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Monday, March 02, 2009

Brave and The Bold: "Deep Cover for Batman!"

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Aquaman made a third appearance--sort of--on last Friday's episode of Brave and the Bold!

In "Deep Cover for Batman!", Bats gets caught up in a fight taking place on a whole 'nother alternate Earth--this one where the heroes we know are villains, and the people we know as villains are the heroes!


Through most of the episode, Batman has to pretend he is his evil doppelganger, Owl Man, and he teams up on the sly with The Red Hood, who is a hero on this Earth.

Eventually, though, their plans are discovered by Silver Cyclone, the evil version of Red Tornado, as well as other bad guys, including a certain Sea King!:

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All the various heroes and villains have it out, but of course the protagonists are flipped. In this case, we're actually rooting for Aquaman to lose to Black Manta!:
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...hey, this Black Manta looks a lot like Mirror Master.

Anyway, this Aquaman doesn't get to say much (actually anything), and the next time we see him he's imprisoned, when the evil Green Arrow, The Blue Bowman, is thrown in with him:
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The other bad guys find out, to their chagrin, that Silver Cyclone was playing both ends against the middle, and his big ultimate weapon thingy is going to wipe out all organic life on one of the Earths, leaving him to swoop in and become ultimate ruler.

Batman and the rest are concerned, of course:
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...that's all we get to see of Aquaman, or Black Manta, and the episode ends with Silver Cyclone being defeated by The Red Hood, and Batman being transported home.

Except that, when he arrives, something's very wrong: Batman is wanted by the police! To be continued!


I may have missed it, but I don't believe the evil Aquaman is named, so I'm not sure what he's called. Since he never speaks in the episode, voice of Aquaman John Di Maggio isn't listed in the credits.

I'm really happy that Aquaman is showing up so much on this show--I figure this level of exposure can only help his chances of getting a regular book again (although Blue Beetle is on the show a lot too, and DC just cancelled his book, so maybe it doesn't make a damn bit of difference). At the very least, young kids will get to become familiar with the character, like many of us did via Super Friends.

Note to Mattel: You could make an action figure of this Aquaman really easily--just a quick repaint, and you're done!
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Shameless Plug Department: A few days ago, I started my newest blogging venture, titled After M*A*S*H, all about my all-time favorite TV show.

This has been an idea I've wanted to get to for a long time, and after many delays (basically finding a few extra minutes in my day that weren't already spent blogging) I decided to kick the blog off on Saturday, February 28th, the 26th anniversary of the show's (still!) record-breaking final episode.

Since this is my first non-comic book related blog, I have absolutely no idea what--if any--audience spillover there'll be from my other blogs, so all I can hope is that those of you out there, who love the show like I do, will take a few moments of each day and stop by to check out what I'm doing.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

I've been wondering about all of the Aquaman appearances on B:B&B. I assume all the Superman characters are off limits, so we won't see them. Have we seen Wonder Woman or the Flash yet? Maybe they are off limits, too.

Whatever the reason, it is fun to see Aquaman pop up so often, as well as the actions figures (two diiferent Aquaman figures and a Black Manta.)

Wings1295 said...

Dang! I missed the episode. Hopefully it will rerun soon.

And good luck on the M*A*S*H blog, Rob!

Dixon said...

Root for Aquaman to lose to Black Manta? NEVER! I don't care how mixed-up that parallel universe might be...

Anonymous said...

So, this episode had a lot of strengths. I enjoyed the premise greatly, and I really enjoyed the brief bits with the Red Hood, especially his origin. That being said, I was disappointed overall, mostly because...surprise surprise, they lacked subtlety. Basically, all we got were generically "evil" twins of the characters in the series, and in the spirit of "classic" alternate universe stories, the only thing to distinguish them from their good counterparts was that they were wearing different COLORS. Not even a different costume design, except for Owlman. Weak. I would have liked something more visually interesting than Green Arrow...but blue. What really bothered me is that there was no real substance to any of these villains. I mean, thinking back to the similar story in JLU, or the Syndicate Rules storyline in the comics...there was SO MUCH POTENTIAL here, and so little done with it. I don't know, I would have really liked to see what made a good Black Manta tick...but I understand that this show simply isn't going to give me that. It was enjoyable despite these things, although for a show that prides itself on flash over substance, I expected a bit more flash in the character designs. Look, Grodd has white fur, he must be good!