Plot summary: New League recruit Captain Marvel rubs Superman the wrong way while Lex Luthor’s popularity continues to grow.

Notes and Trivia

Episode: 20 (S2.E7)

Original Air Date: June 11^th, 2005

Directed: Dan Riba (10)

Written: Dwayne McDuffie (8) (story) and J.M. DeMatteis (5) (teleplay)

Animation: DongWoo Animation Co., LTD. (1)

Music: Kristopher Carter (7)

This episode was nominated for an Annie Award for best direction in an animated show.

Billy Batson’s school is called C.C. Binder Elementary. C.C. Beck co-created the character, while Otto Binder would write a huge number of books starring the character.

Flash rightfully looks embarrassed when Superman claims they don’t shill products on TV, given those damn LightSpeed Energy Bars that just won’t stop coming up!

The TV show ‘The O’Bannon Agenda’ is of course inspired by Bill O’Reilly’s The O’Reilly Factor.

Lexor City is named for the planet Lexor, a distant world where Lex was heralded as a hero and even retired from crime to live there as their benevolent leader… until it was destroyed, which he of course blamed on Superman.

Superman and Batman battle The Cadre in the middle of the episode, a team of villains that opposed Justice League Detroit in the comics. They are Black Mass, Shatterfist, Crowbar and Fastball.

DCAU Debuts

Captain Marvel is a character with extremely complicated rights, hence this being his sole DCAU appearance. They don’t even call him Captain Marvel anymore due to the confusion with Marvel’s now more famous character, so he rocks Shazam instead, like in his two recent live action movies. Created all the way back in 1940 by Bill Parker and C.C. Beck and published by Fawcett Comics, his books used to routinely outsell Superman… which clearly bothered DC enough to sue for copyright infringement, leading to Fawcett to first cancel, then licence and eventually sell the character to DC entirely. Grim!

Captain Marvel is the alter ego of the young orphan Billy Batson who is given magical powers by a wizard: The Wisdom of Solomon, Strength of Hercules, Stamina of Atlas, Power of Zeus, Courage of Achilles and Speed of Mercury. Blending Greek and Roman names? You bet! Anyway, he says Shazam! and magical lightning turns him into an extremely powerful adult superhero but you should never forget he’s actually a young boy. The Captain was the first comic book superhero adapted to live action all the way back in 1941, as well as his two DCEU movies, a dozen animated films, a live action series in the 70s and after a brief period of struggling with his TV rights, multiple cartoons.

Recap

Parasite is on a rampage, draining Metamorpho’s powers, which makes him a real handful for Batman. But by the time Superman arrives on the scene Captain Marvel has resolved things.

The press are smitten with The League’s newest recruit, who expresses admiration for his new teammates… and for Lex Luthor reforming and running for President.

Naturally the media spin this as an official endorsement, angering Superman, who insists The League remain apolitical, unaware Marvel is secretly a 12-year-old boy.

Luthor revels in the support on TV and announces plans to build ‘Lexor City’, offering low-income housing, throwing a big charity event to celebrate, which Superman attends, suspicious.

His suspicions appear warranted as he overhears Lex talking to Mercy Graves (remember her?) about a device and an escape route. Spotting a bomb-like device underground, he orders an evacuation.

Lex claims it’s a fusion generator for free energy and Captain Marvel tries to keep the peace but Superman won’t hear it, leading to a massive super-powered brawl that topples most of the city.

Superman is eventually able to inadvertently force Marvel to transform back into Billy Batson and then destroys the device… which The Atom later confirms was a generator after all.

Clark apologises but Shazam quits The League over their behaviour. Batman comforts Superman, stating that he was set-up, as Lex toasts his successful ploy with Amanda Waller!

Best Performance

Jerry O’Connell is charming in the role of Captain Marvel, understanding his assignment as an over-eager 12 year old in an adult body, fanboying over all the other superheroes in The League. His deference to Superman in particular is done really well, always calling him ‘Sir’ and tripping all over himself whenever they speak. I was in favour of picking him in the first five minutes, but what really sealed it was his final monologue, telling The League to go screw. “You don’t act like heroes anymore” is a stone cold line. He probably would have made for a solid casting in live action if the timing had been right, but alas.

Clancy Brown – maybe the best performer in the DCAU – is once again on fine form, selling the idea of a reformed Lex Luthor but keeping juuuust enough menace in his voice to make the audience dubious of his claims, no matter how many nice gestures he makes. If not for how much rides on O’Connell making Shazam the backbone of the episode, this would probably be yet another cakewalk for Clancy. Also nice of them to keep the delightful Dana Delaney to only a few lines to give everyone else a chance.

John C. McGinley’s work has been a mixed bag to date, but he’s much better as right-wing TV host Phil O’Bannon, slipping into a Southern accent and nailing the obvious pastiche. Nice of them to slip in some lines for him as The Atom too, and while they’re not his best Ray Palmer work, they’re also not his worst!

George Newbern and Kevin Conroy are really good too, but there are already so many strong candidates and they’re not quite there.

Episode Ranking

I’m kind of charmed by the idea of basing an episode on Superman being a little jealous given the long real world history between him and Captain Marvel. Right from the opening minutes of the episode he comes across like a real bitter asshole as the rest of The League seem to like Cap plenty fine, glowering when Supes leads him away for a telling off. Even Batman tells Clark he’s being too harsh! It’s obviously played out to do ‘Evil Superman’ stuff at this point, but I do enjoy having him look like a bit of a dick once in a blue moon in a long-running continuity like this. Like he really loses his cool with Shazam in a ‘was just waiting for an excuse’ way, rather than a heat of the moment thing. I admire that they didn’t take the cowardly way out and have Marvel actually do anything wrong to justify Clark’s actions, with Lex confirming the hero vs hero fight wasn’t part of his frame-job. Superman was just being a dick and Billy really tells him off for it at the end.

But that’s not what this episode is really about, or at least not the thing people most remember; This is the perpetual #discourse fuel episode where Superman claims The League are apolitical, while maintaining a strong grudge against presidential candidate Lex Luthor. Much to unpack here, and I’m not the smartest person to try it, but here we go anyway! The thing that makes the Cadmus arc really sing is that even if they’re villains, they’re correct to criticise The League for operating totally without oversight. This team of quasi-gods fly around the world and do whatever they want, with at least one episode depicting them fighting (and possibly killing) members of a country’s armed forces. They operate out of a satellite base equipped with nuclear-level weaponry. One of their members was actually an undetected spy paving the way for an alien invasion. Superman almost conquered the planet for Darkseid when he was brainwashed. At best there’s not enough accountability. At worst they’re fascists. Superheroes are an inherently fascist medium, in fairness, and at some point you have to just shrug and engage sincerely with the material… but when this stuff is made text rather than subtext like in both this episode and the ongoing story arc – on a children’s cartoon no less – it’s pretty fascinating.

To use Captain Marvel as the key character in such a story was a stroke of genius. Depending on your stance on everything, it’s either a naive child oversimplifying complicated issues… or a group of powerful adults falling profoundly short of the morality standards of a damn child, disappointing what should be their key demographic. It also makes Clark look even worse because while Billy is in the guise of an adult the entire time, that’s technically a child that Superman is punching in the face repeatedly. Jokes aside, I really like the little journey Billy goes on in this episode, learning the hard way never to meet your heroes and delivering a great speech at the end, aided by the Wisdom of Solomon or not.

The extended battle between Superman and Captain Marvel is extremely well done, making sure to focus on the massive wanton destruction they cause with every blow. Empty city or not, they level so many buildings and terrify the handful of attendees, and they do a great job of conveying the fear of those civilians. Throughout STAS and even Justice League we’ve seen Superman clash with villains that were close to his equal and how effective that could be, but just as in Kingdom Come there’s something special about seeing these two in particular beat the fuck out of each other. The whole thing feeds back into both the ‘Superman looks bad’ stuff I was talking about before AND the ‘Cadmus kind of have a point’ aspect, as you can see exactly how much damage these heroes can cause if aimed in the wrong direction.

Lex namedropping the pardoned Hawkgirl on his TV interview was excellent wielding of the show’s ongoing continuity, further underlining the hypocrisy of The League, even if he is of course just pretending to be reformed. And that’s not even the best bit of attention to detail in the episode, as I realised in the middle of Superman’s conversation with Professor Hamilton that Clark has no idea his former friend harbours any ill-will towards him, much less has actively turned on him and is working for Cadmus. Then there’s the realisation Luthor didn’t so much steal the Kryptonite as he was granted access by his secret allies, hoping it would set Superman on a collision course with the climax of the episode, so didn’t really lie. Mwah!

As ever, I think it’s a smart choice to pepper in short fight scenes with villains that are not the crux of the episode in order to keep the world feeling alive and justifying that massively expanded team roster. I always enjoy seeing Parasite in action, however briefly, and The World’s Finest basically ignoring The Cadre while they argue about Shazam was fun too.

I actually think this is an even more effective ‘the villains got one over on The League’ than ‘Task Force X‘, which was explicitly written to achieve that aim. This wasn’t a ‘by the skin of their teeth’ heist job while most of the heavy hitters were out. Lex tricked Superman into destroying a city in front of the media, and Shazam’s words of condemnation hit really hard. This is how you do a downer ending. So I’m placing it one spot above that episode, good enough for third place.

Double Date
For the Man Who Has Everything
Clash (NEW ENTRY)
Task Force X
Fearful Symmetry
The Return
The Once and Future Thing, Part 1: Weird Western Tales
The Ties That Bind
The Cat and the Canary
The Greatest Story Never Told
The Balance
Dark Heart
Initiation
This Little Piggy
Kids’ Stuff
The Once and Future Thing, Part 2: Time Warped
Doomsday Sanction
Wake the Dead
Ultimatum
Hawk and Dove

Rogues Roundup

Lex Luthor (Clancy Brown) (second appearance)

See, Steven Mandragora’s reign of terror only lasted one episode!

I said Lex would have plenty of chances to reclaim his crown and he did it straight away. I’ve said repeatedly that Lex works so well because he’s completely deplorable but can put on a human, even empathetic face when he needs to, and being able to convincingly fake it is arguably much worse than simply being pure mwahaha evil. Look no further than how he masterfully works the media in this episode, from his manipulative TV interview where he is able to organically score some points against The League, to the big stunt with Lexor City designed to smear Superman. You’d think naming a city after yourself would be the worst part of that, but it’s instead that he invited reporters for a photo-op with orphans and then contrived a situation where Superman would fly into a paranoid rage and blow the entire town up.

From the moment Batman suggested Lex was secretly bankrolling Project Cadmus it was basically canonised, because Batman is always right… but to actually get the confirmation like this is excellent and really tees up the upcoming closing stretch of the Cadmus arc. He’s just the ultimate prick, really, isn’t he?

Lex Luthor (↑)
Steven Mandragora
Circe
Task Force X
Amazo
Chronos
Mongul
Granny Goodness
Galatea
Project Cadmus
Dark Heart
Tobias Manning
The Jokerz
Felix Faust
The Annihilator
Tala
Doomsday
Hades
Roulette
Solomon Grundy
Brimstone
Ares
Mordred (and Morgaine le Fey!)
Mordru
Virman Vundabar