Plot summary: Lois takes a trip to an alternate dimension where Superman and Lex Luthor rule Metropolis with an iron fist.
Notes and Trivia
Episode: 25 (S2.E12)
Original Air Date: September 27th, 1997
Directed: Curt Geda (7)
Written:Stan Berkowitz (4)
Animation: Koko Enterprise Co., LTD & Dong Yang Animation Co., LTD. (16)
Music: Michael McCuistion (7)
Obviously named for Brave New World by Aldous Huxley.
‘Brave New Superman’ clearly inspired Overman, an alternate universe Superman who landed in Nazi Germany instead of Metropolis, debuting in comics in 2007. Like ‘Red Son’ exists, but the costume design is so much closer to this.
Could be a stretch, but the LexCorp facility at “9th & Ross” may be a reference to Clark’s high school best friend Pete Ross, who did VERY briefly appear in the second episode.
Professor Hamilton’s machine uses technology from the Phantom Zone Projector he made in ‘Blasts from the Past‘.
Recap
Lois & Jimmy are checking out a machine Professor Hamilton is working on that should provide windows into alternate dimensions. Would you believe me if I told you that despite it seeming safe Lois gets sucked through?
For some reason on the other side she elects to leave the easiest rescue point of the derelict lab and wanders downtown where everything has a distinctly Nazi flavour and there’s a monument to Superman and Lex Luthor, “The Men Who Saved Metropolis.”
She avoids arrest for breaking curfew as Officer Turpin is drawn into a gunfight with “rebels” breaking into a LexCorp building… led by an alternate Jimmy Olsen!
Things get even weirder as ‘Superman’ arrives and uses excessive force to capture them all, save for Jimmy who flees with Lois, having recognised her.
Lois learns that in this world she was killed by Intergang, causing Superman to snap, team with Luthor and take extreme measures to make Metropolis “safe” again.
Jimmy introduces her to his cell of downtrodden rebels, revealing his team stole Kryptonite from the LexCorp facility. Unfortunately Mercy Graves and a squadron of troopers burst in and arrest everybody.
Lex orders Lois’ execution but she’s able to escape and is chased to the top of an enormous Superman/Lex monument where she’s finally confronted by The Man of Steel, stunned to see her alive.
After an emotionally charged conversation he’s convinced to confront Luthor, who naturally deploys Kryptonite to defend himself, declaring his intention to take full control of Metropolis.
Jimmy and the Rebels arrive and chase Luthor off, and after a brief aerial chase Superman causes him to crash his sci-fi jet into a statue. Families are reunited and everybody’s hair blows in the wind.
Lois and Superman return to STAR Labs where the portal re-opens and ‘our’ Superman beckons Lois back through. She complies after kissing the alternate Superman, who vows to rebuild his world’s trust in him.
Best Performance
Dana Delany, the woman that you are. Her take on Lois has been consistently excellent despite a severe lack of screen time, and it’s tiny interactions like her charming attempt to lie to Turpin about her lack of ID card that demonstrate why. That moment alone would be considered a highlight in an episode where she barely does anything, but this is a full feature outing for her where she’s the main character so she wins in a landslide. Her spunky quips remain as on point as always, but Delaney is also able to give the story an emotional grounding that brings it all together. She’s outraged by what’s become of Metropolis, she’s furious that Superman kept his feelings from her, she still fucking hates Lex. It’s all here, everything you could possibly want, right down to giving rallying pep talks and flirting with our hero at the very end.
Everybody else is on their game too, but they didn’t stand a chance against our one true queen.
Episode Ranking
Weird how focusing the story tightly on the core cast (chiefly Lois, but also giving Jimmy Olsen a rare moment in the spotlight) and going back to basics with Superman vs Lex, leads to such a strong episode. The best so far in my opinion. You can stop reading there if all you care about is where I rank ’em.
This is no ‘Over the Edge‘, but it’s still a really good ‘elsewhere’ style story. The subtle redesign of Metropolis is great, with more emphasis on the brutalist verticality of the city, complete with towering statues of Superman. Lex crashing his jet into the face of his own statue at the end is cheesy but they absolutely had to do it. The whole story taking place at night certainly helps the vibe, shifting it more toward a dystopian cautionary tale than a straight-up Nazified America. Dilapidated ruins, an unwashed underground resistance, and of course detention camps help quickly communicate the state of this world. Superman’s apartment being far swankier is a clever little detail too. Plus all the not-quite-Nazi uniforms!
Like many of my favourite episodes of the show so far it’s led by visuals in general. Something simple like Lois noticing the machine works because of the cracked glass you can only see if you stand between the two posts is as clever a moment as you’ll find in a children’s cartoon. They also pulled off one of the most thrilling chase sequences in the DCAU as Lois flees from the police amid a hail of gunfire, making a daring climb across a giant Superman statue’s head. The aerial chase at the end is nothing to write home about, but they do squeeze some brief tension out of it so you get plenty of action to go alongside the headline act of an alternate dimension story.
Evil Superman is right behind Superman losing his powers in terms of tropey stories, so it’s only fitting we’d get both back to back. I think the most interesting part of this take on the character is the very subtle way in which he’s different to our Superman beyond simply being an evil mwahaha copy; Claiming that he did good in the hope others would follow his example feels like something our Clark would never say. It’s not that it’s a bad sentiment whatsoever, it’s just the phrasing feels 1% off, and that’s what I like about it. That in turn leads him to the mentality that he was instead fighting a losing battle against evil and indecency and that helped him to justify the extremity of his New World Order. He’s still not evil even with that, and it’s likely that his outlook on the world is a self-retcon on his part born from grief over Lois, but yeah, I like it a lot. They also do a good job with his two action sequences, first brutalising the rebels, and then storming Lex’s office.
That’s before we get into the juicy romantic implications of it all. We all know ‘our’ Superman has been in love with Lois from day one, but whether due to being polite to a fault or feeling she’d be in danger if they were together, he has never done anything about it. In fact their choice to let that hang in the air unaddressed despite the alternate Superman finally coming clean makes it all the more frustrating. In a good way. That her response to learning this Superman broke bad because of her death is to slap him in the face was such an interesting character choice. In this moment she’s less horrified that he would turn into a fascist overlord and more angry at her own Supes for concealing his feelings, clearly reciprocating them. Then to end the whole thing with the first smooch between Lois & Clark not fully ‘counting’ because it’s the wrong Superman… right in front of the right Superman! Gahhh! Bravo. They didn’t even need to have her ask him to dinner at the end because they’d already nailed it, but I’m not mad about it.
So yeah, what’s left to say? For about half the episode I thought it was fun but could have perhaps benefitted from being a two-parter to give everything more room to breathe. But by the end everybody in the cast has had their moments (fascist Turpin is fun!) and it ends up being an expertly crafted succinct story which makes it more impactful in my opinion. In fact this episode is so good that it makes me annoyed with them for not doing more with Lois, Lex, Jimmy and even Mercy in other episodes.
- Brave New Metropolis (NEW ENTRY)
- Livewire
- Double Dose
- Fun and Games
- The Last Son of Krypton
- Stolen Memories
- Action Figures
- The Prometheon
- Tools of the Trade
- The Main Man
- Mxzypixilated
- Blasts from the Past
- Target
- The Way of All Flesh
- Solar Power
- My Girl
- A Little Piece of Home
- Feeding Time
- Speed Demons
- Two’s a Crowd
- Identity Crisis
Rogues Roundup
Lex Luthor (Clancy Brown) (tenth appearance)
It’s interesting they opted not to flip the dynamic and kept Luthor exactly the same as Lois points out. This is simply a world where Superman took up Lex’s offer to work together, and I liked his big brain idea to quietly execute Lois just in case her presence snaps Superman out of his Nazi phase. Especially because that’s almost exactly what happens.
It’s kind of crazy this has been the only direct Superman vs Lex encounter for a long time, albeit a short and sweet one. Superman postures, Lex calmly plays his Kryptonite card and then does an evil monologue.
I’m going to at last nudge him up into second place. I think they probably could have done even more with him here but it’s tough to find the time when doing a high concept single-part story.
Mercy Graves (Lisa Edelstein) (fourth appearance)
(I haven’t been counting her various mute appearances such as last episode)
She’s barely any different, but takes a far more active role, first leading a raid on the rebels, then taking Lois out to try and murder her, and then engaging in a full on fight with our heroine. She gets outfoxed in the second two of those, which arguably undermines her theoretical role as Luthor’s muscle, but all in the name of good fun and getting to see Lois kick ass.
Nothing she did here was complicated, it’s more that they let her do things at all. The design has always been strong and Edelstein brings a lot of venom to the role. Minor bump.
- Livewire
- Lex Luthor (↑)
- Toyman
- Metallo
- Parasite
- Brainiac
- Mr. Mxyzptlk
- Lobo
- Luminus
- The Preserver
- Bruno Mannheim (and Intergang!)
- Kanto
- Mala & Jax-Ur
- The Prometheon
- Bizarro
- Mercy Graves (↑)
- Earl Garver
- Darkseid
- Detective Bowman
- Weather Wizard
The Matt Signal 
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