With the summer coming to a close most comic book movie fans begin to turn their attention to television and the upcoming fall slate of superhero offerings. As the networks follow the lead set by their big screen counterparts you can expect shows based on comics to be available in abundance this year. For most fans managing this dead period waiting for the fall lineups to commence is a challenge. That’s where CW’s new animated project based on the DC superheroine Vixen comes in.
Making its debut on mobile devices and computers everywhere this last Tuesday Vixen is a miniseries that will stream on
CW Seed a sub site of
CWtv.com. In an effort to take advantage of the
lull in new superhero programing CW is hoping the show will make an early impact and serve as a nice lead in to both of their live action shows Arrow and The Flash.
So should you watch it? The short answer, yes. With a planned runtime of five minutes per episode, and the ability to stream it to any mobile device at your convenience there isn’t a lot of commitment required. If you’re like me you watch trailers, fan films, and YouTube fan casts equal or longer in length all the time. Five minutes of your time for a professionally produced animated piece featuring voice work by actors like
Steven Amell,
Grant Gustin seems acceptable.
But is it any good? Well that’s a little bit hard to say. As I’ve mentioned before it’s not very long and there’s not much to review. You could watch the episode in the time it would take you to read one. I can remember when
LucasArts and
Cartoon Network did something similar back in 2003 with the
Clone Wars. They aired a 2 minute episode every Friday. I tuned in for three weeks, but eventually I got frustrated and didn’t watch it until it was edited together and released as DVD. Now who’s to say if I would have felt differently about the experience if I had the ability to watch on a mobile device at the time?
I mention this because the episode is short and while it does provide you with not one but two cliffhangers. I was left unfulfilled by the experience. You actually feel like you’re headed to a commercial break. The series will have six episodes in total. At five minutes each when put together it will become your basic half hour cartoon. I guess I’m trying to figure out CW’s motivation for this project.
CW President Mark Pedowitz has already said there will not be any more DC Superhero shows in the future. So this all seems like a lot of effort to set up a cameo in one of the existing live action shows. The character designs by
Phil Bourassa who also worked on
Young Justice look great. The dialogue was interesting and I do want to see another episode, but like my experience with Clone Wars I’d rather see it all put together. I’ll probably wait and binge watch it if you can call a half hour a binge watch.
Give the first episode a watch and let me know what you think. Does it frustrate you or satisfy your thirst?
Discuss it, debate it or destroy It.