Plot summary: Darkseid finally invades, bringing his full military might to Metropolis, bolstered by his general, Steppenwolf.
Notes and Trivia
Episode: 39 (S2.E26)
Original Air Date: November 22nd, 1997
Directed: Dan Riba (11)
Written: Bruce Timm (2) (story) & Rich Fogel (6) (teleplay)
Animation: Koko Enterprise Co., LTD & Dong Yang Animation Co., LTD. (23)
Music: Kristopher Carter (11)
Bruce Timm was adamant about Darkseid killing somebody close to Superman and DC nixed Ma and Pa Kent, so they went with Dan Turpin. This is because they’d drawn Turpin to resemble his creator, ‘King’ Jack Kirby, who had recently passed away.
Given this tribute to Kirby there are multiple members of the production staff, as well as Stan Lee, Nick Fury and 3/4 of the Fantastic Four present at Turpin’s funeral. Lee and the Marvel characters were edited off for some broadcasts but restored for the HD release. In the original storyboard Iron Man and Captain America were also present.
Many more New Gods characters arrive in the climax including Big Barda, The Black Racer, Forager, Metron, and MY MAN, Mister Miracle.
Darkseid states if Superman won’t be his knight he will be his pawn. Put a pin that…
Recap
Professor Hamilton informs Superman that Darkseid’s bomb didn’t just blow up the power plant, it’s steadily burning down towards the earth’s core where it will set off enough volcanic activity to turn the planet into a copy of Apokalips.
Talk of the devil, Darkseid dismisses Kalibak’s request to lead the charge, instead tasking the hunter Steppenwolf with taking Superman down.
Steppenwolf gets straight to work, leading a horde of Parademons to dogpile on Superman, who is unable to call in Orion as the bomb fried the circuits of his communicator.
Dan Turpin leads the heavy artillery to even the odds, and Clark gets to work dousing the fire at Ayers island through extensive underwater tunnelling.
Unfortunately the reward for his mammoth task is Darkseid personally confronting him. Superman rejects an offer to serve as his general, so finds himself beaten, tied to the top of an enormous tank and paraded through Metropolis’ decimated streets.
Darkseid declares himself victorious, demanding Metropolis bow to him, but Dan Turpin defiantly refuses, starting a small riot that results in Superman breaking free of his bondage.
Superman easily bests Kalibak, but before Darkseid can rise to his challenge scores of Boom-Tubes open and the New Genesis military pour through, led by Orion, who declares Earth is under Highfather’s protection.
Darkseid opts to retreat to maintain their truce… but murders Dan Turpin with his Omega Beams on the way out! Superman and a bevvy of heroes and loved ones attend his funeral and the episode ends with a tribute to the recently deceased Jack Kirby.
Best Performance
Oh hey, it’s Sherman ‘Derek Powers‘ Howard as Steppenwolf! I like his take on the character, a cocky, almost aristocratic huntsman, but he’s barely in the episode.
Michael Ironside demonstrates exactly why he opted to play Darkseid so sedate when he angrily growls “No!” It’s genuinely a little intimidating. Likewise how calm he is in the face of fighting Superman and being greeted by the full might of New Genesis. His seductive offer to Superman. His matter-of-fact declaration of conquest. The playful venom in his parting words to Superman. It’s all really good, unnerving stuff. Actually, I would say his premature victory speech slightly undoes him, as you can kind of feel his heart isn’t in the theatricality of it, while the usual more laid back approach suits him far better.
Joseph Balogna is in action mode this time around, barking orders from the trenches as he directs troops and choppers around the warzone and calls Parademons “overgrown parakeets.” It all serves to build him up as a hero going above and beyond his station so that his death hits all the harder. He goes out defiant and fighting, and the show will miss Balogna’s work, especially as it was all too brief given what he was capable of.
Episode Ranking
The way Part I and some of this episode went could lead you to believe this should have served as a series finale, but by the end you’re assured that while this was grander than the average Superman tale, they still have even more to do as we’re denied a full confrontation between our hero and Darkseid.
But they play as big an emotional trump card as they’re able short of killing somebody like Ma and Pa Kent (as Timm originally wanted) or even Lois herself. Turpin only made a handful of appearances, but they were able to convey what a loss this was to Clark and the entire city. Seeing Superman lose control in a fit of blind rage is something you can only do extremely sparingly, so it made sense for him to tear the megatank apart, screaming as he does in the wake of the death of his “old friend”, far too late to stop it. The death also works so well because Turpin enjoyed such an outsized role leading the defence. You may think it’s bogus that he’s able to defeat Steppenwolf when Superman couldn’t, or take down a Parademon by himself, but that’s the whole point, that he was struck down after his most heroic achievement. That he was the voice of the resistance movement. That’s sold all the more by Maggie Sawyer clawing her way from her hospital bed to try and back up her partner, motivated by his efforts. They also make a point of endangering several of the cast one by one (even showing Luthor looking on powerlessly from his ivory tower) while Turpin enjoys plot armour, faking you out until he is the one to meet a tragic end. The moment is extremely well executed, as it appears Turpin sealed his own fate by yelling at Darkseid during his exit, only for Space Satan to be petty about it, utterly disintegrating him as the music booms and everybody screams and cries.
To then tie all of that to the real-world tribute to the creator of Turpin (and Darkseid, and The Avengers and dozens of other major comic characters) is powerful for those in the know. I would call it a classy move on Marvel’s part to allow characters they own (that he created) to appear at the funeral, but really there’s no way to follow that sentiment through without getting to the heart of Kirby’s lifelong battles over creators’ rights. King Jack deserved this and so much more. Truly a legend among legends. And for Superman to be left standing tearily at Turpin’s grave after a Jewish funeral, followed by ‘Not The End’ and then the explicit Jack tribute was a wonderful somber ending. It’s tough to convey how rare it is for a children’s cartoon to be this classy and touching.
(Just in case you were under any illusions Bruce Timm is a truly good writer the original ending saw Darkseid back down from Turpin and leave rather than destroy the planet he coveted.)
Anyway, beyond the huge emotional gut punch they clearly understood where we are in the series and built this as what feels fitting for a quasi-season finale (we do have a more upbeat ending to come.) Between the red sky, the army of Parademons flying in every direction and easily overwhelming Superman, Steppenwolf temporarily handing our hero his ass, Darkseid’s megatank driving a beaten Superman around, and the sheer size of the New Genesis fleet, they wanted it to feel epic and it succeeds. Something as simple as a Parademon pinning Clark down and biting his neck gives them such a ferocious feel, conveying how much trouble our hero is in, and what a different kind of trouble it is compared to normal. Sure he can keep punching them, but more just keep arriving to swarm him. And then Darkseid laser blasts him nearly unconscious and strings him up for everybody to look at, their symbol of hope beaten and embarrassed.
Superman’s method of firefighting is also a lot of fun, turning himself into a human drill to poke more and more holes in the tunnel so that the ocean can cool the inferno. I love that they take the time to show him pausing between dives to catch his breath, and how truly exhausted he is when he’s finished. That this is the kind of feat only he could do, with a sense of scale we really haven’t seen before on the show. It’s also clever because it’s ostensibly Darkseid’s biggest power play that he’s been setting up behind the scenes for a really long time, only for Superman to thwart it halfway through the episode… but Darkseid just calmly moves on to something else.
Ultimately I think these two episodes achieve an awful lot in terms of sprawling scale, grand stakes, utilisation of the supporting cast, great action and an insane amount of visual flare. But I would still put them a step below the series’ best, which both had high concepts that they executed nearly flawlessly. I can’t tell what’s more controversial, that I would leave this short of the two above it or that I put it ahead of ‘World’s Finest’.
- The Late Mr. Kent
- Brave New Metropolis
- Apokalips… Now! (↑)
- World’s Finest
- Livewire
- Double Dose
- Fun and Games
- Warrior Queen
- Father’s Day
- The Hand of Fate
- The Last Son of Krypton
- Ghost in the Machine
- 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
- Protoype
- My Girl
- A Little Piece of Home
- Feeding Time
- Speed Demons
- Two’s a Crowd
- Identity Crisis
- Heavy Metal
- Monkey Fun
- Bizarro’s World
Rogues Roundup
Darkseid (Michael Ironside) (fourth appearance)
After all the scheming from the shadows and the briefest of confrontations with Superman in ‘Father’s Day‘, Darkseid finally comes out to play and boy does he justify his ranking and then some.
Clark may already be tired when the attack begins, but that’s the whole point, Big D is a strategist, and picked his moment to hit him with an energy attack that completely floors him, all while narrating to us how he could in fact kill The Man of Steel if he so chose. 99% of villains would do absolutely anything to defeat Superman, but even with victory in his grasp Darkseid is always thinking bigger, wishing to recruit his foe for even greater galactic conquests.
Plus he kills Dan Turpin! So few characters die in these shows, especially ones that have been in multiple episodes, with this being deployed to demonstrate Darkseid is next level. He doesn’t even have to exert himself to beat up Superman or kill Turpin, and elects to make a tactical retreat before we find out if his forces would have been sufficient to fend off the New Genesis army. Some don’t like that kind of thing, but as I said, he’s always thinking ahead.
(I always loved that he can angle the Omega Beams in whacky ways, because what the fuck are you supposed to do against that?)
We still have a whole other gear to hit though, so he’s going to stay in second place for now on account of how subdued he is on purpose. I’m going to need everything if anyone is going to dethrone Livewire. But he has widened the invisible gap between himself and Luthor on the back of how commandingly he is portrayed, and the rock fucking solid visual iconography.
Steppenwolf (Sherman Howard) (first appearance)
I feel uniquely qualified to talk about Steppenwolf given my one-man crusade against the version seen in Zack Snyder’s Justice League. I’m not being hyperbolic when I say I prefer his introductory 10 seconds to 99% of his material in ZSJL. He gets a grand entrance, he doesn’t look like shit and he’s a trophy hunter. That’s already a solid pitch!
Riding his hoverbike like a horse, wielding the Parademons like a pack of dogs and using weapons like axes, swords and (energy) nets fits his vibe well, as he genuinely revels in the process of taking down Superman, rather than simply throwing hands with him.
Now does he eat shit from Dan Turpin in a helicopter just as quickly as he arrives? Sure! But Steppenwolf is a henchman, not somebody you build an entire movie around. Plus he jumps to safety so… is technically still out there. Okay fine, that’s an unsatisfying payoff to his set-up, you’ve got me! But the elevator pitch is better! Adding Steppenwolf to the mix was Rich Fogel’s idea. I think that’s an interesting piece of trivia for them to surrender because he certainly feels like he was tacked onto their larger, clearer ideas. But I do think there was something to this vision and wonder if this had been three parts if they could have done a lot more with him.
Kalibak (Michael Dorn) (second appearance)
Seeing a guy that threw Superman around like nobody else get benched by his father for failing to finish the job is wild. His main function is to serve that same little narrative trick I keep hyping up; We saw this guy be a major threat by himself, so when Superman has to take him on fresh off having the snot beaten out of him by Darkseid your brain goes ‘uh oh, he might be screwed here.’ Instead, just like the last time they fought, Superman is able to summon enough willpower to just mop the floor with Kalibak.
I suppose he should be knocked down a spot for how easily he’s taken out. I would say nothing really happens with his character but it is kind of fucked up that Darkseid acknowledges Orion more as his son when he’s fighting against them than Kalibak who is loyal.
- Livewire
- Darkseid (–)
- Lex Luthor
- The Joker
- Toyman
- Queen Maxima
- Metallo
- Parasite
- Karkull
- Brainiac
- Mr. Mxyzptlk
- Harley Quinn
- Kalibak (↓)
- Lobo
- Luminus
- DeSaad
- Detective Bowman
- Bruno Mannheim (and Intergang!)
- Steppenwolf (NEW ENTRY)
- The Preserver
- Kanto
- Mala & Jax-Ur
- Mercy Graves
- The Prometheon
- De’Cine
- Corey Mills
- Earl Garver
- Titano
- Bizarro
- Weather Wizard
The Matt Signal 
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