Superman in Justice League Action Appreciation!

[DochaDocha]

Lex tries to pull a Negan. Humor on this show is on point.

Another great Supes appearance. Who needs dramatic when you keep getting these great Supes moments?

Seriously, it's like the writers understood all the stupid writing we've complained about for years, pointed out the contrivances, and figured of course Supes is smarter than that to fall for such nonsense. Two minutes of brilliance.

I just have one minor tidbit. How on Krypton did Lex survive having a heavy beam fall on him from that height?

I think the only consistently more satisfying Superman in animation we've gotten was All-Star Superman, but that was an adaptation instead of a mostly original piece.

[Last Son of Krypton]

Lex tries to pull a Negan. Humor on this show is on point.

And this has just become one of my 3 favorite episodes.

[Last Son of Krypton]

This is a bit old, but it belongs here...

Superman's voice actor Jason J. Lewis interview: https://www.themarysue.com/interview...league-action/

[dumbduck]

Disclaimer: My comment about poking fun at BvS had no mean streak to it at all.

Just a little moment of bragging. Did anyone else catch right away that Supes threw the girder exactly to catch Lex on the come back?

Another great Supes appearance. Who needs dramatic when you keep getting these great Supes moments?

Seriously, it's like the writers understood all the stupid writing we've complained about for years, pointed out the contrivances, and figured of course Supes is smarter than that to fall for such nonsense. Two minutes of brilliance.

Exactly. We Superman fans have been complaining about him falling for the same traps for a long time. Just my most recent, amongst my arguments against kryptonite weakness.

It's not only those guys. It's the dumbness of always falling for the same traps. It's seeing Supes taken out at the start of a story and not contributing to the problem solving, rallying, etc.

Kryptonite makes Superman dumb.

Sorry for quoting you on this JackDaw, your argument about mind control correlates.

As I've often said I have a problem with practically all the Marvel/DC powerhouses being OTT. And Superman is by no means most extreme example.

But in Superman's case I do have problems with a couple of his weaknesses: magic and mind control.

On mind control, you'd have to be near moronic not to realise that a mind controlled Superman is profoundly dangerous.

Once it happened, Superman would either find a foolproof defence or give up his powers...anything else would be completely irresponsible. Going down defence route...he's got several natural abilities that should give that. (E.g Ability to think at super speed in Kryptonian.)

As he's never killed anybody under mind control, easy to do away with this one...argue that his natural defences always prevented full control, and he's now learnt how to ramp up those natural defences.

This is not directed at any one poster. Even sincere fans of Superman may say:

'But this predictability is how Superman has always been written like.'

And I have to answer: It's exactly for that reason that it has to stop.

I just have one minor tidbit. How on Krypton did Lex survive having a heavy beam fall on him from that height?

I think the only consistently more satisfying Superman in animation we've gotten was All-Star Superman, but that was an adaptation instead of a mostly original piece.

Luthor was wearing one of his suits that are more streamlined in this show. Allowed him to fight Diana in the 'Luthor in Paradise' episode. I guess he has one invisible force field for his head.

[dumbduck]

Hm. You know, I sometimes feel like a brilliantly competent Luthor and a brilliantly competent Superman aren't allowed to co-exist. I mean in Young Justice we've got a Superman who tries to shout at aliens (in English!) to evacuate a hideout rigged to explode rather than using his x-ray precision heat vision to disarm the bombs, and a Luthor who managed to talk an assassin down from killing him with expert understanding of human psychology. In Justice League vs. Teen Titans, Superman nonlethally defeats a possessed Flash and Wonder Woman, allowing them to regain control of themselves, but Luthor seriously argues that he's "an innocent industrialist caught in the middle" of a fight between the League and a team of criminals Luthor himself assembled.

I guess what I'm saying is that the "It's a Trap" clip illustrates a brilliantly competent Superman alongside a somewhat less than passable Luthor. Better than the one from Justice League vs. Teen Titans, but so far below the one from Young Justice that it's not even close to funny.

I think you have to allow for the show's tone. Luthor did catch Supes with the gravity nanites infection in Repulse. It's somewhat of a give and take. He also managed to possess the power of Zeus with Circe's help, in this case it's the Wondy fans that have to complain... IMO, at least for this show's tone they are pretty balanced.

Your description of the YJ scene makes me hesitant to check the show, not a good recommendation example at all.

edit1:Sorry, it was DochaDocha who recommended it to me, you talked about Superman and the Legion.

EDIT2: I understand what you're talking about, a more serious cartoon where both are equally brilliant.

[W8IN4KAL-EL]

How on Krypton did Lex survive having a heavy beam fall on him from that height?

I am assuming he survived because he was wearing his slim lined battle armor

[Adekis]

I think you have to allow for the show's tone. Luthor did catch Supes with the gravity nanites infection in Repulse. It's somewhat of a give and take. He also managed to possess the power of Zeus with Circe's help, in this case it's the Wondy fans that have to complain... IMO, at least for this show's tone they are pretty balanced.

Your description of the YJ scene makes me hesitant to check the show, not a good recommendation example at all.

edit1:Sorry, it was DochaDocha who recommended it to me, you talked about Superman and the Legion.

EDIT2: I understand what you're talking about, a more serious cartoon where both are equally brilliant.

True enough about the ones where Lex has the upper hand! And I can't be mad about Justice League Action making Lex a little silly honestly, though I do kind of wish his demeanor was a little more like say, JLA Adventures Trapped in Time. A more serious Luthor vs. Superman showdown would be great though. I just want it to be chock full of competence porn for both of them.

On the subject of Young Justice, yeah I'm the big Legion of Super-Heroes fanboy!

I'm actually a huge fan of Young Justice as well, but when watching it you have to make some pretty staggering allowances for the fact that the teenagers are the heroes and not the League. I really like YJ's core cast, especially Dick and M'gann, the show single-handedly made Aqualad of all people one of my top twenty DC characters, and the aforementioned episode where Luthor talks Arsenal down from killing him is in my top five favorite Lex Luthor stories ever. It just has a really, really really awful Superman, like painfully emotionally inept and incompetent in the 'field. I have no idea what anyone was thinking in terms of YJ's Superman. That said, it truly doesn't ruin the show, because Superman's not a central figure. Kon's the show's Superman mythos character, and while he's a brooding bad boy, he's really a pretty well done brooding bad boy. Also Miss Martian is definitely the classic "adorable sweetheart" Supergirl in season 1, just transplanted into Miss Martian's shoes.

[Agent Z]

True enough about the ones where Lex has the upper hand! And I can't be mad about Justice League Action making Lex a little silly honestly, though I do kind of wish his demeanor was a little more like say, JLA Adventures Trapped in Time. A more serious Luthor vs. Superman showdown would be great though. I just want it to be chock full of competence porn for both of them.

On the subject of Young Justice, yeah I'm the big Legion of Super-Heroes fanboy!

I'm actually a huge fan of Young Justice as well, but when watching it you have to make some pretty staggering allowances for the fact that the teenagers are the heroes and not the League. I really like YJ's core cast, especially Dick and M'gann, the show single-handedly made Aqualad of all people one of my top twenty DC characters, and the aforementioned episode where Luthor talks Arsenal down from killing him is in my top five favorite Lex Luthor stories ever. It just has a really, really really awful Superman, like painfully emotionally inept and incompetent in the 'field. I have no idea what anyone was thinking in terms of YJ's Superman. That said, it truly doesn't ruin the show, because Superman's not a central figure. Kon's the show's Superman mythos character, and while he's a brooding bad boy, he's really a pretty well done brooding bad boy. Also Miss Martian is definitely the classic "adorable sweetheart" Supergirl in season 1, just transplanted into Miss Martian's shoes.

It's really exaggerating to call YJ Superman incompetent in the field over one mistake.

[Adekis]

It's really exaggerating to call YJ Superman incompetent in the field over one mistake.

Dozens to hundreds of people died because he tried to save them by shouting at them in a foreign language! He picked an obviously, painfully wrong tactic for the situation. By Superman's standards, that is absolutely, one hundred percent incompetent, and since Superman is defined by being good at saving lives, being bad at saving lives is something it's nonsensical for him to be.

Don't get me wrong, there were ways he could have failed that wouldn't be incompetent, like if he tried to disarm the bombs and failed, and then realized he couldn't move the bombs, but shouting in a foreign language at people who think he's trying to impose his authority upon them was a tactic with a zero percent chance of working, and Superman isn't stupid enough to think otherwise. Certainly, the Justice League Action Superman would never mess up in that kind of way.

[Agent Z]

Dozens to hundreds of people died because he tried to save them by shouting at them in a foreign language! He picked an obviously, painfully wrong tactic for the situation. By Superman's standards, that is absolutely, one hundred percent incompetent, and since Superman is defined by being good at saving lives, being bad at saving lives is something it's nonsensical for him to be.

Don't get me wrong, there were ways he could have failed that wouldn't be incompetent, like if he tried to disarm the bombs and failed, and then realized he couldn't move the bombs, but shouting in a foreign language at people who think he's trying to impose his authority upon them was a tactic with a zero percent chance of working, and Superman isn't stupid enough to think otherwise. Certainly, the Justice League Action Superman would never mess up in that kind of way.

Superman has never had a flawless track record and those aliens were villains who put themselves in that situation. You're judging him based on one incident in which he failed to save villains .

I like Action Superman but let's not ignore that he's in a very different universe where things are a lot simpler. You're treating author fiat and a consequence free bubble as an intrinsic trait to the character

[Frontier]

I'm just glad James Woods doesn't sound like he still needs a throat lozenge like he did in "Repulse" .

[DochaDocha]

I couldn't tell if it was an animation quirk or not, but did Superman look at the first trap and intentionally step on the switch? It would certain be in line with the theme of the episode.

[Adekis]

Superman has never had a flawless track record and those aliens were villains who put themselves in that situation. You're judging him based on one incident in which he failed to save villains .

I like Action Superman but let's not ignore that he's in a very different universe where things are a lot simpler. You're treating author fiat and a consequence free bubble as an intrinsic trait to the character

They were criminals, but it wasn't their fault they blew up! They were targeted by other criminals. Are you positing a world in which Superman wouldn't save bank robbers from terrorists? Because I think that's pretty much what he's going for.

There's types of narrative logic wherein Superman might have written the Kroloteans off, and I would have accepted that if he had. In the ostensibly more simplistic Justice League Action for example, in Galaxy Jest he throws a bombfull of Joker-Gas into WarWorld. I doubt he knew for a fact that all the aliens would all survive the laughing gas, after all, it's extremely harmful and often lethal to humans, right? And for all we know, several of the gladiators did die. But crucially, I don't think it's a problem that Superman did so, because he meant to do it. He wrote off the gladiators as villains, decided it was okay to gas-bomb them, and then did it. The narrative supported his action. There's your "consequence free bubble", not in Superman's competence but in his morals. Golden Age Superman operated similarly - he'd toss criminals and spies off rooftops and such, and the narrative allowed him to do it without question because screw it, they're criminals and spies! There's definitely times when I think that's waaay better than the moralistic navel-gazing Superman stories often get sucked in to!

By contrast, in Young Justice's episode Alienated, he decided that the Kroloteans, despite their criminal actions, were people worth saving, and didn't have to navel-gaze to come to that conclusion but just went back to save them. This is where the "consequence free bubble" pops, and you're right to say that the more serious and empathetic methods of Young Justice set it apart largely for the better. All of which said, no amount of well-thought out ethics gives Superman a get-out-of-jail-free card for incompetence. To me it looks like you're the one trying to create a consequence free bubble for Superman's failure to pick a reasonable tactic to save the Krolotean criminals!

In terms of Superman's track record of course, I want to make clear that when Superman tries to do something with a reasonable tactic and fails, that's a different story to me. If Superman's trying to catch someone falling out of a building but he's too slow, or if he catches them and then they have a heart attack (an actual occurrence from the Golden Age), that's reasonable. If he tells them to flap their arms really hard and they hit the ground and die and the narrative treats it as a tragic failure instead of a farcical one, that's poor writing. And that's what happened in Alienated.

I couldn't tell if it was an animation quirk or not, but did Superman look at the first trap and intentionally step on the switch? It would certain be in line with the theme of the episode.

Rao I hope so. I also remember thinking that Superman looked like he was hurting more from the zap-lightning than he should've been, and given that we're now speculating he might have walked into the trap deliberately, I'm going with "he's acting to mess with Lex"!

[Frontier]

They were criminals, but it wasn't their fault they blew up! They were targeted by other criminals. Are you positing a world in which Superman wouldn't save bank robbers from terrorists? Because I think that's pretty much what he's going for.

There's types of narrative logic wherein Superman might have written the Kroloteans off, and I would have accepted that if he had. In the ostensibly more simplistic Justice League Action for example, in Galaxy Jest he throws a bombfull of Joker-Gas into WarWorld. I doubt he knew for a fact that all the aliens would all survive the laughing gas, after all, it's extremely harmful and often lethal to humans, right? And for all we know, several of the gladiators did die. But crucially, I don't think it's a problem that Superman did so, because he meant to do it. He wrote off the gladiators as villains, decided it was okay to gas-bomb them, and then did it. The narrative supported his action. There's your "consequence free bubble", not in Superman's competence but in his morals. Golden Age Superman operated similarly - he'd toss criminals and spies off rooftops and such, and the narrative allowed him to do it without question because screw it, they're criminals and spies! There's definitely times when I think that's waaay better than the moralistic navel-gazing Superman stories often get sucked in to!

By contrast, in Young Justice's episode Alienated, he decided that the Kroloteans, despite their criminal actions, were people worth saving, and didn't have to navel-gaze to come to that conclusion but just went back to save them. This is where the "consequence free bubble" pops, and you're right to say that the more serious and empathetic methods of Young Justice set it apart largely for the better. All of which said, no amount of well-thought out ethics gives Superman a get-out-of-jail-free card for incompetence. To me it looks like you're the one trying to create a consequence free bubble for Superman's failure to pick a reasonable tactic to save the Krolotean criminals!

In terms of Superman's track record of course, I want to make clear that when Superman tries to do something with a reasonable tactic and fails, that's a different story to me. If Superman's trying to catch someone falling out of a building but he's too slow, or if he catches them and then they have a heart attack (an actual occurrence from the Golden Age), that's reasonable. If he tells them to flap their arms really hard and they hit the ground and die and the narrative treats it as a tragic failure instead of a farcical one, that's poor writing. And that's what happened in Alienated.

Huh. I responded much better to that scene, if only because it showed Superman's empathy and compassion in a desperate situation, which felt more like Superman then what we saw in season 1.

But that's just me.

[Adekis]

Huh. I responded much better to that scene, if only because it showed Superman's empathy and compassion in a desperate situation, which felt more like Superman then what we saw in season 1.

But that's just me.

Eh, I think I gave Alienated enough credit for nailing Superman's empathy and compassion. In those terms alone it's definitely better than watching him break poor Superboy's heart over and over again for a whole season, but as I said it's his competence at issue, not his morality.

Which is again, why I think the Justice League Action Superman is so great- his competence. The writers make a conscious effort to make a Superman who is an absolute ace. Nobody would have ever described the YJ Superman with "You know Kal, he's good at everything."





I've got a similarly high opinion of the Justice League War Superman, especially after JL vs. Teen Titans, but make no mistake. I think that the Action Superman is even better!