Welcome to The Not-So-New 52, your digital Swampflix comic book (adaptation) newsstand! Starting in 2007, DC Comics and Warner Premiere entered the direct-to-home-video market with animated features, mostly in the form of adaptations of well-received event comics or notable arcs. This Swampflix feature takes its name from the 2011 DC relaunch event “The New 52,” and since there are (roughly) fifty-two of these animated features as of the start of 2024, Boomer is watching them in order from the beginning with weekly reviews of each. So, get out your longboxes and mylar sleeves and get ready for weekly doses of grousing, praise, befuddlement, recommendations, and occasional onomatopoeia as we get animated for over fifteen years of not-so-new comic cartoons. 

If you were on any message board, TV Tropes page, or fan forum that was every even loosely connected to DC Comics during a certain period of time, then you know all about Terra, the earthbending girl whose inevitable betrayal of the Teen Titans caused the first faneurysm (™ me) in an uncountable number of fragile young minds and whose specific betrayal of poor little Beast Boy broke more hearts than the siege of Troy. The hair-pulling, the weeping, the gnashing of teeth – it was all the rage at exactly the same moment that every nerd boy was creaming himself over Summer Glau and the rosy fingers of the dawning of SuperWhoLock were just taking hold of the horizon. It’s so well known that, when Young Justice used the character in its fourth season, they managed to pull out a few unexpected surprised by subverting the same old story. See, back in the 80s, there was a relaunch of an older comic, now rechristened The New Teen Titans, and the most well-remembered storyline from that series’s entire run was entitled “The Judas Contract,” in which fan favorite character Terra turned out to be a plant within the organization, operating under the guidance of Slade “Deathstroke” Wilson. Terra appeared in an unvoiced cameo in the post-credits sequence of Justice League vs. Teen Titans, setting up this film’s narrative. 

After a flashback sequence that shows us the meet cute between Dick Grayson (Sean Maher), then still the original Robin, and alien refugee Starfire (Kari Wahlgren), we return to the present, where it has been almost a year since Tara “Terra” Markov (Pumpkin star Christina Ricci, who may not be the biggest “get” these movies have managed to bring on board, but who is perhaps the most exciting to me) joined the team. The team is currently working to bring down an organization known as Hive, which is fronted by a cult leader called Brother Blood (Gregg Henry) and his right-hand woman, Mother Mayhem (Meg Foster!). In between missions, we get insight into their various slices of life. Jaime “Blue Beetle” Reyes (Jake T. Austin) starts volunteering at the local shelter, as it helps him feel connected to the family that he is currently separate from because the alien machine on his back mistrusts Jaime’s father. Raven (Taissa Farmiga) is continuing to work on controlling her powers, and she now has a gem in her forehead in which her demonic father is imprisoned. Dick and Starfire are preparing to move in together, while Garfield “Beast Boy” Logan (Brandon Soo Hoo) is nursing an obvious crush on Terra. All of the team is invested in getting her to open up, but she remains reserved and standoffish. Life gets more complicated when the assumed-dead Slade “Deathstroke” Wilson (Miguel Ferrera, replacing Thomas Gibson) re-emerges working with Brother Blood in pursuit of his vengeance against Damian (Stuart Allan). 

As much as I liked JLvTT (with some reservations, especially that horrible emo song), this one is still an improvement on that installment. Unlike the unrepentant psychopath that she is in most versions, this Terra is legitimately conflicted. I’ve always really liked when an ongoing piece of long from media has a “breather” installment in which we get to see a more relaxed side of our characters and learn more about them and what they’re like in their down time. I enjoy a lot of the moments between Starfire and Dick, since we’ve mostly seen him as a tangential character to the various and sundry Batman-focused entries on this list, and Starfire’s playful energy breathes life into the film, especially the teases about their sex life; I appreciate that if there’s one thing we know about these two, it’s that they are Gomez-and-Morticia horny for one another, and you love to see it. There are a few other things that are risque here, including what a horn dog Garfield is for Terra. My personal favorite, though, comes in a scene in which Jaime gets a little too worked up about his fellow volunteer, Traci, and has to hop into the walk-in freezer to try and get his “scarab” to understand that his quickening pulse doesn’t mean he’s in danger. It’s played like an erection joke, including the position that he’s in, hiding his gun arm, when Traci finds him:

It’s notable that this movie is the most successful comedy in this series so far. There have been little touches of humor throughout, which has been hit or miss. Steve Trevor’s “comical” outdated sexism in Wonder Woman didn’t work for me, but the banter in JL: War was fun, and it still mostly worked in JL: Throne of Atlantis. I don’t normally laugh aloud when I’m watching most comedies at home by myself, but this one elicited multiple chuckles from me. I probably shouldn’t have found it so funny, but there’s a scene where Terra asks Garfield if he knows how she became an orphan, and he responds with “Umm … your parents died?” that made me laugh aloud. Later still, when Deathstroke has set various traps for the Titans, Dick escapes and is searching for the others and finds the trap set for Garfield—a big red button labeled “Do Not Press” that, when pressed, shoots tranquilizer darts—his exasperated muttering of “Come on, Gar,” is legitimately hilarious. Screenwriter E.J. Altbacker has mostly done TV series writing, but he has done two previous animated features: previous installment Justice League Dark and, um, Scooby-Doo! & WWE: Curse of the Speed Demon, which I suppose explains his comedy credentials. That kind of crossover energy may also explain why Kevin Smith appears as himself in this one, which was one of the few off-notes in play here, and I say that as someone who doesn’t particularly dislike him like many other critics. Still, once again, even though we’re past the halfway point, I’m still occasionally finding something new to praise in these movies, and even though there have been a few that felt like such a chore to get through that I started to doubt my commitment to Sparkle Motion this project, this renews my vigor. 

Which is not to say that this movie is all fun and games. Brother Blood isn’t a character who was created just for this film, obviously, but if you did play Mad Libs to come up with a goofy name for an edgelord, “Brother Blood” has a pretty high likelihood of ending up on the list. His brand of violence is a little ho-hum; it may be more that my brain is broken, but when we find him bathing in a pool of blood, I wasn’t impressed, even when we panned up to see the drained body of a reporter who had tried holding him accountable in an earlier interview. It could be that he’s simply not that scary next to Mayhem, since Foster’s trademark rasp imbues all of her lines with a coldness so lacking in compassion that it’s genuinely unsettling. Even more skin-crawling, however, is a scene that occurs after Terra’s true colors have been revealed and she’s back with Deathstroke, entering his command center with cheeks rouged to hell and back and wearing a little pink shift with one spaghetti strap seductively pulled off of the shoulder. We’re not given an exact age for her, but I’d say she’s probably fifteen but looks younger, and her Alicia-Silverstone-in-The–Crush act toward the much older Deathstroke is effectively gross. It’s clear that he’s not into it, but that doesn’t stop him from continuing to promise her that the two of them can be together on some elusive someday, encouraging her ongoing affections but rebuffing her when she acts on them, so that he can continue to manipulate her and use her powers for his own ends. It’s surprisingly dark for a series of movies that have normally equated more adult with more violent, and gives this film a bit more depth than the flicks it shares shelf space with. 

I mentioned Young Justice above, and there was a tactic that the animators of that series turned to in seasons three and four to help cut some corners on the budget. Starting in the third season, the episode’s credits would play over a mostly still image (with the occasional shooting star in the night sky, or the repeated motion of an animal’s breathing in their sleep) while characters had conversations with each other. I was a big fan of this, actually, as it broadened the world a bit, followed up on lingering plot threads and in some cases provided closure on characters who were no longer a part of the main storylines. This started to become more obvious in the show proper during the fourth season, when montages of still images became a part of the storytelling, and although it was noticeable, I wouldn’t call it detrimental. That technique is also becoming somewhat more apparent in these films. In the last Teen Titans movie, it was used during the montage of the characters getting to know each other at the carnival (with that aforementioned terrible emo song), and it happens here, too, when the others throw Terra a surprise party to commemorate the anniversary of her joining the team, among other scenes. In Young Justice, I was happy to accept this as part of an ongoing effort to keep costs under control, and whatever got me more Young Justice was just fine with me. Here, it feels a little cheaper. Conversely, I’ve often cited in these reviews that I wish that there was a little more dynamic movement in the action sequences, and this one delivered on that; in particular, there’s a scene in which Dick’s shoulder is dislodged, and he has to fight Deathstroke with one arm hanging limply, and it’s exceptionally animated. You win some, you lose some. And hey, at least for the first time since Superman: Unbound, we made it through a whole movie without Batman in it. 

I read online that this one is considered the point where the DCAMU (sigh) really matured and came into its own. I’d grant that, although I think that JLvTT and JL Dark would also be contenders for that title. It feels like a real movie, and its tragic ending evokes the conclusion of my cherished Under the Red Hood, which is always a plus in my book. I hope that’s true, since these have mostly been pretty average so far, and I hope we can only go up from here. 

-Mark “Boomer” Redmond