Wednesday, November 4, 2015

On The Air: Vixen (2015)

It ain't enough that producer Greg Berlanti currently has 5, count 'em, 5 series on the air, with a 6th to follow this winter. Well, actually, you might say that Legends of Tomorrow would be #7, since #6 is online.

Berlanti and co-producer Marc Guggenheim are dipping into the waters of animation with Vixen, which fits in rather nicely with Arrow, The Flash, and the pending Legends. That's the good news. The bad? It's only available online via CW Seed, which is available on the network website and accessible on your mobile devices, so you have to pray that WB and corporate sibling Cartoon Network can play nice and compile these shorts to air on CN at some point. Like, you do know that eventually, reruns of Arrow & Flash will turn up on TNT unless they're outbid......!

Vixen, introduced in the comics in the late 70's during the short-lived DC Explosion, is fashion model/designer Mari McCabe, whose powers are based on a Tantu Totem, which she wears as a necklace. How she got the totem and the powers is explained in an early episode, but we won't get into that just yet. The opener is typical Berlanti-verse in that the plot includes the obligatory flashbacks that have been a Berlanti trademark, starting with Arrow (now in its 4th season), but a trope that goes way further than that. Anyway, Mari's being chased by Flash & (Green) Arrow, and, yes, Grant Gustin & Stephen Amell will be heard in these shorts. Jump cut to 3 days prior, when Mari was bailed out of jail by her foster father.

In this short clip, Guggenheim offers some insight, plus an itsy bitsy teaser......




The first episode is not on YouTube, and when you hit the share button over on the CW site, you're asked to choose between Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest, et al. No embedding code to be used here. Meh. We'll keep track of this now 2 month-plus series.

Rating: A.

6 comments:

SaturdayMorningFan said...

Hmmm, she sounds suspiciously like Isis...

hobbyfan said...

As in a recent DTV? Please clarify.

SaturdayMorningFan said...

Isis, as in the mid-'70s live-action Filmation heroin who derives her powers (soar as the falcon soars, run with the speed of gazelles, and command the elements of sky and earth) from her amulet that she wears as a necklace.

What's DTV, Direct To Video? Was there a recent Isis Direct To Video movie I'm unaware of?

hobbyfan said...

DTV does stand for Direct to Video, and, no, Joanna Cameron, the 70's Isis, isn't the voice of Vixen, I'll look it up before I post another Vixen cartoon.

SaturdayMorningFan said...

Oh, sorry. I should have been more clear. I didn't mean Vixen literally sounds like Isis (Joanna Cameron), I meant that the concept of Vixen seems very similar to that of Isis.

hobbyfan said...

Not quite, from where I sit. An African Tantu totem grants its wearer more powers than Isis had from her Egyptian amulet, which made Isis an elemental mistress.