Plot summary: When a time traveller tries to steal from The Watchtower, Batman, Green Lantern and Wonder Woman find themselves in the middle of a Wild West caper.

Notes and Trivia

Episode: 12 (S1.E12)

Original Air Date: January 22^nd, 2005

Directed: Dan Riba (6)

Written: Dwayne McDuffie (3)

Animation: Dong Yang Animation Co., LTD. (6)

Music: Kristopher Carter (4)

These episodes were originally called ‘A Brief History of Time’ Parts 1 and 2 before getting retitled to be a play on T.H. White’s The Once and Future King. This episode’s subtitle, Weird Western Tales is named for a DC comic series of the same name featuring the likes of Jonah Hex, Bat Lash etc.

Jonah Hex acknowledges he’s had “an interesting life” while demonstrating an awareness of advanced weaponry. His 1980s comic saw him transported to a post-apocalyptic future.

We’ve obviously got movie and TV references coming from all angles, including Once Upon a Time in the West, Maverick, City Slickers and The Valley of Gwangi.

Warhawk was a member of the Justice League Unlimited team (aka Justice League Beyond) in Batman Beyond. The truth of his parentage is at last revealed here.

Super cool of the staff to slip in a Monica Lewinsky joke to this children’s cartoon that aired in 2005!

DCAU Debuts

Strap in for a lightning round of Wild West era DC characters. And Chronos.

Bat Lash (Bartholomew Aloysius Lash) debuted in 1968 as the original brainchild of Carmine Infantino and Joe Orlando, before being fleshed out properly by Sheldon Mayer and Sergio Aragones, but as with dozens of characters, Lash didn’t really come to life until Denny O’Neal got involved. Bat is a bit of a Han Solo type, though often claims to abhor violence. He’s struggled to hold down a series over the decades, but is a bit of a cameo monster.

Ohiyesa ‘Pow Wow’ Smith is another Infantino co-creation, alongside Don Cameron, first appearing in 1949. He actually originally appeared in the modern day before they changed his setting to the Old West, claiming the two to be ancestors. This more famous one left Red Deer Valley and became a detective and sheriff. The ‘Pow Wow’ name is considered offensive these days, so he tends to just go by his actual name… which makes sense!

El Diablo (Lazarus Lane) is the most modern of the group, debuting in 1970, created by Robert Kanigher and Gray Morrow. After almost dying at the hands of a gang of thieves, he was revived by a Native American shaman and became a vigilante. He should not be confused with the El Diablo that appeared in David Ayer’s Suicide Squad. DC loves to give 3+ people the same pseudonym. It’s never confusing.

Tobias Manning never gets his comic alter ego name Terra-Man, who first appeared in 1972. Created by Cary Bates, Curt Swan and Dick Dillin, he was inspired by Clint Eastwood’s character in The Man With No Name. His father was killed by an alien, who in turn raised Manning and taught him to use whacky technology. The closest we get to that in this episode is his robot.

Finally, Chronos was actually the archenemy of The Atom and a founding member of the comics’ Injustice Gang. Gardner Fox and Gil Kane rolled him out in 1962 and he was basically a rip-off of Clock King, an incompetent career-criminal who developed an obsession with time during incarceration, but would eventually gain a time machine to distinguish himself.

Recap

In ‘Neo’ Gotham (they never once called it that), David Clinton’s wife gives him shit for inventing time travel and only using it to collect ‘discarded’ items from history instead of becoming rich.

Wounded, he travels back to the present to try and steal Batman’s utility belt. Batman, Wonder Woman and Green Lantern catch him in the act and give chase through a portal.

Ending up in The Old West, Diana effortlessly dispatches some thieves and the trio adopt era-appropriate dress to blend in and then head into town on horseback.

They happen upon local crime boss Tobias Manning strong arming a man with a futuristic weapon for beating him at poker, and then having him tossed in jail to die at dawn. Yeesh. Wild West indeed.

Diana insists on breaking ‘Bat Lash’ out, and it just so happens the man in the cell next to his is Clinton, who reveals Manning stole his time travel device and used it to amass power.

The heroes rescue both men but are set upon by Manning’s crew. Luckily Lash’s allies Jonah Hex, Sheriff Ohiyesa Smith and El Diablo join the fight and fill our trio in on local events.

The impromptu team raid Manning’s compound, fighting through waves of robots, with Smith at last taking Manning down. John disposes of all the future tech and they say their goodbyes.

Clinton opens another portal and tries to leave them in the past, but they follow, finding themselves in 2042, where they meet an older version of Static, and Warhawk address John as… Dad!

Best Performance

You know who has always been a great actor? Peter MacNicol. Just the perfect little sad sap of a man. He sounds genuinely earnest about his collection of historical ‘artefacts’, almost garnering sympathy, but remembering to inject just a little ‘tweaked’ energy to reenforce that this is a villain in the making.

Ben Browder’s clearing having a lot of fun as Bat Lash, but no matter how much I love his insane energy on Farscape, I’m afraid he’s a little out of his depth. Plenty of healthy exuberance though! Conversely Ed O’Ross is excellent as the rumbly Tobias Manning.

Peter Onorati’s chief role in the DCAU has been Warhawk, which he’s still solid at, but I was charmed by his simple robber from the start of the episode too.

Episode Ranking

Something I have really enjoyed about the two Justice League shows is the creative team’s desire to pay tribute to different eras of DC history. ‘Legends‘ honoured the Justice Society of America. ‘The Savage Time‘ shone a spotlight on the World War II characters. And now this episode does the same with the Wild West. It’s that sense of legacy and a very lived-in world that makes DC so enduringly popular in my opinion. I’m not a huge Westerns guy, but I got a kick out of the aesthetic for the sake of 15 minutes. Solid music from Kris Carter throughout too, especially the rearranged version of the main theme song in a more Western style.

The Watchtower canteen scene is one of the most famous in the series, with Batman and Green Lantern gently teasing each other about their respective love lives, only for Wonder Woman to be standing right behind Bruce. This has become such a tired trope, but works well in this instance as they don’t go overboard with it, and if anything he’s being mostly complimentary, while she takes it in good spirits, putting an arm around his shoulder. Why can’t these two just work it out??? It also follows up nicely on Shayera’s return to the fold last episode, as I was frustrated by the gap between her previous two appearances. This is the kind of scene Justice League often did to make good use of the additional runtime from everything being a multi-parter, and something I feared would be lost when moving to single episodes (though this is of course a two-parter). Slice of life stuff is important!

It was a fun touch for Diana to find the revolvers of old much easier to deflect with her signature defensive moves. Likewise John conjuring his own disguise rather than don the stinky clothes of the thief, and of course Bruce refusing to even carry a gun for the sake of a disguise. Heck, I really liked John using his ring to create an over the top green ghost to spook the prison guard. Just a nice set of small character moments that fit in with the modified setting and give the episode a lot of personality. Although on the other side of things… did Diana know the pterodactyl was robotic before she punched a hole through it??? Speaking of which, I love that they bothered to design several different robots and dress them up differently rather than pumping out an army of clones.

Our heroes not being allowed to hurt anyone too badly lest they alter history was a fun stipulation to throw onto things… but given none of them ever kill anyone anyway, not overly necessary. I suppose breaking the arm of a man intended to do great things with his hands would have consequences though.

Overall I don’t think it’s stellar, but is high concept enough, with enough of a unique aesthetic to score near the top. The tribute to the Western heroes is nice, and they blend nicely with the trio chosen to head back in time. Might have been funny to send Vigilante, who would presumably have blended right in, but hey.

For the Man Who Has Everything
Fearful Symmetry
The Return
The Once and Future Thing, Part 1: Weird Western Tales (NEW ENTRY)
The Greatest Story Never Told
Dark Heart
Initiation
This Little Piggy
Kids’ Stuff
Wake the Dead
Ultimatum
Hawk and Dove

Rogues Roundup

Chronos (Peter MacNicol) (first appearance)

I’ve always had a bit of a soft spot for characters like this who sort of become villains by accident, starting out well-meaning but then getting a small taste of the bad life and making some unconscious discoveries about themselves. He doesn’t fully get into that here, just trying to steal Batman’s utility belt and later trying to leave our heroes stranded in the past, but you can see it bubbling under the surface. I liked the little touch that he could use his suit to ‘age’ a door into dust so he could break through it.

He’s a fraction less interesting than The Dark Heart… so far. Another episode to play with though!

Tobias Manning (Ed O’Ross) (first appearance)

There’s nothing terrifically interesting about Manning, he’s just a good old fashioned tough-talking brute abusing his power. I like his whacky future gun covered in smaller guns, and even more so that this single weapon would be enough to take over a small town in an era of six-shooters. He’s later revealed to have robots and a tank and whatnot, but the flashback showing him seizing Elkhorn was just the damn gun and I find that funny.

He’s better than all the other one-dimensional heavies because he at least has a sense of personality, albeit a limited one.

Lex Luthor
Circe
Amazo
Mongul
Galatea
Project Cadmus
Dark Heart
Chronos (NEW ENTRY)
Tobias Manning (NEW ENTRY)
Solomon Grundy
Brimstone
Ares (and The Annihilator!)
Mordred (and Morgaine le Fey!)
Mordru