Composite Humor for a Composite Superman

I like Robot Chicken. It’s a dumb show, to be sure, but it hits that right bit of nostalgia that I probably wouldn’t admit if not for a show like this. It’s clearly targeted at the Gen X and Millennials in the audience, making fun of pop culture and cartoons from their youth, with jokes about shows like The Six Million Dollar Man, Rainbow Bright, Care Bears, Magnum P.I., Knight Rider, Superfriends, and so much more. The show, a sketch comedy series producing 15 minute episodes taking aim at everything with a wid blast all while producing said sketches with toys from the era, is crass and crude and, at times, pretty stupid, but it also has a way about it that makes it instantly memorable and hard to ignore.

While the show in general is fun to watch, usually in small doses so you don’t feel too dirty or ashamed of yourself by the time your binge is over, I have especially liked its specials. These started airing almost as soon as the show began, with the first, the Robot Chicken Christmas Special, airing for the holiday after the first season in 2005. From there were multiple Star WarsThe modern blockbuster: it's a concept so commonplace now we don't even think about the fact that before the end of the 1970s, this kind of movie -- huge spectacles, big action, massive budgets -- wasn't really made. That all changed, though, with Star Wars, a series of films that were big on spectacle (and even bigger on profits). A hero's journey set against a sci-fi backdrop, nothing like this series had ever really been done before, and then Hollywood was never the same. specials which then gave way (once the series had mined just about all they could from the dedicated Star Wars concept) to specials all about DC’s collection of superheroes.

We’ve already reviewed two of those specials so far, with the Robot Chicken DC Comics Special airing in 2012 and then the sequel, Robot Chicken DC Comics Special 2: Villains in Paradise, coming two years later. This third and (so far) final special of the run, Robot Chicken DC Comics Special III: Magical Friendship, came out just a year after that, and it provides more of all you expect: crass humor, weird, deep-cut references, and so many jokes at Batman’s expense. It’s a funny little special, although if I’m being honest, it’s just not nearly as good as the ones that we got before.

An issue with the special this time around is that, unlike with the previous two where there was some kind of throughline for each episode, a kind of plotline you could latch onto, there isn’t nearly as much story for this third special. The overarching idea is that SupermanThe first big superhero from DC Comics, Superman has survived any number of pretenders to the throne, besting not only other comic titans but even Wolrd War II to remain one of only three comics to continue publishing since the 1940s. and BatmanOne of the longest running, consistently in-print superheroes ever (matched only by Superman and Wonder Woman), Batman has been a force in entertainment for nearly as long as there's been an entertainment industry. It only makes sense, then that he is also the most regularly adapted, and consistently successful, superhero to grace the Silver Screen. are friends (thus the “magical friendship” in the title), but Superman is also a massive dick. He takes every opportunity he can to make fun of and belittle Batman, all while pointing out that he, the Kryptonian alien, is just all around cooler. Stronger, faster, able to fly. He’s the better guy, he thinks.

All of this comes to a head when Batman, belittled by Superman one too many times, hops on the Cosmic Treadmill, the device that lets the The FlashStruck by lightning while working in his lab, Barry Allen became a speedster known as The Flash, launching an entire set of super-fast superheroes. travel through time, so he can grab an alternate universe Superman he can use to make fun of the prime Superman. Superman then does the same thing, and they go back and forth until they summon Composite Superman, an evil being made up of both Superman and Batman. And then the Composite Superman tries to end the world by creating, and then merging, the Multiverse.

That’s what I’d call the “meat” of the story, but it’s very loose and not well constructed. The idea of Superman making fun of Batman isn’t really that well developed, whether you watched the previous specials or not. This is, in part, because the heroes in these shorts have whatever personality is required by the sketch to sell the joke. Sometimes Batman is a whiny loser, other times he’s dark and grim, and the same goes for Superman. I don’t think you’re supposed to expect continuity from these sketches, even when the sketches reference previous sketches in previous specials and episodes, but then, at the same time, by having a vague plotline for the episode you also need some continuity so that whatever gags are built off the loose story actually work. That doesn’t really happen here.

At the same time, I don’t exactly feel like the hook of Superman being a dick is all that fresh. Yes, it plays against type for the hero as we know him now, but there’s a long running history of the character (especially in the Silver Age) acting like a kind of mad god who does whatever he wants just because. The Silver Age was a weird time, to be sure, but we all know that joke now. Hell, there was an entire website (that has since gone down as of 2019) called Superdickery. Robot Chicken making the same joke doesn’t feel nearly as amusing.

There are sketches in the episode that do work, mind you. A beat where a chicken gets into a cockfight with Hawkman is amusing. There’s a running gag where Brainiac-5 inserts himself into various sketches to explain the comic book history of a reference, which is pretty amusing. And there’s an absolutely hilarious series of gags introducing, and using, the Justice League’s newest member, Guy with a Rock. These ones, and a few others like them in the episode, manage to leverage the crude attitude of the series alongside the outlandish scenarios to create something really funny.

And, of course, the animation and acting for the show are at Robot Chicken’s usual levels. You might think them good or bad, with cheaply made toys modified with claymation being used for the characters, and voices that barely sound like the characters the show is trying to mock, but at the same time this is exactly what you’d expect from Robot Chicken, so if you’re going into this special expecting anything different, you honestly came to the wrong place. By now you should know how this show operates, and it either works for you or it doesn’t.

With that said, it would be nice to see the show push itself at least a little. If not in the animation and acting then at least via a story that tries harder than this. This third episode feels like its coasting, without any of the truly weird humor or out there scenarios that really make the show sing. Where with previous DC Comics specials I found myself laughing regularly, this third attempt mostly elicited chuckles, if any laughs at all, and they weren’t as hearty or deep as I would have liked. This show can be uproarious when it’s firing, but this special absolutely misses the mark. It feels like the show filling time instead of having something really funny to say about DC and its stable of heroes.

And I guess that’s the reason why it was also the last of the DC Comics specials. After this the show moved on to The Walking Dead and Archie Comics, which would provide new sources for gags and laughs that hadn’t already been mined for all they were worth. It’s likely that the creators (Seth Green and his crew) simply didn’t have enough material to make a third DC special but they were contracted to do so or just bit off more than they could chew. Regardless, this is absolutely a weak entry in the series and it’s for the best that, as of right now, it’s also remained the last DC special Robot Chicken attempted.