Batman Beyond Hits a Rough Spot with an Another Visit from the Staggeringly Stupid Royal Flush Gang
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I’ve never quite understood the concept of superhero pets. Are they superheroes as well, with the requisite super-powers of flight and X-ray vision and whatnot? Or are they just regular pets that happen to belong to superheroes?
As Jerry Seinfeld once famously inquired, “What is the deal?” I suppose it was inevitable that super-pets would become a thing because comic books and high falutin’ graphic novels are just funny animal stories for children. So of course a cartoon based on a comic book is going to feature funny animals in lead or supporting roles.
DC’s good boys and girls will get a high-profile showcase in this summer’s DC League of Super-Pets. Kevin Hart will voice Ace the Bat-Hound opposite Dwayne Johnson’s Krypto the Superdog in a 3-D adventure that finds the pets of legendary superheroes saving their owners from Marc Maron’s Lex Luthor.
So when Luthor is negotiating with the super-powered pups he’ll undoubtedly also be asking them who their guys are and whether they have any experience with Saturday Night Live or Lorne Michaels.
According to Wikipedia, in DC League of Super-Pets Ace “acquires the powers of super-strength and invulnerability.” That makes him different from Batman Beyond’s Ace.
Batman Beyond gives us an Ace who is essentially Bruce Wayne in canine form. He doesn’t have super-powers. He’s not a space alien. He’s built like a tank, massively powerful and serious to the point of grimness.
Courageous, macho and efficient, Ace is the anti-Scooby Doo, despite both being Great Danes voiced by the ubiquitous Frank Welker. Ace is less cute and cuddly than dark and emotionally scarred.
Bruce Wayne calls Ace a quintessential survivor, which makes me think that he also endured the trauma of watching his parents get murdered after leaving a movie theater.
Ace has seen some shit! He’s got PTSD from the trauma he experienced before Bruce found him. In “Ace in the Hole”, the twenty-sixth and final episode of Batman Beyond’s second season, we learn Ace’s origin story.
The poor pup was ripped away from his parents after his birth, as is the custom. He’s sold by a shady pound attendant to a sadistic dogfight promoter, who sees in the massive Great Dane the makings of a warrior and a champion.
Ace is physically and emotionally abused in an effort to make him a cold-blooded killer but he manages to escape the bad guys’ clutches when the cops bust up Ace’s first dog-fight before it begins.
Ace eventually discovers Bruce being attacked a member of the Jokerz gang and is taken home by the sad, lonely old man.
Batman Beyond gives Ace an origin story grim even by superhero standards. He’s the subject of almost unfathomable viciousness, trained to kill and maim while still a puppy.
In the present, Ace goes missing after chasing after the monster who trained him to fight and Terry ends up doing inter-species battle with a dog that has been pumped full of Cerestone, a mutagen that has transformed him into a slobbering, towering monster of pure rage.
Ace shows up and Bruce is so moved that he favors the loyal pooch with a rare display of tenderness and emotion. Under his gruff surface, the massive Great Dane loves his owner, just as his owner loves him.
There’s nothing quite like a bitter old loner and his dog. It’s a special bond that makes “Ace in the Hole” poignant and unexpectedly moving.
The first episode of the third season, "King's Ransom”, unwisely brings back perhaps the silliest villains in Batman Beyond and animated superhero shows as a whole: The Royal Flush Gang.
As you might recall, The Royal Flush Gang are a family of lunatics who dress up like the cards needed for a Royal Flush: Ace, King, Queen, Jack and Ten, use card-shaped weapons and ride around on card-shaped boards.
That, friends, is dedication to a bit. We know they’re crazy because they’re evil super-villains but also due to their attire, appearance and overall aesthetic. Ah, but that somehow is still not enough to really drive home the whole “poker-themed villains” thing.
So the fancy-dressing rogues in the Royal Flush Gang liberally lace their banter with poker-themed wordplay like, “Lady, if you think I’m going to fold you’re not playing with a full deck” and “Sounds kind of chilly in the House of Cards.”
It’s not quite as embarrassing as Mr. Freeze’s cold-themed puns in Batman & Robin but it’s in the same ballpark and that is mildly embarrassing. “Mildly embarrassing” describes The Royal Flush Gang as a whole. Even by the exceedingly lenient standards of super-villains, The Royal Flush Gang stand out as particularly ridiculous.
The Royal Flush Gang is as sloppy as they are silly. The Queen can’t stop reminding The King how he’ll never be able to measure up to her father, the former patriarch of the Gang.
The King at one point tells Terry that he has no idea what it’s like living in the shadow of someone and the teen trainee replies that he does, in fact, know exactly what it’s like to know that you can never measure up to a larger than life father figure. It’s a great moment in an otherwise sub-par episode.
The King is cheating on his wife with Sable Thorpe, the assistant of Paxton Powers, who tries to get the Royal Flush Gang to kill Bruce Wayne but is of course unsuccessful.
“King’s Ransom” is one of the weakest episodes of Batman Beyond. It suffers from sub-par villains and a convoluted plot plagued by way too many subplots. It’s unusual, if not unprecedented for me to be un-impressed by Batman Beyond but for perhaps the first time, the show is finally showing signs of creative fatigue. That’s unfortunate, in that the third season has only just begun but hopefully this is an anomaly rather than emblematic of what’s to come in Batman Beyond’s final year.
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