ANI-MOVIES, *Superman/Batman: Public Enemies

Power Girl beeeewbs! ("ahem") The superhero version of Lethal Weapon flies off in its own movie. Long time amigos Supes and Bats have partnered up in their own comic before titled World's Finest, but over the last few years they've had a different comic called Superman/Batman. The series started out with a story arc where our caped cohorts team up to stop the newly-elected President Lex Luthor from framing them while an asteroid is threatening to destroy the Earth. That became the basis for this superhero slugfest!

Lex Luthor wins the presidency despite how many people know he's a supervillain, and cons a couple of unrelated heroes to work for him lead by Captain Atom. He then learns that an oncoming asteroid made of pure Kryptonite is gonna crash into the planet via Armageddon. Lex tries to convince Superman to stop it, although he turns it into an attempt to kill him with Metallo. Batman rescues him and escapes to the Batcave. Luthor then reports on live TV that Superman killed Metallo, and puts a billion smackers on his head. While trying to solve the mystery of what really happened to Metallo, B&S run across about half the villains in town trying to get their bounty, only to be rescued by Captain Atom and his Luthor-run hero crew. Captain Atom tries to arrest our heroes, but Batman & Superman make off with Power Girl, when Batman realizes it was the villain/hero Major Force who offed Metallo. They then make their way to Luthor's secret crib where they clash with Captain Marvel and Hawkman, but manage to trick Luthor into revealing his plan to letting the asteroid destroy all the life on Earth. Apparently, LL has been taking Kryptonite enimas to make himself deadly to Superman, but it's been making him crazy-as-hell. The World's Finest then scoot to Japan to get help from the young inventor/billionaire Toyman(not the evil one)who builds a giant Composite-Superman rocket-robot to stop the asteroid. However, Luthor shows up in a tacky armored-suit to fight Superman while Bats flies the rocket and blows up the asteroid with no nasty effects to the Earth's atmosphere. Luthor is then kicked out of office by his former superhero hit squad, and Superman is cleared of murder charges.

This movie took a different turn as far as the character designs than the regular DC Universe animated projects had. Instead of the generic style that we're accustomed to from Batman: The Animated Series and Justice League Unlimited, it stuck more to the look that Edward McGuinness' artwork had in the Superman/Batman comic. There is a huge cast of random villains and heroes showing up in it, most notably: Starfire, Black Lightning, Katana, Mongul, Solomon Grundy, Killer Frost, and Grodd, even though you'll need to keep a score card for the list of villains that appear in rumble during the middle. The animation is no exception to the other great production value that was put into Green Lantern: First Flight. Again, my only real complaint is like all the DC Universe movies is that its too short. In fact, its about ten minutes shorter than most of the previous ones. Anyway, this is by far the best best "buddy cop" in capes movie ever!