Review: Robot Chicken DC Comics Special III
The third Robot Chicken DC Comics special, titled “Magical Friendship”, aired last night on Adult Swim. I grew up watching Batman: The Animated Series, which has rendered me incapable of fully appreciating funny takes or parodies of superheroes, especially Batman, but I’ll admit this special was pretty funny.
The first half of the special didn’t have a plot, so the episode jumped from clip to clip featuring different characters. One theme that was very present from the start was Batman’s lack of superpowers. Superman especially tries to get under Batman’s skin regarding this. There is a hilarious scene at the beginning where Batman and Superman are stuck in traffic in the Batmobile, and Superman is telling a story about a space adventure of his, while Batman continues having to tell him that he doesn’t understand all of Superman’s references because he can’t go into outer space. That isn’t really true that Batman can’t go into space (the Justice League Watchtower is in space!), but it was still funny. I would’ve liked to have had a plot in the first half of the episode, though. It would’ve made things go much smoother.
The second half of the special did have a plot, and the whole thing was a parody of Crisis on Infinite Earths. When Batman and Superman open up the Multiverse using the Cosmic Treadmill, an evil mixed version of the two of them comes along, and he lets in all the different versions of the DC characters. The best part of this is getting to see versions of characters that looked really out of place with one another, like Adam West’s Batman with the villains from the Arkham Universe.
More from Animation
- How to watch Rick and Morty season 7 episode 6
- Jujutsu Kaisen season 2 episode 17 review – Thunderclap, Part 2
- What If…? season 2 gets premiere date (and there’s a major twist)
- Ranking the unrankable: Top 10 The Clone Wars episodes, ranked
- Jujutsu Kaisen season 2 episode 16 review: Thunderclap
Overall, I’ll give this special four batarangs out of five. The idea of it all just wasn’t something that appealed to me all that much, but the people behind this got pretty creative and were able to do some funny and interesting things. You can check out the trailer below, and the full episode is now available on-demand at AdultSwim.com if you sign in with your TV provider.
More from Bam Smack Pow
- The Expanse: Every character ranked from worst to best
- James Gunn’s Superman: Legacy casts more major DC characters
- New Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom trailer pushes Arthur to his limits
- Monarch: Legacy of Monsters episodes 1 and 2 review: Aftermath
- 7 actors who could replace Ezra Miller as The Flash in the DC Universe