| Derek's
Continuity Corner:
"Grudge Match"
Despite
"Grudge Match" featuring the best heroines the show could
offer, it's the villains we must focus on this week. Besides,
we've already covered all the heroines, and if you want to
see them beating on each other (we don't judge), you need
to be buying Birds of Prey. Now to those villains...
To answer Goodson's question, technically
Sonar does NOT have mind control powers. As his name indicates,
he is DC's "Sultan of Sound."
Bito Wladon hailed from the tiny country
of Modora. Born of deaf parents, Bito mastered sonic technologies
the way only people from tiny fictional countries can do.
In order to call attention to the plight of his people suffering
under the thumb of a harsh dictator, he journeyed to America
and fought Green Lantern.
You know, it's descriptions like this that
make it hard to believe Baby Boomers needed to use
drugs to be this incoherent.
Eventually Bito took the step of assuming
control of his country, and clashed with Green Lantern again
and again. It's a logical pairing - light vs. sound, and
in defense of the implication of the JLU episode,
it's possible that Sonar could create some sort of subsonic
signal that could control minds through the communicators.
I mean, if you're going to accept that he could wear that
outfit and still consider himself pretty macho, the mind
control thing isn't a stretch.
Not much else can be said about him beyond
he must have had a really cool European accent which JLU
did not really use and, of course, few comic book characters
wore epaulets as well as Sonar did.
I say did because he's dead, and not as
a result of several overdeveloped women beating him to death
for his sexism. A much uglier, more vicious Sonar arose
in the nineties, heir to Bito's weaponry, but all of it
implanted within his body, making him more akin to Marvel's
Klaw.
Speaking of klaws…
Briefly shown being part of a boring fight,
Catman started out as something of a joke. Shortly after
production on this episode, writer Gail Simone turned that
notion on its head in the comics, and right now he's clawing
his way into fan's hearts. So what's with the transformation?
Thomas Blake spent time as a wealthy big
game hunter before turning his attention to crime. Donning
an orange and yellow suit made from (allegedly) mystical
cloth, he took the name Catman and turned to burglary in
Gotham City.
Of course, Catwoman had problems with him
taking her gimmick. Over the years, their rivalry had varying
levels of intensity, depending on who was writing Batman
and if that writer cared about Catman.
Even when a writer cared, it wasn't much.
First Blake became a sexist abusive pig, more to serve as
foil to Catwoman's characterization post-Frank Miller than
to develop Catman. From there, it was a quick spiral downward.
In Brad Meltzer's Green Arrow arc,
"The
Archer's Quest ,"
the author recast Blake as a sometime nemesis of Oliver
Queen. Subcontracted by The Shade to "clean up" after Queen
died, Blake had become out-of-shape and ineffectual. A drunken
slob, he got his butt kicked by a reborn Green Arrow, and
was last seen in that book slumping in shame.
Apparently, that was the lowest the character
could go.
Last year, he came roaring back with a
strength no one expected, least of all fans. In Gail Simone's
Villains
United ,
a Secret Society of Super-Villains formed. A very few villains
balked at joining such an organization; one of them was
a seemingly emotionally remote Thomas Blake.
He had retreated to a compound in Africa,
living among a pride of lions and definitely no out-of-shape
sot. When the Society killed his lions, Blake joined a counterforce,
the Secret Six, dedicated to bringing down the organization
of supervillains.
It turned out that his defeat at the hands
of Green Arrow had made him take stock of his life, and
he changed himself to fit a new worldview. As the mini-series
progressed, it became clear to his fellow villains that
Blake actually was something in between, acting upon his
sense of honor and personal justice rather than a desire
to be on the wrong side of the law.
The series wrapped up with a conversation
between Catman and Green Arrow that made it clear the changed
man would be likely to take on either side in the hero-villain
game if either crossed the line of his code of ethics.
Though Justice League Unlimited
can't much be bothered with him, you'll find Catman a much
more interesting character in the comics.
Next Week: The Legion of Super-Heroes
- a team so confusing they've been rebooted and rebooted
and rebooted, but fans love them anyway.
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