If you’re a Tiny Toons fan, you’ve no doubt seen the short from the Special Classes Day episode, The Just-Us League of Supertoons.
In the short, Plucky Duck (once again in the role of superhero Batduck) and his sidekick Hamton J. Pig as Decoy the Pig Hostage (I love how on-the-nose that name is) get an invite from Buster Bunny (aka Superbun) to join his elite squad of heroes, the Just-Us League of Supertoons.
Said League is chock full of Tiny Toon parodies of DC characters:
- Babs Bunny/Wonder Babs (Wonder Woman)
- Byron Basset/Aqua-Mutt (Aquaman)
- Li’l Beeper/Li’l Dasher (The Flash)
- Fifi LaFume/Scentanna (Zatana)
- Sweetie Bird/Pink Canary (Black Canary)
- Shirley the Loon/Hawkloon (Hawkgirl)
In the short, the League initially rejects Batduck and Decoy for not possessing any super-powers, just a pile of wacky gadgets…
Not to mention being amazing clog-dancers.
That is, until arch-villain Wex Wuthor (Montana Max) shows up and tries to drain the Leaguers of their powers, wherein Batduck’s lack of powers ultimately saves the day, earning he and Decoy key positions in the League…as parking valets.
A funny short, however, there is a hiccup: The League rejects Batduck because he has no super powers, BUT….
…One cape who did make it into the League was Calamity Coyote as Keen Arrow, a spoof of Green Arrow. Green Arrow’s m.o. is similar to Batman’s: he’s another rich guy with cool toys. So the Just-Us League passes on one toon for having no powers, yet they accepted another toon who likewise has no powers. Kind of undermines the premise a little.
“That does Not. Make. Sense!”
Really, all the writers could’ve done was turn that into a one-off joke, like have Batduck say, “Keen Arrow doesn’t have any powers, and he’s in the League!” to which Superbun could’ve said something like, “We have a one-non-powered hero requirement, and that position is already filled. Sorry!”
“I certainly hope someone got fired for that blunder!”
On a related rambling, something similar bugged me about the DC Super Hero Girls ‘Super Hero High’ special. From the series’ start, Barbara Gordon only interns at Superhero High in the IT department.
Easy as Raspberry PI
In the special, we finally learn why Babs has yet to don the cape and cowl of Batgirl: she isn’t a student at Super Hero High because she feels she’s not worthy of being a student, because she has no powers. In an early scene, Cheetah derides Barbara for being a “Nonny”, as in “Non-Powered Person”, basically this universe’s equivalent to being a Muggle or a Nomag.
Again, this would be fine, EXCEPT….
…There are already non-powered students attending Super Hero High!
Heck, Batgirl isn’t even the only non-powered heroine among the main cast. Katana doesn’t have any super powers, just mad samurai skills and a razor-sharp sword (which likely isn’t even possessed here, given that this is a kids’ show). Harley Quinn doesn’t have any powers either, unless we’re going by Quackerjack’s rules and are counting wackiness as a super power. Throughout the entire 60 minutes of that special, I kept waiting for someone to point out to Babs that Harley, Katana, Catwoman and Lady Shiva don’t have powers yet they’re students, but no one did.
-Which is not to say that Batgirl isn’t worthy of being in Super Hero High, because she most certainly is.
“‘Nonny’? I prefer, Hyper-Advanced, Technologically Gifted Mega-Genius!”
“Hey! That’s my line, Red!”
Twin Images 
Interesting side note: One of the many names that I considered for this site was The Just Us League of Super Geeks, in reference to the aforementioned Tiny Toons short, but that would’ve been too many words for a URL and it was so long that I thought people wouldn’t remember it, so I shortened it to Just Us Super Geeks (I also considered The Just Us League, but we were still on Blogger at the time and that name was already taken). Obviously, that didn’t happen, but we could wallpaper our study with all of the names that we considered for the site before settling on the current handle.
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