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Justice
League Unlimited
This Little Piggy
Original Airdate - 08/28/04
There
was a noticeable change in tone between the first and second
season of Justice League. The show moved away from
the middle of the road storylines and became a more adult
oriented action cartoon. The fights were more brutal, the
themes of war were brought into storylines and romantic
relationships were raised from simmer to boil.
It's
just as easy to notice a reverse trend with Justice League
Unlimited as it reins the plotlines back in and tries
to skew towards a younger audience. Take for example this
week's episode "This Little Piggy" or as I prefer to call
it, "Batman: Pig in the City."
Batman
and Wonder Woman run into Wonder Woman's rival Circe while
out on patrol one night. Circe, who was recently paroled
from hell, gets some revenge on Wonder Woman by turning
her into a pig. Batman contacts his old "friend" Zatanna
to try and undo Circe's magic but she's no help. While Batman
is distracted, Wonder Pig runs off into the city and has
all kinds of crazy adventures (strange that she manages
to find a slaughter house in the middle of a major city).
B'wana Beast is brought in by Batman to help in the hunt
along with brief appearances by Red Tornado, Elongated Man
and The Phantom Stranger (actually it was the Crimson Avenger
which had to be pointed out to me by reader Barry Cole who
later pointed out that his name is Barry Cope.)
The
very concept of Wonder Pig should alert viewers that all
notions of this being a serious episode can be thrown right
out the window. Paul Dini serves up a classic children's
story that has some good laughs but little action. Batman
and Zatanna spend most of the episode going from one location
to another and talking to people. On the positive side,
the dialogue they do have is the episode's greatest strength.
"You're a princess from a society of immortal warriors,
I'm a rich kid with issues…lots of issues." Lines
like that were clever enough to hold my interest despite
the absurdity of the plot but this is the first episode
I was glad didn't last an hour.
Continuing
the Greek theme, Medusa makes an appearance half way through
the show and it turns out that she's a lot more of a yenta
than Clash of the Titans led us to believe. Her appearance
is just as hilarious as it is odd.
B'wana
Beast was the guest JLU member of the week. I've never seen
or read a comic with BB in it so I don't know much about
him, but judging from this episode, there's not a whole
lot more to know. I'm sure Derek can fill us newcomers in.
B'wana's appearance was a logical choice (Animal Man would
have been cooler) but his role in the story was left unresolved.
I did
prefer this plotline to last week's formulaic "Hawk and
Dove" but the sillier aspects are something I'd prefer show
up on Teen Titans and not JLU. Still, any
episode where Kevin Conroy sings can't be all bad.
Derek's Continuity Corner:
B'wana Beast -- wow. I'm still reeling that they actually
used him. To be honest, I'm not sure if he ever had his
own title, though he had at least one try-out in Showcase.
He was a bizarre twist on the white jungle lord trope so
prevalent in comics. Followed around by a trusty ape sidekic,
B'wana Beast has the power to merge animals into new creations.
Would Animal Man have been better? You can be the judge,
as the two met in the initial four issues of Grant Morrison's
revival of the environmentally active superhero.
As for Circe,
she's been an on-again off-again enemy of Wonder Woman.
At one point, she'd gone so deep undercover disguised as
a friend of Diana's that when she remembered she was evil,
it was too late. Circe liked Diana. That didn't last too
long, however, as by the time Grant Morrison (there's that
guy again) used her in the JLA story Rock of Ages, she was
definitely a villain again.
Zatanna, the
Mistress of Magic, also once disguised herself as a witch
when she first met Batman. After that contact, she was able
to summon a psychic duplicate of the Dark Knight to help
her find her father, Zatara, in another dimension.
Most notably,
this episode marks the last (for the foreseeable future)
that the fantastic Paul Dini will have a hand in. After
teaming with Bruce Timm on the original Batman: The Animated
Series, Dini has made Warner Animation strong for over a
decade. But now he's going on to different pastures, rumored
to be live-action. He had to come back for this last shot,
as Zatanna is one of his favorite characters. Maybe it's
the fishnets.
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