An interesting one. Nice seeing them work out the chain of command, and I like the way Kaldur/Aqualad emerged as a natural leader. Although he's such a natural fit for the role that his talk about Robin being born to lead the team sounds unconvincing, like an
Informed Ability in TV Tropes terms. So far this Robin has yet to demonstrate any reason why anyone else would see him as a born leader. (And again his humor is based on removing prefixes from words that are never used without them. This time it's "concerted" from "disconcerted." Enough already.)
They seem to be portraying Bane as a maker and distributor of Venom, which is ironic, since in the comics, after he kicked his addiction to Venom, he became an antihero on a crusade to take down its makers and distributors. But I guess the idea in this "Earth-16" setting is to go with early versions of the characters. I would've liked to see some mention of Bane being inspired by his clash with Robin to begin stalking Batman and probing him for weaknesses. But at least we did see a hint of the mastermind Bane is in the comics, in the way he played the sides against each other. Weird how his luchador mask seemed to be reinterpreted here as face paint.
And I agree that "Sportsmaster" is a lame name and concept for a villain, but this goofy Silver Age character was reinterpreted here as a real badass, with an eye so keen that he could track Miss Martian even when she was cloaked. As for the Kobra cult, I don't find them substantially less silly here than I did when they showed up in
Batman Beyond. But it's interesting to see some continuity with the Blockbuster stuff from the pilot. And it's an intriguing (if icky) design concept, the way the increase in muscle size actually tears the skin open.
I'm starting to get comfortable with Bruce Greenwood as Batman. He's doing a good job.
There was an error in the date captions -- they said "June 18" and "June 22," even though the series premiere was on July 4. But the last caption said "August," so I guess those were meant to be "July." Hopefully they'll fix that in the reruns/DVDs. It's so rare to see an animated series with a clearly defined timeline, and as something of a chronology nut, I'd prefer not to see any inconsistencies.
