Thrush

I would have with gone with Steel. Cooler character and he'd curb stomp Cyborg.

fujishig

Well, Timm went with John Stewart (and actually gave him more of a personality than the comics in the process) for Justice League, but Johns is in love with Hal so that was out...

The Young Justice universe has Icon, but they also have a bigger Justice League. Where's my token Asian?

fumanstan

Artemis? Sort of.

Thrush

The Atom is Asian.

PhantomStranger

Not anymore, the Asian Atom was killed off. Ray Palmer is back in the role.

Big Boy Laroux

Dammit - the title changed on my TiVo from "Young Justice" to "Young Justice: Invasion" so it didn't record. Off to watch online.

CaptainMarvel

Ugh. Same here. They're replaying it tomorrow,but next week's is also under the new title.

Deftones

shit, did the same for me! fuckers!

fwiw, it's on CNw, which isn't in HD in a bit. I'll wait for tomorrow's HD airing on CNHD

The Valeyard

Fuck!

Sonny Corinthos

'Young Justice' heads into sci-fi direction in new season

The creators of the Young Justice animated series want to include so many DC Comics characters, they're going to have to go offworld to find them all.

Young Justice: Invasion, which kicks off the show's second season Saturday morning (10:30 ET/PT) on Cartoon Network, will showcase a new direction for the series' teenage heroes such as Superboy, Aqualad, Artemis and Kid Flash.

"Our first season really focused on trying to play it straight, keep everything very grounded. Fantasy elements and far-out science-fiction elements were really kept to a minimum just to help us establish the reality we were trying to convey in our world and with our characters," says series co-creator Brandon Vietti.

"Second season, the floodgates are wide open."

But the tone of the series hasn't changed, according to co-creator Greg Weisman. Young Justice will still focus on pushing to make the superhero genre to be as realistic as it can be. Just with more cosmic stuff.

"Basically, the galaxy's coming to Earth," Weisman says, "and our guys are the front line."

Bringing in new characters from the DC Universe was always in the creators' plans — Weisman counted and they have 241 characters total appearing in the first 26-episode season of Young Justice and the second season of 20 episodes combined. They wanted to see the cast grow as former sidekicks and youngsters Robin, Miss Martian, Zatanna and their ilk came into their own under the tutelage of Batman, Superman and the rest of the grownup superheroes.

The team will be growing quickly. Wonder Girl (voiced by Parenthood star Mae Whitman) shows up in Saturday's episode, as does Adam Strange (Michael Trucco of Battlestar Galactica). Blue Beetle, Beast Boy, Lagoon Boy, Bumblebee, Batgirl and more will debut as the season progresses.

There were student-teacher relationships explored in the first season of Young Justice, Vietti says, but with so many newcomers in the second season, "we have more of a freshman vs. senior relationship dynamic going on."

And not everyone will make the cut, Weisman says. "Some are going to do really well with the team, others won't do quite so well."

Where there are heroes, there are villains and ne'er-do-well sorts. G. Gordon Godfrey, who in comics is a minion of the evil Darkseid, appears in Saturday's episode and is voiced by movie and animation veteran Tim Curry. (Asked if this means Darkseid and other folks from Apokolips will be coming later in the season, Weisman says, "I'm not going to confirm or deny.")

Lobo, voiced by David Sobolov (Teen Titans), also makes his debut, and the intergalactic mercenary is one of Vietti's favorite characters.

"He's just the embodiment of chaos," he says of Lobo. "His appearance is the top of the sci-fi iceberg for our team, the first encounter of many we'll be exploring for the rest of the season."

Adds Weisman: "The introduction of these characters is all fairly organic. We pretty much knew who we wanted to bring in more or less from day one, and this was all part of our master plan."

http://www.usatoday.com/life/comics/...ies/54582660/1

fumanstan

I didn't realize that the second season jumps ahead so far. Cool.

Big Boy Laroux

It's up on their website now.

Man, they did not waste any time introducing the new characters! It's practically a whole new show.

I'm sure they'll get into the backstories of the new guys (like bumblebee and mal duncan (who were last seen as high school students) and beast boy and miss martian's blood perhaps?), but they started off by hitting the ground running!

Giantrobo

You jackass.

Giantrobo

Lovin' this series.

The way they do their story arcs is what made JL and JLU great.

RocShemp

Love the premier but missed the MIA regulars. And the 5 year jump was odd to say the least. I wonder why they broke up Connor and M'Gann.

fumanstan

I actually didn't like the premiere that much; I think I was looking forward to more of a direct continuation with the characters already established, especially since they were already adding new characters regularly as the season went on. It seems weird that 5 years would pass without anyone figuring out what happened to those main Justice League heroes.

PhantomStranger

I like Cyborg a lot as a Titan, but he is the replacement for John Stewart's role in the League now that Hal Jordan is back.
+1
I think the jump ahead is a little too clever for this series. I would have liked to see the continued adventures of the original team from the first season. Did they drop Wally and Aqualad from the show? I don't remember seeing them at all in the first episode, which really does feel like a whole new show.

Thrush

Didnt care for it either. In the previous season they did a good job of establishing the team, characters and their relationships with each other. Now it seems they just jumped to a point where we basically dont know anything about anyone anymore.

I also don't like how new characters are being introduced. When the show started we saw where Aqualad, Superboy, Artemis etc came from. We got a bit of the characters origin and got to know what their abilities were. Now its like, plop , heres Rocket and Wondergirl, and some dude who seemingly never leaves the cave.

Big Boy Laroux

I'm sure we'll get the backstory. Will it be presented as flashbacks within episodes? Or dedicated episodes to the history? Who knows. But they can't just leave it.

And I'm sure they'll explain where aqualad, flash, and Artemis are. It's way too sloppy not to. This is pure speculation, but maybe they are all off with clone Roy still trying to find the real Roy. That threesome seems like they would focus on that (aqualad and flash are close to Roy, and Artemis is basically his replacement)

I think the 5-year jump will ultimately just end up being the method the writers took to be able to add more characters, while still keeping some kind of age continuity. This feels like one of those TV episodes where they show you the end first (which raises tons of questions), then spend the rest of the episode showing you how they got to that point. But this will be a full season of that (again, just speculation on my part - it's just how it felt to me. It felt like the writers went out of their way to create questions, even down to "what happened between superboy and miss Martian?")

Plus, I've always liked nightwing. So that's one bonus of the 5-year jump, at least for me. I hope we get to see him out on missions as well.

RocShemp

I think the 5 year jump makes sense since this was all planned by Vandal Savage. That's one guy who has all the time in the world. So a plan that takes 5 years before it even comes into motion makes perfect sense, hence the leap ahead.

However, I hated the line about their never having considered the missing Leaguers had gone off planet. I can accept that they hadn't been able to cover much of the Galaxy in five years to stumble upon where they might have gone. But that they never considered it as a possibility was just stupid.

Sonny Corinthos

It was great to see NightWing and Batgirl. I hope they become regulars on the show. I didn't know about the five year jump in time. I was wondering how Robin looked more grown up than he did last week's episode.

Big Boy Laroux

You know this is a different robin, right (Tim Drake)? The robin from the first season (dick grayson) is now nightwing.

You may know that, but your statement about an older robin seems to indicate otherwise (unless you were talking about what you saw in the previews)

Sonny Corinthos

Yeah I knew about them. I guess I was just caught off guard by seeing so many new members at one time.

boredsilly

I agree with a lot of you that I am a little bummed that we're seemingly loosing the team dynamic that the show did so well cultivating in the first season, but I still thought this episode was awesome (especially from a fanboy perspective).

Deftones

Liked it but didn't love it. Missed some of the previous characters. Didn't like the time jump. Lived seeing new members of the team(s) and dick as night wing.