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Slick’s Nit-Picks: Young Justice Invasion, Episode 204 – “Salvage”

Mommy, mommy! New Pokémon!

With the Justice League’s numbers cut pretty much in half, the team must once again step up to the plate. They will have to pick up the League’s slack and conduct their own missions while remaining incognito. They are still a covert ops unit. The good news is that The Kroloteans will probably not be abducting humans anymore. The bad news is they can’t because the majority if not all the ones that were on Earth are now dead. Protecting life is a paramount for both the team and the JLA so having the Kroloteans go up in a mushroom cloud is a bit of a record blemish. Now that Kaldur is a bad guy and seems to have no problem with mass murder, business will be picking up very soon. Black Manta has officially replaced Ocean Master as a member of The Light and his son and lieutenant is the former leader of the team. The likelihood of there being any beach parties seems pretty low this season.

So yeah, you been slippin' lately, son.

THE GANG’S ALL HERE Green Arrow tracks down Red Arrow in Washington D.C. and radios the info to his friends. On a rooftop, he is confronted by Green Arrow, Black Canary, Nightwing, his uncle Jim Harper (formerly Guardian) and Wally West (formerly Kid Flash). They try to hold an intervention because Roy’s quest to find the original Roy Harper has made him lose focus on living his own life. Meanwhile, Superboy literally grabs Jaime to conduct what he calls personal business. When confronted, he explains to Blue Beetle that the Kroloteans had no idea about the bomb that killed them and the only other source of alien tech has been Intergang. He figured he would track their activities since the newly created Zeta Shield will not prevent boom tube transport. With the help of the New Genisphere, he manages to track Whisper A’Daire and Ugly Manheim to the Hall of justice where they unleash a new terror on the D.C. and Virginia area.

Cocaine's a helluva drug.

SPEEDY SMACKS During the five-year gap, Red Arrow searched feverishly for Roy Harper, just as he said he would. All searches led to the belief that Cadmus deletes the source material when creating clones. This is why his uncle resigned as Guardian; he wanted to figure his place in the world as a clone of Jim Harper. Red Arrow refused to give up and his obsession cost him pretty much everything. He is out of practice and his value system is off. Green Arrow watched him foil a robbery, but as he returns the money to the store owner, he pockets one of the money stacks. His excuse is that looking for Roy is expensive, especially since everyone else has given up on him. The truth is unspoken to try and maintain the kid-friendly status of the show. The clone of Roy Harper is going through the same trouble the real Speedy did in the comics; he’s a drug addict. He refuses the help and friendship of those at the intervention and runs off.  At his safehouse, Cheshire (now his estranged wife), makes a more convincing argument. She also left because of his obsession, but she is back because she needs his help to raise their infant daughter. I will bet that made him feel a bit more real; clone or not, he has created a life and it’s time to man up to that. Cheshire knows that he will still search for Speedy, so she called in every favor she could and is going to help him on one last mission to try and find the real Roy Harper. Fortunately, the odds are that he is alive as Ra’s al Ghul did pull him out of Cadmus cold storage with Match before they burned the building.

I got spinners AND my joints glow! What you got, son?

SUPERBOY…IS AWESOME? The original team changed a lot over the past five years. Robin is now Nightwing, M’gann is losing touch with the concept of heroism, Aqualad is a bad guy called Manta, Artemis and Wally maintained their relationship and went to college together, etc. The big surprise however is Conner. Aside from adopting the Kryptonian name Kon-El and Superman accepting him as a brother, he has matured a great deal, possibly more than the others combined. I was shocked that the character I complained the most about last season is now pretty awesome. He thinks now before going into a fight and studies his enemies patterns. When the Appelaxian golem appeared, Connor knew that Blue Beetle’s sonic attack was a terrible idea. He also came up with a plan before taking a second crack at the golem. When Jaime gets hurt, we see him show compassion for teammates not named M’gann. His teamwork with Superman during the Malina Island raid, as well as his ability to think and lead in the heat of battle show that he is finally worthy of the crest on his shirt.

After, the laughter...come nasty tears

REACHING FOR PROOF All I am gonna say here is look for yourself. Here is Blue Beetle’s weapon:

YEAH! This is how you get it in!

And here is the Partner’s:

Nah, you got a long way to go be fore you reach my level, lil' man.

The Partner is a representative of The Reach, point blank.

Yeah, I can gun and run - ain't no RE5 BS here!

Look carefully, you can even see the beetle legs gripping the shoulders, wrapped around the rib cage and wrapped around the waist. The lack of antennae can be easily explained in one of two ways. The writers obviously don’t want us to know who the partner is, so they antennae are being hidden. The other possibility explains the size difference between Beetle and the Partner and it is not just because Jaime is a teenager. Jaime’s scarab is one of several classes of scarab and it plays the role of Infiltrator. It is supposed to allow Jaime to pose as a hero while slowly taking over his mind and then turning on everyone. Problem with that plan is the scarab is damaged and actually befriends him (or he resists control). The Partner wears an Enforcer-class scarab, which would make him larger because its role is physical coercion. I highly doubt what he ordered Sportsmaster to do to Ugly and Whisper is the action of a Negotiator-class scarab. All I am saying is that it is time to stop blacking out the Partner. We have bigger mysteries to unravel on this show, so stop playing around with puzzles that are already solved.

umm yeah, please kill that hing with fire like now.

Superboy was amazing in this episode. He dealt with his (obvious) jealousy in a pretty mature way and he did pretty well leading the mission with Blue Beetle. I would like to see how he might fare with a whole squad. Red Arrow was right about one thing in not giving up his search. We know from the season one finale that Ra’s al Ghul did keep Roy Harper alive. We just do not know why or where. It will be interesting to see what Red Arrow and Cheshire discover. On the alien front, he newly activated zeta shield consists of 16 individual satellites which I am pretty sure will all be destroyed in the hear future. Just the fact that they showed the whole pattern of them and that scarabs seem to not like Apokoliptan tech gives me a bad feeling. That second fact makes me also think there may be more than one invasion going on. Sportsmaster alluded to Intergang being in league with The Light and we have seen Light agents using said tech. However, if it is “not compatible” with The Reach, combined with the fact that we have seen two of Darkseid’s elite on Earth, The Light may be working multiple angles. Also, I just won the official Slobo award for taking over a full season to realize that “The Light” is a slightly veiled reference to The Illuminati, which explains why they are everywhere. Regardless, things are getting really ugly, really quickly this season. Too bad for Manheim, none of that ugly will include him anymore.

Together 5 years? Still took y'all forever to make it happen.

These sisters hold on to their men. . .

Not your baby? I'm your WIFE, DAMMIT!

any way that they can.

  • Slick's Nit-Picks: Young Justice Invasion, Episode 203 – “Alienated”(mytakeradio.com)

  • Slick's Nit-Picks: Young Justice Invasion, Episode 202 – “Earthlings”(mytakeradio.com)

  • Slick's Nit-Picks: Young Justice Invasion, Episode 201 – “Happy New Year”(mytakeradio.com)