Plot summary: The Justice League choose the worst possible time to succumb to in-fighting as Gorilla Grodd forms a new team of super villains.
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: 43 (S2.E17)
Original Air Date: November 22nd, 2003
Directed: Dan Riba (23)
Written: Stan Berkowitz (16)
Animation: DR Movie Company Co., LTD. (5)
Music: Michael McCuistion (17)
The robots the League use for training are clearly the same as Zeta’s original form in Batman Beyond.
Bruce Timm got the idea for Morgan Edge to have purchased Clayface from all the weird shit you hear about celebrities buying. Did you know Nicolas Cage loves trilobites?
Speaking of Edge, the somewhat forgotten Superman supporting character found his way into an outsized role in Superman & Lois, serving as the main villain of the first season.
Giganta’s original (somewhat uncomfortable) origin story is used over her various comic retcons.
Recap
Green Lantern and Martian Manhunter thwart a robbery by The Shade (remember him?), but the villain eludes them when they fail to coordinate their attacks.
Giganta escorts Shade to safety and brings him to meet the rest of ‘The Secret Society’, Sinestro, Parasite, a debuting Killer Frost… and their leader, Gorilla Grodd!
The Society break into the private island fortress of eccentric billionaire Morgan Edge, liberating Clayface from his collection of oddities!
Batman realises what’s happened after seeing news coverage of the incident, tracking Clayface to a facility potentially able to reverse his condition.
The Society think they’ve got Batman in a trap, only for the rest of The League to back him up. It makes little difference though as the villains kick their asses and then leave.
The League argue and point fingers in the aftermath, ostensibly disbanding!
To Be Continued…
Best Performance
They play far more to Powers Booth‘s strengths this time around, turning Grodd into a master manipulator. Booth has a naturally smarmy quality that lends itself really well to this reboot of the character, who ends up being the standout from this giant ensemble.
Jennifer Hale probably had a great deal of fun slipping into her breathiest voice for Giganta, going against type for the usually… uhhh shall we say oafish villain. 10% less and it’s perhaps a bit offensive, but by being so over the top with it there’s a charming parody element in my opinion. Plus she got to offset it with the ‘tough talking’ Killer Frost.
Episode Ranking
It’s pretty bizarre to me that they opted to essentially remake ‘Injustice for All’, this time saying the themes out loud, while also acknowledging they already told this story.
It’s theoretically a good story to tell – that this is a collective of extremely powerful individuals but as their foes begin to coordinate their attacks, they need to work together too – but it’s also one that so clearly belongs in the first season when our heroes were still relatively new to being a team. By this point they’ve been through so many missions together, demonstrating a great deal of cohesion along the way, that the whole thing rings false for me. Like why is J’onn J’onzz having to stop Superman from using his heat vision on a cardboard cutout of a little girl, when The Man of Steel has been at this for years now? There’s also dumb shit like claiming Martian Manhunter could have warned Hawkgirl that a robot was booby-trapped with his telepathy. That’s right, reading the mind of a robot. Plus Batman not being a team player, which feels like it’s become less true over time? It’s all just such poor execution of a nice idea, and as I say, coming far too late.
On top of that, it doesn’t really do wonders for any of the characters from a likability standpoint. I’ve talked about conflict being a necessary element for an interesting ensemble, but when none of the characters feel like they’re in the right, and their shared goal is pointless (see above), the concept is nullified. Like you can’t ALL be the dick. There’s a version of the argument about Superman using his invulnerability to protect his teammates, who interpret it as being babied, that could be good, but this was not it. They just all look petulant, which really undercuts the drama of their ‘break-up’ at the end of the episode.
I got a kick out of Morgan Edge pretending to be a chef and trying to escape, but Grodd seeing through it because of his expensive shoes. It initially seemed like what they were going for there was being more clean about no loose ends, but both ways work for me.
Ultimately the main allure of the episode is the extended giant 7 vs 6 brawl, which I concede is one of the better fight sequences they’ve done to date and keeps the episode out of the very bottom of the rankings. Among my favourite moments were Sinistro generating a second construct to hit Hawkgirl with while she holds off the first, and Flash sliding down Shade’s shadow… beam? But again, the idea behind this scene is The Society win because they collaborate more effectively, which to me wasn’t really backed up by the footage. Diana and Shayera can’t agree which of them is going to go after Giganta, but everything else is mostly just a single villain overpowering a single hero.
I can’t say I’m overly looking forward to the team getting back together next episode given how ineffective their split was, but hey, they’ve got a fun group of villains to battle, and hopefully we start to see more personality from them too.
Do you know how hard you have to work to make me give a bad review to a story featuring training sequences, a heist, conflict between the heroes and Clayface???
- The Savage Time
- Legends
- Only a Dream
- Twilight
- Hearts and Minds
- Injustice for All
- Paradise Lost
- In Blackest Night
- Tabula Rasa
- The Terror Beyond
- The Enemy Below
- Secret Origins
- A Knight of Shadows
- A Better World
- Fury
- Maid of Honor
- Secret Society (NEW ENTRY)
- Eclipsed
- War World
- Metamorphosis
- The Bold and the Brave
Rogues Roundup
Gorilla Grodd (Powers Booth) (third appearance)
As Grodd appeared in the show on his own before this and is the leader of the operation, he’s getting ranked separately from the rest of the squad, though obviously there’s a great deal of crossover.
Pivoting Grodd to a silver-tongued master tactician may be a bit jarring, but it’s certainly a more interesting role. Similar to how Aresia was able to manipulate the Injustice Gang easier than Luther be pretending to care about them, Grodd gets results by appealing to their personal motivations, proving the most effective leader of the three as a result.
He also maintains his psychic abilities to keep things spicy, and he wisely hangs back and deploys them when his foes are distracted. The decision to leave The League alive and humiliate them again in front of an audience later is… iffy. Like I appreciate the drama, but if the idea is Grodd’s even more cunning than Luthor, this is not selling that.
He absolutely has to move up many spots for this, as he’s got a more engaging personality and proves to be an excellent tactician.
The Society (Ron Perlman/Ted Levine/Brian George/Steve McHattie/Jennifer Hale) (first appearance)
I thought about spinning The Shade off as he’s been in two different groups, but he barely did anything of note in his previous appearances.
Grodd claims his roster choices for this group are inherently superior to The Injustice Gang, half of who were just in it for the money, which is a nice idea, though I question the semantics of it all. There’s certainly greater focus on them being a cohesive unit and combining their powers, which is fun, but there’s also a bit less in-fighting, which is unfortunately less entertaining. The closest we get is that Killer Frost acts as the wildcard, desperate to live up to her name and do some murder despite orders.
The return of fan favourite Clayface is the real headline here though. Used sparingly in BTAS due to cost, advancements in animation allowed an awesome version of him to feature regularly in the upcoming The Batman cartoon. Here he’s kind of underwhelming though, mostly just slithering around and almost getting owned by Batman. It makes sense Bruce would get better at taking down one of his most dangerous foes, but given the things we’ve seen Clayface do in his three previous appearances, this has to be considered a let-down.
So yeah, while they’re made to look far more capable than their spiritual predecessors, there’s just not as much going on under the hood so far.
- Darkseid
- Dr. Destiny
- Lex Luthor
- Despero
- The Joker
- The Injustice Guild (and Brainwave!)
- Amazo
- Solomon Grundy
- Vandal Savage
- The Injustice Gang
- The Imperium
- Brainiac
- Hades
- Draaga
- Aresia
- The Secret Society (NEW ENTRY)
- Deadshot
- Gorilla Grodd (↑)
- Orm
- Simon Stagg (and Java!)
- Colonel Vox
- Felix Faust
- Ichultu
- Eclipso
- Morgaine le Fey
- The Manhunters
- The Justice Lords
- Kanjar-Ro
- Mongul
- Doomsday
The Matt Signal 
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