Season premieres of Cartoon Network's Teen Titans and Justice League Unlimited tonight. (JLU is actually a new series premiere, but it's a sort-of continuation of the previous Justice League cartoon, so let's not split hairs.) While I enjoyed the new Justice League thing just fine, I couldn't shake the feeling that the new concept--instead of a solid cast of the biggest heroes, we get rotating teams made up of all sorts of DC superheroes, ranging from the popular to the obscure--is primarily aimed at the comics fan market, and won't necessarily serve the stories as well as the original concept did. For example, as a longtime fan, I got a certain thrill out of recognizing every single character in this episode, no matter how fleeting or how obscure (and we're talking characters like Vibe, the break-dancing hero from the 80s, and Nemesis, a super-spy character who only ever appeared in backup stories). But the main story, featuring Green Lantern, Green Arrow, Supergirl, and Captain Atom, could have been told just as easily with Superman, Batman, and Wonder Woman. As it is, folks who aren't familiar with Captain Atom get some tantalizing hints about him, but since this may be his only appearance in the series, that's all they get. It feels like a gimmick, but it's still a well-done cartoon, so I'll be sticking with it.

And over on Teen Titans, they continue with their bastardized adaptation of the Terra/Judas Contract story from the original comics series from the '80s, but completely missing the point. The great thing about the original story was that it completely subverted expectations. It introduced a new team member, a cute girl, and then revealed her to be a traitor. Even better, she was a completely unrepentant sociopath, and never turned from the dark side.

In this new, sanitized for kiddies version, Terra is a reluctant betrayer, desperate to find her way back into the light... just the way the original comics readers assumed the original Terra would turn out to be, only to be proven horribly wrong. This version takes the well-worn path that you would expect it to take (she's not really evil, just misunderstood, if only she were given a chance, blah, blah, blah) and it's a story we've seen so many times before, it has zero impact. Again, I still plan on watching the show, but it's a shame to see that, in this case, they seem to have missed the point by a country mile.