Superboy: No capes. No tights. No offence.

JUNE 19, 00:43 ECT - On the island of Santa Prisca the strong-man Bane and his men are being help prisoner by armed terrorists belonging to the Cult of Kobra. The Kobra soldiers tell Bane that they will leave if one of his men is able to defeat Kobra’s champion in single combat. Bane agrees and is surprised when the Kobra spokesman hands him back his weapon (a drug injector). Bane then uses it inject himself with the a red-drug (Venom) which in seconds dramatically enhances his strength and musculature. His opponent appears to be a skinny youth until Kobra’s bodyguard (Shimmer) injects him with blue drug (Kobra Venom) that transforms him into bestial monstrosity (Mammoth). Even Bane’s strength is not enough to overcome Mammoth and he is very quickly beaten unconscious. The soldiers then start chanting “Hail Kobra! Hail Kobra!”

JULY 22, 20:08 ECT – Batman gathers Young Justice to brief them on their first mission. Santa Prisca is known as the source of an illegal neo-steroid called Venom, but black-market supplies of it have dried-up despite intelligence scans showing its factory still operating at full capacity. Young Justice are to covertly infiltrate the factory and decide whether a full Justice League intervention is required.  The team approach the island under the cover of darkness in Miss Martian’s cloaked bio-ship. Aqualad is dropped at Drop Site A just off shore. He patches into the islands defense sensors allowing the bio-ship to safely approach. Miss Martian and Kid Flash darken their own costumes as they approach Drop Site B. Superboy prefers his own clothes (black t-shirt and trousers) and Robin’s costume is already dark. They drop into the jungle and signal Aqualad to meet them at the factory site.

Robin had asked Batman who would be leading the mission, but Batman told them to sort that out among themselves. Robin naturally assumes that his experience makes him the leader so when Superboy hears somebody nearby Robin vanishes into the trees and assumes that everybody else will follow his example. Kid Flash’s infra-red goggles and Superboy’s infra-red vision show two squads of fighters approaching them, but the two armed groups starting firing at each other before before either of them discover the heroes. Aqualad advises them to avoid the battle, but Kid Flash first has to find Robin. The Kid rushes ahead, but slips on the muddy ground and goes tumbling down the slope. He lands sprawled at the feet of the armed group led by Bane. He and they are surprised to see each other, but Bane’s men quickly recover their composure and Kid Flash has to beat a hasty retreat under gun fire.

Superboy plows into Bane and Robin suddenly makes a reappearance to take down his fighters. Aqualad eventually rejoins them after capturing a fighter from the other group. Robin identifies Aqualad’s captive as belonging to the Cult of Kobra and surmises that Kobra’s takeover of the island is responsible for the disappearance of Venom from the black-market. Kid Flash is all for contacting Batman with the news, but Robin refuses to leave until they know what Kobra is doing with the drug. Robin clearly sees himself as the leader, but Kid Flash isn’t impressed and begins a protracted argument with him. Superboy doesn’t want the gig and Miss Martian rules herself out citing the problems they had with Mister Twister. Superboy says she did alright causing Miss Martian to blush.

Superboy hears Bane and his captured fighters discussing the arguing heroes. Bane is happy to play along for the moment believing that Young Justice’s presence will play to his own agenda. Robin’s argument that he should be Young Justice’s leader is cut short by Bane’s laughter. He offers to show them a secret tunnel into the factory, but he knows enough mental exercises to keep Miss Martian’s telepathy from reading anything but his surface thoughts. He points out to them that “the enemy of my enemy is my friend.” Bane then leads them to a point over looking the factory from where they can see that Kobra is stockpiling a large quantity of Venom. From there he leads them though a disused tunnel and into a quiet part of the factory.

To Bane’s consternation Robin vanishes again and Kid Flash runs off to find him. Robin makes it to a control room and knocks out a Kobra operator. Superboy, Miss Martian, and Aqualad stay together and notice that Kobra is only interested in new Venom coming off the factory line and are ignoring the factory’s older stockpile. Superboy then hears a helicopter approaching. Kid Flash finds Robin just as he decrypts the factory’s new compound – a mixture of Venom and the Blockbuster formula (from the Cadmus Project in “Independence Day” and “Fireworks”). The new combined drug is three times stronger than Venom and permanent. The mystery buyer that Kobra has lined-up must be the link between them and Project Cadmus.

Kobra orders the area shielded from radio transmissions as his buyer approaches in the helicopter Superboy heard. Lord Kobra tells the masked buyer that the Kobra Venom is a success prompting him to declare that they can finally go “mano et mano” with the Justice League. The invisible Miss Martian is watching the meeting and she sends a telepathic image of the buyer to Aqualad. He recognises the villain as the Sportsmaster and tries to radio the Red Tornado, but Kobra’s shielding blocks his signal. They need a plan quickly, but it’s Bane who acts first by diving into Kobra’s soldiers. The disturbance is heard by those at the meeting and Mammoth charges them. Bane then ducks away leaving the teen heroes to tight Kobra’s troops.

The fight against Kobra’s troops is uncoordinated and Young Justice quickly lose any advantage they may have had. Aqualad has Miss Martian link them telepathically and asks everybody to fall back and regroup. Robin is confronting Lord Kobra and his bodyguard Shimmer and is annoyed by Aqualad’s request. Kid Flash clears a path as they are pursed back through Bane’s tunnel. Superboy then collapses the tunnel behind them to block off their pursuers. Robin questions how his first mission as leader could go so wrong. Robin is exasperated, but he does point out that Aqualad is the only person who has effectively led them. Aqualad then agrees to be their leader, but notes that he’s only doing so until Robin is mature enough.

Their first priority is to prevent the shipment of Kobra Venom from leaving the island. Robin has already sabotaged Sportsmaster’s helicopter, but Lord Kobra knows Young Justice will come back. However, their return is blocked by Bane as they try to escape from the other end of the secret tunnel. Bane believes killing them will force the Justice League to intervene and remove Kobra from his island. Kid Flash snatches Bane’s detonator before be can blow up the tunnel. Miss Martian then lifts him Bane off his feet with her telekinesis and Superboy punches him out.

By the time that Young Justice return to the helipad Shimmer has repaired the sabotaged helicopter. Superboy tricks Mammoth into Aqualad’s attack. He pushes Mammoth back with a torrent of water and then shocks him unconscious. Sportsmaster’s rifle hurts Superboy and he is able to anticipate Miss Martian’s invisible approach. He holds her hostage as he edges back towards his helicopter before throwing her at Superboy. The Sportsmaster takes off, but Miss Martian still has Bane’s detonator and has already placed his explosives aboard the helicopter. The explosion doesn’t hurt Sportsmaster (who bails out), but the helicopter crashes into the Venom factory destroying it in a massive fireball.

Lord Kobra had been effortlessly blocking each of Robin’s attacks, but he steps backwards and vanishes into the jungle when the rest of Young Justice show up. Robin is now glad they picked Aqualad as the leader as he’ll be the one who has to explain the mission’s outcome to Batman.

JULY 23, 10:01 EDT – Back at the Cave Batman sternly tells them they’ll each receive a written evaluation of their mistakes, but he also congratulates them on a  job well done and on adapting to the situation they had to face. Elsewhere, the Sportsmaster reports to the Light that the only thing he recovered from the factory was a single ampoule of Kobra Venom (one of the Light with a French accent says it can always be reverse engineered). Nevertheless this is the third time that Young Justice have thwarted the Lights plans.

• The time stamps are incorrect (see below). The correct timestamps are June 19th for Santa Prisca Bane vs Mammoth, July 22nd for the Young Justice’s excursion to Santa Prisca and July 23rd for Batman’s debrief.
• Young Justice’s costumes can be darkened to enhance concealment at night.
• Miss Martian has a crush on Superboy.
• Superboy can understand Spanish.
• Kid Flash is good at chemistry. He recognised the chemical in Speedy’s foam arrow in “Welcome To Happy Harbour” and recognises the Blockbuster formula here.
• Miss Martian is once again taken down by a fireball.
• The Light are confirmed as the backers behind T.O. Morrow’s Mister Twister robot.

Bane

Bane is the man who broke the Batman. He is to Batman what Doomsday was to Superman. We’ve already encountered the character of Superboy in Young Justice. Well he was introduced in the comics as part of a storyline where Superman was temporarily killed-off and a replacement (or four) took his place. Superboy was one of those replacements. There was a fashion for in the 1990s which saw the principal character killed-off or disabled so that a new younger, edgier character could take his place. This trend produced Spider-Man’s “Clone Saga”, Superman’s “Death of Superman”, Green Lantern’s “Emerald Twilight”, and a host of similar plots.

For Batman the replacement fashion manifested as a trilogy of stories called “Knight Fall”, “Knight Quest”, and “Knights End”. The over arching plot was that an already exhausted Batman had his back broken by a new villain called Bane. Bane was a child who was born in a prison on the Caribbean island of Santa Prisca. He never knew freedom and was essentially a prisoner/criminal from the moment of birth.

Like Bruce Wayne Bane was extremely gifted naturally and trained himself to the peak of physical fitness. He was also surprisingly intelligent (something people often forget). Bane became the virtual ruler of his prison, but he was still chosen to be the test subject for a new super-steroid called Venom. It fantastically increased his strength, but he became addicted to it and had a special harness created which injected it directly into his body at the press of a button.

Bane eventually escapes from Santa Prisca and becomes fixated on the Batman. A series of events and distractions prevents the Batman from stopping Bane’s takeover of Gotham City’s underworld until it’s too late. He challenged the Batman and used his venom fuelled strength to cripple the already exhausted Batman. While Bruce Wayne healed he appointed a mental-disturbed former cultist and assassin called Jean Paul Vallee (alias Azrael) to masquerade as the Batman (it must have seemed like a good idea at the time). Vallee/Batman defeated Bane, but became a greater threat as he descended into violent paranoia and crossed the line into lethal vigilantism. A recovered Bruce Wayne had to forcibly remove Vallee from the role of Batman.

Bane wasn’t killed-off and has remained around the DC Universe. He’s an odd character in that he is, in some-ways, quite noble in some of things he wants to do, but he never really crosses the line to become a hero or even an anti-hero. His portrayal in other media has been decidedly mixed – the absolute worst was in Batman and Robin which reduced him to a mute-thug working for Poison Ivy. In this episode Bane is voice by Danny Trejo. Chuck Dixon, Doug Moench, and Graham Nolan get a creator credit for Bane.

Kobra

The DC Universe Kobra is a cult-come-terrorist organisation in the best toyline/James Bond tradition. When we first saw them they were led by an American called Jeffrey Burr, one of a pair of conjoined-twins and who was kidnapped after he was surgically separated from his brother Jason. Jeffrey was raised to be the cult’s leader, but he and Jason retained a psychic link which Jason used to fight against his brother’s organisation in their original appearances. Jeffery was eventually killed off and replaced by a brainwashed Jason.

Kobra remain the DC Comics terrorist organisation of choice – a suitably malleable evil-group that any story about suicide bombers, cultists, mass suicides, or whatever can be safely pinned on without offending the sensibilities of any real world religion or minority. Not to be confused with GI-Joe’s terrorist group Cobra. Lord Kobra is voiced by Arnold Vosloo who voiced Black Adam in the DC DVD Superman/Shazam!: The Return of Black Adam and Bar-El in All-Star Superman. There is a link between the two Cobra/Kobra’s as Vosloo also voiced Zartan – an agent of GI-Joe’s Cobra – in GI-Joe: The Rise of Cobra.

Lord Kobra’s lieutenant is identified as Shimmer which would make Kobra’s Champion her brother Mammoth. In the comics Shimmer and Mammoth are Selinda and Baran Flinders, Australian meta-humans who were members of a group called the Fearsome Five that first appeared in New Teen Titans #3 (Jan 1981). She has the power to transmute one element into another and he is a brainless, super strong brute. Neither of them have been shown working for Kobra in the comics. In the Earth-16 continuity it seems that neither Selinda or Baran have superpowers until he is transformed into Mammoth by the Kobra Venom.

At one point Lord Kobra commands Selinda to repair his sabotaged helicopter, a role that it would normally be reserved for another of the Fearsome Five, the genius Gizmo. In the Teen Titans cartoon Mammoth and co were shown as part of the H.I.V.E. and it was Gizmo who got the most screen time.

Sportsmaster

Sportsmaster is an old DC villain from the 1940s. He was Crusher Crock who used sports themed weapons to fight Wildcat. The villain Sportsman who appeared in Justice League “Legends” was an homage to the original Sportsmaster. The character obviously has the potential for lameness given the sporting motif, but the Young Justice version keeps things to a minimum and is surprisingly effective. The mask he wears is meant to be a hockey-mask.

The Sportsmaster was voiced by Nick Chinlund. Chinlund was a basketball player, a sportsman, until an injury forced him to consider other lines of work.

Time Stamps

There is a mistake in the displayed timestamps as originally broadcast. The pre-title sequence is listed as taking place on June 19th and Young Justice’s excursion to Santa Prisca begins on the evening of June 22nd. However, Young Justice don’t become a team until July 4th as shown in “Independence Day” and “Welcome To Happy Habour”.

Pretty quickly after broadcast Greg Weisman posted to Ask Greg that:

YOUNG JUSTICE TIMESTAMP HORROR

Yes, that’s right. I said “horror”. (For me, anyway.)

Okay, as some of you probably have ALREADY noticed, two of the timestamps on Episode #4 of YOUNG JUSTICE (“Drop-Zone) is incorrect.

Here’s the CORRECT timeline:

The beginning of the Teaser correctly reads:

SANTA PRISCA
JUNE 19, 00:43 ECT

The beginning of Act One SHOULD read:

CARIBBEAN SEA
JULY 22, 20:08 ECT

And the tag at the end of the episode SHOULD read:

MOUNT JUSTICE
JULY 23, 10:01 EDT

We are fully aware that to some of our more serious-minded fans, these are huge errors. All I can say is that there’s no possible way it’s as traumatizing to you guys as it is to us.

I cannot even imagine how it must feel to be watching the program go out live and see that the dates are screwed up like that, but I’m pretty impressed that Greg posted a correction so quickly.

Misc.

• At one point I had the writer listed as Andrew J. Robinson when the correct should have been Andrew R. Robinson.
• The opening sequence makes use of English subtitles over the Spanish dialogue. I wonder who was the genius was decided to used the extra-sized “New Episode” box over the subtitles blocking part of the dialogue.
• Bane cites the Arab proverb “the enemy of my enemy is my friend”.
• Miss Martian uses her telepathy to link the team together. This was something that Grant Morrison had the Martian Manhunter do during his JLA run (admittedly it’s an old X-men trick, but who reads those comics).

Highlights

The Kid Flash, Miss Martian, Superboy take down of Bane.

Oddities

Martians blush the same colour as humans – they’ve got green skin so shouldn’t they be blushing a deeper shade of green?

First Impressions

What I find interesting about Earth-16, Young Justice’s world, is how mature it is. The Justice League are mega-stars, the Light (alias the Secret Society of Legion of Doom depending on your vintage) are professional and well organised, and many of the actors (like the Cult of Kobra and the Sportsmaster) are already known to people like Batman. This team may be only just beginning, but everybody else is already well established and dug in. It gives the show a real sense of place.

Some really interesting dynamics are developing. Miss Martian’s crush on Superboy, Robin’s inability to get over working alone, and Aqualad’s natural leadership. I liked the leadership subplot and was pleasantly surprised that Robin recognised Aqualad as the better candidate – a more immature character would been have really snotty about that. Covert mission uniforms I can just imagine Mattel rubbing their hands with glee as they have now got three alternative costumes for each team member (civilian, normal costume, and covert costume).

Bane’s transformation is pretty horrific when it’s animated. What I’ve always wondered is: where does all that extra-muscle mass come from? Really, he’d need a massive tank fuelling the transformation, not just that little wrist controller. Same goes for Mammoth and Blockbuster. Their flesh even splits apart to show the muscles underneath. Gross man. I certainly don’t think that many of us are use to seeing Bane thrown around so easily. The development of the Kobra Venom involving the Blockbuster formula was interesting. It shows a very carefully plotted series even from the first few episodes. That certainly means we haven’t seen the last of that sample the Sportsman flashed up at the end.

The Verdict