Plot summary: Gorilla Grodd recruits Lex Luthor into The Legion of Doom, sending him on a mission to Blackhawk Island to put him through his paces.

Notes and Trivia

Episode: 27 (S3.E1)

Original Air Date: September 17^th, 2005

Directed: Joaquim dos Santos (14)

Written: Dwayne McDuffie (15)

Animation: DR Movie Co., LTD (14)

Music: Kristopher Carter (11)

Despite the title of this episode (and how I’ll be referring to them) they couldn’t actually use the name Legion of Doom in the show due to a mandate from DC Editorial. The Secret Society were also supposed to be called The LoD in their debut but that was likewise overruled.

The Key gets a prominent role in this episode as the original plan was for him to be revealed as a construct of Brainiac spying on The Legion of Doom and eventually re-merging with Lex Luthor. Hence him being voiced by Corey Burton. This was all dropped in favour of… well, we’ll get there.

The Blackhawk museum sequence features a LOT of homages to the lengthy comic history of The Blackhawks, including their various costumes, villains and the characters Chop Chop and Zinda Blake. Plus a bunch of stuff from ‘The Savage Time‘.

A few more will show up later but for now The Legion of Doom includes: Atomic Skull, Bizarro, Black Mass, Blockbuster, Cheetah, Copperhead, Devil Ray, Dr. Cyber, Dr. Destiny, Evil Star, Gentleman Ghost, Giganta, Heatwave, Key, KGBeast, Killer Frost, Major Disaster, Metallo, Parasite, Puzzler, Queen Bee, Rampage, Silver Banshee, Sinestro, Sonar, Star Sapphire, The Shark, The Thinker, Toyman, Volcana and Weather Wizard.

DCAU Debuts

Aztec was seen in the background a whole bunch in the previous two seasons but I figured him getting addressed directly by Superman merited a write-up. A relatively recent creation compared to most of the characters in the show, having debuted in 1996, the work of Grant Morrison, Mark Millar and N. Steven Harris. Real name… ‘Uno’… Aztek’s appearance in Morrison’s JLA series is almost certainly why the character is in JLU as I’ve talked a lot about Morrison’s influence on the DCAU’s Justice League. He has a comical number of abilities ranging from flight to invisibility, intangibility and various energy powers granted by his magical suit of armour, having been raised as the champion of Quetzalcoatl.

Beatriz ‘Bea’ Bonilla da Costa is Fire, the first Latina superhero in mainstream comics, created by E. Nelson Bridwell and Ramona Fradon in 1979. As her name implies she’s got a Human Torch thing going on, being able to take on a living flame form, fly around, shoot fire, all that jazz. She originally went by Green Fury or Green Flame and bounced around various books but gained her enduring name and greater popularity as part of the hugely influential book Justice League International. She is almost always joined at the hip with Ice, with Hawkgirl’s comment about her in this episode alluding to the longtime speculation the two are queer. She was played by Natalie Morales in Powerless and Michelle Hurd in the notoriously awful TV movie Justice League of America.

Key is another obvious Grant Morrison homage, having debuted decades earlier (the work of Gardner Fox and Mike Sekowsky) but falling into obscurity until featuring in JLA, which greatly raised his profile. He has no known real name and gained his powers from ‘psycho-chemicals’ that unlocked additional senses and brain power. Despite what’s seen in this episode he predominantly uses drugs/viruses as weapons, as well as creating robotic ‘Key-Men’ to do his bidding.

Finally Doctor Polaris is Neal Emerson, created by John Broome and Gil Kane in 1963. A master of magnetism and whatnot. He’s going to get elevated a shocking amount later.

Recap

Months after his arrest, Lex Luthor escapes from prison with heavy police pursuit. He comes to a dead end but is grabbed by Key and teleported far away.

Key brings Lex to his employer, Gorilla Grodd. Lex isn’t interested in a team-up, but Grodd reveals an enormous swamp base with over two dozen villains inside, The Legion of Doom!

The last living member of the Blackhawks, Chuck, alerts The League of a security alarm from Blackhawk Island. Hawkgirl and Flash take Fire, the latest object of Wally’s affections, who he fails to flirt with.

The team encounter heavy resistance in the form of giant robotic condors, destroying their jet and forcing them to make an emergency landing, with Chuck arriving to assist.

Chuck insists on acting as their guide through the island’s wacky defence systems which include more giant robotic animals and a War Wheel. Remember those?

Reaching the vault containing the island’s most dangerous confiscated weapons, they encounter Lex Luthor, Key and Dr. Polaris, defeating the latter two.

Lex triggers a self-destruct sequence and the villains escape with the Spear of Longinus, which Grodd simply wanted as a loyalty test. Luthor sulks, promising to kill him one day.

Flash and Fire express their concern about Lex having new allies while Chuck and Shayera pay their respects at a monument to the other Blackhawks.

Best Performance

I generally write Clancy Brown‘s name in on this section whenever he appears before I even write these reviews and then see if someone else can beat him to it. That did not happen here even if it’s far from his best work. I wonder if he was tickled by the notion of Lex talking to himself given voice acting is frequently talking to yourself but trying to pretend you’re not. Is this easier? Harder? No different? Whatever the case, he gets what they want and makes him sound a little bit jittery while maintaining the short-tempered grudge-holding that made the character fun in the first place.

Powers Booth is whatever. Not as bad as his first appearances, not as good as return. I think he suits the role but he’s definitely not as good as Brown. Seymour Cassel was relatively endearing as Chuck insisting on going on one last mission. He’s a cute old man, it’s fine.

Episode Ranking

There’s simply so little going on here, feeling like a huge admin episode to establish shifts in the status quo for this season at the expense of making a quality episode.

The League now operate from The Hall of Justice in Metropolis as well as The Watchtower so as to not alienate people as much, with King Faraday (remember him?) assigned as the liaison between them and the US Government. Neat!

Grodd recruits Lex into The Legion of Doom, whose massive membership is supposed to let them do battle with The League. I suppose they technically do just that as they achieve exactly what they set out to do and escape after… but Polaris and Key get their asses kicked pretty easily and it takes Lex’s trickery to allow a full retreat. This is hardly The Suicide Squad pulling off a heist on The Watchtower and doesn’t really sell Grodd’s grand vision in my opinion. This is meant to be a proof of concept and they appear barely more capable than any previous team-ups.

The main event ends up being the battle of egos between Lex and Grodd, with Luthor revealed to be hallucinating an after-image of Brainiac that drives his actions, radically transforming what has become the DCAU’s prevailing villain into a far more desperate character. Grodd bringing him to heel with the promise of a piece of Brainiac’s body – with Lex vowing to murder him one day – is all well and good, but this should really be a backdrop to something grander.

The intention was for that something grander to be the battle against all the weird wonderful robots on Blackhawk Island but I’m afraid that’s a huge flop for me, dog. The novelty of the island’s defences wears off extremely quickly and I fear it may have been too late to pay tribute to The Blackhawks after ‘The Savage Time‘. It probably would have worked if they’d done it in Season Two of Justice League rather than the kick-off for Season Three of JLU, which deserved more of a bang instead of a forgettable mid-season episode. It also felt a little off because of how much time they spent getting to the central vault and how anticlimactic the final confrontation was, feeling like it needed a few more minutes to justify itself.

They try to spice things up with Shayera’s teasing of Wally about having a crush on Fire, but even that falls largely flat. Wally has been mostly redeemed from his sex-pest days, but I can’t say I’m overly rooting for him to ‘get the girl’ yet, and Fire is barely even a human being in the episode, but rather 50% Bruce Timm’s Fantastic Four fetish and 50% Maria Canals-Barrera hopefully having fun putting on an exaggerated accent. And it doesn’t even go anywhere! Not just beyond this episode (I don’t think they ever interact again!), but there’s not even a token smooch on the cheek or arrangement to get coffee or whatever. Honestly the bright spot was Wally winking to convince Bea to drop him so she can have both hands free to save Hawkgirl… only to reveal he has no clue how he’s going to survive the fall (hurricane hands.)

One good joke and some set-up for things coming later doesn’t make a good episode, and the sentimental tribute to The Blackhawks just doesn’t land at this point in the DCAU. A very rough start to the final volume of this continuity.

Double Date
For the Man Who Has Everything
Clash
Task Force X
Question Authority
Fearful Symmetry
Panic in the Sky
The Return
The Once and Future Thing, Part 1: Weird Western Tales
Epilogue
Flashpoint
The Ties That Bind
The Cat and the Canary
The Greatest Story Never Told
Divided We Fall
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
I Am Legion (NEW ENTRY)
Hawk and Dove
Hunter’s Moon

Rogues Roundup

Lex Luthor (Clancy Brown) (seventh appearance)

In some ways it feels too soon to bring Lex back into the fold after featuring so heavily in Season Two. Thankfully they’ve been smart enough to give him a new gimmick: his imaginary friend, Brainiac. It’s genuinely shocking to see him willing to look like he’s talking to himself, making no attempt to justify it to others.

More than that, he’s now driven by a desire to return to the nigh-omnipotence he briefly tasted when merged with Big B, disinterested in petty riches and political power and instead hungering for cosmic knowledge, which is an interesting new motivation. Plus his green jump-suit and pistol are spiffy!

He ends up tilting the balance and allowing the villains to ‘win the day’ after his cohorts get beaten up, justifying his recruitment, and we do have the promise of a showdown with Grodd later.

Gorilla Grodd and The Legion of Doom (Powers Booth/Michael Rosenbaum) (first appearance)

Bruce Timm initially balked at The Legion of Doom as they’d already done The Injustice League and The Secret Society in Justice League. ~~Dwayne McDuffie~~ Grodd attempts to make the argument for how this is different, reasoning that they’re like a co-op, all doing as they wish but teaming up to protect each other from The League, whose own numbers and J’onn’s ability to coordinate them proving too much. This is still absolutely just those two previous groups though.

Grodd as the master manipulator leading the group is at least interesting though, picking up where he left off in ‘Secret Society‘, able to push everybody’s buttons with ease. In Lex’s case it’s anticipating he’d want a chance to rebuild Braniac.

Key and Dr. Polaris get to show off some fun powers and I like their campy designs, but there’s not a huge amount going on under the hood for either as they’re functionally running interference for Lex to steal the spear.

Lex Luthor (-)
Steven Mandragora
Amanda Waller & Project Cadmus
Circe
Task Force X
Amazo
Galatea
Chronos
Mongul
Brainiac
Granny Goodness
Gorilla Grodd and The Legion of Doom (NEW ENTRY)
Dark Heart
Tobias Manning
The Jokerz
Felix Faust
The Annihilator
The Ultimen
Tala
Doomsday
Hades
Roulette
Solomon Grundy
The Thanagarians
Brimstone
Ares
Mordred (and Morgaine le Fey!)
Mordru
Virman Vundabar