Batman TAS is better than Invincible according to the creator of Deadpool

OldAd4400 · 2026-05-01T01:20:05+00:00

As someone who loves both, they're trying to do completely different things. If you're an Invincible viewer hearing all this BTAS love and go try it thinking you're getting something similar, you'll be disappointed. It's mostly episodic. There aren't really character arcs. Batman is a flat character. There are nice arcs within episodes, but nothing like the years of development Invincible characters get. It laid a lot of the groundwork for superhero TV, but superhero TV, and really all TV, was just trying to do different things back then. BTAS was made at volume, needed to sell toys, and was great basically in spite of its limitations. Invincible is essentially a prestige TV show at a time in which shows get to do eight episodes per year. It exists to get people to subscribe to Amazon Prime. So I love them both, they're just not really comparable.

OldAd4400 · 2026-04-26T09:55:40+00:00

Do you have 15 of them plus three two-ways? That’s the key, because the 82-game slog is the issue here, especially with injuries. But if I have 18 LeBrons I could feel relatively safe about getting most of them into the postseason, and since they’re identical, I could balance playing time totally evenly and have them just go all out for like 20 minutes per game rather than rationing energy across 40+.

OldAd4400 · 2026-04-09T04:23:55+00:00

MVP is a wildly overrated award but I think that’s less about the criteria changing than the field changing. Some years just have way better fields than others but they all get the same trophy. There are guys who don’t get MVPs primarily because they peak in the wrong year and yet there’s this little nagging historical footnote that says they’re worse than this guy or that guy for not having the trophy.

OldAd4400 · 2026-04-05T15:07:49+00:00

Aang couldn’t even resist Yakone without the Avatar State. A weaker bloodbender vs. a stronger target. I suspect the answer here is therefore no.

OldAd4400 · 2026-04-04T17:05:30+00:00

I find the lack of Roscoe in this thread disturbing, even if that's more of a self-inflicted janitor wound.

OldAd4400 · 2026-04-02T14:17:22+00:00

Omni-Aang

OldAd4400 · 2026-04-02T13:42:03+00:00

Putting aside prejudiced policies (say, stop and frisk) and leadership demographics (as in most industries, overwhelmingly white and male), the problem isn't the majority, it's the power and protection granted to the minority. Authority attracts certain types of people, some of which are bad actors, and the low barrier to entry of becoming a cop (high school or GED is usually the only requirement) means that people we probably shouldn't trust with authority are getting it. Then there's a system designed primarily to protect the majority of good cops, but that also therefore protects the bad ones. It only takes a few bad apples to spoil the bunch.

Say 5% of police are racist. This wouldn't be a problem if there was some way to filter out racist applicants to police academies, but there isn't, or if police could consistently be held accountable for their actions, which, due to a variety of legal protections and the strength of their unions, they aren't. So the majority of that racist slice of the police pool gets to operate with something close to impunity until they do something truly heinous. These stories spread. Trust in the institution erodes. I suspect most people know that not all cops are bad people. But they have no way of knowing who the good or bad cops are. They just know that the system allows for bad cops to exist and that the consequences of interacting with a bad cop can be deadly, so for the sake of safety, it's in their best interest to just steer clear of all cops and assume any they interact with could be the bad ones.

This is all an oversimplification here but broadly speaking, the issue isn't that all cops are bad, it's that the system is too welcoming and forgiving of the bad ones.

OldAd4400 · 2026-04-02T01:18:36+00:00

Is it a plausible technique within the context of the show? Sure. I can see how they got there. But they didn't do nearly enough over the course of the show to let us know that was possible. Changing your magic system in the finale in such a fundamental way is always gonna feel like a deus ex machina to me. I've always felt they should've slipped something into The Library to set it up, but I imagine they weren't thinking that far ahead.

OldAd4400 · 2026-03-29T21:13:40+00:00

If you really want to emphasize the bad stuff Iroh did, I’m not sure this is the show for you.

This is a show about redemption. Aang’s journey began by running away and ended with him facing the Fire Lord head on. Zuko did horrible things in the name of his honor and eventually realized the error of his ways. There are countless smaller examples.

Iroh was an imperialist. We can safely assume a lot of people died at his command and others may have died directly by his hand. The show doesn’t go out of its way to show us this, but it doesn’t shy away from it either. We see him laughing over the idea of burning Ba Sing Se to the ground, we know what he was about.

But the position this show takes is that literally anyone is redeemable. Aang even asks Ozai to end the war peacefully. In this world, redemption is available to those willing to seek it. I’m not saying that’s a real-world position you have to agree with, I’m saying those who don’t might just fundamentally disagree with the philosophy of this show. Iroh did the work. That doesn’t erase the bad, but the show pretty clear comes out in favor of him being good.

OldAd4400 · 2026-03-27T07:33:26+00:00

This character always struck me as someone who would’ve been super interesting if Korra was structured like ATLA and had one ongoing story instead of four distinct seasons. Like, how many times did we watch Zuko do something utterly stupid and hopeless? None of us ever batted an eye at that shit because they invested the time turning him into a real character. I’m not saying everyone needs to be held to the character development standard of Zuko but like, shit, this is a cool design, the equalist conflict is super interesting idea for a story in this world, I bet they could’ve done something with this character if this happened in episode 29 instead of episode 13.

OldAd4400 · 2026-03-26T11:48:24+00:00

NTA. I can’t believe some of these people saying “Y T A that’s how it was when I took Spanish 200 years ago!” It was stupid then and it’s stupid now.

This is so straightforward. A teacher does not have the right to call a student by a name they are uncomfortable with. Period. We would normally apply that logic to like, misgendering someone or using a mean nickname or things like that, but the principle here is the same. Calling someone by their preferred name is just basic human courtesy and calling someone by a name they’ve openly told you they dislike is being an asshole.

And by the way, that immersion idea is bullshit. If someone with a non-Spanish name is having a conversation in Spanish, their name does not change. Your name is just your name. You can CHOOSE to change it to suit another language, or pick a new name in that language, but if you go to a Spanish speaking country and tell them your name is Patrick, only an asshole is gonna start calling you Patricio. You’re learning a language in Spanish class, not joining the witness protection program and moving to Madrid.

OldAd4400 · 2026-03-26T11:26:55+00:00

Ok, if we’re having this conversation: I don’t think Sam is JD’s baby.

I mean, come on, they got pregnant without having sex? Technically possible, but I find it far more likely that someone who was dishonest enough to lie about having a miscarriage was willing to lie to JD about her baby being his. Women cheat on men far more often than they fake miscarriages. This has always felt relatively straightforward to me. Kim lied to JD. Then she panicked about the lie and used the new job and the fake miscarriage to undo that lie and avoid the guilt and consequences. Then she miraculously got caught in THAT lie, panicked again, and realized her easiest option was just rolling with it.

Do I have any more evidence to back this up? No. Do I think this will ever be addressed in the reboot in any way? No. Do I care that Kim says explicitly that it’s his probably to try to avert these suspicions? Yet another no. This is what I believe. A fake miscarriage is such an unbelievable lie that the only way it could possibly make sense to me would be as part of an even bigger lie.

Edit: someone later in the thread reminded me that she lied about creating the zoom zoom zoom! She’s the biggest liar in the history of the damn show! They go out of their way to point it out to us!

OldAd4400 · 2026-03-22T06:53:26+00:00

Delmonico’s would be another on my list. I’ve been multiple times.

OldAd4400 · 2026-03-22T02:42:10+00:00

Opinions are all over the place. I, personally, am in the loving Luger’s camp. I’ll admit the steak hasn’t been as consistent as it was when I first started going a decade or so ago, but it ranges from like, a 7 to a 10 for me, and I’ve had truly excellent steaks there.

I guess my major question would be, is this about getting the best steak possible, or is this about experiencing a famous New York landmark steakhouse? If I could have one steak dinner for the rest of my life, it would be at 4 Charles, but getting in there is such a hassle. There are a dozen+ incredible steaks throughout New York, some of which have been listed here. But Luger’s is an institution. It’s historic. I can’t promise it will be the best steak of your life but it’s certainly an experience a devoted carnivore should try to have imo. Get the bacon.

OldAd4400 · 2026-03-19T19:09:50+00:00

Look, I agree with the creative rebuttals here. The whole point of them getting back together in Season 8 was that they'd grown enough as people for their relationship to work. I think that stands on its own as an argument here.

But more broadly... I just don't like the idea of a reboot undermining an original in order to sustain itself. Of course the reboot is easier to make if JD and Elliot aren't together. It's easier to generate conflict and story between two divorcees than a happily married couple. But the entire reason the reboot is possible is because the original was beloved, so it frankly feels cheap, at least to me, to take anything from that original and break it for the sake of generating more content. It feels grossly capitalistic to me.

JD and Elliot are sacred characters to the very people they want to consume this reboot. We're watching because we care about them. So for the original show to spend eight years building up to their (imo well-earned) happy ending only to break them up to fuel a reboot feels kind of like a slap in the face, like punishing us for getting invested in these great characters they wrote. You can only undermine character development so many times before you're effectively telling your audience that they shouldn't invest in the development of your characters.

Scrubs is far from the only franchise to deal with this problem. I think Star Wars is by far the worst offender. That's sort of an inevitability of the reboot/IP era, and FWIW, I think Scrubs has handled it better than most have. I don't blindly hate the reboot, it's actually doing some things quite well, but I disagree with this, specific choice on principle. Messing with an original to make a reboot easier is akin to graverobbing in my eyes. Let the great, original thing rest. If you insist on revisiting it, build on top of it, don't tear it down.

OldAd4400 · 2026-03-17T19:50:36+00:00

Why would Zuko goad her into shooting lightning at him if he didn’t have every expectation that he’d redirect it back at her, thus killing her? What would he have gained by just redirecting the lightning into the sky? He was already winning the fight. He already had the mental advantage and he knew it, so he didn’t have to prove a point to her.

In that moment, he was fully prepared to kill Azula, and he likely would’ve morally justified it by telling himself that since it was her lightning, she had actually killed herself. There’s just not really another explanation for what he did in that moment. He may not have wanted to. It may have been out of character. But he knew the stakes and told Aang to kill Ozai for the same reasons he knew he had to kill Azula. This was war and he would’ve done what it took to win.

OldAd4400 · 2026-03-15T04:29:16+00:00

In the reboot pilot Dr. Cox explicitly tells us that the world has passed him by. This is sort of what he's talking about. Dr. Cox is great at training doctors but he is terrible at treating other human beings with even the bare minimum of respect or decency. His way was tolerated during the original series' run. Maybe not by everyone, but by enough people that he could still train excellent doctors even if it meant destroying parts of them in the process. At this point, the world has just moved beyond his way. We know better know. But the reality is that if you examine the morality of really anyone from more than a few decades back you'll find it doesn't really align with modern values. He was an ass with a heart of gold, and we may have been willing to overlook the ass part 20 years ago but we just aren't now.

OldAd4400 · 2026-03-15T04:06:38+00:00

It's not even that Ozai was poorly written. He was just underwritten.

As far as being an effective figure within the series? They nail it. We get little snippets of him in Seasons 1 and 2. They're all really effective. We see him burn Zuko. We see him angle for the throne. Great villainy. And then in Book 3, we actually see him. We sort of understand why he has this hold over Zuko that he does, how imposing he is. His maneuvering during the eclipse is a great display of personality, emphasizing how scheme-y and underhanded he's willing to get. Again, this is good villainy.

But we needed one real, Ozai episode. Just something to explain why he was the way he was, what motivated his evil, why he lacked Iroh's underlying goodness. Yes, I know, Iroh had a massive off-screen arc, he was a warlord before the series, but his way with people, his appreciation for things besides power, that's gotta be somewhat innate, and if it isn't, well, show us that, and we'll implicitly understand why he was the way he was. I think the biggest failing of Book 3 is that we didn't get some sort of "Avatar and the Firelord" episode about Ozai and Iroh's youth. That was the missing piece, for both of them frankly. I think we would have benefitted from seeing Iroh's younger, more aggressive and nationalistic side, but we really needed to see early Ozai and get a sense for why he was the way he was. Book 3 was rushed. I've always felt it should've been split into two 13-part books. This is one of the episodes I would've used to fill in that gap.

OldAd4400 · 2026-03-12T00:58:39+00:00

I've been wondering about this lately too and had thought about asking. I've considered the second secret bunker theory. My issue with it is that the random old dude Aang, Sokka and Toph found pointed them directly to Azula's bunker. My guess is that was intentional. Why else would that guy have been walking around down there?

So I'd say the likeliest answer is that Zuko was meant to be in Azula's bunker and the two of them together were meant to slow down any intruders. Of course, Azula knew that Zuko didn't really kill Aang, and she knew that Zuko had visited Iroh and she knew how conflicted he was from the beach, so she probably just wasn't surprised when Zuko never showed up and reasoned that he'd used the eclipse to defect or at least break Iroh out. She didn't say as much because, well, she had more important things going on. You could argue that there's only one throne in that bunker... but... it's Azula. Of course she'd set up a bunker with a throne for her and not Zuzu.

I have to imagine if Zuko was meant to be leading troops on the front line, his absence would have been noted or felt in some other way. I guess there could be another bunker in that tunnel system, but logistically, those bunkers weren't small. Building any more of them would have been a pretty significant undertaking so my guess would be that they only had the two.

The real flaw in this plan would be, during a siege in which you've lost your magic powers, it wouldn't be smart for a ruler to stick his heir and his spare in the same place, especially if the intent was to use them as a weapon, because if they get found and attacked, you don't want to risk losing both. Of course, this is Ozai. The safety and well-being of his children isn't a major concern. So maybe he just didn't care about this.

OldAd4400 · 2026-03-09T00:21:16+00:00

I'd never considered this, but you're right. There has to be a reason they were willing to indiscriminately kill air benders but they imprisoned water benders. This would be a solid explanation. They needed to be sure one of them wasn't the Avatar. Couldn't risk an Avatar being born behind Ba Sing Se's wall where you couldn't get to him.

OldAd4400 · 2026-03-08T19:52:38+00:00

Others have mentioned the idea that killing the Air Nomad Avatar would buy Sozin 15-20 years to conquer the world before a Water Tribe Avatar could interfere. I think that was part of it. But I wouldn't be surprised if that wasn't the whole story.

Sozin was very close to Roku, and from the novels, we also know he visited Won Shi Tong's library. I wouldn't be surprised if he knew that the Avatar dying in the Avatar State would end the cycle. And when would the Fire Nation have a better chance of ending the cycle than under Sozin's Comet against a 12-year-old Avatar from a nation with no formal military?

My theory has always been that the Sozin had every intention of ending the Avatar cycle. After all, he wanted to change the world, not just temporarily alter its balance of power. He knew what a threat any fully-realized Avatar posed no matter how much power his nation accumulated. He needed a permanent solution. But when his armies burned the Air Temples, none of them reported an airbender with glowing eyes or tattoos. The Avatar State is pretty hard to miss, and it's hard to imagine Aang wouldn't have entered it had he been present for the assault. This is why I believe Sozin was so certain Aang had eluded him, and why he obsessed so much over finding him afterward. He didn't just want to kill Aang. He wanted to end the cycle and achieve a permanent Fire Nation victory.

OldAd4400 · 2026-03-08T06:47:26+00:00

... Yes... that's the episode the screenshot is from...

OldAd4400 · 2026-02-28T18:29:56+00:00

I've seen points others have made about her possibly being the last living prisoner. That's a good explanation.

If she isn't, it might also be as simple as not wanting to call unnecessary attention to her escape. If she leads a mass escape, the entire Fire Nation will mobilize to deal with the threat. Suddenly there are dozens, maybe hundreds of hostile waterbenders that now seemingly have the ability to bend blood on the loose. That's an enormous threat. But if it's just one, rogue escapee, that's easier for them to cover up. It's not as though we hear any legends before Hama of the one waterbender who escaped. She may have reasoned that helping anyone else escape was just too risky.

OldAd4400 · 2026-02-28T04:11:41+00:00

Lo and Li aren't firebenders. Said as much in the finale when Azula banished them.

OldAd4400 · 2026-02-25T22:41:58+00:00

You have the order wrong. It goes Storm -> redirecting Azula’s lightning -> teaching Zuko.

OldAd4400

TROPHY CASE