Since the announcement that Vixen would be hitting CW Seed, I’ve been excited. Here’s an underused, under rated DC Character that has been part of the Suicide Squad, Justice League, and most recently the Justice League International. She’s definitely more than a character who can carry her own weight, she can enhance a team by a lot. The casting choice was perfect. This has everything working for it. It exists in the amazing DC Comics CW Universe alongside Arrow and The Flash, and would even be interacting with them (and all the characters would be voiced by their real live counterparts, so you get Grant Gustin as the Flash and Stephen Amell as The Arrow).
Vixen Promo Image from CW Seed
The fact that it’s animated is a big point. Some feel that this is a cheap shot but I feel like it works. You can do so much more on less of a budget, and big explosions look less cheesy (that episode where an air strike drone was following Team Arrow in the Arrow live action show… come on, I know the budget isn’t amazing, but that looked SO BAD. It looked like an airplane rendered with all the power of a PlayStation One). This also means that she can tap into her powers much more fluidly and have it look amazing. Definitely more amazing than the last time she appeared in DC Animation.
Remember how she ate that worm at the end? That was funny.
So I heard the news that episode one dropped today and immediately log in to CW Seed to check out the first episode of Vixen and here comes the first surprise; it’s less than five minutes long.
I had no idea about this. Was there a press release saying it would be released in that small of increments? Not even Regular Show or Teen Titans GO! go this short for a weekly show. What’s going to happen when the whole season is over, you release a 23 episode DVD that’s basically an hour and forty minutes of animation? Just one small animated movie in the CW Verse? If anything I’d include it as a bonus for Flash Season 2 DVD or Arrow Season 4 in Special Features, but I’m getting ahead of myself. Four minutes might be short, but there was still story in there. Let’s get to that.
You start off with Flash and Green Arrow giving chase to Vixen all over these high rise buildings. Animation is beautiful, fluid, and definitely has a style that’s winning me over. It’s not CGI like Beware the Batman, it’s not quite borderline Anime like the New 52 movies, and definitely distant of that Bruce Timm/ Paul Dini type of animation. This is it’s own thing, and it all works better for it. The green and the red definitely stand out, and you can see The Flash fluidly running left and right in smooth animation. However, it is here that the first problem comes in. Although The Arrow is amazingly animated, anytime he misses a shot, or Vixen catches an arrow mid air, Green Arrow is shocked and opens his mouth, but nothing comes out. At first I thought the voice was cut off or the sound was off, but it wasn’t that. Watched it more than once (not that it took that long) and it just looks weird. It looks as though Stephen Amell’s voice should be coming out of my speakers, but nothing. Zilch. It’s the first weird part. As the chase ends, it flashes back to 3 days ago.
Vixen is sitting in a jail cell, and someone posts her bail. She talks among the correctional officers (at this point I realize the first part was no mistake as all their voices come in fine). It’s one of her adoptive fathers, they have a small reunion chat over dinner, they walk out and a couple of street thugs want to steal her totem necklace at gun point. Vixen looks like she might just get her power up to teach these goons a lesson and…. credits. Yep. That’s it. Cue teaser trailer for Episode 2.
This is short. Real short. I might just tell the crew over at Comics After Dark to just watch it with me really quick before we do our podcast so that we can all review it as a team. Hell, why don’t you watch it right now before reading the rest of this article. Go ahead. I’ll wait.
Done? Okay, so final thoughts. This has been a project I’ve been waiting so long to see, and although it saddens me to see it be so short, the story that is there is actually good. It sets up conflicts, it sets up the story and the character and it gives it direction, without too much detail of course. We still have to learn about her magic totem and how she’s channeling her power, but I’m sure that’s going to come up soon, along with more Team Flash and Team Arrow. I’m definitely going to stick with this. Magic hasn’t really been done in the CW Verse too much (unless you count The Lazarus Pits in Arrow, and we have Constantine coming in to explain more of that to us) so it’s good to mix it up with Flash (the Science of DC) with Arrow (the street justice, nitty gritty part of DC) to make a good tri-fecta. I’ll be tuning in every week, without fail, and if you love the DC CW Verse, you owe it to yourself to watch this series and get into a great DC Character. What have you got to lose? Four minutes? You weren’t going to do anything with those anyways.
Vixen in DC Comics
