Category Unpopular Opinions

Unpopular Opinions: Teen Titans TAS is Silly!

silverstar 1 Comment

Let’s talk about Teen Titans GO! for a minute.

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Yeah, I know. This is a VERY polarizing series. It’s silly and nonsensical and loud and garish and seems completely inane to anyone beyond the second grade. No denying that. But what I don’t get is when people complain about TTGO! (and they do… a lot!), someone will inevitably chime in with something like…

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“Teen Titans GO! is garbage! It’s a slap in the face to fans of the original  dark and serious Teen Titans!”

wtf

Um…seriously?

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This show was “dark and serious”? THIS SHOW?? The show in which 5 teenagers live together in a giant T-shaped tower with no adults and no discernible income who never take off their costumes (they even sleep with them on), call each other by their superhero names all the time, in one episode tried to stop a British fashion designer who’s stuck in the 1960’s from using his Yellow Submarine/Monty Python powers from turning the entire city stereotypically British and in another battled a wacky magician voiced by Tom “Spongebob Squarepants” Kenny who imprisoned them in his magic hat and they spent a bulk of the story as talking animals and in yet another episode fought a mound of living, talking tofu? You’re calling THIS show “dark and serious”??

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Teen Titans GO! is very juvenile, I’ll give you that, but let’s not let our fandom cloud our memories and capacity for logical thinking, shall we? The 2003 Teen Titans series was a silly show that was occasionally intense, not an intense show that was occasionally silly. Selective memory much? Yeah, there were some intense, dramatic moments, but overall it was pretty darn goofy.

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The show was like a group of kids playing superheroes, but the game never stopped. The kids stayed in character and play-acted all day and all night. Am I calling Teen Titans: TAS bad? No. But it was not “dark and serious”. The show did a Wacky Races spoof in one episode, for crying out loud.

On a similar note, when people bad-mouth the 2016 Powerpuff Girls reboot (and they do)…

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…I’ll hear something like:

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“This show is an abomination! It’s a dumb comedy instead of a serious action cartoon like the original PPG was!”

-Whaaa? You think the original Powerpuff Girls was a serious action cartoon?

 

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Were we watching the same show back then? Or was there another show called The Powerpuff Girls that I’m not aware of? ‘Cause the PPG show that I saw was a comedy cartoon which sent up the superhero genre, like The Tick. I once said that very thing to some wanking fan, and said fan replied with:

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“The Tick was a silly parody!”

And Powerpuff Girls wasn’t??

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“PPG aired on Toonami for a little while!”

So did Hamtaro, so following your logic, that would also make Hamtaro an action cartoon.

Again, you can prefer whichever incarnation of PPG that you choose, but don’t hand me this malarkey that the original PPG was this hardcore action cartoon, because I know it wasn’t. I was there. It was a show about 3 color-coordinated kindergarten aged girls with crazy superpowers who spent their days fighting a super-smart chimp, a metrosexual demon, a big pink furry hillbilly monster and a gang of green skinned mutant juvenile delinquents.

Here’s today’s Unpopular Opinion. It’s actually a truism, so some of you hardcore super-fans might want to sit down for this one:

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THE SUPERHERO GENRE…IS…SILLY!

No, I’m not denying that there’s some great writing and action and even drama in the better stories, nor am I saying that superhero stories aren’t cool, they most certainly can be, but let’s face it: the genre as a whole is inherently goofy and absurd. It’s a universe littered with muscularly fit guys and gals who somehow come into possession of crazy magic powers and mad skills, they give themselves silly names and don brightly colored pajamas with giant letters and/or symbols on them and use said crazy magic powers to do battle against bank robbers, space invaders, mad scientists and would-be world conquerors. Reality check time: superheroes are already silly as all get-out, so turning them into fun, strictly-for-laughs comedies isn’t really that big of a stretch.

I’m not saying people have to enjoy the likes of Teen Titans GO! or Powerpuff Girls 2016; chances are if you’re above the target age group for these shows and you grew up watching their predecessors, then these shows are likely not going to be your cup of tea, but before you attempt to claim that the previous incarnations of these shows were something akin to Lord of the Rings or 12 Angry Men, you might want to take these off:

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NOSTALGIA GOGGLES. Now with 75% More Blind Ignorance!

Unpopular Opinions: Jubilee

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Here’s an unpopular opinion for ya: I don’t think Jubilee (of the X-Men)’s mutant power is lame. Never have and never will.

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Let the sparks fly!

Whenever some comic book or superhero site makes a list of the lamest X-Men and their powers, Jubilee invariably makes the list, and I’ve never gotten that. Yes, over the years the gang at Marvel have come up with some seriously dorky mutants….

 

…Like Jazz, the mutant whose only power was having blue skin, and nothing else. Oh yeah, and he was also possessed mediocre rapping skills. Cool?

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“Blue-yaka-sha!”

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Or Longneck, who had a six-foot neck.

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He’s the hero to call should Geoffrey the Giraffe ever decide to knock over a bank.

Or Forget-Me-Not, with the power to be forgotten. And this is useful because…?

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What was I talking about? I forget.

But why is Jubilee always placed in this category? Jube’s original powers were cool. Who wouldn’t want to be able to fire multicolored hot electric destruction from your finger tips?

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Often I hear folks say, “Hur-hur. Jubilee’s powers are stupid. They’re just fireworks. She can’t do anything.” Ah, no. Jubilee’s projectiles are not mere fireworks, they are globules of plasma fired in varying degrees of intensity. Do you not know what plasma is? Allow me to elucidate:

Plasma is the 4th state of matter, after solids, liquids and gases. It is an ionized gas consisting of positive ions and free electrons in proportions resulting in more or less no overall electric charge, typically at low pressures (as in the upper atmosphere and in fluorescent lamps) or at very high temperatures (as in stars and nuclear fusion reactors). One possessing this power could easily short out electrical devices or destroy a house with this power. Jubilee’s powers were actually nerfed on the FOX TV show because a) she was just a kid and her powers hadn’t reached their full potential yet and b) in the comics, anyway, she chose not to use her ability to its’ maximum out of concern for seriously injuring or killing someone. One’s power is not weak just because one chooses to hold back on it. The potential for serious damage is still there.

Jubilee is similar to DC’s Wonder Twins, who are similarly lambasted by fans, critics and comedians for being lame-ohs when in fact their abilities are actually potentially formidable and were more extensive in the comics than they were in their TV incarnation.

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-Speaking of which, let me side track for just a second here. Recently I had a bit of back-and-forth with the same horndog jackass with the Blackfire fetish on the DC Superhero Girls comments section on YouTube. When I casually mentioned that I’d like to see Zan and Jayna on DCSHG, this smug piece of talking moose excrement quipped:

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“I dunno, man. You come off like a weirdo.”

Says the guy who’s obsessed with a D-List villain character. You wanna see a weirdo, douche? Look in the mirror!

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-There, I said it. I feel better. Now back to Jubilee.

Now with the level of respect and enthusiasm that I have for Jubilation Lee, you may be wondering what I think of Marvel’s new incarnation of the Generation X comic book series, with Jubilee at the forefront? My answer is…

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Yeah, I haven’t read the new Generation X, and I have no plans to. Why? Because it looks dumb and not like anything I’d be interested in. I have no problem with the cast being basically misfits who don’t fit in with any of the other more serious X-Factions; that could be fun if they decide to do it as a comedy, you know, wacky roommate antics, but the characters they chosen for it are unflatteringly lame. Eye-Boy?  A kid with eyeballs all over his body? Disgusting! Nature Girl? A girl with deer antlers who can communicate with animals and plants? What the actual what? It’s like someone at Marvel saw that Robot Chicken sketch about Kid Venison and said, “We should do that for real!” Bling!? The daughter of rappers who’s made of living bling-bling? Seriously?? Yeah, these ideas are too ridiculous, even for comics. (Though I do think that Bling! is a cool name.)

You’re probably asking:

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“But Damon, you should be looking forward to the new Generation X. Jubilee’s back, and she’s the leader this time!”

-Yeah, but it’s Jubilee NOW. Not the Jubilee that’s cool. The current Jubilee has been depowered and without her plasma fireworks for nearly a decade; now Jubes is a vampire who was bitten by the son of Dracula and has a baby?!?

Pardon my French, but….

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“EFF THAT ESS!”

Nah, folks can check that out if it tickles their collective fancy, but I’ll stick with my memories of the Jubilee that I liked, thanks.

 

Unpopular Opinions: Superboy

goldstar 4 Comments

OK, I know that by saying the following that I’m going to risk ticking off every fan of the Young Justice animated series, but here it is: I didn’t (and still don’t) like the YJ version of Superboy. At all.

I had become a fan of Superboy (Kon EL) ever since I read the DC vs Marvel comic book mini series, and ever since then, I’ve been wanting to see Superman’s clone Conner make his animated TV debut. Alas, what we got was this.

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“Frustrated grunt!”

It’s bad enough that the shows’ producers went with the T-shirt and jeans look for the character, which doesn’t even look like a super hero costume. It looks like he’s fighting in street clothes. Still, it’s better than his costume in the Amalgam universe where he was fused with Spider-Man to become Spiderboy.

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No, just no.

YJ gave Superboy a completely different personality than the one that he had in the comics. This Superboy doesn’t make wise cracks. He has no sense of humor. Instead of having tactile telekinesis power that mimics Superman’s power of flight, he just is able to leap considerable distances.He broods all the time and starts dating Miss Martian…and later gets dumped by her.

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Ugh! Teen soap opera drama. Pass me Mr. Bucket!

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THIS is the Superboy that I wanted to see on the small screen. The Kryptonian Kid. The one with the tactile telekinesis powers and the cool black jacket. Stylin’!

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The Conner from the comics was cool. he was cocky and over confident. I imagined someone like Edward Furlong (circa Terminator 2) doing Conner’s voice.

But no, we don’t get the interesting version of Superboy. That would have been too good. Instead we get stuck with this hot headed brooding lame-o with leaping powers. He was like the Hulk, only without the charisma.

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“‘Ooh! Look at how dark and tormented I am!’ Sheesh, what a whiner!”

So now, DC reset it’s universe a couple more times since then and it seems that there’s yet another Superboy out there; Jonathan Samuel Kent, the son of Clark Kent and Lois Lane. I haven’t read any of the current comics yet, so I don’t have a strong opinion on this character yet, positive or negative, nor do I have any idea where Kon-El fits in with this continuity, or if he’s there at all.

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Hmm…The costume’s OK. I like the jacket with the S shield on it, and the red sneakers are a nice touch. This is starting to sound like a Pop Dream…

I’ll have to read the Rebirth comics before I state how I feel about this version of Superboy, but he already has the advantage of not being the Young Justice version.

I don’t know if we’ll get a Superboy on Cartoon Network’s Justice League Action or on any other DC animated series, but if we do, please don’t let it be the Young Justice version. Even if it’s not Conner Kent, let it at least be a Superboy who doesn’t need to wear nicotine patches for his powers, one who knows what jokes are and who actually SMILES sometimes.

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OK, that’s cute. I’ll give you that one, DC.

 

Unpopular Opinions: Pinky, Elmyra & the Brain Could’ve Worked!

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By now, we all know the story: Kids’ WB! wanted their own prime-time animated hit a la The Simpsons, and for some bizarre reason they got the notion that Pinky & the Brain could be their Simpsons, so they gave the Animaniacs spinoff a less-than-spectacular run on prime time. When that didn’t hatch ratings gold, they began tooling with the show’s premise, to expand on P&B’s universe and show them doing other things besides just trying and failing to take over the world (in other words, try to make the show a clone of The Simpsons). Their brilliant idea was to stick the titular duo with one of THE most annoying characters in popular culture, Elmyra from Tiny Toon Adventures (whom my brother Jason once referred to as “the Tom Green of cartoon characters”). The result: The colossally unfunny Pinky, Elmyra & the Brain.

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Oh, the stupidity!

Yes, I’ve see this show, and no, it wasn’t good. At all. But I’ll tell you something that you may not believe, especially coming from me: Pinky, Elmyra and the Brain actually could have worked!

Gary Coleman

“Whatchu talkin’ bout, Silverstar?”

Hear me out. While PE&B was evey bit as lackluster as you’ve heard, the idea of transplanting Pinky & Brain from Acme Labs to suburbia and having them adopted by a kid was not a bad one; it just could’ve used some tweaking and rethinking. PE&B was like CN Real in that respect, in that the idea of the block itself wasn’t bad, but the shows they put on the block were.

First and foremost, for this idea to work, you’d have to GET RID OF ELMYRA. I get that the character was popular for who-knows-what reason, I know that Elmyra was one of Spielberg’s favorite characters, but let’s be real here: Elmyra just doesn’t have a lead character’s aura. In the two Duff Family episodes of Tiny Toons, the character was surrounded by co-stars who were far more interesting than she was. The character of Elmyra only has 2 shticks:

  1. She loves animals to death, and
  2. She’s dumb as a post.
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“Hey, that’s an insult to posts everywhere! At least we’re good for something!”

Elmyra simply isn’t deep, layered or appealing enough to carry an entire show, plus the Brain already had one dufus to contend with, Pinky; he didn’t need Stupid in Stereo. Had it been me, I would’ve gone with an entirely new kid character for the role, and while we’re at it, why not make this new kid non-white, just for diversity points?

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“As you know, we executives aren’t big on hard work, and creativity’s not our thing. If you just want a non-white girl character to be the kid on this show, we don’t have to create one, we’ve already got a character like that, from the same show, in fact…”

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…MARY MELODY.

Sure, why not? Mary Melody was also a Tiny Toon, so there’s your name recognition, plus personality-wise she was basically a blank slate, so the producers could do whatever they wanted with her and not tick off any fans. Flesh the character out; give her some quirks, passions and goals to shoot for, give her a funny, quirky family and possibly some friends to play off of, add some wacky neighbors to populate Mary’s world and you’ve got your Simpsons knockoff right there.

What about Pinky and Brain themselves, you ask? They’d still be on the show of course, but they’d have more of a supporting role. Here’s another unpopular opinion: I never thought Pinky and the Brain deserved their own series in the first place. They were fine as a light segment among other light segments, but as soon as you place the duo in the limelight, the shortcomings of the characters and the basic premise become all too obvious. Like Elmyra, Pinky and the Brain just don’t have deep enough personalities to carry an entire series, and honestly, if we really had to get an A! spinoff, I’d have much rather gotten a Slappy Squirrel show.

Anyway, P&B would basically function like the Penguins from the Madagascar movies: they’d be seen in the background hatching their own schemes by Mary Melody and the other human character’s feet, occasionally getting their own subplots.

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Of course, they could occasionally get roped into the main plots via shenanigans.

That’s how I’d personally handle the Pinky, Elmyra and the Brain premise. For anyone who thinks it’s kind of jerky to reduce Pinky and Brain to supporting roles in what’s supposed to be their own spinoff, I say…

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…It was more jerky to make Brain the meat in a stupid sandwich!

Unpopular Opinions: Chi-Chi

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I’m probably one of the very few Dragon Ball/DBZ fans who doesn’t hate Goku’s wife Chi-Chi.

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Fun Trivia Fact: Chi-Chi’s name is a Japanese pun which translates to “Mother’s milk”. All of the Dragon Ball characters’ names are either puns or plays on words of some kind.

Yes, what Chi-Chi’s anti fans say I agree with. Sure, Chi-Chi overdoes it. Yeah, she can be a wet blanket at times and yeah, she goes ballistic on occasion, but in a way, I see her point! Her husband (and sometimes her son also) are always going off to fight or train to fight some alien or demon or otherworldly entity where there’s always the risk of them getting seriously injured or killed.

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“Hey, honey bunch! I’m going away to to train for big fight with some invading alien fire breathing bowling pins who want to turn the planet into a giant bowling alley! If I don’t die, I’ll back next year-ish!”

Admit it, if that were going on in your household, you’d be stressed out too!

Given that Goku has actually died (and come back from the dead) not once, but twice and also once merged with the eternal dragon (and has come back from that too, somehow), Chi-Chi’s desire for a normal alien fighting free life seems perfectly understandable and sane to me.

It’s hard being the responsible one. People tend to label you as a “drag” and a “killjoy”. It’s a thankless job, but someone has to do it! At least Chi-Chi has a sense of order and discipline for her son. She doesn’t just let him do whatever like Goku.

I know that I’m kind of a weirdo (assuming that’s not painfully obvious at this point). Perhaps it’s because I have kind of a “thing” for fictional wives and mothers (and also I’m a sucker for chicks with black hair), I don’t find Chi-Chi’s desire for a Leave it to Beaver lifestyle free of danger, chaos and invading weirdos to be annoying at all. I may not agree with her methods, but I do see where she’s coming from.

There’s also the fact that Chi-Chi is one of the physically strongest female fighters in the Dragon Ball universe, even if she’s relegated to being comic relief most of the time. The woman can fight! She and Goku have been living off of their fighting tournament earnings for years! Although it’s not always shown, Chi-Chi is really in love with her husband and on the infrequent occasions when we do get a tender moment between the two of them, it’s very sweet to see. It gives me the warm fuzzies.

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Aaaaawwww….

Donna Reed

Chi-Chi is like Donna Reed…

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…if Donna Reed could kick your ass!