it's worth. We talked about Harley and Mercy in the previous episode, but here, Kalibak's entire personality revolves around getting his father to accept him. Sure, Kalibak looks weird. He's a hunched-over brute with an oversized head and weird-ass clothes, and looks more beast than man. He's a moron and a brute that Darkseid doesn't see as any more than a thug, and even a mere human like Bruno doesn't think much of him. He's a simple-minded brute who smashes everything in his path without really thinking of what's going on because all he wants to do is to make daddy love him, a far cry from the respectful father-son relationship that Jonathan and Clark have... though thankfully the episode doesn't try to shove this point down our throats. 

Kalibak boom tubes to Earth and starts wrecking the city, and we get to see that the brutish Kalibak is actually a fair match for the Man of Steel. It's nothing new, really. We've seen characters like Metallo and Brainiac be physical matches to Superman before, but this is a villain with a relatively interesting backstory, and the well-tried-and-true fact that Kalibak isn't even the main villain here. He's just a lackey acting independently of his dreadful master's orders. There's a neat, if not particularly subtle, sense of building up to a far more powerful villain that Superman can't even begin to touch. Yet at the same time, even if Kalibak is a mere brute, seeing him beg for mercy in front of Darkseid, his own father, and get nothing but a rant about how he's a piece of shit before Darkseid straight-up incinerates him with his omega beams... yeah, that's pretty cold. We know from this episode that Darkseid's eye beams have a 'teleport to the slave mines' setting, but at the same time, jeez, we don't actually see Kalibak after his eye-beam incineration, and that's pretty cold.

A pretty fantastic episode, and since I peeked at episode titles... hoo boy, the next one's going to be a doozy. 

DC Easter Eggs Corner:

• Kalibak, the son of Darkseid, is a brutish ogre-like creature that, well, is Darkseid's son. Darkseid loathes Kalibak, who, despite his prowess as a warrior, was always second-best to Darkseid's other son, Orion. Kalibak absolutely desires for Darkseid's approval -- the act of which disgusts Darkseid even more than Kalibak's lack of intelligence.
• Desaad, chief torturer to Darkseid, is a torturer that serves as Darkseid's majordomo, alternating in his portrayals as a sniveling sycophant and a constant schemer. While perhaps nowhere near the most powerful among the New Gods, his conniving nature make him a pretty dangerous opponent nonetheless.