Plot summary: With the heroes captured by Brainiac, Darkseid makes his move, putting the fate of the entire universe in jeopardy.
For background on the creation of Justice League and info about how I’ll be covering it, check out the Series Primer.
Notes and Trivia
Episode: 28 (S2.E2)
Original Air Date: July 5th, 2003
Directed: Butch Lukic (14)
Written: Rich Fogel (7) (teleplay) and Bruce Timm (7) (teleplay & story)
Animation: Koko Enterprise Co., LTD (28)
Music: Kris Carter (13), Michael McCuistion (14) and Lolita Ritmanis (14)
Part II was nominated for Best Sound Editing in Television Animation at the Golden Reel Awards. Prestigious!
Among the four opening/closing stories in Justice League, this is the only one with only two parts instead of three. This created an uneven episode count for this season, leading to the only standalone episode in the show. It’s also the only of these to not feature the entire League.
J’onn suggests Hawkgirl use Brainiac’s archives to look up info about Thanagar. She instead changes the subject. Let’s put a pin in that…
The Forever People and (My man!) Mister Miracle make non-speaking cameos at the end when the New Gods are revealed to be alive and well.
Speaking of which, in ‘Part I’ Forager claims to be essentially a second-class citizen of New Genesis, being elevated to a more noble position in the ending of this episode. This contradicts his appearance in ‘Apokalips… Now!‘ where he was depicted as part of the New Genesis force that appeared to repel Darkseid.
The events of this story directly set up the JLU episode ‘The Ties That Bind’
Recap
Superman, Hawkgirl and Martian Manhunter are brought to Brainiac’s central chamber where the genocidal AI tries once again to convince Clark to join forces and conquer the universe.
That’s obviously a staunch no, so it’s fightin’ time instead. Hawkgirl caves Brainiac’s chest in with her mace… only for a half dozen more Brainiacs to attack!
The League hold their own, but Darkseid arrives and reveals this entire endeavour was a ruse, and he and Brainiac take the heroes down together.
Turns out Brainiac wants a body of flesh and blood, deeming Superman the most worthy host… but Darkseid of course betrays their secret alliance and seizes control of Brainiac’s central programming.
Darkseid triggers some kind of giant cosmic reaction, shaking the foundations of New Genesis (and the universe), with Brainiac drones protecting him from Hawkgirl and Martian Manhunter.
Orion arrives with Batman and Wonder Woman to turn the tide, with Bruce managing to shut off Darkseid’s computer, free Superman and trigger a self-destruct sequence.
Everybody gets to safety, but Superman lingers to face Darkseid one more time. Before Clark can finally finish his nemesis, Batman forces an exit via Boom Tube moments before the base explodes.
The heroes regroup on New Genesis, wondering if Darkseid (and Brainiac!) are truly dead this time, while Highfather is relieved to learn his people survived the cosmic chaos.
Best Performance
Do I even need to say it? Michael Ironside continues to reign supreme. Big evil monologues can make or break a performance given how over the top they can be, but Ironside definitely stuck the landing. There’s a subtle hint of bemused playfulness in a lot of his line deliveries, fitting of a character who treats the universe like a chess board. Plus he’s always great when he’s smack-talking Superman mid-battle.
George Newbern hasn’t had much of a chance to prove he’s as good as Tim Daly so far, with Superman taking more of a backseat to newer characters. This is probably his best outing, rising to the occasion of the big standoff with Darkseid. Superman is so rarely aggressive or violent (unless Zack Snyder is writing him of course) that you have to make those moments count and I would say Newbern managed exactly that.
Ron Perlman sounds far less comfortable as Orion than his various past DCAU roles. Perhaps all the Fourth World dialogue just felt too silly, which is understandable. I would have liked for them to have played up Orion’s signature temper, which Perlman is a natural fit for, but that’s contained to the visual-only cue of him punching a pillar. He even plays the confrontation with Darkseid with surprising nonchalance, which is a weird direction choice IMO.
Episode Ranking
There’s a LOT going on here. At its core, it’s a pretty epic clash with two of the DCAU’s most dangerous villains, as the League find themselves prisoners at the heart of Brainiac’s colossal fortress, which makes for a fun visual even before Darkseid joins the fray. The reveal of their alliance, and then Darkseid turning on Brainiac and doing crazy space mumbo jumbo kicks things up another notch, and then they cap it all off with a dramatic ‘final’ confrontation that runs back one of the DCAU’s greatest one on one fights, while also giving Orion a brief payoff he was denied in STAS. ‘Superman vs Darkseid: Round 4’ feels weighty, impactful and appropriately elevated to me, capturing the feeling of defeating a Final Boss, but doing it in a season premiere. I like the choice to make it a fairly even battle, rather than Darkseid effortlessly mopping the floor with Clark like in the past, but equally not having Superman simply lock in and overcome someone that he could barely hurt previously. They each get to win for a bit, and then Batman drags Superman away before they can settle it once and for all, setting the stage for a decisive FIFTH confrontation way down the line.
I have nothing but praise for all of the above, and if anything could say more about it. I think that comfortably boosts it up into third place, but there are some issues that hold it back from the top two spots.
Real strides were made here to try and deepen the mythology of the DCAU by leaning hard into Jack Kirby’s Fourth World. We get our first mentions of The Anti-Life Equation (more below on how that impacts Darkseid’s character), Highfather communes with The Source, and The Bugs of New Genesis provide shelter to the residents of Supertown. While this stuff has become very much my jam over the course of my DC fandom, I can fully understand it all being a bit much, and minimal explanation is provided for a lot of it. I also think they perhaps needed a third episode if they were going to properly delve into the complex caste system of New Genesis, with Forager’s mini-arc feeling underbaked and fighting for time with the A-Story. If they were doing that I could have gone for more for Orion to do and it even seems somewhat of a shame to never return to Apokalips in the wake of the war, staged or not.
This episode was also a mixed bag in terms of visuals. I enjoyed the hard sci-fi of Brainiac’s enormous secret base and it’s multiple levels of ‘true’ inner sanctum, and there were some pleasing pieces of animation in things like the final fight and even Hawkgirl dragging J’onn out of a pit… but I also found most of New Genesis clunky to the point of being downright ugly. I talked about it in ‘The Enemy Below‘, but sometimes when trying for these slick ‘camera’ moves afforded by the advanced animation, it makes the character models look uglier than they should. I lack the technical know-how to explain that properly, but it’s happened several times, and it makes me wish they’d just keep the shots more static. Big action scenes tend to look good when they do it, but almost never when it’s just characters standing around and talking. There’s also multiple instances of the models looking weird when shown at a distance, with their sharp outlines but muddy details. That sometimes happened towards the end of STAS and it’s a shame to see it return.
Even the worst aspects of this episode are balanced by the brighter spots, and it’s pretty hard to deny the electric nature of Superman vs Darkseid. With a third episode to give some elements more room to breathe I think this could have taken on our current Top 2.
- The Savage Time
- Legends
- Twilight (↑)
- Injustice for All
- Paradise Lost
- In Blackest Night
- The Enemy Below
- Secret Origins
- A Knight of Shadows
- Fury
- War World
- Metamorphosis
- The Bold and the Brave
Rogues Roundup
Darkseid (Michael Ironside) (second appearance)
Nice touch for Highfather to disapprove of even speaking Darkseid’s name in front of children.
Darkseid revealing he misled our heroes and then breaking his alliance with Brainiac in the span of 60 seconds is textbook big brain evil stuff. Heavy D’s mastery of technology is an underrated aspect of the character, and I love how well they wrote and drew his effortless takeover of Brainiac by simply plugging a Mother Box into a control console. Like a better version of Tony Stark breaking into S.H.I.E.L.D.’s network in The Avengers.
I don’t think the Anti-Life Equation came up in STAS, and I’ve always had mixed feelings about it. On the one hand there’s a sense of campy tradition to his intentionally vague evergreen desires. On the other, it’s sometimes kind of weak to have him nebulously attribute every given action to it, with perpetually shifting explanations as to what it is, how it works, how to find it etc. I shouldn’t really punish the DCAU for this as it’s a larger meta-problem with long-running characters in comics, and one of the things people love about this continuity is that they get to have their own self-contained take on things… but in this two-parter Darkseid sent Steppenwolf into New Genesis territory and enslaved Brainiac, with both actions ostensibly contributing to his pursuit of the equation. And then he starts talking about the most generic of ‘rebuild the universe in my image’ plans on top of that.
Still, despite those nitpicky critiques of his motivations, Darkseid is undeniably positioned as the biggest threat The League have faced to date, orchestrating a war and then playing both sides. His dialogue remains excellent, and is elevated even further by Ironside. Plus he tries to murder his own son! That’s pretty metal.
Brainiac (Corey Burton) (second appearance)
The extendo-arms were a fun addition, but the true sauce here was finally taking advantage of Brainiac being an AI, not an organic being, by deploying multiple robotic bodies at once. I don’t know if the idea is this central base is new and/or is the only thing that allows such a feat, but whatever the in-universe explanation, I’m glad they finally embraced it, as Brainy has a natural advantage over puny fleshlings. Each one of the drones is among the strongest foes the League have encountered, so even when the team do smack a few around, a single one proves capable of taking down even the most powerful among them.
Ironically they finally did this in a story about Brainiac wanting to leave all that behind and steal Superman’s body. In a perfect world they’d have done more with this arc in STAS, as there were some hints here and there that Brainy held an emotional grudge and whatnot, but instead it just feels like Plan 27 in a never-ending cycle of plots and schemes.
I think this episode is stronger for Brainiac than the previous, so I’ll move it up the list slightly, but being enslaved by Darkseid hurts things a little.
- Darkseid (↑)
- Lex Luthor
- The Joker
- The Injustice Guild (and Brainwave!)
- Vandal Savage
- The Imperium
- Brainiac (↑)
- Hades
- Draaga
- Aresia
- Deadshot
- Orm
- The Injustice Gang
- Simon Stagg (and Java!)
- Felix Faust
- Morgaine le Fey
- The Manhunters
- Kanjar-Ro
- Mongul
- Gorilla Grodd
The Matt Signal 
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