Young Justice, Season One Volume Two
Last week, DC Entertainment released the second disc from season one of Young Justice, and the series is off to a strong start. Although DC’s live action movies have been hit-or-miss of late, DC and Warner Brothers consistently do animation very well.
Starting with Batman: the Animated Series, through to the Justice League, Wonder Woman, and Green Lantern movies, all have had great stories and animation. Young Justice continues that tradition, with some very strong storylines and characters.
If you are not familiar with Young Justice, think of them as the junior arm of the Justice League of America — the Justice League in training. No, this is not the Teen Titans … well, not exactly. Some of the members are the same (Robin and Kid Flash) but the group is not as independent as the Titans.
This is a well done animated series, more in line with the Justice League movies, though, than with the Teen Titans or Justice League TV series. The animation is less stylistic than those, but is strong and clean and well executed. More importantly, though, the stories are involving and have a well balanced mixture of action and intrigue.
The new DVD release has episodes 5, 6, 7, and 8:
- “Schooled”: Superman’s surrogate father relationship to Superboy comes to a head.
- “Infiltrator”: Green Arrow’s new sidekick, Artemis, joins the team, but she may not be all she appears.
- “Denial”: Doctor Fate is one of my favorite characters and they do him justice in this episode, although I was really disappointed that they made Madame Xanadu a fraud and throwaway character.
- “Downtime”: Great character development in this episode for Aqualad as he has to decide between life on land or life under the sea.
In this day and age of iTunes and BitTorrent, I understand why Warner Brothers needs to get out in front with DVDs on the shelves as quickly as possible. But this is four episodes for around $15, which seems kind of pricey to me, especially since it does not include any extras. That means the whole season will cost around $45 when it’s finished or $3 an episode, which also happens to be how much each episode costs online.
Season 1 of Young Justice is also available on iTunes , and the season pass is $39.99 for standard definition and $49.99. So, despite the fact that I might buy this online, saving Warner Brothers massive expense in packaging and distribution, it costs me more for the hi-def version. Oh, well, as long as they keep the series on Cartoon Network and not cancel it after two seasons — like they did the Legion of Super Heroes — I’ll be happy.
