kevin michael richardson

The Not-So-New 52: Justice League vs. The Fatal Five (2019)

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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. 

At the end of my review of Reign of the Supermen, I mentioned that, given DC’s tendency to milk every udder until it bleeds, it’s possible that the “DCAMU” may one day return following the yet-to-be-reviewed Justice League Dark: Apokalips War that serves as the mini-franchise’s finale. After all, who would have thought that, nearly thirteen years after the 2006 finale of Justice League Unlimited, there would be another installment in the DC Animated Universe that we all knew and loved (I have decided that I must align myself with the camp that does not count that other thing). In 2019, Warner Animation released Justice League vs. The Fatal Five, a continuation of sorts from JLU, and honestly? I love it. 

We open in the 31st Century, where some members of the Legion of Superheroes attempt to hold off several villains as they attempt to steal a bubble-shaped time machine. A future, heroic version of Brainiac attempts to upload a virus to the time craft so that even if they fail to stop the bad guys, they won’t be able to get aboard and get up to their temporal shenanigans. The trio of villains gets past him just as the upload hits 99%, and they are able to get away, although not without a stowaway, Thomas “Star Boy” Kallor (Elyes Gabel), who travels on the outside of the time sphere and manages to get the upload complete, imprisoning the villains within as the sphere falls to earth in the 21st Century, as does Star Boy. While Superman (George Newbern) and Wonder Woman (Susan Eisenberg) save civilians from the falling ship, Star Boy lands and realizes that his supply of medication, which he needs to take periodically to stabilize his thoughts and clear his mind, has been destroyed. He goes in search of a replacement at a nearby pharmacy only to realize too late that there is no equivalent in this time period; in the process of attempting to get help, he disrobes because he thinks that the pharmacist is frightened by his costume. As one would expect when a naked man appears in a pharmacy in the middle of the night demanding a medication that does not exist and talking about being from a different time, the authorities become involved, and Batman (Kevin Conroy) ultimately appears on the scene, too, taking the temporally displaced babbler to Arkham, while the locked sphere is taken to Justice League headquarters for analysis. 

After a ten month time jump, we meet our new additions to the League since we last saw them, lo these many years ago. At JL HQ, Mr. Terrific (Kevin Michael Richardson), a supergenius gadgeteer hero is working to unlock the mysterious sphere. In the field, Batman is training/testing Miss Martian (Daniela Bobadilla), niece of team member Martian Manhunter, to see if she’s ready to join the team. Finally and most interestingly, we meet Jessica Cruz (Diane Guerrero), a woman who, while hiking with some friends in the Pacific Northwest, stumbled upon a mafia burial; her friends were executed in front of her and she managed to escape, but now suffers from extreme agoraphobia. She also happens to be Earth’s most recent recruit into the Green Lantern Corps, and it’s her that the villains from the future are after. You see, the titular Fatal Five were defeated in their own time, ten centuries hence, and the heroes of the future could think of no way to properly incarcerate their most powerful member except to send her into the past, when the Green Lantern Corps still existed, so that they could lock her up there. When Terrific and Superman finally crack the enigma of the time sphere, the three freed villains can now seek out Jessica to use her as the key to free their incarcerated companions and become the Fatal Five once more. 

Within the first five minutes of the movie, as I mentioned above, we get to see the power trio of the Justice League again, and I have to tell you, I was not expecting to have the emotional reaction to this that I did. I imprinted on the nineties animated Batman at a very young age (I have very distinct memories of running down our very long driveway from the bus after kindergarten to watch it on Baton Rouge’s FOX affiliate, WGMB, and can even remember specific images and episodes), and I grew up with that franchise and its associated media like Justice League and Justice League Unlimited. I was nineteen when JLU ended, so this version of these characters were very formative for me. When Superman saves a child from being obliterated by the falling time ship and commends the kid for his courage but tells him that it’s okay to run sometimes, and then Wonder Woman appears next to him, and they play that electric guitar riff (you know, the one from like fifteen seconds into the JLU opening theme), I actually got a little verklempt. 

I also really like that the group we know and love is still together, and still gaining new members, and that this expanded runtime allows the story to center in on Jessica, to deal straightforwardly with her PTSD and her agoraphobia, and to allow her to bond with this timelost hero of the future over their dual psychological issues. Although it would have been nice to see Flash, Manhunter, or some of the other characters that we haven’t seen in a long time, the absence of John Stewart, the Green Lantern from the TV show (an absence that is explained by the fact that Lanterns are dealing with a major issue in deep space, which also handily explains why the prison break on their headquarters world meets such little resistance) means that we get to spend a lot of time with Jessica, and I really liked her. She’s ultimately this film’s main character, as she is the one who undergoes dynamic change and growth over the course of the narrative, up to and including facing her fears in her darkest hour and ultimately forging herself into something stronger as a result. To a lesser extent, we get to spend some time with Miss Martian, a character who was still largely unknown at the time that JLU went off the air (she would become more prominent after the character was one of the main cast in Young Justice), and it’s fun to see her in this animation style; she’s very cute, and I like her characterization in this narrative. 

On an extratextual note, this one is also special because it’s the last time that the late Kevin Conroy voiced his iconic role. After JLU’s conclusion, he voiced the character in several of these animated releases: Gotham Knight, Public Enemies, Apocalypse, Doom, Flashpoint Paradox, Assault on Arkham, and The Killing Joke, but this was the first time that he was reprising this Batman, with this design, the one that I grew up with and the one that I love most. Conroy passed away in 2022 after a private battle with cancer, and although archive audio (I assume) was used in one of these animated films that was released just this year, this 2019 release is the last time that he really got to play this part. It’s made all the more touching that there is a sequence in which Batman, Jessica, and Miss Martian enter Star Boy’s mind and see the future there, which includes a museum dedicated to the founders of the Justice League (and in which Jessica sees a statue of herself, which helps her to understand her place in all of this and gives her the confidence that she needs to keep picking herself up again). Here, Batman gazes upon a memorial to himself, some hundred decades into the future, and although there’s no change in his attitude, it’s a loving (if coincidental) tribute to Conroy as well, who will forever be my Batman. May he rest in peace. 

-Mark “Boomer” Redmond

The Not-So-New 52: Batman and Harley Quinn (2017)

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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. 

I think that I would have had a better impression of Batman and Harley Quinn if I had seen it when it was released, instead of in 2024, when we’ve already had a few seasons of the excellent animated adult Harley Quinn TV show. I’m sure this raucous, foul-mouthed representation of the character—which now seems like a tamer, less funny version of the TV series version—was probably more fun and exciting seven years ago, but it doesn’t hold up anymore. That’s only partially the film’s fault, however; it can’t be held accountable for the fact that what I think of as the best version of Harley Quinn was right around the corner, ready to overshadow it. I can blame it for being, well, not very good. 

In a (contentious and challenged) continuation of the beloved Batman: The Animated Series, Batman (Kevin Conroy) and Nightwing (Loren Lester, reprising) must turn to the recently paroled/released Harley Quinn (Melissa Rauch, taking over for Arleen Sorkin, who originated the role and the character in the 90s) to try and find out where her BFF Poison Ivy (an utterly wasted Paget Brewster) is hiding. Ivy has recently teamed with poor man’s Swamp Thing “Floronic Man” (Kevin Michael Richardson) to steal some actual Swamp Thing matter from STAR Labs, with the goal of doing some “One man’s eco-terrorism is another man’s most ethical way to save the planet” shenanigans. Noting that Harley hasn’t reported to her parole officer in months, Nightwing finds her working at a kind of Super-Hooters where women dress in skimpy(er) versions of superheroine/villainess costumes. Tailing her, the two end up fighting one another; he asks why she’s resorted to this line of work instead of using her psychology doctorate, and she gets real with him about what the job market is like for ex-cons. She knocks him out, he wakes up tied to the bed, and they eventually hook up (although one can read the consensuality of the situation as dubious). She agrees to help the Dynamic Duo, they go on a couple of fest quests, and eventually they find Ivy and her new co-conspirator and save the day. 

Due to time constraints as a result of work, travel, and my social life, I ended up accidentally watching this one as if it were a three-part episode of the series, as the film’s 74-minute runtime breaks down into three neat segments that are roughly the length of an episode of The Animated Series. I don’t think it suffered from that. In fact, I don’t mention it often, but I’ve probably watched about a third of these so far in more than one sitting, a practice I don’t normally condone (a movie is like a spell or most poems, to be consumed all at once or the magic could be dispelled), but which hasn’t really impacted my reading of these as texts. If anything, it’s made me engage with them more. The ones that really capture my interest are straightforward, one sitting, beginning to end viewing experiences, while the ones that fail to really grab me are the ones that I realize I have to rewind and rewatch parts of because my mind was starting to wander. And some, like Gotham Knight and Emerald Knights, are episodic by design, while others are episodic as a result of the fact that they are adapting stories that originated in a serialized, month-to-month medium, like All Star Superman (although that one gets a full viewing every time). Viewed through that lens, this is a three-parter with a first episode that I found mostly boring, a second part that was a big improvement, and a finale that was fine, I guess. 

First, the good. The “Superbabes” restaurant is a fun sight gag, but that’s all there really is to write home about in the first act. The middle is better, as the unlikely trio’s research brings them to a shack in the woods where assorted colorful hoodlums and hooligans gather, with visual references to the Adam West Batman series aplenty, and even includes two musical numbers, one of which is endearing and funny (we’ll get to the second in “the bad”). There’s even a toilet humor gag that managed to cross the line into getting an actual laugh from me; Harley has some greasy food, she begs for the Batmobile to be pulled over so that she can use the facilities, Batman assumes it’s a ruse to escape and refuses, Harley passes a great volume of gas, Nightwing begs to roll the window down, and Batman again refuses, saying that it “Smells like discipline.” It’s a good gag, as there’s an abundance of writers who adore Batman to the point of biblical idolatry, and to tweak their over-the-top stoicism is funny both with and without that context. The final act also includes a pretty funny bit, where it seems like the day will be saved by the appearance of Swamp Thing, here a nearly omniscient/omnipotent vegetation deity, but he really just shows up to wag his finger at the villain and affects the plot not at all. It’s like the seed of an idea for the kind of gags and bits that the Harley Quinn animated series pulls off, and although it’s in its infancy here, it’s a good joke. 

When it comes to the bad, I have to say, I don’t like Rauch as Harley. It’s funny, because I know she got her big break on Big Bang Theory, a series I have seen approximately 57 minutes of and all of them under duress, the same place that TV Harley Kaley Cuoco gathered much of her attention. (To me, I will always remember her from the endless promotion of 8 Simple Rules that aired constantly during reruns of Grounded for Life when I was in high school, as well as for her role as Billie, the Cousin Oliver of original recipe Charmed’s final season, because my brain is broken in so, so many ways.) Cuoco seems born to voice this role, while Rauch is doing … I don’t know, I’m sure it’s her best. It’s not quite as iconic as Sorkin’s original Harley, or as perfectly suited as Tara Strong’s chameleon-like version, or as unhinged as Cuoco’s ascension to animated Harley supreme. Sometimes, when watching the show, I can almost see Cuoco in the sound booth when she lets out one of Harley’s frustrated cries, really getting into the body language and everything. In this, Harley sounds so canned and rehearsed that you imagine that there was almost no motion during the entire recording session. It’s a very frustrating experience. This gets pushed past my tolerance limits when we have an entire musical performance of Rauch-as-Harley singing the seminal, perfect The Nerves (although obviously best known as a Blondie single) track “Hanging on the Telephone.” I’m not one to get upset when a filmmaker gets a little self-indulgent, but this is a real speedbump in this one, especially as it comes on the heels of the aforementioned fun music number. 

I wish that I could watch this with completely fresh eyes when it was a new release, without the baggage of a much better, funnier, more exciting, and better performed adaptation of the character. But we’re all trapped within the horizon of our experiences, so here I am, trying and failing to like this release. 

-Mark “Boomer” Redmond