Plot summary: Disgusted by The Justice League continuing to parade around as heroes, General Eiling takes matters into his own mutated hands.

Notes and Trivia

Episode: 33 (S3.E7)

Original Air Date: February 25^th, 2006

Directed: Joaquim dos Santos (17)

Written: Matt Wayne (3)

Animation: DongWoo Animation Co., LTD. (7)

Music: Kristopher Carter (13)

General Eiling’s transformation into a monster is taken directly from Grant Morrison’s influential JLA comic series which informed much of Justice League and JLU. Morrison had a terminally ill Eiling transfer his mind into the body of ‘The Shaggy Man’, a relatively obscure villain from the 60s who is functionally indestructible. The Eiling version shaves all the fur and calls himself The Patriot, hence the title of this episode.

It is said “nothing less than an artillery shell will be able to penetrate his skin”, an allusion to the less snappy version of how Superman was described in his early days.

The music playing during the parade is re-used from the start of the race between Superman and Flash in ‘Speed Demons‘.

The group of shitty kids heckling the parade and later helping out are a tribute to The Newsboy Legion, creations of Jack Kirby.

DCAU Debuts

Spy Smasher was a Fawcett Comics creation introduced in 1940. The work of Bill Parker & C.C. Beck, Alan Armstrong was a vigilante detective in the vein of Batman and Blue Beetle, secretly a wealthy socialite and armed with a variety of gadgets. He became quite popular but ceased appearing due to the lawsuit between DC and Fawcett, with the former eventually absorbing the rights to all of the latter’s characters.

The Seven Soldiers of Victory debuted as a team allllll the way back in 1941, making them one of the oldest teams of superheroes in history, lagging behind The Justice Society by 2 years but pre-dating The Justice League by almost 20 years! Assembled by Mort Weisinger and Mort Meskin, they were a collective of less prominent heroes: Vigilante, Crimson Avenger, Green Arrow & Speedy, Shining Knight and Star-Spangled Kid & Stripesy, with Shining Knight being the only member with any superpowers. They were assembled when a villain called The Hand (not to be confused with Marvel’s group) was feeling so cocky he put out a newspaper ad challenging heroes to take him on, and then they decided to keep the team-up going. The original book didn’t last very long and many short-lived revivals have taken place over the following decades. The Stargirl episode ‘Brainwave’ showed a black and white photograph of the traditional lineup.

Finally, Speedy aka Arsenal aka Red Arrow is Roy Harper, the young sidekick of Green Arrow. Debuting in 1941, the creation of Mort Weisinger and George Papp, he was a core member of the Teen Titans until adopting the codenames Arsenal and later Red Arrow in adulthood, joining The Justice League to prove he was Green Arrow’s equal. He was the subject of a famous storyline depicting his battle with drug addiction, one of the earliest examples of mature themes making their way into mainstream comics. His character model here is adapted from the one used in the Teen Titans animated series, which is not canon to the DCAU, though they use the same voice actor, Mike Erwin. Arrow featured Colton Haynes as Roy for a few seasons.

Recap

In the height of World War II, German scientists attempted to create a super solider called… ‘Captain Nazi’, but the American hero ‘Spy Smasher’ stole the serum during a daring raid.

Decades later a dossier on the incident sits with General Eiling, who bemoans his demotion since Project Cadmus was shut down during a dinner with Amanda Waller.

With The League spread extremely thin, Mister Terrific assembles a ragtag group of five leftover members to “fill in for Superman” as part of a parade in Metropolis.

Their boring assignment gets a lot livelier when Eiling crashes the parade, transformed into a hulking monster by the Nazi serum which he seized by force from Cadmus.

Eiling beats the absolute piss out of the quintet of Leaguers, so Mister Terrific sends in the only re-enforcements he could find… Crimson Avenger and Speedy! They contribute very little.

Shining Knight takes such a monumental beating that a crowd of bystanders stand in Eiling’s way and call him out on his hypocrisy, convincing him to abandon the skirmish. The fucking end???

Best Performance

Once again I have to give it to Nathan Fillion on account of the sheer amount of fun he’s having with Vigilante’s cowboy voice. “From Merlin hisself” was a particular highlight, along with his bickering with Shining Knight about Clint Eastwood.

JK Simmons does his level best to elevate poorly written material, and as ever suits this gruff pragmatic general character. He ever so slightly deepens his register when he turns into the monster, which works better for me than if they asked him to become a total snarling beast or replaced him with a different actor.

Episode Ranking

In some ways this is exactly what this show should be about, shining a spotlight on lesser-known heroes and letting them have their moment while the ‘Big Boys’ are busy. While the lineup follows the original Seven Soldiers of Victory, this blend of personalities is great as they’re so wildly varied. From the Odd Couple act of Vigilante and Shining Knight, to Star Girl being told off for complaining by the socially conscious Green Arrow, conflict is generally where story lives on television.

It’s just such a shame that they barely do anything with their assembly of oddities after their initial round of bickering. This is the third semi-featured appearance of S.T.R.I.P.E. and he’s still yet to get anything resembling a backstory or piece of meaningful dialogue. If you have nothing to say about him then don’t include him at all, is my take. Stargirl remains stuck in ‘brattier Supergirl’ mode, but does at least get to do the most damage to Eiling until she lets slip all her powers come from her staff so he disarms her and almost crushes her skull. Crimson Avenger doesn’t say a word, to the point I burst out laughing when he silently handed Stargirl her staff back and then walked off again like a total fucking goof. He and Speedy are treated as jokes when they arrive, and I honestly found it a little bizarre for them to slip straight into fight banter with Ollie and Roy after so casually revealing they’re former partners. Like… I don’t need an epic tapestry of their history together, but we’re thirty-three episodes into the show and they’re debuting characters like this as afterthoughts. This duo can’t exchange a single parting word in the aftermath? Bleh.

Vigilante hyping up the disappointed crowd who came to see Superman, encouraging Stargirl and Shining Knight to show off their powers, was a good bit. It doesn’t impress the horrible kids of course, but by the episode’s end they’re fighting over who gets to be Shining Knight and Vigilante, which is cute. Unfortunately that ending is so powerfully anticlimactic it kind of hurts. Eiling just keeps beating everybody up until the crowd are so horrified they step in and he sees the error of his ways. It sounds good, but it’s just not well executed at all. “I’ve become what I hate, I’ll give you that.” is some fucking terrible ‘saying the themes out loud’ writing. Then he just leaves and we will never see or hear from him again. If you’re going to ‘tie up loose ends’ with a character like this then you absolutely have to give them an ending.

The black and white Nazi-era vignette at the start was kind of fun, evoking a pulpy era of Hollywood with the stone castle up on a clifftop and a mad scientist trying to win the war for Hitler. But as ever, I’m not letting a short scene save an otherwise bad episode.

The attempted ‘360 camera shot’ as Shining Knight and Eiling face off exposes that for as smooth as the animation has become on the show over time, there are definitely still some rough spots. Likewise the incredibly pixelated typesetting of the dossier Eiling is reading at the start.

I for sure think there was something here, with the first half actually being pretty entertaining, but it became clear half this script just says ‘they fight’ and then Matt Wayne doesn’t have the goods required to pull off the scene where the ordinary citizens triumphantly speak truth to power and it all wraps up too quickly. This needed a lot more work and instead underlines the ways JLU has failed to live up to its own premise.

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
Patriot Act (NEW ENTRY)
Chaos at the Earth’s Core
Hunter’s Moon
Dead Reckoning

Rogues Roundup

The Patriot aka General Eiling (JK Simmons) (sixth appearance)

Eiling refusing to accept ‘the war is over’ almost a year after the events of Season 2 is a great idea, with him espousing points like The League gaining ground (they have a second headquarters on Earth now) while he and other members of Cadmus got demoted means it was a loss, not a truce. He’s bringing up The Cold War while Waller is telling him to get with the times. He’s attacking American troops and forcing his way into a secure facility to use an experimental Nazi weapon but all the while believes he is doing what’s best for his country.

I think it’s crucial that his mind remains in tact during his Hulk-out, telling one of the soldiers he’d never hurt him for simply doing his job. I know this all may seem a bit hypocritical as I softly complained about giving Lex superpowers last season, but Eiling wasn’t nearly as established a character and this is his natural endpoint, so I’m good with it.

S.T.R.I.P.E. plays the sacrificial lamb to demonstrate how fucking powerful Eiling becomes as he hammers him into oblivion and tears open his chest plate, fully prepared to deliver a killing blow before they’re interrupted by a literal child who Eiling almost murders. See how he’s become more extreme than the enemy he warned everybody about? Much American Military, Very Satire. He even mocks Shining Knight for refusing to follow the orders of King Arthur when it meant the death of innocents in case any of that was too subtle for you. It’s just a shame the whole thing ends on such a flat note and he just concedes the argument and leaps away never to be seen again.

I’ve spun him off from the rest of Cadmus on account of this unique monster rampage. I’ll let him borrow a dash of the group’s narrative depth, but I’m afraid even with that and the promise he shows in the first half of this episode I still think it’s charitable to place him just above halfway down the list. More interesting than the other brutes for sure, but potential not paid off at all.

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
The Patriot aka General Wade Eiling (NEW ENTRY)
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