DC Cartoon Recap

The Batman: "Riddled" -

The Riddler is probably my favorite Batman villain. And this is not a series I've found myself generally fond of. Yet this episode was surprisingly good, arguably better than the first two BTAS Riddler episodes (although not approaching the Ty Templeton stories).

Now the Riddler himself...I hate the design. HATE IT. Robert Englund actually turns a rather good performance as the villain, and the character is written well. But whereas BTAS gave the Riddler perhaps his best outfit ever, this costume is perhaps his worst. Even worse than metrosexual Riddler. It's almost as if the show's creators said to themselves "We made Cluemaster obscenely fat; let's make Riddler anorexic. And goth."

The riddles themselves were unusually easy for a Riddler story, but maybe that was part of the plan. I'm still curious as to why he intentionally gave a bad riddle, though. It doesn't seem to serve his scheme at all. And I'm really tired of "The Batman" episodes using Bats' secret identity as a plot point. That got old halfway through last season.

Justice League Unlimited: "Task Force X"

I know that's the team's real name, but I guess the cartoon censors don't allow mention of a "Suicide Squad." I wonder if they nixed "Boomerbutt" too.

Biggest surprise here? The Squad wins. How often do you get a cartoon where the villains pull off a victory? I wish we'd gotten to see the bad guys in costume at least once, but the mission made disguises mandatory.

I'm not familiar with Plastique, but the others were handled well. Digger was sufficiently annoying, Floyd was full of himself, Flag was upright. I guess that Clock King isn't affected by the Bat-embargo. I liked seeing Waller again, but I didn't recognize the woman next to her.

I also appreciated that the object of the Squad's mission was something introduced in a previous episode, and not merely a brand-new maguffin. Giving JLU a sense of internal continuity was a good move.