Belch's Brief Reviews--Jan 26, 2002

[DR. BELCH]

ST SHK#24: "The Big Leagues"
This has been the one either most anticipated or most dreaded by Batfans around here. Most seemed worried it'd just be an excuse for Shock to save Batman and make him look like the big hero. Technically, he did...but Batman wasn't compromised like most feared. What makes Batman strong is that he realizes when in another city and dealing with their heroes/local constabulary, it's best to cooperate with them because they have an edge in dealing with whatever freaks and mutants they have. He maintained a sense of cold aloofness, which Static took for snubbing (Robin reassured him that's just his way), but he was never overly rude or ego-driven. He admits to not being a team player and likes things on his own terms, but does surround himself with allies--such as The Justice league--when need be and will admit when he's up against the wall. And he did smile a couple of times--but who wouldn't smile at a rookie getting the best of The Joker, the self-proclaimed Clown Prince of Crime?
While chasing a mutant suspect, Static spots a horde of balloons coming out from under a manhole cover, which promptly explode. Unfortunately he loses the perp...who has his own problems when he finds himself kidnapped and doused with laughing gas by The Joker, who is bothered by the heat being on in Gotham and decided to "scare up some fun" in Dakota City.
Static visits the poor giggling fool in the emergency ward, and that's when Batman appears big as life--with a slightly older Tim Drake (who seems embarassed at the "Boy Wonder" epithet). Static tries to go on a mission with them, but his father pages him to come home (this is why most superheroes are adults or orphans!) and forces him to cut it short. Batman gives him a paging device tells him to use it to contact him (Static inexplicably tears his inside pocket and loses it).
Meanwhile Joker and his new band of mutants--Shiv, Talon, a punk with a Jamican accent they call "Bigfoot" who looks like a refugee from Rescue Heroes:GRT, and Hotstreak--swipe a fire truck, then knock over a bank. Petty crime seems beneath The Joker, but with him the point is seldom the money--it's the look of a victim's face when he gets schnookered.
While Static is manning the entrance to a sewer tunnel, Batman and Robin are captured by the mutant goons. Static uses the Batplane to trace the Batradio signal to Joker's lair, where he finds Batman and Robin tied up and hanging from the ceiling, where Joker plans to hit them like skeet with huge spiked iron balls fired from the spring launchers on the truck. Static, however, manages to deflect the projectiles, and the Bang Babies are quickly mopped up.
The ending is the best bit--Joker tries to electrocute Batman with an electric joy buzzer, but ends up gripping mitts with Static, who takes all he has and returns it tenfold. Hence Batman's famous schadenfreude smile.
Loved Robin's line to Talon, "Do you realize how many times I've hard people make that joke?" (referring to her "birds of a feather" remark).
DYN Harley's picture on Joker's desk? The eyes were drawn smaller and didn't fill the holes in her mask completely...it also indicates he still carries a torch for her, though there's no way of saying how recent it is.
Watch for Static's impromptu lightning Batsignal...and a shot of Bruce (and Tim) out of costume. His hair looked grey at one point, but it was a brief scene and may have been a trick of the light.

JCA#225: "The King and Jade"
Jackie is assigned to protect a king--who apparently is only about Jade's age, and is disenchanted with his living-in-a-bubble lifestyle--who is in San Francisco to sign some treaty. Jade, wanting to see a real-life king of a real-live country--uses the snake talisman to sneak into the embassy unseen...and while the greetings are being exchanged notes some strange tattoos on the necks of two of his highness' entourage.
After a while she makes herself known to the young monarch, who "puls a Jade" on her and gets hold of the talisman, making himself invisible and leaving the grounds. Unfortunatley while playing together at the park he is captured by two of the same men Jade saw earlier and ransomed for some precious royal stones.
Jade notices a similar design on the neck of the king's top advisor and insists he's a saboteur...but the snakelike tat turns out to be an innocent monkey, partially obscured by his shirt. (Okay, I made the same mistake. So did Faye Valentine in the Cowboy Bebop ep "Heavy Metal Queen"--"I have a thing for eels.")
Apparently the real traitor is an old man--the prime minister, I think--who seeks to use the gems' mystic power to seize the throne. He's quickly taken care of.
DYN the young majesty's "I Heart S.F." shirt?
Still no Dark Hand this week. I'm getting noticeably bored with these B-list storylines.
Invisible Jade eating popcorn was a highlight--I guess it would have been a little too graphic to show the food in her belly digesting through her in a cartoon. Though in Hollow Man, in the scene where Kevin Bacon vomits, the half-digested food's also invisible. I never could figure out why....

[DR. BELCH]

POK#430: "Moving Pictures"
Ash and his friends meet up again with photographer Todd Snap (whose voice sounds strangely higher--sloppy dubs make a lot of young male characters sound like they're hitting puberty in reverse). He tells them he's searching for the legenary bird Articuno, which, like Ho-ho, is purported to by a myth (which blatantly ignores the events of the second movie--continuity bullpuckey; don't ask.)
Like something out of a Tex Avery cartoon, Ash proves bad luck for whoever he meets--a few moments later Todd is nearly crushed by a lump of ice that comes hurtling from the sky. It wasn't a lump of frozen airplane feces like you hear about in those tabloid rags on the newsracks at Wal-Mart, like I thought at first for some inexplicable reason--it's a frozen baby Pokemon.
An unevolved Sunfloram or Sunkern, to be technical.
Todd recalls a nearby inn he'd passed earlier, and Ash, Brock and Misty head that way with the frozen creature--and speaking of cold things, Team Rocket follows.
Here we meet Sophia, who looks like an older Nurse Joy and has a strange passion for telling stories. I half expected the words "Picture it--Sicily...." to come out of her mouth. She spins a sad tale of a man she loved once who went away, remained MIA for a long time, had gotten hurt, came back to her, and died shortly after they married (the picture of her kneeling at his grave especially got to me--very morbid for Saturday morning!). Team Rocket and Team Twerp are visibly touched. One problem, though--her husband is alive and well and seated right behind them! Seems she's an expert b.s'er who reads too much of that blasted Jackie Collins. Amusing to note, also, that Meowth apparently watches Mexican soap operas (his Telemundo comment).
The couple has a tradition of having their picture taken every year with a gaggle of Sunflora--which seem to have a particular significance to them, since they reunited in a field of the basketball-headed buggers--but it's been unseasonably cold this year, and their are none available. Todd offers, nonetheless, to take this years' picture, it being the couple's 50th wedding anniversary, and they hike to the area where the couple first met.
After a couple more romance-novel tripe stories from Sophia--who it seems watches too much FOX, noting her comment on "reality TV"--they find that Team Rocket has taken over the lovebirds' spot with a huge snow machine. Buried in snow, Team Twerp is visually helpless, until Sunkern employs some modified solar beam attack called "sunny day" to melt the snow. Team Rocket tries to get away in their balloon peacefull, but Ash--a bit mean, I felt--sends them blasting off again.
It seems the couple will have to make do with a measly Sunkern this year, until Brock suggests evolving it with the Sunstone he won at the bug-catching tourney. Which he does--and its cries alert a horde of Sunflora which have been inexplicably hiding all this time. The couple gets their golden anniversary photograph, Todd ecides he will continue the search for Articuno, which he believes to be the casue of this cold snap, and Misty decides she isn't going to be suckered into believing any more of Sophia's stories.
Nit: does Ash not know better than to use a plant Pokemon in freezing weather? Why not Cyndaquil, or Nachtowl?
Team Rocket performs admirably on skis--Jessy in particular is a flame-headed Picabo Street. If their careers in villainy ever bottom out they could do well in the Winter Olympics--silver at least. I thought they'd collide i nmid-air at the climax of their motto....

XMEN #25: "Mindbender"
Jean's behaving oddly. First she complains of nightmares...then she vanishes during the night. Cerebro traces her; she turns up sometime later robbing a bank security vault. All she takes is a single ring.
She turns up at the mansion a few nights after, does a mindwipe on Scott, spirits Kirk away...and the two of them together are observed on a security tape purchasing bus tickets to New York City shortly after a museum is robbed...and a ring is taken.
Jean returns again, this time taking Kitty and Evan, and the four take the Blackbird to a second museum in Washington. A third ring is stolen, and several guards assaulted.
It seems Jean's fugues are connected to a jack-in-the-box she won at a carnival...and Rogue recognizes the face--which resembles Pinhead in the Hellraiser movies--on the toy as that of a carny hypnotist she saw there. The Professor takes the reamining mutants--Logan, Scott, and Rogue--to the grounds, where they meet up with the mind-controlling madman. He proves extremely powerful. Xavier realizes he is just the envoy to a much higher power, and the rings are the key to something much bigger.
It turns out that they are the tools to release Apocolypse--who will ikely show up in the season two finale. I'm hoping he's handled moderately better than Magnus, how they'll draw him, and if Warren "Archangel" Worthington will factor into it somehow.
There's a secondary plot with Bobby Drake and the junior mutants (from "Joyride") getting into the Danger Room and nearly killing themselves using the equipment unsupervised. Seems Multiple Lad was sore over getting shafted on their little jaunt in nthe 'Bird and took this opportunity to get revenge.
atch for the scene with Kitty in the Brotherhood boarding house. I guess the lvoebird's relationship got a bit rocky, what with her accusing Lance/Avalanche of kidnapping and all.
Note Beast, during the battle, moves on all fours and grunts like an ape.
Note also that the hypnotist, like Xavier, is bald. I wonder if that's a standard thing with this type of talent--baldness. I think Charles is naturally a chromedome, but I think this guy shaves his. I wonder if no hair enhances one's empathic performance, like runners or swimmers?