Plot summary: The Question finally unearths the secrets of Project Cadmus, bringing him into a collision course with Superman and Lex Luthor.

Notes and Trivia

Episode: 22 (S2.E9)

Original Air Date: June 25^th, 2005

Directed: Dan Riba (11)

Written: Dwayne McDuffie (10)

Animation: DongWoo Animation Co., LTD. (2)

Music: Lolita Ritmanis (7)

Superman’s drink of choice on his date with Lois is Soder Cola, a fictional brand that often sponsors our old pal Booster Gold.

Batman tasked Question with proving a link between Cadmus and Lex Luthor back in ‘The Doomsday Sanction‘

Cadmus’ secret files contain references to Miracle Man, Flashpoint (the name of the next episode), the Multiverse and the novels The Boys from Brazil and The Weapon Shops of Isher.

Question states “A is A”, which is both a reference to the character’s origins as a spiritual successor to Mr. A, and a key tenet of ‘The Law of Identity’, a sister philosophy to objectivism. Exhausting.

The character who tortures The Question, Doctor Moon, was originally meant to be Hugo Strange after his previous appearance as part of Cadmus, but The Bat-Embargo was now in full swing so… enjoy this dude who is clearly just him with hair.

DCAU Debuts

Mantis gets a short appearance at the start of the episode, fleeing the civil war of Apokalips and putting up a surprising amount of fight against Superman and Captain Atom. As you might guess, he was created by Jack Kirby in 1971 as part of the Fourth World Saga and has a kind of insane collection of powers including flight, various energy powers and being able to freeze people solid, as he does to Captain Atom here. Keeping with his name, he’s part of the humanoid insects that originally hail from New Genesis, like Forager. Mantis’ group migrated to Apokalips and swore loyalty to Darkseid.

Recap

After helping fend off an attacker from Apokalips, Captain Atom is approached by General Eiling, who informs him he’s been called back up to active duty in the US Air Force.

Superman gets a decidedly better visitor after the battle, swooping Lois Lane off for a picnic where she cautions him about public perception of The League given recent events.

After stealing sensitive data from Cadmus, The Question becomes convinced of the inevitability of Lex Luthor becoming President, setting off a chain of events leading to super-powered armageddon.

Confronting Superman about the founding Leaguers concealing the events of ‘A Better World‘ from them, Question points out all the similarities recent events have with that alternate universe.

Seeing no other choice, Question tries to kill Luthor himself, believing this will prevent Superman from doing so… but Lex beats the piss out of him with superhuman strength.

Luthor taunts Question that his entire Presidential Campaign is a farce and then hands him over to Cadmus’ official torturer to try and figure out what exactly Q knows.

Huntress tells Superman she’s worried about her boy toy as he’s been missing for a week, talking the Man of Steel into a raid on a Cadmus facility to rescue him.

They successfully free Question, but Captain Atom blocks their exit, demanding they stand down on authority of the US Air Force. That’s right, Eiling has drafted Captain Atom into Cadmus!

Best Performance

It takes some real doing to best Clancy Brown when he’s locked in, and when you’re fed the line “Do you know how much power I’d have to give up to be President?” it’s pretty tough to not lock in. Brown is sublime here, going against the very thing I always praise him for by taking all the emotional outburst out of his performance and sliding 100% into the eerily calm, almost playful side of the billionaire baddie.

HOWEVER! Jeffrey Combs absolutely rocks my fucking world as The Question. Whether it’s his sassy banter with Huntress, his demented ramblings about determinism, speaking truth to power to Superman, his resignation as he calmly states The League would survive him assassinating Luthor, or his defiant resistance to Cadmus’ torture, spouting off various conspiracy theories instead of giving up what he knows… it’s all just perfect. How on Earth am I expected to vote against a guy who says with 100% conviction “The plastic tips at the end of shoelaces are called aglets. Their true purpose is sinister!”???

And none of that is to discard the work of Amy Acker, who is yet again having a wonderful time as the truculent Huntress. She’s always fun paired with Combs, but she also has a really fun vibe with Superman, utterly unafraid to talk smack to him. I also really liked her calling Q “Babydoll”. Very me of her.

Episode Ranking

I can’t help but admire the ballsy decision to tie together so many threads and start to reveal their overall endgame, especially as they retroactively make a couple of very blah episodes pivotal. Turning ‘A Better World‘ into the inciting moment that convinced Cadmus they had to take steps to prevent this world’s League from overthrowing the world government, and then citing ‘Doomsday Sanction‘ as proof Superman is behaving like his ‘evil’ counterpart is just so brazen that I have to respect it. They even bring back Jimmy Olsen’s damn Signal Watch in this episode for goodness sakes!

Speaking of Superman, Clark finally learning of Professor Hamilton’s involvement with Cadmus has been among my most anticipated moments in the series, as I really liked how they handled their final scene together in STAS, with an enraged Clark terrifying Hamilton in ‘Legacy‘. I got exactly what I wanted with this confrontation, as Hamilton looks more than a little petty to throw his lot in with people he admits are criminals purely because he was scared for a few seconds many years ago… but Clark absolutely flies off the handle at him in the wake of that reveal, so you can kind of see where he’s coming from. What really seals the whole thing is Hamilton dropping his posturing once Superman leaves the room, his body language sinking as he lets out an anxious little gasp of relief that it’s over. Such a human moment.

In my review of ‘Clash’ I said the thing that makes Cadmus work is that they absolutely have a point when they criticise the unilateral decision making of The Justice League. Well, wouldn’t you know it, here’s Lois Lane to spell all of that out for the audience, offering a fair measure of the whole situation from a perspective fans are inclined to trust. She’s simply cautioning Clark et al to be careful, pointing out things like his battle with Shazam and the use of the orbital laser canon – conveniently from the same episode General Eiling debuted.

After having Captain Marvel condemn The League for operating without oversight in the aforementioned ‘Clash’, Huntress now does the same for the opposite reasons, criticising Superman for waiting until he has enough evidence to move against Cadmus instead of just taking matters into his own hands. Her reverse psychology works perfectly, as the duo raid an official government facility. Superman briefly looks kind of scary scary as he effortlessly smacks around their troops, while she almost murders Doctor Moon. Regardless of how cool Huntress looks while fighting, this is basically the exact fascism The League have been accused of, both in these reviews and by Cadmus and even The Question.

Shit, how have I gotten so far into this review without talking about The Question?!? He and Huntress could absolutely have had their own spinoff. Okay maybe not, but they could have been regular characters on an ensemble spin-off, such as the proposed squad of characters with no superpowers that Batman was to put together if they’d gone through with their plans to have him temporarily leave The League. I say this because of how damn good their opening scene is, arguing about going out on a real date while they broadly ignore the waves of thugs she’s fighting while he’s doing computer stuff. Q absolutely yeeting a computer monitor at the last one standing, almost taking Huntress by surprise in the process is one of the best things I’ve ever seen in my life. Him spending days reviewing the files and going completely insane is also fun, and they do an impressive job of making him look disheveled the next morning despite not having a face. Actually the most insane he looks is when he casually strolls up to Superman while he’s holding aloft an unimaginably heavy piece of machinery in order to strike up a conversation. Truly, what an incredible character.

Unfortunately I think there’s a biiiit of a hole in the middle of their delicious little bit of continuity-weaving, as Question confronts Superman about the events of ‘A Better World’. Yes, Lord Superman murdered President Lex Luthor to kickstart that chain of events, but it’s all been acknowledged as happening in another world, albeit a similar one. I get what they’re driving at, but the idea it’s fated to occur here as well is a big stretch to me, but Question treats it as an absolute certainty, even talking shit to Clark about quietly murdering him for discovering ‘the truth’, citing his attempt to lobotomise Doomsday – just as Lord Superman did – as proof. Liiiiike…. was that not just sound self-defence rather than a quasi-execution? His next argument? Simulations run by Amanda Waller that all lead to an outcome of The League vs The US Government and millions of deaths. Actually I guess that one feels accidentally prescient as a number of huge corporations are taking advice from AI in 2025. Jeffrey Combs does them an ENORMOUS favour with his performance, selling this iffy set of leaps in logic extremely well.

Also I can’t be too mad about the journey given the result is the tremendous scene where Question attempts to murder Lex himself before he can become President, thus preventing Superman from doing it. The dialogue sings, Combs and Brown crush it, the music is great, and the reveal Lex not only seems to have superpowers now, but that his entire Presidential campaign is bait from Cadmus to rile up Superman is a great little one-two punch of intrigue.

Overall this episode is delivering a lot of exposition (including Lex Luthor being free from cancer!) but manages to do so without ever becoming clunky. The Question drives the episode, which makes sense given the title, and remains one of the most compelling forces in the DCAU, bringing the super charming Huntress with him. Letting such an oddball loose in back to back scenes with Superman and Lex Luthor was such a fantastic decision and if the entire episode were as good as those few minutes this would be challenging the top spot. Unfortunately it just can’t compete with the sense of style of ‘Task Force X‘, the profundity of ‘Clash’, the emotional truth of ‘For the Man Who Has Everything‘ or the impeccable writing of ‘Double Date‘. I’ll tell you what though, the gap between this and everything below it is huge.

Double Date
For the Man Who Has Everything
Clash
Task Force X
Question Authority (NEW ENTRY)
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
Hunter’s Moon

Rogues Roundup

Lex Luthor (Clancy Brown) (third appearance)

Hey did you know that when you beat cancer you gain superhuman strength? Oh, that’s not a thing? Well I guess Lex is is still holding onto some secrets even after admitting to working with Cadmus and that his run for office is part of an elaborate ruse. In some ways stapling superpowers onto a villain whose very identity revolves around not having powers ruins things… but I’m going to reserve judgement until we see where that goes. It’s handled extremely well here as he matter-of-factly slaps Question around like he’s nothing, taunting him the entire time.

The key thing here is he’s at his most dastardly and arrogant. This strong personality is what got him to the top of the list in the first place, and he maintains that really well even with his venture into being a physical threat as well. His claims that’s already more powerful than the US President are so incredibly on brand, and I’m desperate to know how literal he was being about spending $75m just to piss Superman off.

Project Cadmus (CCH Pounder/J.K. Simmons/Robert Foxworth/Jeffrey Combs) (fourth appearance)

General Eiling pulling rank to get Captain Atom into their employ is a nice idea. ~~Hugo Strange~~ Doctor Moon’s torture of The Question is solid. Professor Hamilton finally gets his moment with Superman and it rules. And Amanda Waller… is definitely in this episode.

But this is precisely why they’re ranked as a collective. Individually that’s a real mixed bag, but overall – and working in concert with Luthor – you have such an interesting group. Their fear of how bad things could get for them if The Justice League ever decided to go to war with the government is 100% justified. They saw Superman under the influence of Darkseid. They’ve seen the orbital laser. They’ve provoked Superman into destroying a city on camera. And they’ve been nudging all these pieces from the shadows based on a computer simulation and things that happened in another universe! They’re so afraid of The League that they’re becoming a self-fulfilling prophecy by committing evils that would invite the very challenge they fear in the first place. That’s just really good shit.

I’m going to move them up a little but there’s obviously even more room to land this plane.

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