Crisis of Infinite Episodes - The Microscopic Monsters

Thank the maker, Black Manta and his Manta Men were back!

Crisis of Infinite Episodes - Vassa, Queen of the Mermen

Evil mermen, robot whales, the return of Mera! I must be in heaven. Mera got swallowed by a whale Jonah style unleashing the wrath of Aquaman. After sending a few waves of sharks to their death against the whale rays, Aquaman ripped apart one of the robots by hand. Electric eels took care of another and another one he rammed with a real whale. Funny how a flesh whale tore apart one made of steel. After defeating Vassa, "Princess of Whales" Aquaman just let her go home even though she vowed to return. Maybe Aquaman deserves some of the trouble he gets if he is dumb enough to allow his enemies to regroup and try again.

Spotlight on Captain Cold

Since 1957 Captain Cold has attempted to put the Scarlet Speedster on ice. Despite his Captain's rank, Cold has never reached the levels of popularity or recognition of the Batman's civilian foe Mr. Freeze - for whom he is frequently mistaken.

Crisis of Infinite Episodes - The Deadly Drillers

If for nothing else, you have to give Aqualad credit. He could have gone the lazy way and called himself "Aquaboy," but he classed it up a bit with the lad suffix, which begs the question, "Is there an Aqualass?" Google says no, but there is an Aquagirl. Anyways, believe it or not, there are actually two Aqualads. The first and best known was named Garth. In the comics, Garth began as a sidekick and then like Robin came into his own taking on a new hero codename, Tempest. He eventually died. The second Aqualad, just recently introduced, was named Jackson. Jackson happened to be the son of none other than Aquaman's nemesis Black Manta and yet he too thought "lad" was a fitting moniker.

Crisis of Infinite Episodes - The Ice Dragon

The episode opened like something off the SyFy network with an underwater ice dragon battling some sort of sharktopus. After getting trapped in ice with A-Lad, Aquaman proved its not what you can do, but who you know, when he recruited some saw faced fish and a hammer head shark to bust him out. Eventually Aquaman tricked the dragon into trapping itself inside an iceberg and he was perfectly content shipping the dragon off to the arctic for someone else to deal with.

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Episode Count: 0119
Series Count: (09 of 36)

Crisis of Infinite Episodes - The Crimson Monster from the Pink Pool

I will refrain from making the joke I want to about this episode's title, but you have to admit, it is a bit of an odd choice. The monster itself however has a pretty amazing design. Most of the creatures in these cartoons are pushovers, but that thing was serious business. After being batted around a bit, Aquaman summoned an octopus to create a smoke screen which had the side effect of turning the monster blue and neutralizing his acidic spray. That was lucky. At that point he began essentially just a punching bag for fish. A-Man hauled the beast back to its pink hole but the octopus ink was so potent the hole was also neutralized, whatever that means.

Retrospective 2011 - Part 4

Batman: Year One 

I have already said a lot about Batman: Year One, so to sum it up, it was pretty good. Great actually, right up there with Batman: Under the Red Hood. I feel it did the source material, one of my favorite graphic novels, justice. Its just a shame that the story goes by so fast... Hopefully The Long Halloween is in the pipeline as it would make an amazing follow-up. As far as the DC releases in 2011, they were overall pretty impressive. Both Year One and All Star Superman were top tier quality releases and along with Emerald Knights, all three 2011 releases were solid - perhaps the best year of the batch so far.