Author: Robert Greenberger

Gregory Maguire had no idea what he was unleashing when he wrote Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West in 1995. Since then, a tremendous amount of energy has been spent on revisiting the antagonists from fairy tales to modern fiction in an effort to explain their motivations. Quite often, the opponent is more interesting than the protagonist so there’s an appetite to understanding what made them “evil”.

Another trend has been taking the classic fairy tales and first making them into palatable Disney animated fare followed by live-action adaptations and stage editions. By combining the above, we arrive this year with Maleficent. Perhaps the single most arresting visual in the Disney rogues gallery, this cunning sorcerer has given generations nightmares since the cartoon version arrived in 1959.

With Angelina Jolie as the title character, this had the making of a fascinating character story hidden under layers of action, adventure, and humor as she cursed young Aurora who went on to become known as Sleeping Beauty.  The pedigree both before and behind the camera promised a grand experience which is why the final product, out Tuesday as a DVD Combo Pack, is so disappointing.

Linda Woolverton, who has virtually lived writing fairy tales for Disney since Beauty and the Beast in 1991, seemed a perfect choice for the project. She dutifully did her homework and found a key to understand why Maleficent was evil. In the Charles Perrault and Brothers Grimm retelling of the story, she was a fairy and fairies, after all, have wings. Once she asked, “where are Maleficent’s wings?” that he story was found.
The film tells of young Maleficent (Ella Purnell and Isobelle Molloy), an orphan fairy, who is somehow the leader of the mystic realm known only as the Moors. When an orphan human, Stefan (Michael Higgins, later Sharlto Copley), wanders from his adjoining lands, an unlikely friendship develops. But then he vanishes and the next time we see him he is a servant to King Henry (Kenneth Cranham) and we’re told, but never shown, he had become greedy. Instead, Henry leads a vast army towards the Moors where he is repelled by Maleficent and her enchanted allies where he is mortally wounded.

Stefan renews his acquaintance with Maleficent in order to kill her and become heir to the throne. When he drugs her, after forgiving him his absence, he finds he cannot end her life but instead steals her wings, effectively ruining her and winning him the throne. Now she’s pissed and seethes and rages and summons heretofore unseen occult energies and becomes the recognizable evil power.

Woolverton is so busy building up Maleficent and making her sympathetic that she’s forgotten to make the humans anything more than one-dimensional beings. Why does Henry want to conquer the Moors? There is no apparent enmity between them nor reason to gain the land? Why is Stefan so ambitious, forgetting his friendship? Everything the humans robs the film of being a well-rounded story.

Similarly, the three fairies who arrive to first bless then care for Stefan’s daughter Aurora (Vivienne Jolie-Pitt, Eleanor Worthington Cox and finally Elle Fanning) are played for comedic effect but fail at being funny, just inept, wasting the talents of Imelda Staunton (Knotgrass), Juno Temple (Thistlewit), and Lesley Manville (Flittle). The crow Diaval (Sam Riley) is enchanted by the witch and is at least interesting to watch. Memorable supporting players would have made this a far stronger film.

The most interesting development Woolverton and director Robert Stromberg bring to the story is the quasi-mother/daughter relationship between Maleficent and Aurora, who is gifted with such a kind soul that she mistakes Maleficent not as the bane of her existence but as her fairy godmother. This leads a fine twist in the retelling of this classic tale.

The effects are swell, the dragon transformation and climax strong but the underlying motivations are so weak that it really robs the film of the strength of its themes. As a result, this 97 minute story disappoints more than it thrills. Clearly, though, I am in the majority since its worldwide box office is over $750 million.

The film comes as a Blu-ray, DVD, Digital HD combo pack and the high definition transfer is rich and wonderful to watch. The 7.1 DTS-HD Master Audio is a fine companion so young girls everywhere should enjoy it time and again.

For the adults, there are some nice Bonus Features, notably the five Deleted Scenes, at least two of which address the issues I raise above. Aurora: Becoming a Beauty is a lightweight look at how much Elle Fanning enjoyed becoming a princess. From Fairy Tale to Feature Film features Woolverton talking about the process without anywhere near enough time tracing the source material. Building an Epic Battle looks at the cinemagic involved in this particular action sequence while Maleficent Revealed looks at the rest of the digital effects but does so without much in the way of explanation o you just stare at before and after images as they speed by. Classic Couture examines the fine apparel worn by the characters (and probably deserves an Oscar nomination).

The Warren Commission Report
By Dan Mishkin, Ernie Colon, and Jerzy Drozd
Abrams ComicArts, 160 pages, $29.95

Conspiracies are everywhere if you know where to look. Over the last century, Americans have increasingly looked for dire machinations behind the unbelievable. Much as our ancestors sat around campfires telling mythic tales to explain how the sun rose each day, today, people make up fantastical stories to make the impossible comprehensible.

With the growth of mass media, from film to radio to television to the internet, studies have shown we have gravitated towards like-minded thinking, narrowing our worldview and therefore giving voice and importance to ones who would have once been considered mad. This development gained traction and accelerated its piercing of the zeitgeist thanks largely to ineptitude. America knew Japan was going to bomb throughout the Pacific but didn’t say a word much as we knew there were foreigners acting suspiciously in 2001. But the largest of these incompetency’s may well be the actions taken in the minutes, hours, and days that followed the assassination of President John F. Kennedy.

Today, there is a growing subset of graphic novels that condense and streamline mass amounts of information for our benefit. There was Economix for finance and The 9/11 Report: A Graphic Adaptation. Now comes The Warren Commission Report, a handy one-volume guide to the facts, inconsistencies and theories surrounding the events of November 22, 1963. Adapted from the report, released September 27, 1964, writer Dan Mishkin deftly takes the reader through the indisputable facts and into the murky world of error, evasion, and espionage.

Looking back, it’s astonishing to see how inept and ineffective local and federal authorities were to secure the crime scene and preserve the evidence. We’re a CSI generation, used to minute inspection of every hair follicle and fiber, so the notion that precise measurements were not taken or that detailed studies of the president’s body were delayed, hurried, or incomplete is mindboggling. So too the inexplicably lax security when assassin Lee Harvey Oswald was moved, allowing Jack Ruby to get close enough to kill the killer.

Mishkin takes us step by step through the investigation, shining a bright light thanks to declassified and public documents that were not available at the time. He shows where mistakes were made, where politics and ass-covering led to facts being obfuscated, which went on to fan the embers that grew into the conspiracy fire. He also doubles back to introduce us to Oswald and how he had remained on intelligence radar for some time but agencies then, as now, didn’t share information or collaborate in the name of national security.

Brining Mishkin’s work to life is the art team of Ernie Colon and Jerzy Drozd, the former having gained newfound fame through the 9/11 graphic novel. Colon’s distinctive style is altered, not always for the best, by Drozd but the familiar faces of Kennedy, Oswald, Lyndon Johnson, and J. Edgar Hoover are readily recognizable. The storytelling is quite clear with the interesting color choice of making Oswald an all-white figure, letting him standout from the crowd wherever he is seen, devoid of connection to humanity. If there’s a visual fault it comes to some questionable balloon and caption placements that mar the smooth flow of the text.

This book does not attempt to sanctify or refute the report or the theories around it but offer clarity, especially the last two dozen pages or so that places the events in the larger context of a rapidly changing society as the 1950s conformity gave way to a rebellion of individualism. This may be one of the strongest parts of the book, since context, as we know, is everything.

For those who lived through it, this will bring some comfort and some new insights. For those who were born a generation or more after, this is a good primer to what America was once like and how it helped shape the world we currently live in.

It’s interesting to watch Green Arrow thrive on television in ways he could only envy in the comics. After being a second string character for much of his career, he seemed to work well first on Smallville, and now on his own series, Arrow. The problem, though, with being a B-lister for decades is that his rogues’ gallery is woefully weak and therefore the show’s producers have to dip into the rest of the DC mythos to fill out his world.

The show’s third season gets underway shortly and Warner Home Entertainment has recently released Arrow: The Complete Second Season in a nice box set. Here, we can review all 23 episodes to see how things have evolved as Oliver Queen goes from vigilante to hero while his allies grow in number.

One of the things that has been a struggle in comics for the last era or two is that a hero can’t realistically maintain a secret identity. Ollie (Stephen Amell) needs allies and with that comes trust. So, we went from Diggle (David Ramsey), in the first season to Diggle and Felicity (Emily Bett Rickards) by season’s end. This year, Roy Harper (Colton Haynes), Canary (Caity Lotz), and Laurel (Katie Cassidy) have come to know Ollie’s alter ego. Argus’ Amanda Waller (Cynthia Addai-Robinson) somehow knows, too. Heck, even newcomer Barry Allen (Grant Gustin), visiting from Central City, knows the truth. So, it’s telling that as the season ended, the one who still doesn’t know, his sister Thea (Willa Holland), is the one to vanish, a thread left unknotted until this fall.

The show has also nicely plundered Batman’s resources as Huntress (Jessica De Gouw) returned and we met Nyssa al Ghul (Katrina Law), setting up this coming season’s arrival of Ra’s al Ghul himself.  But first, old business needed addressing and much of the season’s meta arc dealt with Slade Wilson, Deathstroke (Manu Bennett), exacting revenge against Ollie, blaming him for Shado’s (Celina Jade) death and worked with  Isabel Rochev (Summer Glau) to take down both Queen Consolidated and the Queen family, which climaxed with the death of Moira (Susanna Thompson), Ollie’s mom. As for Thea, her world was shattered when she learned her true father was Malcolm Merlyn (John Barrowman), who conveniently returned from the dead.

The episodes stir the pot with verve and alliances rise and fall with long-simmering threads spun out across the weeks and months. We’re even teased with the hint of an Ollie/Felicity romance even while he and Canary got nice and cozy. On the other hand, the cast has grown so large, supporting teams of players in the present and an almost separate collection in the flashbacks, that some shows feel overstuffed, losing focus. While I appreciate the need to spotlight Diggle now and then, bringing in his wife, her connection to Waller, and the formation of the Suicide Squad felt more of a distraction than a strong storyline on its own. Both Thea and Roy were underserved by the scripts this year.

That said, I do want to applaud the two-parter that acts as prelude to this month’s The Flash series, and the way they subtly continued those subplots through the final episode. Speaking of which, the finale was one of the best action episodes of prime time I’ve seen in a long time so kudos to the writers, cast, and stunt performers for making it exciting.

The transfer to high definition is fairly seamless and a joy to watch, accompanied by the strong DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 surround track.

The four-disc set comes with some standard extras, most of which are diverting enough although none are Must See viewing either. We have From Vigilante to Hero (24:00), an examination of the season’s design; The Visual Effects of Arrow (11:00), exploring how the night scenes, explosions, and action is brought to life; and, Wirework: The Impossible Moves of Arrow (10:00), a companion feature focusing on the stunts. There are, of course, Deleted Scenes, culled from “City of Heroes,” “Identity,” “Crucible,” “Keep Your Enemies Closer,” “State v. Queen,” “Three Ghosts,” “Tremors,” “Heir to the Demon,” “Time of Death,” “The Promise,” “Suicide Squad,” “The Man Under the Hood” and “Unthinkable.” And we have the requisite Gag Reel (5:00). Finally, there is edited footage from Arrow: 2013 Comic-Con Panel (26:00).

Increasingly, studios want you to stream or buy your own digital copy of feature films and to entice you, that edition is being made weeks prior to the physical disc being available for purchase. In an effort to direct viewer buying and viewing habits, studios are also shifting review copies from disc to high definition download. My first encounter with this brave new world, ironically enough, comes with 20^th Century Home Entertainment’s current release of X-Men: Days of Future Past, the sprawling, epic film from May. The biggest drawback is making certain you have enough hard disc storage for the mammoth file and a set-up that allows you to watch on a huge screen. Lacking that, I watched the film on my 24” external monitor and while the image was crisp and the audio clear enough (although maybe I need to upgrade my speakers); it needs a bigger screen to properly appreciate.

Bryan Singer returned to the franchise and pulled out all the stops, successfully adapting the Chris Claremont/John Byrne story while seamlessly integrating it with the four preceding feature films. He directed the first two while Brett Ratner mishandled X-Men: Last Stand and Matthew Vaughn wonderfully rebooted the franchise with X-Men: First Class.

As we toggle between past, present, and future, we understand that in the 1970s, Bolivar Trask (Peter Dinklage) convinces Congress to fund his Sentinels program to root out mutants, who threaten “our” way of life. Once his program goes live, it grows, morphing with the times, until the future is a dark land of devastation, with the last handful of mutants on the run and losing their battle with extinction. In a final desperate act, Kitty Pryde (Ellen Page) uses her powers (in ways that never quite made sense) to send Wolverine (Hugh Jackman) back in time to derail the program. In order to do this, he needs to reconcile Charles Xavier (James McAvoy) with Erik Lenscherr (Michael Fassbender) but first, Magneto needs to be freed from confinement under the Pentagon and to accomplish this, they need help from young mutant Pietro (Evan Peters).

It becomes several races against time as ideologies are heated debated in one era while the Sentinels locate the planet’s last mutants and approach, forcing many a heroic sacrifice to buy Kitty the time she needs to keep Wolverine in the past, protected by Xavier (Patrick Stewart) and Magneto (Ian McKellan).

The casts are blended fairly well and even though the story may make a civilian’s head throb; it’s a fairly coherent story, well-told thanks to a strong script largely from Simon Kinberg, Singer’s direction, and a cast that is up to the task. It’s nice to see familiar faces such as Halle Berry’s Storm and cameos like Kelsey Grammer’s Beast. Page is under-utilized here, sweating and trembling but given little else to do. As befits his stature in the Marvel Universe, it’s really Wolverine’s story and Jackman is up to the challenge, once more better served in the ensemble than either of his solo films. The other spotlight is on young Mystique (Jennifer Lawrence) who is trying to carve her own path which sharply diverges from that of her mentor, Xavier. She becomes the threat that needs stopping, not Trask and Lawrence is deadly and vulnerable at the same time.

The high def version and forthcoming Blu-ray features several nifty extras, starting with an extended Kitchen sequence (6:00) that got trimmed but explores many of the film’s issues and themes as debated between Xavier and mystique with Beast (Nicholas Hoult) and Wolverine mere bystanders. There’s a fun Gag Reel (5:36) and a handful of deleted scenes that should be viewed with Singer’s commentary. (Be warned, just as this became available for sale, it was announced an extended version was to be released next summer, integrating these scenes including the Rogue [Anna Paquin] sub-plot that caused some controversy when dropped.) There are also some nice images from the Trask Industries archives.

DC Comics has always had a special place in its heart for the teen sidekicks and since the 1960s, there have been numerous books dedicated to their collaborative efforts. Little wonder then, that Cartoon Network would want series based on Teen Titans and Young Justice. While the former reduced them to far younger incarnations, the latter took the Peter David-written comic and expanded its scope in vastly satisfying ways. Young Justice ran a mere two seasons but retains an ardent fan following so it’s nice to see the entire first season out now as a two-disc Blu-ray package.

The show was developed for the cable channel by former DC assistant editor Greg Weisman, who discovered his forte with animation as witnessed by the wild success of his Gargoyles. Here, he’s partnered with Brandon Vietti, no stranger to translating comics to cartoons. Their premise takes the teens – Robin, Aqualad, Kid Flash, and Arrowette  – and sees them declare their independence from their mentors and are turned into The Team, covert operatives. The android Red Tornado watches over them in the JLA’s original mountain HQ and they receive missions from Batman so there’s a tight connection to the Justice League which is expanded throughout the first season.

Early on, the teens are on a case within Cadmus and discover the clone named Superboy and his adjustment to life away from the lab is a major thread through the series. The team is rounded out with the arrival of M’gann M’orzz, Miss Martian.

Interestingly, rather than trying to justify their choices to play fast and loose with DC Universe print continuity, the producers declared up front that these adventures occur on Earth-16 in the New 52 multiverse and I’m okay with that, since it shuts down the critics really fast. This certainly explains the new brown-skinned Aqualad, created by Vietti and Weisman, but does not justify his inclusion in the New 52. With that said, there are plenty of nice touches to the larger fraternity of heroes such as Zatara’s appearance in the opening episode. There’s a lovely nod to original Titans as the new team takes on Mister Twister. Episode 10 is touching as Superboy and Miss Martian take on the Conner Kent and Megan Morse identities as they begin their first day of school, meeting Super Friends’ Wendy and Marvin, one-tome Titans Mal Duncan and Karen Beecher, while their teacher is Lucas “Snapper” Carr.

Reviewing these 26 episodes is interesting to watch seeds planted early finally sprout or connections other DC animated series are made clear. Additionally, it’s fun to see familiar behind-the-scenes names such as director Jay Oliva who graduated from episodic stories to the feature animated films including the recent Assault on Arkham. Peter David gets his due by contributing a few episode scripts as well.

Weisman does a nice job with the themes teens experience such as love, jealously heightened emotions and the desire to live up the adults’ expectations while still trying forge a unique identity. He also has a clear through-line for the stories so the chronology ticks off days at a time and is internally consistent unlike so many other animated shows. Secrets that have been introduced previously come into play in the penultimate episode which also sees Milestone’s Rocket join the team. Then comes the season one finale which brings many threads together and reveals Vandal Savage being behind much of the trouble. There’s fighting but also a 16-hour gap when Batman, Hawkwoman, John Stewart, Martian Manhunter, Superman, and Wonder Woman were absent and their whereabouts helps set the stage for season two, when the series was renamed Young Justice: Invasion.

While not the best of the DC animated fare, it is among the top five shows and despite its fans does not get its just due. Rewatching these, I was reminded how much fun this series was and it looks great on high definition disc. There are no extras, but that’s par for Warner Archives.

The Yeti Files: Meet the Bigfeet
By Kevin Sherry
Scholastic Press, 122 pages, $8.99

Yetis are one of the most persistent legends around the globe and we covered more than our fair share of such stories at Weekly World News. They are also perfect material for a children’s book. Kevin Sherry, a veteran storyteller, explores the nature of Yeti life in The Yeti Files.

Apparently, Yeti are secretive on purpose so when a Yeti named Brian is glimpsed, he goes into hiding. This prompts his cousin Blizz Richards to go in search of him, propelling a story about family and acceptance among other species. We meet a variety of cyptids all drawn in a style making them non-threatening to the young readers this volume is aimed at.

Blizz’s narration gives us the inside scoop on crypitds, large and small, while being amusing. What’s odd is that cryptids apparently do everything humans do: eat too much, use the Internet, and have family reunions. There’s little unique here about their culture other than their desire to remain hidden from view. Hoping to change that is George Vanquist, self-proclaimed cyptozoologist, but as Buzz describes him, is actually clueless. He’s in search of Brian or his family and threatens to find the family reunion, requiring some ingenuity from the Yeti collective.

As threats go, Vanquist is more a bumbling one, there to provide comic relief but is actually so inept and dumb it detracts from a stronger story.

Sherry’s writing and artwork is appealing and this should be a gentle way to introduce young readers into the larger worlds of creatures sand fantasy.

Sisters
By Raina Telgemeier
Scholastic Graphix, 197 pages, $24.99 (hardcover)/$10.99 (softcover)

Mining one’s past for story ideas is a tried and true method but comes with the risks of exposing family and friends to the harsh spotlight so it can be challenging. Thankfully, cartoonist Raina Telgemeier has a wonderfully supportive family, who have allowed her to explore her early years in several works, starting with 2010’s Smile, and this month the wonderful Sisters.

Smile was all about coping with the arrival of braces while Sisters takes place sometime later as the family makes a pilgrimage from San Francisco to Colorado to see relatives. There’s 14 year old Raina, nine year old Amara, and six year old brother Will. As they drive there and back, the road trip is broken up with flashbacks tracings Raina’s first lesson in being careful what you wish for. After hoping for a sister, Amara arrives and she’s no fun at all. First there’s the crying then the usually sibling fighting and then the rivalry as both demonstrate artistic skills. Despite common ground, they just cannot stand one another, so Raina retreats behind her headphones while Amara takes in the world around her.

Telgemeier is brave and confident enough to mine emotional territory while making her younger self overly emotional and far from the hero of the story. She’s withdrawn and moody, excessively fearful of reptiles, amplified when Amara desperately wants and eventually receives a snake. She’s so looking forward to hanging with her cousins, cherishing memories of their last visit many years earlier so of course the reality never measures up. This further isolates her from her surroundings which means she has been missing all the signs of her parents’ marriage collapsing. Amara, a far more observant girl, has noticed but said nothing.

Cleverly, the flashbacks bring us along from Amara’s arrival right up to the events just prior to the fateful car trip. Things then come together as the family, minus dad, is driving west and the van breaks down. Mom and Will are off to find a tow truck, leaving the sisters alone in the car where, finally, they begin to connect.

Telgemeier’s open, colorful artwork is pleasing to the eye and she takes her time setting things up and never crowding the story. She does a nice job aging her characters while keeping them recognizable, and keeps the settings clear. This is a wonderful sequel to Smile and a worthy follow-up to last year’s fictional Drama.

The universal themes portrayed here will allow families to recognize some aspect of themselves in the dynamic, much as I saw me and my brother in Raina and Amara although we were much older before peace settled between us. Scholastic recommends the book for ages 8-12 but really, it’s a fine all ages read.

Based on a video game, Batman: Arkham, which I do not play, I came into Batman: Assault on Arkham, without any particular predisposition. As the first editor of the Suicide Squad, I was intrigued to see how they would operate. As I feared, screenwriter Heath Corson totally misused the team in this violent, pointless direct-to-animated mess which is unleashed on Tuesday.

Amanda Waller (CCH Pounder) played within the gray areas of the DC Universe, picking damaged heroes and villains, as needed for missions. She made sure there was a field leader to keep them in line, and offered the heroes something they wanted and the villains a chance at clearing their records. Here, she collects a motley assortment of villains without a real rationale for each, putting them together for a mission that makes little sense. The silly MacGuffin here is that the Riddler (Matthew Gray Gubler) has stolen a database of SS operatives and intends to use that information from the confines of Arkham Asylum. Her team has to go in and retrieve the data from his cane so you would want people good at stealth, lock picking, electronics, etc. It makes little sense to bring in a behemoth like King Shark (John DiMaggio) or KGBeast and after Waller demonstrates the effectiveness of the implanted bombs by killing the Beast, does not replace his brawn, sending them in short-handed.

We have, instead, Harley Quinn (Hynden Walch), who makes sense given she used to work there; Deadshot (Neal McDonough), Captain Boomerang (Greg Ellis), Killer Frost (Jennifer Hale), King Shark, and Black Spider (Giancarlo Esposito). They have to infiltrate the Asylum, which by this time should really have installed a revolving door given how unsecure it is, armed with materiel courtesy of the Penguin (Nolan North). Killer Frost has also been given the task of eliminating the Riddler once his data has been retrieved, not for offending Waller, but for possessing the know-how to disarm their bombs.

While rated PG-13 for violence, such as heads being blown off, we also see a nude Harley get it on with Deadshot, setting up the triangle between them and Mr. J (Troy Baker), who is keenly aware she’s back in the building, and plays on her malleable mind. Batman, meantime, twigs on to the fact the Asylum has been compromised (again) and joins the fray, eventually taking down Black Spider and impersonating him.

Let’s not forget the dirty bomb the Joker has managed to bring into the asylum and keeps stored in Harley’s mallet, neatly placed in an unlocked box.

There is plenty of action, almost all of it over-the-top and unbelievable; a distinct lack of characterization, and plot holes that really irk me since I am not distracted by rapidly pressing lots of buttons on my controls. No question, director Jay Oliva knows how to handle the action, moving things along at a brisk pace so you don’t really notice what a problem the basic story is. The character design, 2D based on the video game’s 3D version, is fine although Deadshot is way too bulky and Batman’s pupils are visible.

I suppose if you like the game, you’ll enjoy the movie. If you enjoyed the original Squad, this will irk you and if you like the Squad’s current incarnation, you should be satisfied.

The 76 minute movie is presented on Blu-ray, DVD, and as an Ultraviolet digital edition. The Blu-ray comes with two nice featurettes, the first focusing on Harley herself, with Paul Dini, Mike Carlin, and others discussing how she came to be and how readily she translated from Batman: The Animated Series to the current DC Universe. I did miss hearing from Bruce Timm, her visual father. The other piece is longer and somewhat ponderous as Arkham itself is discussed by former DC editor Jack C. Harris (who suggested the name, derived from H.P. Lovecraft’s work) and writer Len Wein to sociologists providing the history of insane asylums and how it informed Arkham. The talking heads acknowledge that residence there tends to corrupt all and yet no one discussed why it is not simply razed to the ground and the inmates (who come and go all too easily) relocated. Instead, much due is given Grant Morrison’s Arkham Asylum graphic novel and no mention made of the forthcoming New 52 monthly Arkham Manor (an unsustainable idea but that’s for another time).

There’s a nice 10 minute peak into this fall’s sequel to Justice League War, Justice League: Throne f Atlantis finally giving Aquaman his animated due. Finally, there are well chosen episodes from the archives: “Task Force X” (Justice League Unlimited), “Emperor Joker” (Batman: The Brave and the Bold), “Two of a Kind” (Batman), and “Infiltrator” (Young Justice).