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Sunday, February 01, 2015

Aquaman Episode 16 - The Brain, The Brave and the Bold

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Aquaman Episode 16 - "The Brain, The Brave and the Bold" by Dennis Marks

A mysterious ship approaches the domed city of Atlantis. It is piloted by the malevolent toad known as The Brain, who plans to claim Atlantis' riches and technology as his own. Luckily standing--swimming--in his way is that Aquatic Avenger, Aquaman!
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The Brain's first salvo is to send a phalanx of missiles out to destroy Atlantis' dome. Aquaman, Aqualad, and their finny friends get in the way and smash the missiles, causing them to "harmlessly" explode nowhere near Atlantis.

The Brain then tries a different tack: emitting something called "Sonic Brain Waves", which turns Aquaman's finny friends against the Sea King! Aquaman tries to command them, but instead they mindlessly swim into The Brain's ship, along with Storm and Imp! Thankfully Aquaman and Aqualad save their steeds just in time.

After Aquaman is temporarily knocked out by one of The Brain's raygun-wielding henchmen, Aqualad is kidnapped and put under the Sonic Brain Wave machine:
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This turns Aqualad against Aquaman, and the Sea King has to find a way to control his sidekick without doing him harm. Tusky intervenes by slapping the rogue young man in the head, knocking him to the sea floor and breaking the spell. Aquaman uses some whales to smash The Brain's ship, causing it to explode. With this latest threat neutralized, we have reached...The End!


I can't be the only one surprised--and just a little bit disappointed--that an episode with "Brave and the Bold" in the title was A)not written by Bob Haney, and B)didn't feature a guest appearance by another member of the Justice League. For some reason, Filmation kept Aquaman separated from his JLA pals (other than appearing in the opening credits to the JLA cartoon), and none of them ever showed up in this show. Too bad, that would have been amazing.

This episode is a bit of a change of pace, in that it features Aqualad and Aquaman squaring off, if only for a few seconds. He may been unbearably goofy, but The Brain had a better plan than most of the hapless alien invaders we've seen so far.


3 comments:

Anthony said...

Yeah, for some reason the show didn't have Aquaman in the JLA outside the opening. Though the "super-superheroes" (to quote the Hour's theme song) also lacked Batman and Wonder Woman in its JLA...weird...

And yes, the Brain had a decent enough plan. Though now that the Sea King's defeated him, I'm sure he's dropped his "toad" disguise and plans to head back to Acme Labs to prepare for tomorrow night... ;-)

Joseph Brian Scott said...

The Brain was the least inspired villain of the animated series to me. I don't see what makes him any smarter than any of the other ocean-conquerors Aquaman faced. He's so nondescript, in fact, he hardly needed to be changed for SATURDAY TV FUNHOUSE.

Earth 2 Chris said...

For some reason, the Brain's design has come to represent the Filmation cartoon to me. Was this on the Super Powers VHS tape?

Chris