Welcome back to yet another edition of Boomb Tube! This one is a little late due to shenanigans but we are BACK! This week: Professor Pyg and Mister Toad return, and the Teen Titans learn to read.
This week, Beware the Batman finally featured Professor Pyg and Mister Toad, the two best characters in superhero animation right now, attacking Not-Lady-Gaga for her use of fur in her wardrobe. Elsewhere, Batman took Katana out on a training date to observe other people’s behaviors and to deliver amazing dialogue.
Katana: “I see everyone else enjoying a pleasant meal.”
Batman: “I see crime.”
Their banter is interrupted by Pyg and Toad who have suspended Lady Gaga on the hand of a big clock on some building that they’re sitting on, enjoying tea and biscuits. They are the best characters. Seriously, their death trap is literally just some rope and this clock tower that was laying around. They are villains on an efficient budget. Batman saves Lady Gaga and tracks down Professor Pyg and Mister Toad (who also made a delightful debut in The Wolf Among Us this week) to (Jack) Cole Plastics where he discovers they are placing a bomb under the Gotham Opera House. Batman races there and confirms his suspicions when he sees a truck that has lazy acronyms for Pyg and Toad, and then the literal word “Bomb.” They are seriously the best villains, you guys. The bomb doesn’t even turn out to be legit, it’s a decoy for ANOTHER bomb that the duo have placed on a yacht. There, it turns out that their second bomb is just a thermometer that goes up one degree anytime someone steps onto the yacht. That’s not just scientifically implausible, it’s ballsy. Any other system (remote detonation, a timer, actually just counting the passengers) would work just fine but no: they need body temperature to determine when this bomb will go off. That’s not just stupid; it’s incredible. Unfortunately, Katana evacuates people off the boat (which somehow increases the temperature further even though small explosions that occur near the bomb don’t increase its temperature either. I have no idea what’s happening here.) Eventually, Batman is able to access the yacht’s override system and activate the sprinklers, handily defeating everyone. When asked how he could do this by Katana, he unironically responds “Bruce Wayne knows YACHTS!”
Finally, Katana takes up Bruce’s advice of following your instinct and asks Jason Burr out on a date an- oops, yup, turns out he’s working for the League of Shadows so that’s another piece of Bat-Dad advice that failed to work. Good job, Bruce.
Final Verdict: 8.3 – Pyg and Toad are fantastic, even when some other episode aspects fail.
Over on national tragedy, Hulks and the Agents of SMASH, Laufey has summoned winter to Earth because villains with at least a passing connection to heroes are so early 2013. The Agents team up with Thor who just kind of drops in to stop Laufey but run into trouble when Green and Red Hulk are sooper-ticked at each other because they cause each other to not get enough sleep. There’s a whole sub-mystery as to why they’re angry at each other and that’s the whole reason. I just brought it out right now so we wouldn’t even pretend to worry about it. The group then fights Frost Giants while being a really forced version of sassy to each other, until Laufey reveals his ultimate plan and summons the huge Titan Ymir! Eren and the rest of the Survey Corps are completely shocked by this development, as are you if I just spoiled season two of Attack on Titan for you. Seriously, catch up with the manga already. Lazy anime jokes aside, Hulk and his team defeat Ymir by seriously just firing lasers at him until he falls down. Then, generic enemy conquered, Thor flies off while the Agents stand around and talk about how warm it is. On an iceberg. Either the Hulks never had an actual perception for how temperature felt, or defeating Ymir caused the world to gain a dozen new levels of Global warming.
Final Verdict: 3.1 – Another boringly generic episode.
Teen Titans Go! tackled the legitimate concern of illiteracy by having the Titans who weren’t Raven discover reading, become obsessed with JUST their one book, to the point that they center their whole lives around ONE book. Honestly, it’s pretty funny. They even find a comic book and turn into the George Perez Titans for a good laugh. Eventually they discover the Necronomicon, bring that to life, fight it, and decide to never read books ever again. I have no snarky comments for this. Reading will ruin your life.
Continued belowFinal Verdict: 7.5 – Books are terrible.
Finally, in the spirit of the season, Ultimate Spider-Man had a two-part Halloween special starring Terry Crews as his impression of Jefferson Twilight. Dracula is leading another army of vampires, and Spider-Man and His Ultimate Friends team up with Blade to stop him. They manage to fight vampires for a good fifteen or so minutes,including a neat scene where Nova uses his rocket sun-power things to blow up the vampires. Back at base, Coulson in Indiana Jones cosplay explains that Dracula’s after an ankh that will allow him to walk in sunlight. The Ankh was fought over millennia ago until it was shattered and scattered across the land of Hyrule. Eventually, Spidey’s team, along with Blade, accidentally discover the Ankh and Dracula reveals himself as the villain to no surprise. Not because I literally just said he was behind all this a few sentences back, but because he was in Avengers Assemble like a month ago. Dude is not very secret.
Dracula gets in a fight with the group which includes Nova obliterating him in an actually neat scene, but this all ends when Dracula hypnotizes everyone except Spider-Man and Blade who are wearing reflective lenses. So was everyone else but whatever. Dracula escapes and Blade goes after him, leaving Spidey alone with Nick Fury who unveils his other secret team consisting of Werewolf by Night, Frankenstein’s Monster, and The Living Mummy. They call themselves The Howling Commandoes. I call that an awful pun.
Spider-man is completely spooked by this even though his best friend’s dad tries to kill him on a weekly basis so really a mummy should be the least of his concerns. Frankenstein and the Agents of SHADE eventually join Spidey in tracking down Dracula, and by that I mean they stand around for a couple of minutes until Dracula swoops in and steals the Ankh. Oops. The Agents of SHADE plus Spidey eventually go to Aunt May’s house to make sure she’s alright and have awkward dialogue where they find Blade just kind of strolling around. He joins the team too after some artificial conflict with Werewolf by Night, and everyone finds Dracula at some temple thing they drive to in an ACTUAL monster truck. There, an army of vampires fights the Howling Commandoes until they’re defeated by Man-Thing being dropped in like Chemo on Nightwing’s apartment. Dracula is eventually defeated when Spider-Man just kind of webs the Ankh out of his hands while the sun rises so you know, anti-climax there. Unfortunately, this episode continues to not end as it turns out that Living Mummy wanted the Ankh all along (a twist if there ever was one) and grows to gigantic size, teleports to New York, and screams for Nick Fury to fight him. Again, he’s defeated by Spider-Man swinging around, this time with Blade’s sword, until he cuts off the bad guy’s magical amulet. With the main threat of Dracula neutralized and the threat that was written in to make this two-parter the necessary 44 minutes defeated, Spider-Man and Co. finally enjoy a peacefulish Halloween with Blade joining what’s left of the Howling Commandoes, neither of them to be seen ever again.
Final Verdict: 5.2 – A sort-of promising crossover marred by boring characters and plot.
