Todd Jensen writes...

I haven't seen "Young Justice" before today, since I don't have cable, but I discovered that my local library has a copy of the first four episodes on DVD, and so checked it out.

I thought that the series was well-animated, and liked those place/time captions at the bottom. (They reminded me of "The X-Files".) I was also pleased to note that, even though I'm not a DC Comics expert (the only member of the team I knew anything about outside the context of the cartoon was Robin), I was able to understand what was going on in spite of that, and who the characters were.

I also liked the way you distinguished Aqualad from his two initial teammates, Robin and Kid Flash, by having Robin and Kid Flash talk in an everyday style, while Aqualad has a more dignified speech pattern. (Kind of like the difference between the trio's speech patterns and Goliath's.)

A few thoughts on specific episodes.

INDEPENDENCE DAY/FIREWORKS: The opening amused me. Four different super-hero-and-protege pairs, with different styles and atmospheres, and they're all fighting cold-themed super-villains! (I'm glad that Batman said they should look into why four cold-themed super-villains were all on the loose on the same day, though I don't know if that question's been answered yet in the series.)

I also got a kick out of the Hall of Justice scene, where somebody thinks that Speedy is Kid Flash's name (no wonder Speedy changes his name to Red Arrow!), followed by the Justice League telling the proteges that most people don't get to see this much of the Hall of Justice - and then we see the tourists looking in through the window!

Those creatures roaming about Cadmus Labs were positively creepy, especially the imp-like ones that perched on people's shoulders and mind-controlled them. Though it was a big surprise when they turned out to be a lot more friendly than they looked, and just wanted their freedom.

WELCOME TO HAPPY HARBOR: Kid Flash's comment on Miss Martian shape-shifting into his form was great.

I suspected that Superboy felt so uneasy about Miss Martian using telepathy on him because of his background, even before the characters said that.

I remember your comment about how you often felt unsettled when those fights in "Gargoyles" destroyed historical artifacts; I got that feeling myself when the team's fight with Twister demolished what looked like a historic old house.

The revelation that: a) Twister had a human pilot inside, and b) the "human pilot" was really a robot, definitely startled me. Two of the biggest surprises in those four episodes. (Almost like "The Edge" and "Leader of the Pack" merged.)

DROP ZONE: Aqualad telling off Robin for acting as if he was still working with Batman, who knows Robin's methods and vice versa, when the rest of the team don't have that kind of understanding of him, was great. (No wonder he winds up team leader - though I laughed when Robin said that Aqualad's the best pick for that job - and thus the best pick for explaining to Batman why the mission wound up far less covert than it was supposed to be!) Got a smile, also, out of Batman's talk to the team at the end, going from reprimanding them for their mistakes to congratulating them.

The Light make a great "big bad" for the series, all the more so because of their title. The word "light" so often has positive connotations that it's creepy to see it used for the main antagonists.

A great start. I hope that the library gets more episodes on DVD soon.