Plot summary: The Justice League receive a visit from The Justice Lords, their counterparts from an alternate universe who go to extremes to almost entirely eradicate crime.

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: 37 (S2.E11)

Original Air Date: November 1^st, 2003

Directed: Dan Riba (19)

Written: Stan Berkowitz (14)

Animation: DongWoo Animation Co. LTD. (3)

Music: Michael McCuistion (15)

These episodes were originally to depict comics’ ‘The Crime Syndicate’ but the scripts underwent so many changes they opted to switch to ‘The Justice Lords’ who are original to this series. They differ to their more prolific counterparts because they aren’t simply evil, but rather heroes that went to extremes, like The Authority.

The Lords’ costumes are a remnant of when Bruce Timm pitched the League wearing matching uniforms but DC Editorial wouldn’t allow it for Batman, Superman or Wonder Woman, so it was dropped.

The President Lord Superman speaks to is visually similar to George W. Bush. The episodes were written during the days leading to the invasion of Iraq, with the staff likening Bush’s administration to The Justice Lords.

The alternate Flash was written to have died simply because the writing staff couldn’t think of a decent way to portray him as evil. I’d maybe start with the fact the ‘normal’ version is already a massive creep, but that’s just me.

Lord Superman and Doomsday punch each other simultaneously at the end of their battle. This was what kills both in the ‘Death of Superman’ storyline.

Recap

We open in media res as The Trinity fight their way through security at… the freakin’ White House so Superman can confront… President Luthor?!

Lex has the world on the brink of war, and after a tense exchange Clark finally has enough and opts to murder his nemesis. Yep, we’re doing another alternate reality story, y’all!

Two years later, ‘The Justice Lords’ are running the world from the Watchtower. Flash is dead, Batman stays in his cave all the time, and the others help suppress protests. Lovely stuff.

‘Lord Batman’ summons his teammates upon discovering their universe is colliding with the one ‘our’ Justice League inhabit. He proposes making contact so they can save both worlds.

Instead, The League are led into a high-tech prison cell in the Lords’ universe in order to take them off the board. They try to resist but get taken down.

The Lords return to The League’s universe where motherfucking Doomsday crash lands and begins wreaking havoc. Lord Superman sees it as an opportunity to curry favour with the public. Sure.

Much car-throwing and wanton destruction later, Doomsday appears to have won… until Lord Superman uses his heat vision to lobotomise the behemoth.

Lois Lane and the media are naturally confused by the new tactics and costumes, with an imprisoned Lex Luthor realising they’re not the real League.

To Be Continued…

Best Performance

Always nice to hear from Dana Delany again, even if it’s only a few lines. Not a patch on her best stuff unfortunately. Elsewhere it’s slim pickings though, as the core cast don’t do much to establish themselves as truly different from their counterparts, save for George Newbern playing Lord Superman as a straight up evil dictator. It’s not great though.

I guess I’d default to Clancy Brown as his raw charisma elevates some shoddy writing to at least make President Luthor a character I want to know more about, and his schmoozing of the prison guard at the end is fun.

Episode Ranking

Cool episode about the League becoming full-on fascists, helping cops assault student protestors!

The premise is a simple one that most shows like this do at some stage, with the League meeting their evil counterparts. I don’t love mirror-match style stories as I’ve said, but they are mostly a layup for compelling action if nothing else. The issue here is Stan Berkowitz wrote it terribly.

For one thing the creative team talked about eschewing The Crime Syndicate in favour of these brand new ‘Justice Lords’ as they wanted heroes that went to extremes instead of pure evil villains… but The Justice Lords are patently evil. Even the most generous definitions of ‘doing it for the greater good’ have to be broken by Superman’s general demeanour. He’s a huge dick to Lois and is excited by the idea of making an entire planet surrender to them. But hey, toss out that comment and it’s still a solid ‘evil versions of the heroes’ story, right? Wrong! They spend a solid amount of time establishing the world The Lords live in, but then gloss riiiiight over the multiverse aspect, The League are convinced extremely quickly, and then we pivot into a Doomsday story… in the main show’s universe… but The Justice Lords are the ones to fight him. That’s just so damn messy when they already had plenty going on. Then ending on Lex realising they’re not the real Justice League is one of the lowest energy cliffhangers they’ve done in the series.

I do like The Justice Lords’ designs, with their uniforms not matching in the strictest sense, with each hero maintaining their own distinct looks, but all sharing a motif. I get why Bruce Timm wanted something along these lines when they were pitching the show. Superman’s white cape and darker colours, Batman’s silver finishes, Wonder Woman’s shorter hair and red full-body suit, Green Lantern’s shaved head (which will become his look in JLU), and Martian Manhunter basically dressing like Doctor Strange. All good stuff. My favourite is probably Hawkgirl, whose normal costume I’ve never loved. Switching her yellow tank top, green tights and red boots for a body suit that sports a hawk emblem on her chest is an improvement, even if the whole thing is brown. The ‘slicked back’ golden helmet helps tie the whole thing off. I do like the ‘feathered’ crest shape of her main one, but the gold is great.

While I don’t think we got enough of a window into the differences in their characters or what drove them to do all of this, I am tickled by the notion of Lord Batman achieving incredible scientific wonders out of boredom due to their world being virtually free of crime thanks to their more extreme tactics. One of Bruce’s defining characteristics is that he simply doesn’t know how to do anything but be Batman forever, with armchair critics loving to point out all the good he could do if he used his intellect and technology – and most importantly his money – to help the public instead of pouring it all into a one-man crusade wearing a rubber bat costume. The idea that he’s still committed to wearing his costume whenever he’s in the Batcave, even in this world and functionally retired, is just great stuff. Like he simply cannot let go and be normal. He’s too far gone.

Pretty funny to me that they continued the streak of alternate-world Supermen getting together with Lois Lane while the main universe one forever pines. Well, I guess we don’t know their status post-STAS, as she’s only appeared in a dream sequence to date, but still. She was a logical character to have speak truth to power, condemning Superman’s actions and being kept prisoner in her own home on his orders. Super grim. Then ‘our’ Lois is the only one to not be okay with the tactics used by The Lords take to defeat Doomsday.

All in all you have plenty of cool moments and iconic shots for a big Justice League highlight reel, but one of the worst structured scripts they’ve put forth in this show. Not as bad as some of the howlers from BTAS – it’s not like the entire thing is awful – but there are such deep issues at the heart of the story. That does mean I’m fascinated where ‘Part II’ goes though, so that’s something.

1. The Savage Time
2. Legends
3. Only a Dream
4. Twilight
5. Hearts and Minds
6. Injustice for All
7. Paradise Lost
8. In Blackest Night
9. Tabula Rasa
10. The Enemy Below
11. Secret Origins
12. A Knight of Shadows
13. Fury
14. Maid of Honor
15. War World
16. A Better World (NEW ENTRY)
17. Metamorphosis
18. The Bold and the Brave

Rogues Roundup

Lex Luthor (Clancy Brown) (fifth appearance)

This is maybe the most autopilot appearance by Lex in the DCAU to date. I did enjoy some of the manic energy of President Luthor at the start, but most of that is just Clancy Brown being good at his job. The actual dialogue is generic and bad though. Even his home truths style accusations that Superman is complicit by letting him live were underbaked.

Then we switch back to ‘our’ Lex and a super run of the mill battle that he loses in quick fashion, and he ends the episode on a somewhat funny note, openly bribing a guard. I think he might have to move down the list, gang.

The Justice Lords (George Newbern/Kevin Conroy/Susan Eisenberg/Phil LaMarr/Maria Canals-Barrera/Carl Lumbly (first appearance)

You can argue the semantics of their villainy all you want, these fuckers rule the world from a space station and help beat up protestors who want their right to vote restored. By comparison them tricking and imprisoning The League feels inconsequential. They are actively suppressing democracy!

Anyway. I like their designs as I said above, and I guess playing Marvel’s The Illuminati and trying to destroy another universe to protect their own is high drama and everything, but they’ve yet to really delve into the interiority of these alternate versions. Sure, GL and Hawkgirl miss ‘their’ Flash, and Batman is bored because they squashed crime, but I need a lot more to call these good characters. So far it’s truly just cool outfits and the loose idea of ‘What if the Justice League were evil?’ (which wasn’t even the intent when writing them!)

Doomsday (Michael Jai White) (first appearance)

He’s finally here in his goofy little green boots and shorts! We went three seasons of STAS without seeing perhaps Superman’s deadliest foe, so I’m glad they got around to him here instead, even if there’s not really room for him in the story. But that’s not his fault, so let’s give him a fair shake!

The main allure of Doomsday is he just keeps getting up, shrugging off every attack, and is capable of beating Superman to death with his bare hands. You have to be careful making that a character’s gimmick because there are hundreds of characters who are simply really strong. They assigned him a voice actor for some reason, with the always wooden Michael Jai White delivering some weird lines about Doomsday wishing to conquer, which does nothing to help with the generic feel they handicapped him with by having him arrive so abruptly and not getting his own feature story.

One of the heaviest hitters in comics history reduced to smack-talk about how his skin can survive a nuclear explosion. Then he’s lobotomised with minimal effort. Sad. There’s truly nothing interesting or redeeming about this take on the character.

1. Darkseid
2. Dr. Destiny
3. Lex Luthor (↓)
4. Despero
5. The Joker
6. The Injustice Guild (and Brainwave!)
7. Amazo
8. Vandal Savage
9. The Injustice Gang
10. The Imperium
11. Brainiac
12. Hades
13. Draaga
14. Aresia
15. Deadshot
16. Orm
17. Simon Stagg (and Java!)
18. Colonel Vox
19. Felix Faust
20. Morgaine le Fey
21. The Manhunters
22. The Justice Lords (NEW ENTRY)
23. Kanjar-Ro
24. Mongul
25. Gorilla Grodd
26. Doomsday (NEW ENTRY)