Plot summary: The League have their feathers ruffled by The Ultimen, a rival team of corporate superheroes, but questions arise about their backers.

Notes and Trivia

Episode: 9 (S1.E9)

Original Air Date: December 4^th, 2004

Directed: Joaquim dos Santos (5)

Written: Dwayne McDuffie (1) (story) & J.M. DeMatteis (3) (teleplay)

Animation: DR Movie Co., LTD (5)

Music: Kristopher Carter (3)

Project Cadmus gets named after being hinted around at in ‘Fearful Symmetry‘

Aquaman’s membership status remains unclear. He’s been standoffish in all his other appearances, but ‘Hereafter‘ confirmed he’d become a member in the nebulous – and now possibly erased – future. He sure does conduct himself like part of the team here though.

No idea how Bizarro made his way back from the planet Superman left him on in ‘Little Big Head Man‘.

Despite making a real point of wanting to stay a million miles away from Super Friends when creating Justice League… this sure is a big old tribute to the series:

The Ultimen’s designs resemble original characters created for Super Friends to increase diversity; Downpour & Shifter are the Wonder Twins, Long Shadow is Apache Chief, Juice is Black Vulcan and Wind Dragon is Samurai.
The squad of Justice Leaguers assembled for the mission (Aquaman, Batman, Superman, Wonder Woman) is the original lineup from Super Friends… minus Robin.
The Ultimen’s headquarters resembles the Hall of Justice (which first debuted in Super Friends)
The Lava Men appear to be pulled directly from the show as well.

DCAU Debuts

As mentioned above, The Ultimen are all riffs on original creations from Super Friends, which ran in one form or another from 1973 to 1985. Most of these never properly made it into DC comics (beyond a direct tie-in book to the show itself), but the massive cultural imprint of The Wonder Twins did see them make a handful of appearances in main continuity, albeit never for very long.

We also get the debuts of Amanda Waller and Maxwell Lord, who first appeared in 1986 and 1987 as theoretical allies of The Suicide Squad and Justice League respectively, albeit with shady motives. Waller – created by John Ostrander, Len Wein and John Byrne – is a government operative through and through, often antagonistic but seldom ‘bad’, while Lord – the work of Keith Giffen, Kevin Maguire and this episode’s writer, J.M. DeMatteis – is more of an amoral businessman, with some degree of mind control, but would eventually find himself cast as an actual villain, chiefly against Wonder Woman. Pedro Pascal portrayed the more overtly evil Lord in Wonder Woman 84, but has been replaced by Sean Gunn, with James Gunn stating he will remain in his original comics role of an iffy but broadly good financial backer of The Justice Gang. Viola Davis has gotten to continue playing Waller between live action continuities and they’re very lucky to have her.

Recap

Aquaman calls in The Trinity to fend off a group of lava creatures attacking an oil platform, but there’s some tension when rival superhero squad The Ultimen arrive to lend a hand.

While the crisis is averted, the Ultimen irritate The League with their overly rehearsed press soundbites, backed by wealthy businessman Maxwell Lord.

Unfortunately it turns out the Ultimen’s bodies are failing, with Amanda Waller ordering Professor Hamilton (remember him?) to get to work on ‘the second team’ to replace them.

Long Shadow overheard these orders thanks to his powers, and he convinces the rest of the group to help look for proof, coming face to face with their own tank-grown clones.

Lord confirms they were artificially created by Project Cadmus a year ago (with implanted memories) to be popular with the public and loyal to the US Government so as to undermine the Justice League.

While Long Shadow hesitates, the rest of the Ultimen start tearing apart the facility and decide they’ll be remembered if they kill the Justice League so start a brawl.

The League take the Ultimen down pretty easily, with Long Shadow convincing them all to go quietly into custody… but Amanda Waller pulls rank to take them away instead.

She tries to take Long Shadow too, but The League get in the way so she drops the matter, though implies she knows Batman’s real identity. Long Shadow is inducted into The League for his final days.

Best Performance

On the surface Tim Matheson should just be yucking it up as a greasy businessman, but he gives Maxwell Lord a surprising amount of humanity in his confessions to The Ultimen, coming across as genuinely regretful.

CCH Pounder is a tremendous Amanda Waller and is 100% the voice I have in my head when I read comics featuring the character. She’s just so fucking ice cold all the time. Plus she gets to play Juice of the Ultimen thanks to some heavy voice modulation, which is neat.

One of the biggest problems with the episode is none of the Ultimen are particularly well voiced. Grey DeLisle gives the twins some vague character, but Juice barely talks, and James Sie and Gregg Rainwater are bad as Wind Dragon and Long Shadow. Those last two really needed to be good to make all of this work, and they weren’t.

Episode Ranking

While I appreciate the little tribute to Super Friends, the DEI squad just aren’t overly interesting. I enjoy Shifter’s various animal/monster transformations (particularly the sea serpent), but the rest are pretty boring, as even the ones with cool powers are boring as human beings. They try to get some juice from the flirtationship between Long Shadow and Wonder Woman, but even that falls a little flat, especially as they choose to have Batman make zero comment on any of it. I should feel extremely bittersweet about Long Shadow achieving his dream of being inducted into the Justice League, knowing he’s living on borrowed time, but it’s just difficult to engage with a character who isn’t well written or performed. Super sweet idea, not very well executed.

Maxwell Lord’s corporate handling of the team is interesting, worrying about market demographics and taking secret calls about them… yet that lasts roughly 2 minutes and immediately transitions over to the reveal they were created in a lab and are about to be scrapped for clones. Again, should be interesting, but isn’t. So what we’re left with is Wind Dragon convincing his teammates that they should use their dying days trying to murder 4 extremely popular superheroes to leave behind a legacy… which doesn’t even make much sense given we know they’re going to be replaced like nothing ever happened, so it’ll be attributed to other people anyway.

Obviously there’s some fun to be had, particularly Batman running rings around Juice in their brief fight, and Aquaman owning both ~~Wonder Twins~~ siblings in embarrassing fashion. Like why did you think weaponising water at AQUAMAN would be a good plan? And the final standoff with Amanda Waller’s troops is neat. But a few small moments amidst an episode that’s so aggressively uninteresting doesn’t help anything.

Holding this episode up against ‘Fearful Symmetry’ is quite frankly depressing despite their similar DNA. A conspiracy involving artificial superheroes as part of Project Cadmus, and said clones questioning their existence? Both good on paper, but this episode lacked the compelling trio of The Question, Green Arrow and Supergirl, and the sharp writing of Stan Berkowitz & Bob Goodman. I almost put it straight to the bottom of the list, but ‘Hawk and Dove‘ made me angry, and that’s worse than being boring, I suppose.

For the Man Who Has Everything
Fearful Symmetry
The Return
The Greatest Story Never Told
Initiation
This Little Piggy
Kids’ Stuff
Ultimatum (NEW ENTRY)
Hawk and Dove

Rogues Roundup

Project Cadmus (CCH Pounder/Robert Foxworth/Tim Matheson (first appearance)

Alright, I may regret lumping the various members of Project Cadmus together, but I don’t know if individually they really count as villains to the same degree as the overarching government scheme. Amanda Waller is the mouthpiece of the operation, and is excellent in that regard, taking shit from absolutely nobody, and getting the last laugh on Batman with the flippant reveal she knows he’s Bruce Wayne.

Professor Hamilton went bad with his creation of Galatea, which was bad enough, but rolling straight into creating an entire team of government-approved heroes and talking about them all like lab rats is brutal. This plot to create the Ultimen and replenish their ranks with clones is bad enough, but the detail of things like bringing in actors to pretend to be their families is next level.

If they had more planned for Maxwell Lord I’d spin him out… or maybe he shouldn’t even count at all? He’s obviously aware of what’s going on, but is such a low rung on the ladder and appears to feel genuinely bad about his role in it all.

Lex Luthor
Circe
Amazo
Mongul
Galatea
Project Cadmus (NEW ENTRY)
Brimstone
Ares (and The Annihilator!)
Mordred (and Morgaine le Fey!)
Mordru