Plot summary: Deadman seeks the help of The Justice League to avenge an attack by The Legion of Doom, who next set their sights on Gorilla City.

Notes and Trivia

Episode: 32 (S3.E6)

Original Air Date: February 18^th, 2006

Directed: Dan Riba (16)

Written: Dwayne McDuffie (18)

Animation: DR Movie Co., LTD (17)

Music: Lolita Ritmanis (11)

The now compliant Bizarro is sporting a scar on his forehead, the result of Lex ‘upgrading’ the members of the Legion of Doom on Grodd’s orders.

Deadman casually reveals that Batman helped him solve his own murder. This was depicted in the tie-in comic Gotham Adventures.

Batman states the Master of Nanda Parbat trained him in martial arts. In the comics Bruce has ties with several characters from Nanda Parbat, including Richard Dragon.

Powers Boothe thought Grodd died at the end of the episode so was surprised to be invited back for more recording sessions.

DCAU Debuts

Deadman was created in 1967 by Arnold Drake and Carmine Infantino but made far more famous by Neal Adams and Jack Miller. In life he was Boston Brand, circus performer, but following his murder his spirit is gifted with incredible power by the Hindu goddess, Rama Kushna (who also appears in this episode.) Able to possess any living being, Brand at first sought justice for his own death but goes on to become an all-around hero, most closely associated with the Justice League Dark, but also popping up as a supporting character basically everywhere over the years. Two separate attempts at a live action TV show were made, and even a Guillermo del Toro-produced movie, but none of these ever came to anything.

The big strong yellow lady in The Legion of Doom is Rampage aka Dr. Kitty Faulkner. Created by John Byrne during his run on Superman (which was heavily influential on STAS), she’s always seemed a tiny bit of a She-Hulk rip-off to me, transforming into her more monstrous form here and there only to be stopped by Superman and returned to her nice normal human form again.

Recap

In Nanda Parbat, Deadman seeks advice from a monk about why he continues to linger in this realm after avenging his murder. He is told he must instead avenge the monk’s death, confusing him.

The Legion of Doom arrive to clarify, murdering they way inside the temple and killing the elder, horrifying Deadman. They steal a magical orb and teleport away.

The goddess Rama Kushna tells Deadman he can save the souls of all the monks if he retrieves ‘The Heart of Nanda Parbat’ from The Legion, who intend to use it as a power source.

To that end, Deadman possesses Superman in order to ask Batman and Wonder Woman for help. They swap information and end up contacting Solovar, as The Legion are attacking Gorilla City.

Deadman floats through the forcefield and shuts it down to allow The Trinity inside and they get to work kicking serious ass…

But not quickly enough to stop Grodd from executing his plan: Using The Heart, Gorilla City’s shield generator and some other bit and bobs to project a wave that turns everybody in the vicinity into gorillas!

But Superman just yeets the reactor into the sky, it explodes, and everybody is restored to normal. Easy. Devil Ray takes aim at Wonder Woman, so Deadman possesses Batman to murder him!

Rama Kushna scolds Deadman for taking a life and while all the monks are restored, Brand remains stuck as a ghost. Lex Luthor shoots Grodd and seizes control of The Legion of Doom.

Best Performance

We have a nice assembly of actors here, with a medley of returning villains played by Clancy Brown, Powers Booth, Michael Beach and Juliet Laundau, as well as an all-too-rare appearance by Kevin Conroy. None of them do anything worth talking about.

Let’s just go with Raphael Sbarge for lending such a distinct voice to Deadman. He’s far from the best guest character in the series, but nobody else is really doing anything, so why not?

I generally love when actors are tasked with doing soft impressions of each other in body-swap style episodes. George Newbern definitely doesn’t sound like Sbarge, but I appreciate him ‘hey, I’m walkin’ here’-ing his voice a little. Susan Eisenberg declines to do the same. Boo!

Episode Ranking

Really cool visual on Rama Kushna when she appears to Deadman as a giant face and swirling psychedelic energy. Tempted to leave it there as the rest was so fucking boring.

Literally half this episode is devoted to Nanda Parbat, between the opening attack by The Legion, their nebulous talk about using The Heart as a power source for something, and then Rama Kushna giving Deadman his orders. That alone isn’t so bad, but it’s made a lot worse by the fact they spend the next few minutes swapping exposition and then working together to try and figure out where The Legion are… which was entirely pointless as Solovar was going to end up calling them anyway. Truly, that scene only exists to have The League start to put together some pieces about The Legion’s existence, which the audience has known about all-season. I don’t think characters always have to know as much as the viewer, but it certainly exasperates an already plodding episode to devote so much time to playing catch-up.

Another consequence of characters having to constantly fill each other in on what’s going on is much of the dialogue is extremely clunky. Whether it’s Grodd and Luthor talking around their mysterious plans, Deadman telling Bruce and Diana about The Heart of Nanda Parbat or Wonder Woman explaining Gorilla City to Deadman, none of it is sharply written. We’ve also got Bizarro back in the fold and he’s written terribly too as the script plays fast and loose about which things are backwards and which are not. For example Luthor tells him that Superman is his best friend, which Bizarro acknowledges by saying he must kill him. Why is the best friend part inverted to be negative, but then the very negative thing he says next is played straight? It’s not an isolated thing, either. Commit to it or don’t, ya know?

Boston Brand wrestling with his conscience should have been a really big part of the episode, as Bruce had previously scolded him for contemplating using Superman’s powerful body to take revenge, but then when he spotted an opportunity in the height of the chaos in Gorilla City he possesses Wonder Woman and almost goes for it anyway. There’s obviously something here, but Deadman already conceded Batman was correct about his assertion The Master would not approve of vengeance, so it’s not like Brand has a big breakthrough. A bungle, I fear.

And as for Grodd’s fucking plan… I’m at a loss for words. It’s kept deliberately convoluted so that even Lex can’t figure it out until it’s too late, but not in a good way. Luthor builds Grodd a mind control module, which sits atop The Heart of Nanda Parbat, which is inserted into Gorilla City’s shield generator… kay. AND THEN, Tala materialises another doohicky that allows the machine to project an energy wave to turn everybody on Earth into talking apes! This is not actually the part of this I have beef with as it’s a classic comic caper. It’s more that they’ve spent the entire episode obfuscating this plan, and then Grodd tells Luthor not to bother trying to shoot either Superman or the machine (unclear which) because “it’s too late.” Then all Superman has to do is hurl the damn thing into the sky and it blows up, reversing the process barely 60 seconds after it took effect. All of this so we could get some laughs out of three apes dressed like Superman, Batman and Wonder Woman? Oh, and I guess Lex and Tala, too. If Grodd meant ‘it’s too late, the heroes have already foiled us’ then he looks bad because it was comically easy to do so. If Grodd meant ‘nothing can stop the wave now!’ then he looks bad because that’s immediately disproven. Truly, pick your poison.

That’s followed by a chaser of Deadman puppeteering Batman to commit murder – and with a gun no less – in order to save Wonder Woman’s life. This is absolutely a solid idea, but it happens twenty minutes into a 23-minute episode, including credits. Bruce is mortified, Clark tells him it wasn’t his fault, and they all storm off, with absolutely zero interaction with Deadman, who is rightfully reprimanded by Rama Kushna. I’ve gotta say though, The Elder explicitly told Boston his destiny was to avenge his murder, and then when he did it he was denied the right to move on to the afterlife. I guess if you were being charitable the monk didn’t tell him that if he avenged the death he would move on, he just told him it was his destiny and then it happened… but even that’s questionable because it only came up in the first place in the context of saying that solving his own murder was not his destiny and that’s why he was still tethered.

BUT WE’RE NOT DONE! After teasing tension between Lex and Grodd, Luthor launches his coup in only the sixth episode of the season (and they aren’t even in all of them!) by simply shooting Grodd. With a regular ass gun. No tricks, no fancy tech. He just fucking shoots him. Grodd is a huge psychic gorilla! It’s note even particularly by surprise! How is that all it takes???

I did chuckle at Superman continuing his sentence from exactly where Deadman possessed him and looking absolutely insane for it. There ya go, I did a compliment sandwich… where the bread is raaaazor thin and the filling is stacked to the ceiling. One of the worst written episodes of television you could ever have the misfortune to encounter.

Double Date
For the Man Who Has Everything
Clash
Task Force X
Question Authority
Fearful Symmetry
To Another Shore
Panic in the Sky
The Return
The Once and Future Thing, Part 1: Weird Western Tales
Epilogue
Flashpoint
Shadow of the Hawk
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
Flash and Substance
Kids’ Stuff
The Once and Future Thing, Part 2: Time Warped
Doomsday Sanction
Wake the Dead
Ultimatum
I Am Legion
Hawk and Dove
Chaos at the Earth’s Core
Hunter’s Moon
Dead Reckoning (NEW ENTRY)

Rogues Roundup

Gorilla Grodd and the Legion of Doom (Powers Boothe/George Newbern/Susan Eisenberg/Lex Lang) (third appearance)

Atomic Skull and Rampage are basically brought along on the opening skirmish so they can look bad, allowing the higher profile villains to remain smelling of roses. The former gets taken down by a child while the latter is Deadman’s first possession target. In that same vein we get a number of short appearances from the likes of Cheetah, Blockbuster, Copperhead and others all getting their asses swiftly kicked by The Trinity to make them look cool.

Bizarro is the main featured henchman, occupying Superman for more than the few seconds that everybody else manages. He does what Lex tells him now thanks to a lobotomy, removing whatever vague sense of sympathetic charm he had in his previous appearances. Now he’s just evil Superman. And he and Clark don’t even exchange any lines of dialogue, so why bother?

As for Grodd himself? Well, he’s banging his way through his subordinates and trying to turn the entire world into apes, so… it’s not exactly Cadmus, is it? Maybe Luthor taking over will turn them around.

Lex Luthor (Clancy Brown) (ninth appearance)

Lex’s primary function in the series so far has been to be catty with Grodd in order to provide a sense of ‘palace intrigue’. Well it turns out they decided there weren’t enough legs for that, so he’s already taken over The Legion of Doom.

Unfortunately it’s not even a very good takeover, and along the way he looks like a bit of a chump as Grodd is able to conceal his real scheme from him, and then he gets turned into an ape for a few seconds for a joke. They didn’t even have enough time to portray another of the Brainiac visions!

Tala (Juliet Landau) (fourth appearance)

It is cool that she’s the only one who can see through Deadman’s possessions and also the only one who can hurt him, I suppose. But overall I have some major regrets about spinning her off into her own ranked placement given she can only really exist in larger groups, and that isn’t helped by making her Grodd’s new squeeze, only to immediately jump ship to Lex at the end.

Devil Ray (Michael Beach) (second appearance)

I don’t know if they did this on purpose, but I couldn’t help but feel they were really protecting Devil Ray’s standing here, as he’s the one to kill the first guard in Nanda Parbat, and then he murders the elder monk as well, sparking the key events of the episode. They even let him repeat Derek Powers’ iconic line about having to be more specific when he’s accused of murder, which is fun.

He does temporarily get knocked down by the possessed Rampage, but it still feels like they were positioning him to be third in the pecking order behind Grodd and Lex… so naturally he dies! He did at least remain defiant in the face of defeat at Deadman/Wonder Woman’s hands, and then gets to be the last one standing, forcing Deadman to murder him. Ideally there’d be ramifications for that as he used Batman’s body to do it, further cementing Devil Ray’s legacy… but no such luck.

Farewell, surprisingly badass prince.

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