Plot summary: When the sorcerer Felix Faust turns the Amazons to stone, Wonder Woman has no choice but to help him gather mysterious relics protected by powerful magics.

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: 10 (S1.E10)

Original Air Date: January 21^st, 2002

Directed: Dan Riba (5)

Written: Joseph Kuhr (1)

Animation: Koko Enterprise Co., LTD (10)

Music: Kristopher Carter (4)

This episode establishes that it’s been eight months since Diana left Themyscira to join the team in the opening three parter.

Hurricane Gardner is named for comics writer Gardner Fox, who wrote a tonne of issues of Justice League. The newsstand it blows away at the start may be named for Bernie from Watchmen.

Likewise, Diana saves a young girl called Cassie, who insists they are not sisters. Cassie Sandmark became Wonder Girl in the comics, the slightly less famous successor to Donna Troy as Wonder Woman’s sidekick.

Felix Faust’s DCAU design is patterned on Boris Karloff.

Recap

Diana’s abandonment of Themyscira plays heavily on her mind, so at Superman’s suggestion she returns to try and make amends… only to find the island in ruins and her fellow Amazons turned to stone!

The sorcerer Felix Faust reveals himself as the culprit and demands Diana’s help finding the scattered pieces of an ancient relic in exchange for reversing his spell.

Diana’s treasure hunt first takes her to a museum where she triggers not just the alarm system, but a giant statue to life to attack her and reclaim the relic shard!

After a brief brawl she is able to defeat the colossus, but the destruction attracts Superman, Flash and Martian Manhunter. Diana reluctantly explains her predicament, and they agree to help.

Flash and Martian Manhunter easily locate their piece in a South American temple thanks to super-speed… but this one summons an enormous fire-breathing snake!

Meanwhile Clark & Diana’s shard is buried under a mall in Metropolis… and causes them each to hallucinate that the other is a monster, leading to a huge brawl that demolishes the place.

Both groups manage to resolve their separate horrors, but Wonder Woman is left contemplating the consequences of having to overcome such strong defences…

Back on Themyscira, Faust is revealed to be working for Hades, who claims to have been “patient” for 3,000 years. The pair agree they will soon rule the world.

To be continued…

Best Performance

Susan Eisenberg is very much the star of the show here, getting by far the most dialogue. It’s not just a win by default though, as Eisenberg uses the opportunity to illustrate why she was cast in the first place. She imbues Diana with so much warmth and steely determination. She will overcome very obstacle because she simply has to. Whether that’s a twenty foot sword-wielding statute playing keep-away, or an extended brawl with freakin’ Superman. Her drive to save the family and friends that exiled her is the heart of the story, and Eisenberg conveys that with basically every conflicted line, right to the end when she realises whatever she’s gathering for Faust must have been so heavily guarded for good reason. But to be honest I think I had decided the winner pretty early, as I really liked her practicing the reunion with Hippolyta during the flight home, both how she did it and that it was done at all given how often these shows are fighting for every second of runtime. It made Diana seem incredibly human, and not just an empathetic demi-goddess.

Jonathan Rhys-Davies gets the most generic of angry mwahaha dialogue as Hades, who is embodied as living fire, and still makes it work thanks to his trademark booming pipes. Robert Englund is very much in first gear as the slippery Felix Faust. Basically any actor could have done this role, but I have hopes he can take it further in Part II.

Episode Ranking

I mean… this is your proof of concept of a ‘Wonder Woman: The Animated Series’, right? DCAU fans lament such a show never existing to this day and while we all know the reason why, it’s still a huge shame. It’s pretty common for kids to develop a brief fixation on Greek mythology, which offers up no shortage of colourful characters and monsters to pad out a season or two of television, along with whichever DC heroes and villains they’d be permitted to use. While comic fans think of Diana as one third of ‘The Trinity’, if you exclusively learned about DC through these cartoons you’d be forgiven for thinking she’s considered a much lesser hero than Batman and Superman.

Anyway! I really like the inciting incident of this story being Wonder Woman (and Superman) doing everyday hero stuff – in this case rescuing folks from a hurricane – which makes Diana wistful when she sees a child reunited with her doting mother. A lesser show would tie the hurricane directly to the plot or something along those lines. I’m also constantly asking for superhero media to depict characters just doing run of the mill saves of ordinary people in trouble, rather than the constant ‘action figures smashing together’ fights against villains in combat arenas devoid of civilian bystanders.

They executed the ‘giant statue comes to life’ fight scene well, imbuing a surprising amount of personality into the mute behemoth, thanks to little touches like how it demonstrates to Diana that it swiped the relic piece, and poking through the rubble with its sword to see if she’s still alive. Then Wonder Woman gets to rise up, give her loud affirmation, and pummel the damn thing into pebbles, with the whole ‘gore is fine if they’re non-human’ thing applying.

The giant snake wasn’t quite as compelling, largely because it was dealt with far easier. We get the briefest of allusions to Martians being weak to fire, but J’onn quickly recovers and just fucking punches the thing out in one. Luckily the monster hallucination brawl is made pretty fun by having the POV shift back and forth so that you never see the reality of two of our heroes wailing on each other with cars and whatnot. Plus the resolution being Clark seeing the truth reflected in a water fountain, and then having to force Diana to look in a mirror was a neat resolution. Naturally he exclusively plays defence between these two events and absorbs a real pounding from the furious warrior.

Batman is siloed into his own little investigation into Faust on the sidelines, which makes sense in terms of deploying the heavy hitters against the monsters. I loved their decision to have him approach the professor on a stormy night so that his intimidating silhouette looks enormous on the wall amidst a lightning flash. They follow up on that by using forced perspective to make him look ten feet tall as he approaches the diminutive academic. So far ensuring Batman seems cool as shit at every opportunity had made up for his limited screen time.

Overall I really liked this as a Part I, particularly from a pacing point of view. They gave ample time to the opening hurricane rescue sequence, moved organically over to Diana’s horrifying homecoming, and then onward to collecting the three relic pieces. Diana fetching the first one solo before accepting help from her allies who split into two groups is excellent plotting. There’s a lot still to do with Faust, Hades, what this relic is even for, and a presumed emotional reunion between Diana and the Amazons, and any of that could prove underwhelming. But for now, it’s a very strong debut.

1. Injustice For All
2. Paradise Lost (NEW ENTRY)
3. In Blackest Night
4. The Enemy Below
5. Secret Origins

Rogues Roundup

Felix Faust (Robert Englun) (first appearance)

What Faust lacks in real character or personality, they make up for in a couple of subtle scripting choices. Firstly, having him temporarily restore Hippolyta for a few fleeting moments and then turning her back to stone. He states this is simply to prove he is capable of doing as he claims to convince Diana to take the deal, but it doubles as a pretty fucked up thing to do to her psychologically, as the reunion is too short to give any true emotional reprieve.

I also like that Diana forbids the rest of the Justice League from helping her simply kick his ass to make him turn everyone back, as she insists on respecting the rules around men never setting foot on Themyscira… which Faust of course had not qualms about breaking/

Englund also gives him a solid snivelling quality, and the pact with Hades is solid if on-the-nose given his namesake. But I’m afraid all of that doesn’t make up for the fact that so far he’s not really a three-dimensional person.

1. Lex Luthor
2. The Joker
3. The Imperium
4. The Injustice Gang
5. Deadshot
6. Orm
7. The Manhunters
8. Kanjar-Ro
9. Felix Faust (NEW ENTRY)