Young Justice: Phantoms on HBO Max

Very much a minority opinion among the fans, though one I share.

Mainly I suspect because it predates on Shiva rather than David Cain (who hasn't appeared on the show and would arguably be mostly redundant given the presence of both Deathstroke and the much improved Sportsmaster) being the "bad parent", which some decry as "racist" (ignoring that Shiva only even considered dabbling in being good due to characters who don't exist in YJ and it's not like she was much of a positive role model to Cass anyway).

 

I'm less concerned with the semantics of her backstory than I am with her portrayal as a character; which they nailed.
But yes, cutting David Cain out of the equation and having Shiva be the fanatical nutter who raised a child to only be able to communicate through violence is a much more streamlined approach, if for no other reason than Shiva was always the more interesting character and Cain was a two dimensional cardboard cut-out with "daddy issues" scribbled on it.
Also, how often do we get to see female characters get to be strong, capable, amoral/villainous, AND a mother?

For me the core of Cassandra's character isn't the parental issues in and of themselves, it's that she was raised knowing nothing but violence and could have easily become exactly what she was intended to be, but she instead decided all on her own that this was wrong and chose all by herself to become a hero (even though at her core she doesn't see herself as one.)

Of all the bat family members that have come and gone over the years, Cass is to me the only one that (if and when the time came) both would and could take over Batman's mantle, with equal dedication and focus as Bruce himself. Whether or not she should is of course a whole other discussion.

 

I have no strong opinion on the David Cain/Lady Shiva thing but agree it was for the best, both because it's more streamlined and the similarity to Sportsmaster in this show.

But what I really appreciate about the stuff Cass-related in the Artemis arc was seeing the YJ take on how Babs got paralyzed and having it be related to her heroing instead of simply being victimized.

 

Yeah, I'm one of those that doesn't really rate Killing Joke all that highly, and not just because of it's treatment of Barbara; honestly the very premise (Batman and Joker are two sides of the same coin) is so obvious they didn't really need to belabour it so much. Hell, that basically describes almost all of the Gotham rogues' gallery from Two-Face, to Riddler, to Catwoman. They all reflect some aspect of Bruce. That's always been the point. And the attempt at macabre shock horror didn't help matters either. If anything it made it feel cheap and schlocky.
Though in fairness the Joker sanity speech is a high point for the character all on it's own.

So yes, Babs actually having some agency in what that her in the chair, giving her ownership of that is also a huge improvement (side note: I've always thought that Oracle was the definitive version of her character, so this is doubly welcome.)
Though a minor nitpick I have is that is rather undercuts what I liked most about Cass's arc in the comics; she actually killed a person as she was trained, but in that moment came the realisation (and we're talking about her as a child at the time, remember) that it was wrong. She wasn't turned, or recruited, or rescued from abuse; she saw the indoctrination for what it was and escaped it all on her own.
Not that I have a fundamental problem with her revelation coming from Babs' act of self-sacrifice, but it does change the tone a little.

 

I *LOVE* this show and have done my best to get everyone I know to watch it.

From what I understand, Mr. Moore agrees. He's not fond of the book.

At the time it came out, it seemed so amazing... but decades have made me see it a bit differently. I totally agree about Joker's sanity speech though!

 

My feelings on Moore are a little mixed. On the one hand he's a solid writer and I respect that he didn't sell out, avoiding Hollywood like the plague (but also not hamstringing his partner when he wanted to make Watchmen into a film.)
On the other hand he's the miserable bugger that grumbled about other writers making new stories with his characters when 1) he's made a career doing exactly that, 2) said characters were themselves by design thinly (if at all) disguised stand-ins for the old Charlton stable, 3) this is the same man who made a porn version of the works a J. M. Barrie, Lewis Carroll, and L. Frank Baum . . . Throwing black kettles in glass houses much?

I'll be honest, I didn't rate it that highly for the first two seasons. I mean I thought it was good, but I wasn't massively invested in the teen drama, and I think watching it week to week with a long stretch between seasons, I think I forget a lot of details and wasn't making the connections I should have been. And then it was cancelled and I just figured that was that, and put it out of my mind.
Bingeing those two seasons over again when the show came back gave me a much higher level of appreciation for the choices in tone, and for allowing the characters to grown, change and age (damn near unheard of in animation!) doing in two season what it can take comics decades to run through (and inevitably retcon and start over.)
On top of that, the latter two seasons have been leaps and bounds beyond the previous, which I suspect has a lot to do with being moved from a network cartoon channel for kids, to a prestige streaming service.

Yeah, the age at which you're first exposed to something can often make a huge difference. For example I used to really like Frank Miller's stuff. But now . . . well let's just say I'm not 14 anymore.

 

I think that's unfair. Moore's never once taken issue with other people writing Constantine or the character getting movies and TV series, and he's by far the Moore creation DC's made the most use out of. Moore even wrote a cover blurb for another writer's Hellblazer run that he enjoyed and that was *after* he'd already fallen out with DC.

His issue with Watchmen seems to specifically be that he feels DC reneged on the spirit of their agreement with him by not reverting the rights to him as was the original plan, not out of some general principle against using other people's characters.

 

This kind of thing is what contract stipulations and clauses are for. If he expected a corporation to choose being nice over profit without there being some binding legal reason to do so, then that's profoundly naïve. If he felt they explicitly violated such a contract, then that's what lawyers are for.

 

My point is he's not unhappy about other writers using characters he created. He's unhappy about the legal situation. He's not being hypocritical by using other people's characters. Unless he's used characters somewhere that were part of a similar ownership kerfluffle that I'm not aware of. No black kettles and glass houses here.

If there's one thing that can be said about Moore it's that, for better or for worse, he's unwavering in his convictions. It's pretty ironic that he created Rorschach as a criticism of a certain line of thinking because that black-and-white "no compromise" attitude pretty much is him. Hell, he admitted he hadn't voted for twenty years or something because there was never a candidate he could support.