Plot summary: Season Two is underway as Superman releases a Kryptoninan prisoner from The Phantom Zone and teaches her to be his partner… which of course doesn’t go as well as he’d hoped…
Notes and Trivia
Episode: 14 (S2.E1)
Original Air Date: September 8th, 1997
Directed: Dan Riba (6)
Written: Robert Goodman (2)
Animation: Koko Enterprise Co., LTD & Dong Yang Animation Co., LTD. (9)
Music: Kristopher Carter (5)
Superman’s ship containing a Phantom Zone projector was set up in the very first episode, where Jor-El stated his plan was to place the entire population of Krypton in the Phantom Zone and then send one person ahead to let everybody else on another planet.
Wonder Woman is mentioned for the first time despite her canonically not being a public figure until Justice League‘s first episode. This is either meant to just be a random throwaway expression, a continuity error or you can chalk it up to time-travel shenanigans from ‘The Savage Time’ way down the line.
The designs for the Kryptonian military were clearly a big influence on later designs for both Derek Powers’ security detail and Shriek in Batman Beyond.
Recap
Professor Hamilton discovers a strange device inside a hidden compartment in Superman’s rocket ship. Supes confirms it’s a Phantom Zone projector, capable of transporting dangerous aliens to another dimension.
Hamilton accidentally releases one such creature, which Superman is able to pacify and return to the Phantom Zone, but a Kryptonian named Mala begins calling out to them for her release…
Heading to The Fortress of Solitude, Superman uses the Kryptonian computer from Episode 2 and the memory orb he took from Brainiac to get the low-down on Mala.
Together with Jax-Ur, the head of the Kryptonina military, Mala helped lead a coup of Krypton that was thwarted by Jor-El, and the pair were imprisoned in The Phantom Zone. Life for Jax-Ur, 20 years for Mala for just following orders.
Clark decides its past time to let Mala out, and then takes her to a reclusive STAR Labs facility out in the woods to let her process everything and learn to use her slowly developing superpowers.
Testing out what she’s learned, he brings her along to stop a robbery, but she ends up getting a little too aggressive with the thieves, perturbing Superman.
Mala catches wind of Superman considering sending her back to the Phantom Zone (as Lex Luthor calls for on TV), and push finally comes to shove when she gets aggressive with Lois during an interview.
Superman tries to take her back by force but she breaks free and distracts him by endangering civilians. This gives her the time needed to free Jax-Ur from the Phantom Zone!
To be continued…
Best Performance
Leslie Easterbook does a good job with Mala, playing up both her more aggressive side, and some mostly convincing theatrics to manipulate Superman. Her pleas to be released from the Phantom Zone and flirting with Clark juxtapose nicely with her gleeful comments about humans being defenceless against them. Her struggles to get to grip with her powers are fun if a little too brief. I’ll talk about it a lot more below, but of the things I don’t like about the final few minutes, Easterbook’s performance isn’t one of them.
Ron Perlman was fine as Jax-Ur in a brief appearance in this first part. It’s a far cry from his turn as Clayface in BTAS. Everybody else’s role is pretty small, with Dana Delany and Clancy Brown only getting a couple of lines each, and Tim Daly again being just fine. Corey Burton’s Brainiac is solid, but exposition is never going to win you this category.
Episode Ranking
I keep praising the show for building on everything it establishes, and the decision to introduce a second Kryptonian to kick off Season 2 was an excellent choice. It adds a key piece of the Superman mythos (The Phantom Zone), while also fleshing out another (The Fortress of Solitude), complete with bringing back what seemed to be a one-time holographic recording by Clark’s parents, now repurposed as his very own Bat-Computer. They even used Brainiac to provide the exposition, as his memory orb now acts as a legitimate archive, transforming the would-be-conqueror into Wikipedia. All very nice, and that’s before you get into the ramifications of Superman no longer being the last of his kind, a perfect way to change the status quo and up the stakes after the first season.
I have some issues with the final obvious betrayal at the end (more on that below), but for the most part this was a fun little story that expands on Kryptonian history and underlines our hero’s virtue as he and Mala end up being worlds apart. It isn’t quite bold enough to properly poke around at the idea that Krypton’s government wasn’t just misled by Brainiac, but potentially fully corrupt, tossing prisoners in with monsters, and Mala inadvertently being left there too long while Jax-Ur got a life sentence for some… Light… Treason. Okay it was a coup, but still! I’m not mad at them for that, and to be honest just giving me the mental runway to ask those kinds of questions for myself is plenty given there’s a whole story around Mala learning to use her powers and whatnot.
It was a pretty solid episode visually, from the whacky monster Clark pacifies, to the way they depict the Phantom Zone, to the costume designs for the Kryptonian military, to Mala’s training montage, and a shockingly fun little action set piece at the end where Superman saves a restaurant full of civilians from certain death.
For now I’m placing it high up the list, though with the caveat that it’s obviously an incomplete story and my objection to Mala’s characterisation at the end; She is basically turned from a strong independent person into a stereotypically over-emotional woman upset that Clark rejected her, and then they reveal she was also Jax-Ur’s romantic partner, giving the possibly unintentional vibe she’s just running from man to man seeking somebody to tell her what to do. Not great, Bob!
- Fun and Games
- The Last Son of Krypton
- Stolen Memories
- Tools of the Trade
- Blasts from the Past (NEW ENTRY)
- The Main Man
- The Way of All Flesh
- My Girl
- A Little Piece of Home
- Feeding Time
- Two’s a Crowd
Rogues Roundup
Mala & Jax-Ur (Leslie Easterbrook/Ron Perlman) (first appearance)
I’m discussing them as a single entity because as far as I know they exclusively appear together. If that changes I’ll split them later.
That said, this is mostly the Mala show in Part I, as Jax-Ur remains imprisoned until the end while she gets to have a little adventure without him. It’s a nice touch that she doesn’t really mask any evil, as much as Superman’s optimism coming back to bite him. She admonishes the thieves for stealing and falls in line with Clark’s wishes… but she simply thinks in different terms to him, assuming he is the planet’s ruler rather than its protector. She’s a soldier who participated in a coup after Jax-Ur claimed the Kryptonian council were weak, so of course these are the terms she thinks in. He’s also thrown off the scent by her being legitimately upset by the destruction of Krypton, which acts as a bonding moment. As it should! He just can’t see who she is beyond that.
There were the makings of a nuanced character here, and it suuuuper sucks that they decided to make her last straw being jilted by Superman when Lois asks if they’re a couple. She had clearly already eavesdropped on his conversation with Hamilton and had plenty to be angry about, so to then write a scene where she’s also offended he doesn’t want to bang her makes her look like a jilted woman out for revenge. Shame on this creative team, who are usually much better at this stuff.
- Toyman
- Lex Luthor
- Brainiac
- Metallo
- Lobo
- The Preserver
- Parasite
- Bruno Mannheim (and Intergang!)
- Kanto
- Mala & Jax-Ur (NEW ENTRY)
- Earl Garver
- Mercy Graves
- Darkseid
The Matt Signal 
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