Plot summary: Superman races to prove John Stewart’s innocence while Flash does his best to play defence attorney as the truth finally begins to take shape.

For background on the creation of Justice League and info about how I’ll be covering it, check out the Series Primer.

1. Notes and Trivia
2. Recap
3. Best Performance
4. Episode Ranking
5. Rogues Roundup

Notes and Trivia

Episode: 5 (S1.E5)

Original Air Date: November 26^th, 2001

Directed: Butch Lukic (3)

Written: Stan Berkowitz (2)

Animation: Koko Enterprise Co., LTD (5)

Music: Kristopher Carter (3)

These two episodes are a very loose adaptation of ‘No Man Escapes the Manhunters’ and ‘No World Escapes the Manhunters’, a two-part Justice League comic featuring Hal Jordan in John’s role.

We get our third spoof of the OJ Simpson trial in the DCAU as Flash states “If the ring wasn’t lit, you must acquit!” The other two were ‘Joker’s Millions‘ and ‘Over the Edge‘, which featured obvious Johnnie Cochran parodies.

You may have been thinking it’s dumb to have very different looking characters in the same universe called The Manhunters and The Martian Manhunter. You’d be correct, but there is a convoluted reason for it: As The Guardians explain here, The Manhunters were the first attempt at an interstellar peacekeeping force, but what is left out is that they modelled their robot servants on the stoic behaviour of ‘The Manhunters of Ma’aleca’ (aka Mars).

Recap

Despite John’s guilty plea, Superman doesn’t buy it so takes J’onn with him to investigate the crime scene while Flash and Hawkgirl stay behind to stall for time.

Flash evades bailiffs to take the stand when Stewart declines to defend himself. The judges warn that should he lose he will share the punishment with the accused. Neat system!

Hawkgirl approaches the other Green Lanterns who opted not to watch the rest of the trial. She calls them cowards and starts beating them up until Kilowog decides they should help Stewart.

Kilowig tries to act as a character witness, but the prosecution tears him apart, pointing out they use nothing but their judgement to make life and death calls. The Guardians try to back him up but fail.

John (and Flash) are sentenced to death, but Superman & J’onn return from their investigation to reveal the entire thing was a frame job utilising an enormous holographic projector, which Hawkgirl deactivates, revealing Adjouris 4 is safe and sound.

Kanjar Ro confirms he was paid off by The Manhunters, with The Guardians explaining they likely want revenge after they were replaced as a peacekeeping force by The Green Lantern Corps.

The League, Guardians and various Green Lanterns return to stop The Manhunters’ invasion of Oa, with Stewart finally defeating their leader in the Central Battery chamber after it tries to absorb all of the Guardians’ power.

In the aftermath John’s fellow Lanterns apologise for turning on him earlier, but he ignores them and instead thanks The League for refusing to quit on him and he flies them all home.

Best Performance

Phil LaMarr puts in by far his best performance so far, not requiring Garrett Morris’ help this time either. He begins in a mostly passive role, having accepted his fate, before scolding Flash for not taking it like a man when they’re both sentenced to death. But the second he learns he’s innocent after all he leaps into action and angrily bellows at Kanjar-Ro, showing a nice little bit or range. He also delivers the best version of the Green Lantern Oath we’ve heard to date towards the end, and then gives his fellow Lanterns the cold shoulder when they try to apologise for him. He ends the episode by demonstrating a little vulnerability towards his teammates for never giving up on him. Between the script and LaMarr’s voice acting they have rescued this character from an extremely rough starting point.

Beyond LaMarr there are a lot of fun little freaks dotted around. Dennis Haysbert has such a unique voice that fits Kilowog perfectly. It’s a tiny bit marble-mouthed and also implies a sense of physical size, but above all it’s distinct and memorable. The big lug falling into The Prosecutor’s trap is cute. Speaking of which, we get a little more Kurtwood Smith than last time, and he’s still an excellent casting. Same for Rene Auberjonois as Kanjar-Ro. I loved his delivery of “For money” when he’s asked why he did what he did. He tosses in a fun little voice for Galius Zed too.

Episode Ranking

This episode demonstrated how much better they’ve gotten at split narratives. In the past there would be a tendency for them to struggle to weigh two (or three) stories equally, hurting the pacing or making things too chaotic. It’s paramount for them to do it here given the size of their cast, and they’ve already upped their game compared to the opening, by establishing the trial as the firm A-Story in Part I, with two characters’ lives hanging in the balance. It’s the location from which The Plot happens, with everything else in the story having to adhere to the trial’s timeline. But because they did such good work laying that groundwork before, they can afford to actually make it a bit more limited this time, instead providing two alternate branches that converge into one later.

Hawkgirl probably got the least love in the opening three parter, so it’s nice that across these two episodes she’s taken on a far bigger role, especially in this one as she takes on four Green Lanterns by herself. Admittedly they all agree to not use weapons (including power rings) but still! The scene also makes Kilowog look good as he sits the fracas out while his friends get embarrassed, and then it’s his decision to take action that ends things. They’re never really going to do anything with him, but he is a popular character so it’s nice to not include him in the beatdown. Plus this all gets paid off in the final fight as she and the Lanterns all fly in together to provide reinforcements.

Before that though she comes to the rescue of Superman & Martian Manhunter, who provided the third location, conducting the search for proof their friend didn’t kill billions of people. I liked them using logic to puzzle out the truth, with the moon from which John is purported to have destroyed Adjouris 4 remaining in orbit despite the thing it was orbiting being destroyed. The reveal of the giant projector and J’onn likening it to a children’s toy from Mars was some… let’s call it economical exposition. They toss you the briefest of action sequences when Kanjar attacks, and Superman again has to be the one to think beyond rampant violence, as Hawkgirl shoots Kanjar down and then Clark retrieves him by force before he dies in a presumed crash. Shayera angry. Clark smart and compassionate.

The battle on Oa is solid but not stellar. The absolute highlight for me was a Manhunter trying to track Flash’s rapid movements on a turret control console, only for J’onn to intangibly remerge from it, reaching into its head and functionally tearing its brain out. The Martian Manhunter is terrifyingly powerful in ways none of us can even begin to comprehend. They try to get some big drama out of The Manhunter leader absorbing the entire power supply of the Central Battery, growing gigantic and stripping all the Lanterns and even The Guardians of their power, going as far as to try and do a death fake-out. But then all John has to do his recite the Lantern Oath and he absorbs all the power back into his ring and then puts it back into the battery, which for some reason kills the Manhunter. Weird! I feel like if they had a bit more time to play with they could have done a bit more of a fight scene with the giant Manhunter, but we’ve already shifted from one to two-parters to solve their story problems and they can’t have them all be three-parters!

All of the above is well and good, but the heart of this story deals with some surprisingly heavy themes, and I expressed some worries last time that they’d undercut the power of it by revealing John wasn’t guilty after all. Well, they did exactly that, but did their best to at least have their cake and eat it by having John spout some rhetoric about people like The Justice League having to be held accountable. I’m not delusional enough to believe they’d kill off two main characters five episodes into the show, nor do I necessarily think it would have been a good thing if they’d told this story right near the end and did go through with it. However it does always feel a little bit of a copout when they go through all this drama only to say ‘just kidding!’ It’s not a million miles away from ‘it was all a dream’ in my opinion. But hey, John was fully in favour of being executed for his ostensible crimes, going as far as to ensure he died with dignity, and that does speak well to his character and sense of morality.

Speaking of character, this served as dramatic character rehabilitation for John (as well as Hawkgirl as I outlined above), as well as mending fences between John and Flash. They’re fundamentally too different to ever stop bickering, but it was nice to have Wally be the one willing to die defending John after all the chastising John has done of the speedster.

All in all I think this second part is a little weaker, but as a complete package it’s a compelling little story that proves this format can in fact work. It stays at the top of the list and I do think it’ll take some work to top it.

1. In Blackest Night (–)
2. Secret Origins

Rogues Roundup

The Manhunters (James Remar) (second appearance)

Their plan is pretty clever, besmirching the reputation of their replacements and luring The Guardians away from Oa in the process, so they can attack their former masters’ base while they’re away. The reveal of their origins gives them some fun layers too, as it means they continued to do exactly as they were told, but all the while holding a grudge and waiting for their chance to bring down their creators.

Unfortunately once all those cards have been played they descend into painfully generic territory. It’s the classic rule of ninjas where one or two of them are deadly, but when an entire army of them are deployed they become markedly easier to defeat.

They briefly try to pivot them back in a more positive direction as their leader ostensibly becomes one with the Central Battery and grows giant and freaky-looking… but then John just says the GL Oath and that’s that.

All in all they were more fun than you might initially expect of an army of identical robots, but they can’t compete with the Imperium.

Kanjar-Ro (Rene Auberjonois) (second appearance)

He was obviously a villain in Part I, but he didn’t really do enough to merit talking about so I saved him for Part II.

I love the design of this shifty little pirate man, and Auberjonois is a fun casting, especially as he’s best known as a stickler for the rules in Deep Space Nine. As I said above, he didn’t really do much but still gave off solid bad vibes, and that continues up to the reveal, as you see him sneaking around and inherently don’t trust him.

And then of course he tries to murder them and when the truth comes out he very casually confirms he did it all for cold hard cash. Classic dirtbag behaviour. But he’s obviously just a goon so his ceiling can only be so high.

1. The Imperium
2. The Manhunters (–)
3. Kanjar-Ro (NEW ENTRY)