Plot Summary: Green Arrow is reluctant to accept an invitation to the newly expanded Justice League, but finds himself mixed up in a nuclear-powered caper all the same.

Justice League Unlimited

At the time ‘Starcrossed‘ was being written and produced there was uncertainty about whether Justice League would continue, but Cartoon Network requested a third and fourth season after all. However they wanted a rebrand and to drop the multi-parters, leading to a ‘new’ show called Justice League Unlimited.

To go along with this, the creative team opted to massively expand the roster, with more of a rotating cast of characters, many of whom were making their animation debuts, though at least one of ‘The Big 7’ from Justice League features in most episodes. The show is also far more continuity-heavy than anything they’d done before in the DCAU, weaving together story elements from every other series, and featuring a number of ongoing arcs. This means barely any variance in air date and production order, but I’ll be following the latter just in case.

The initial 2 season order came to a close with ‘Epilogue’ but Cartoon Network commissioned one last season which was unfortunately riddled with rights issues, often referred to as ‘The Bat Embargo’. Due to the out of continuity The Batman cartoon and Christopher Nolan’s impending Batman Begins it was decided while Batman could still be used – though sparingly – his supporting cast and villains became off limits. Similarly, a Smallville spinoff led by Aquaman was in the works (but never actually came out), so Arthur vanished from the show too. I assume they didn’t go past 3 seasons due to arguments about all of this.

Notes and Trivia

Episode: 1 (S1.E1)

Original Air Date: July 31^st, 2004

Directed: Joakim dos Santos (1)

Written: Stan Berkowitz (1)

Animation: DR Movie Co., LTD. (1)

Music: Michael McCuistion (1)

The League’s expansion was originally to be depicted in the cancelled movie Justice League: World’s Collide, which was later reworked into Crisis On Two Earths.

Kin Shriner was so enthusiastic to be cast as Green Arrow that he showed up to the recording session dressed as his character. Shriner was a replacement for James Marsters.

Batman’s claim that Green Arrow was recruited to keep The League honest ends up not just being a hollow gesture in the Season 2 episode ‘Flashpoint’.

I absolutely will not be identifying every background extra on The Watchtower at any point… but I will be starting a new feature for characters that get something meaningful to do:

DCAU Debuts

Oliver Queen aka Green Arrow is one of the oldest characters in comics, debuting in 1941. A simple Batman/Robin Hood mashup for his first few decades, he became far more popular in the 60s when Denny O’Neal & Neal Adams tweaked him to be a street-level vigilante and extremely left-leaning character. His preference to deal with crimes that affect ‘normal people’ is incorporated into this episode. While popular among comic fans, his mainstream profile was boosted greatly thanks to cartoons like this, a recurring role in Smallville and of course as the lead of Arrow.

Captain Atom has a complicated publishing history, having been created by Charlton Comics to occupy a Superman-esque role for the company, before DC bought Charlton and absorbed their characters. He was the inspiration for the far more famous Dr. Manhattan, as all of the core cast of Watchmen were originally intended to be the newly acquired Charlton heroes, but DC Editorial nixed the idea given Alan Moore’s plans for them, so knockoffs were created instead. This version is Nathaniel Adam, an ex-Air Force pilot who is framed for crimes he did not commit and experimented upon, gaining his vast array of energy manipulation powers. He was blackmailed into working for the government but broke away and joined the Justice League. In the comics his skin is usually a nearly unbreakable alien metal, but in the show he’s a being of pure energy contained within a special suit. Neat!

Recap

Green Arrow thwarts an armed robbery at a supermarket. Green Lantern approaches him, complaining he never replied to their invitation to join The League.

Ever the boundary-respecting good conversationalist, John teleports them both aboard The Watchtower, which is now playing host to dozens upon dozens of heroes.

Superman explains Martian Manhunter will choose squads and coordinate their operations. To that end Green Lantern, Captain Atom and Supergirl are sent to deal with a nuclear threat in China.

Green Arrow tags along on their flight, refusing to be teleported back. Upon arrival there’s some tension with the Chinese military, with General Kwan insisting they move along.

The source of the trouble is eventually revealed as a towering nuclear-powered armoured colossus, which they struggle to damage in any meaningful way, and John is injured in the process.

The others try talking to the military again, who reluctantly admit it was intended to be a guardian against foreign powers but they lost control. They hand over some carbon rod dampeners.

Captain Atom almost dies in his attempt to neutralise Brimstone’s reactor, but Green Arrow ends up firing one of the rods in with his bow…. and then Kara punches its head off.

In the aftermath Batman again tries to convince Ollie to officially join, but it turns out all it takes to get him aboard is Black Canary walking past.

Best Performance

George Eads sure isn’t very good as Captain Atom. Just absolutely does not give off ‘decorated army man’ in any way whatsoever. Nicholle Tom remains a mixed bag as Supergirl, and the worse material she’s reading compared to STAS doesn’t help anything.

Our former series regulars are all relatively solid, particularly Kevin Conroy, with Batman ‘working’ Green Arrow pretty well to start and finish the episode to get him to join the team.

But this is absolutely a Kin Shriner showcase, and he does in fact have the goods. He does a great job of sounding more like an everyman hero who questions the motives of the powerful, and in an episode where basically everybody is argumentative, he’s the only one you could consistently side with. Ollie is the team’s moral compass, and Shriner could easily have shrunk from that task but did not.

Episode Ranking

There were a million ways they could have gotten this soft reboot of the show started. The expanded membership. A big focus on The Trinity. Some kind of ‘where are they now?’ news piece. An enormous sexy threat justifying the expansion of the team. Instead they went for a street level crime showcasing Green Arrow. I think this was absolutely the correct choice. Ollie comes off really well, with the art team deftly working around the restrictions that cartoons can never depict ‘normal’ arrows striking human targets, so GA deploys his fun array of trick arrows, including explosives, a net and of course the faithful boxing glove. It doesn’t feel a million miles beyond the action of Justice League, but it’s certainly all very clean and fluid.

Oliver’s focus on helping the common man over huge alien threats also works nicely because between that and his lack of superpowers, you’d think he’d be the last person The League would want on their team… and yet! Arrow’s stance that they lose sight of ‘the little people’ is an interesting critique after a series that positioned The League as borderline gods, while Batman makes a compelling counter pitch, pointing out that ordinary people get hurt by the big sexy villains. Turns out when you bolt a ‘moral quandary of the week’ onto a story, it tends to make everything work a little better. Theoretically its his strong sense of right and wrong that leads to the discovery of the truth… but I’m pretty sure a hundred foot nuclear powered monster would have shown up on League sensors. Still, he sure did save that truck driver, and that was nice.

Don’t love them repeating their past sins by having Green Lantern look down upon a female hero, this time balking at Supergirl being added to his squad, which they follow up with a crack about her being oblivious to geography. Yayyyy, girls suck and are worse at things than men! They thread that into some bickering with the overly-formal Captain Atom, who even John Stewart – the world’s biggest stick in the mud – making fun of him for over-use of military chatter. These two are really just here to provide some (annoying) secondary conflict and contribute to the action scenes, because literally all the juice comes from Green Arrow. They try and pull off a moment of unity later on, but it just doesn’t really work because both have been written in an unlikeable fashion. Where is the charming Kara of STAS??? Oh, and they also try a brief Captain Atom death fake out, but he’s just fine 3 minutes later.

While they nailed the all-important opening, and Green Arrow was a perfect first new hero to get a showcase, the mission itself just isn’t all that interesting, which is wild given it involves a nuclear mech. The most interesting part about it goes mostly unsaid, as the subtext is the Chinese military built Brimstone out of fear of the amassed power of a growing Justice League, but they breeze straight past that into the most generic giant monster story possible. They tied in the least likeable member of the original League as the leader of the mission, and then cut the legs out from under his squad, so all you’re left with is Green Arrow. Again, he’s great, but can only carry things so far.

On that note, you can immediately see the pros and cons of the new format. With so many fewer personalities competing for screen time you have an opportunity to tell a more focused character story, which they did with Green Arrow (and Batman was good in a small supporting role). But it also means you can’t really hide anywhere with the people you do have, and everybody else in this episode was bad, including a villain that doesn’t even speak. There’s just less margin for error when you don’t have a second part to fall back on to save things. But equally it was a tight in and out story and it’s done with now, versus when an episode was boring or bad in Justice League and I was saddled with even more of it.

I can’t see this episode finishing high… but it gets to be number one by default for now!

Initiation (NEW ENTRY)

Rogues Roundup

Brimstone (first appearance)

It’s never named in the episode, but yes, this is Brimstone… allegedly. A giant, mute, nuclear robot man isn’t the way I would have gone in the very first episode, personally. But I guess it provides a decent amount of danger to innocent civilians, which ties back to the story they were trying to tell with Green Arrow.

It’s basically all-powerful… until it isn’t, easily brushing off Supergirl and frying Green Lantern and almost murdering Captain Atom, but is then taken down with an Inanimate Carbon Rod.

There’s just nothing at all interesting here, and while it gets to debut at number one, it’s tough to imagine it not ending up in last place.

Brimstone (NEW ENTRY)