Legion of Superheroes: "Message in a Bottle"

"Series Classic"
Best Superman (Kal El, that is) episode yet.

I've been really impressed with "Legion" this season. I latched onto it when the Cartoon Network cancelled "Justice League" (JLA) in all its pop culture wisdom. I was so-so on the first season of Legion, but saw flashes of inspiration, which made me stick with the show. Being produced by the team behind JLA helped, too. Regarding this episode, I felt it was virtually perfect in every regard. The only quibble I have was not adding Supe's 41st century clone, Kel El in this episode. Kel El has history with Imperiex, he'd love to see the Fortress (and Krypton), and he foreshadowed a dark path that Brainy is going to take (more on that later).

It's tough to play with established canon in any show, but I feel this episode did a great job of providing a standalone adventure and keeping the Superman mythos intact.

Imperiex leads Validus and a divison's worth of destructo bots to the Fortress of Solitude in the 31st century. Superman, Brainy, and assorted pals race to confront our baddie.

Imperiex, his cohorts, and Superman all get miniaturized and transported to the miniaturized city of Kandor, the surviving capital of Krypton stored in a bottle! Not having read every comic book there is has a bright side: getting great surprises in the animated series regularly. =)

I had no idea there was a "messenger" crystal created by Jor El that had been keeping Krypton intact before Brainiac 1.0 shrunk Kandor and removed it from the planet--spelling the end of Krypton. Of course Imperiex would want the "messenger" as a weapon of mass destruction to destroy planets that dare to defy him. Again I wish that Kel El had been included in this episode. He deserves to see Kandor (not to mention Krypton) as much as Kal.

The moment I saw the simulated red sun in the Kandor "sky," I knew Superman was in it deep against Imperiex. Seeing him wrestle with a failure of his he hadn't experienced yet (not restoring his fellow Kryptonians and their city to their normal size) was awesome. Brainy and company bringing up the cavalry and giving Superman a power suit was a nice development. Superman having his power suit broken just before the major confrontation with Imperiex was a great reversal in an episode full of twists and turns.

And watching Brainy face his demon (Brainiac 1.0) was the stuff of the highest drama. The second he input the info about restoring Kandor from his early generation "evil" ancestor, I knew there were going to be consequences down the road. Brainy's "smirk" immediately after the download and after he wiped Superman's memory to remove the temptation for Superman to restore Kandor in the 21st century and preserve the timeline established for the Legion.

The memory wipe is another great story twist. Watching the Kandorians supercharge and go mano a mano with Imperiex's goons when Brainy turns the sun yellow was loads of fun. And seeing Krypton restored and Kandor returned to the planet and back to normal was a fitting climax.

It's awesome when animated writers show they understand great characters and storytelling, better even than many film and TV writers.

The moment when Kel El confronted Brainy with the line "Once a brainiac always a brainiac" in "The Man From the Edge of Tomorrow, Part 1," I knew we were going to have a subplot to run in parallel with the main storyline of stopping Imperiex from creating a 31st century empire.
I'm really looking forward to seeing what happens in the rest of the season.

Some episodes are much better than others. This is one of the great ones.