Plot summary: Shadow Thief returns and drops some bombshells about Hawkman and Hawkgirl’s alleged past lives.

Notes and Trivia

Episode: 37 (S3.E11)

Original Air Date: April 29^th, 2006

Directed: Joaquim dos Santos (19)

Written: Matt Wayne (5) (story) and Geoff Johns (1) (teleplay)

Animation: DR Movie Co., LTD (19)

Music: Michael McCuistion (13)

A scene where Vixen borrowed the strength of a gorilla was cut for time, explaining why she’s a powerhouse in the fight with Shadow Thief after last mimicking an electric eel. The model was re-used from Fingers the gorilla in Batman Beyond.

Bashari declares victory over Ahk-ton, freeing the nation of Kahndaq from tyranny and plaicng a grateful Teth-Adam to the throne. The latter is the real name of Black Adam, frenemy of Shazam/Captain Marvel, and the former is his original nemesis.

The kiss between Chay-Ara and Bashari is shot-matched exactly with Hawkgirl and Green Lantern’s kiss in ‘Wild Cards‘, with identical music playing under it.

While they end things the way they do here, John and Shayera’s off-screen reunion has been confirmed as canon by Bruce Timm.

DCAU Debuts

Gentleman Ghost (created by Robert Kanigher and Joe Kubert) is Jim Craddock, debuting in 1947 as a normal human criminal masquerading as a ghost, the arch enemy of Hawkman, hence his inclusion here. Following a company-wide reboot he was re-cast as a legitimate spectre, wrongfully hanged for sexual assault by a 19^th Century reincarnation of Hawkman. Cursed to remain on this plane of existence until the soul of his killer moves on… he’s kind of screwed given the Hawks’ constant reincarnation. He has been lurking in the background as a member of the Legion of Doom but never actually did anything until now. He was originally pitched for an episode of BTAS but Bruce Timm didn’t want to use genuinely supernatural villains… ignoring the Ancient Egyptian succubus, Etrigan the Demon etc. Timm clearly had a change of heart for Caped Crusader.

Hath-Set was created by Gardner Fox and Dennis Neville in 1940. A priest responsible for the murders of Prince Khufu and Chay-Ara with a cursed Nth Metal dagger. As a result all-three reincarnate and Hath-Set hunts the two Hawks down to kill them again with the same dagger. For some bizarre reason Arrow decided to graft this onto Vandal Savage, with his immortality depending on consistently murdering the Hawks.

Recap

Green Lantern has trouble taking down The Gentleman Ghost, but Hawkman steps in and helps, much to John’s annoyance. After the two leave, Shadow Thief emerges…

John warns Shayera that Carter Hall is back on the scene, reigniting the tension between the two of them and Vixen.

Shadow Thief attacks John in his home, easily besting Vixen and making off with GL. Desperate, Mari calls in Hawkgirl to help and the pair attempt to go to Carter for answers.

Arriving at the museum he works in, they instead find Shadow Thief waiting to spring a trap. Hawkman tries to help they all get their asses beaten and hooked up to the Absorbicron (remember that?)

Expanding on the previous ancient memories, Shadow Thief claims Queen Chay-Ara began an affair with the warrior Bashari, who is the spitting image of John Stewart.

The devious priest Hath-Set discovered their treachery and ratted on them to King Katar and then murdered the lovers. Devastated, Katar in turn took his own life.

The villain reveals he is Carter Hall’s dark desires made real by the Absorbicron. Carter refuses to murder John, instead absorbing Shadow Thief back into himself.

John finally confesses to Shayera about their son from the future. He admits he loves her… but he’s staying with Vixen, wanting to make his own choices. Shayera asks Batman to tell her about Warhawk.

Best Performance

Loved Robin Atkin Downes as Gentleman Ghost, but it’s too brief.

I’d need to go back and watch it again to be sure, but it felt like James Remar was trying much harder as Shadow Thief. Maybe the dialogue is a little better and the atmosphere is doing him more favours. Either way, he’s delightfully creepy. It’s such a character performance from a guy who is largely just the same fucking person in everything. He off-sets all of that slightly by being worse as Carter Hall in the present, coming across as somewhat bored by comparison. He’s fine as Katar Hol in the ancient past, so I guess overall he comes out well.

The dialogue is very dated, but Gina Torres and Maria Canals-Barrera sniping at each other in the gym is kind of fun, and they both get some solid stuff to do on their own, particularly the romantically charged scenes – for both Chay-Ara and Shayera – and I loved that final line read of “Tell me about my son.”

We probably need to talk about Phil LaMarr. He’s a tremendous voice actor overall, but I’ve always thought his performances as John Stewart are hampered by how hard he’s trying to get across the gruff military aspect of the character. It’s like he’s playing a sport with one arm behind his back or something and I think it detracts from the surprising amount of weighty material they toss his way, including this episode. I think I’d feel a lot better about both the character and the romance if LaMarr adopted a more naturalistic tone.

Episode Ranking

John Stewart, the man you are not. I think it’s well written, but holy hell does he come across poorly in the early scene where he interrupts Vixen and Hawkgirl working out. Does Mari potentially deserve some karmic justice for attempting to rub their relationship in Shayera’s face? Maaaaaybe? But for him to respond so apathetically to her enthusiastic overtures and then reveal “There you are” was actually referring to his ex? Stone cold.

I know I so rarely talk about the music but McCuistion’s borderline soft-porn stylings over the top of John and Mari’s slice of life segment at John’s apartment was sincerely great. Even more so because of how it transitioned into a fight with Shadow Thief.

The Shadow Thief fights are still very cool, with plenty of shape-changing, phasing and ambushes. The shot where he emerges from a wall, nonchalantly posing at a full 90 degree angle, Green Lantern strung up unconscious in a web of shadow… ropes(?) beneath a skylight during a thunderstorm? Now THAT is that good shit.

Vixen feels like a character they had larger ambitions for, as her powers are both cool to look at and were probably fun for the writers and animators to play around with. Plus The League isn’t exactly swimming in prominent female members, and they invested so heavily in Green Lantern and Hawkgirl in Justice League, and Mari lets them explore the fallout of that further. She’s been pretty solid when they’ve let her have a larger role in an episode, and I think this is probably my favourite of those… So naturally this is basically it for her.

Personally I think inserting John into the whole reincarnated lovers storyline is overmuch, but it’s at least well written, breathing a lot more humanity into the ancient counterparts. The strained relationship between husband and wife doesn’t really paint either of them as ‘the bad guy’ as such (though Katar plans to conquer the entire planet to ‘bring peace’), and there’s some genuine heat between Chay-Ara and Bishari despite them only getting a few moments on screen together, with the nice touch of them both showing trepidation about Katar. The whole ‘I’d leave him for you’, ‘I’d never ask, I’m afraid that you would’ exchange is why Geoff Johns is a prolific comic writer, and most of the staff on this series frankly are not. See also Katar’s heartbreak upon finding his wife dead in spite of her betraying him, so much so he takes his own life. Honestly I’m shocked how good and naturalistic the relationship dynamics are in this tiny slither of screen time. And that’s with me hating them adding John to the mix.

Though having said that, I like that no part of this episode proves that the visions shown by the Absorbicron actually happened or that anyone is a resurrected version of anyone else. Shadow Thief is driving the car, so to speak, and is by his own admission an extremely biased narrator, tilting all events in Carter’s favour. Who is to say this whole thing isn’t just the subconscious fantasy of an archeologist who has the hots for Hawkgirl and is jealous of Green Lantern? Shayera maintains that the device was both damaged and incompatible with a human mind, after all. It feels like a comic history nerd’s attempt to nicely marry the conflicting backstories of two complicated characters, and largely succeeding.

The ending is perfect. Not how they resolve Shadow Thief, that’s whatever. John finally saying everything to his ex at last… but then choosing to stay with his girlfriend (who is ten feet away recovering in a hospital bed, btw) because he refuses to let ‘fate’ make his decisions for him… God, I almost respect John Stewart! Much like the Bishari dialogue I raved about above, John’s “I’ll never say that” when she says “tell me you don’t love me” is superlative. This is how people talk in real TV shows and movies! (No offence, children’s cartoon I have written hundreds of thousands of words about!) It may also be the least this whole deal has ever sucked for Mari as John is honest about how he feels but in making that confession, commits fully to Vixen, arguably for the first time. Not as a rebound to try and move on from the missing woman he’s hung up on, not as an awkward half-in, half-out thing he ostensibly felt trapped by while flirting with his ex, but an active choice to try and make it work. Obviously it doesn’t work out, but this is a perfect end to their on screen story in my opinion.

Oh and the Batman of it all? Incredible. It’s 10 seconds and Bruce doesn’t even speak, but it says SO much. Batman is the coldest man in the world (except he isn’t, but ya know.) The two of them have never been overly friendly. He voted her out for goodness sakes. She’s not an overly vulnerable person herself. Yet here she is, hat in hand, asking BATMAN for comfort by telling her about the son she hasn’t had yet.

I don’t really like the DCAU version of John Stewart. When I first watched all these shows I wasn’t particularly taken by either the Green Lantern/Hawkgirl romance, or these two Shadow Thief stories. But here I am, all these reviews later, placing both of these episodes and Shadow Thief high up my two rankings (spoilers for the next segment), and bowled over by Geoff Johns kicking the holy hell out of the regulars (many such cases.)

Double Date
For the Man Who Has Everything
Clash
The Great Brain Robbery
Task Force X
Question Authority
Ancient History (NEW ENTRY)
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
Grudge Match
I Am Legion
Hawk and Dove
Far From Home
Patriot Act
Chaos at the Earth’s Core
Hunter’s Moon
Dead Reckoning

Rogues Roundup

Shadow Thief (James Remar) (second appearance)

He may be borrowing liberally from the Best of Inque Vol. 3, but if you’re going to steal, steal from the best. It’s again not quite as good as our girl, but I’ll still take him making holes in himself to dodge lasers and enveloping John entirely to try and suffocate him. I talked about it in the episode review but his little surprise ‘entrance’ in the museum is one of the very best ‘one of those’ in the whole series. The webs/tentacles are a nice new trick too, and props for being smart enough to target Green Lantern’s arm to try and hobble his use of the Power Ring.

On top of all that, they added the wrinkle that he’s actually a manifestation of Carter Hall’s id. Openly acknowledging that he largely exists to give Hawkman a foe to conquer so he can be a hero is interesting to me, and that’s before he plays the devil on Carter’s shoulder to get him to try and execute John in an attempt to ‘get Shayera back.’

Every so often I’ve looked at his placement on the list and thought ‘surely that’s way too high’… but unfortunately he’s simply too cool to be any lower… and they’ve not only boosted the cool factor, they even grafted a proper character of sorts onto him. He’s not just staying, he’s moving up.

Gentleman Ghost (Robin Atkin Downes) (first appearance)

You can’t tell me this guy’s not a tonne of fun! He flies! He runs straight through trucks! He can easily overpower a Green Lantern Power Ring!

Look, I know he’s basically here for a gag, functionally identical to the various niche villains that The League swiftly take down and I don’t bother writing about… but it’s The Gentleman Ghost! Robin Atkin Downes’ foppish performance alone makes him worth talking about IMO.

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