Episode Guide: Justice League/Unlimited

Credits

Cast

Crew

Character Appearances

Featuring

• Baman (last appeared in “Dark Heart”)
• Green Lantern (appeared last episode)
• Wonder Woman (last appeared in “Dark Heart”)

Villains

• Chronos (David Clinton; a research scientist from the time of Batman Beyond; first appearance)
• Tobias Manning (Outlaw in the Old West; first appearance)

Guest Stars

• Bat Lash (roguish gambler in the Old West; first appearance)
• El Diablo (Lazarus Lane; masked whip wielding vigilante from the Old West; first appearance)
• Jonah Hex (old west gunslinger; last appeared in the Batman episode “Showdown”)
• Sheriff Smith (Ohiyesa “Pow Wow” Smith; the Elkhorn Sheriff in the Old West; first appearance)

Other Characters

• Enid Clinton (The nagging wife of David Clinton; first appearance)

Cameoes

• Batman II (Terry McGinnis; the future Batman from Batman Beyond; last seen in Batman Beyond: Return of the Joker)
• Static (Virgil Hawkins; future version of the character from the Static Shock TV show)
• War Hawk (future member of the Justice League; last seen in Batman Beyond’s “The Call”)

Groups and Henchmen

• Gunslingers (Manning’s henchmen)
• Jokerz (future street gang from Batman Beyond: Return of the Joker)

Story Details

Locations

• Elkhorn (19th century frontier town)
• JLA Watchtower
• Gotham City (in the mid 21st century.)

Continuity

War Hawk is John Stewart’s son. Hawkgirl has rejoined the League (she’s shown aboard the Watchtower, but she doesn’t speak).

References

JUSTICE LEAGUE OF AMERICA #198-199 - a group of Leaguers are trapped in the past with DC Western Heroes by the Lord of Time.

Comments

Over the course of its 70 year history DC Comics has published comics from many more genres than just superheroes. At one time or another they’ve had success with aviator, cowboy, detective, horror, science fiction, war, funny animals, and even romance. The wonderful nature of the old DC system meant that most of those characters, in some way or other, actually lived in the same fictional universe. This episode is a wonderful overview of that tradition and of some of DC’s western heroes. You can find a fuller list at John Bullough’s The Western Characters of DC Comcis. There are a lot of characters and stuff to go over for this episode so I’ll only cover the Western characters and leave the Batman Beyond characters for the next episode write up.

Western gunslingers always present a problem for children’s cartoons. Justice League is great fun for us older peeps, but lets not forget that its primary demographic is still meant to be teenage and younger. If the bad guys have guns that’s fine because they never hit anybody anyway, but you can’t have the good guys actually shooting at the bad guys - they might actually hit them. So we’re left with the old “shoot the chandelier” routine where the good guys spend most of the story pulling off increasingly improbable trick shots to avoid seriously injuring the bad guys. Notice how Jonah Hex destroys the town’s water supply rather than just shoot the two bad guys sat on top of it, and then also notice just how trigger happy the lads get once they’ve got robots to shoot at. The robotic dinosaurs and the cowboy with the kite-parachute amused me, but in that case I’m more inclined to think that it was a bit of self-mocking fun at all those cartoon fighter pilots and tank crews who always manage to bail out just before their vehicles explodes - in the safe world of cartoons even Old West Dinosaur Jockeys have parachutes.

The White Hats

Bat Lash was a dapper and witty gunslinger created by Sergio Aragones and Nick Cardy for SHOWCASE #76 (Aug 1968). His full name was Bartholomew Aloysius Lash and he spent a fair amount of time on the run from the law after he killed a corrupt deputy in self-defence. His publishing run was brief, but he’s such an atypical and fun character that he’s become a seminal part of the DC West. He was as much a product of the late 1960s political scene as he was of the old movie version of the West. I sometimes wonder if he wasn’t at least partially influenced by the lead character from the Wild Wild West TV show.

El Diablo, is of course Spanish for the devil, but this version of the character appears to be more like an older hero called The Whip and well there’s no real way to hide it, the Whip was DC’s homage (read: blatant copy) of Zorro. In the stories he was Rodney Gaynor, your typical bored 1930s millionaire playboy who decides to take up a masked identity to fight crime. However, the real El Diablo first appeared in ALL-STAR WESTERN #2 (Oct 1970) and was created by Robert Kanigher and Gary Morrow . He was Lazarus Lane, by day a comatose bank teller, but at nightfall he awoke as El Diablo. Not to be confused with the old Super Friends character of El Dorado.

Sheriff Smith was a western detective whose stories had the rather unfortunate title of “Pow Wow Smith, Indian Lawman.” His real name was Ohiyesa (said to mean Winner in the Sioux language), but those dumb townsfolk just called him Pow Wow Smith - something this episode addresses. He first appeared in DETECTIVE COMICS #151 (Sept 1949) and was created by Don Cameron and Carmine Infantino. His comic book town was Elkhorn and is the setting for this episode.

Jonah Hex is perhaps the most successful of DC’s later Western Characters. He undoubtedly owes a huge debt to Clint Eastwood’s nameless stranger and he is one of the more deadly of gunslingers in DC’s Old West. He was created by John Albano and Tony DeZuniga for ALL-STAR WESTERN #10 (Feb-March 1972) and his adventures lasted well into the 1980s. His line in his episode about time travel is a sideways reference to a rather bizarre period in his history when he was temporarily transported to a futuristic post-nuclear war setting. After his death his body was stuffed and displayed in a travelling sideshow. Hex previously appeared in the Batman episode “Showdown” during a flashback where he fought Ra’s Al Ghul.

The Black Hats

The two villains of the piece this week don’t really bear that much relation to their comic book originals. Tobias Manning was the alter ego for a space cowboy called Terra-Man who used to nuisance Superman, but the name is the only connection with the by-the-numbers “black hat” that appears in this episode. David Clinton is called Chronos in the comics. He was an enemy of the Atom who specialised in time themed crimes long before he actually started time travelling. The version in this episode shares the alter ego, but almost everything about him is different. You can find a full profile of the comic book Chronos here.

It’s hard to make out most of Chronos’s collection, but there appears to be a couple of crowns, a chalice, and a rather prominent jade skull. Items on his list when he hit’s the Watchtower “M’s Dress, Napoleon’s Vest, Washington’s Teeth, Batman’s Utility Belt.”

This John Stewart was a Marine before he joined the Green Lantern Corps so he has objection to picking up gun from time to time. He did it in the season one finale set in World War II and he does the same here. In contrast Batman refuses to even pick up a gun in this episode and makes a point of showing that he doesn’t need to use them.

This may be something very minor, but John Stewart’s Ring Ghost looks like something straight out of Scooby Doo.

Synopsis

Fifty years into the future henpecked researcher David Clinton made the invention of a lifetime - the Chronos-Suit - a fully functioning wearable time travel machine. Unfortunately his superiors at Gotham University were less than impressed by his earlier ideas and had denied him tenure. This gave his wife, Enid, yet another reason to berate and insult him. Yet she reserved her most stinging wrath for his lack of vision in putting the suit to work. Clinton had been building up a secret collection of lost historical artefacts, but all Enid could see was a “loser” who was squandering their single chance to become somebody. Their row ends with Clinton dives into a time tunnel to escape his wife’s anger.

“Later” in the present day Batman and Green Lantern’s discussion about Wonder Woman and Hawkgirl is interrupted by an alarm from the living quarters. They stumble upon Clinton trying to steal Batman’s Utility Belt and pursue him through one of his time tunnels. Batman, Green Lantern and Wonder Woman find themselves deposited just outside the of Elkhorn, Oklahoma in the year 1879. A trio of local ruffians tries to rob them, but the Leaguers turn the table by “borrowing” their clothes for disguises. They then make their way into Elkhorn to discover that the town has become the personal kingdom of a black-hatted varmint called Tobias Manning who had used future technology to run the local Sheriff out of town and to enslave the townsfolk.

The Leaguers break a cardshark called Bat Lash out of the town jail and ask for his help in finding the man Manning got his technology from. It’s only then that they discover that the dishevelled man in the next cell is actually David Clinton. He confesses that Manning robbed him when he first arrived and that he has been kept alive to explain to Manning how to operate the weapons he’s been stealing from the future. The heroes find themselves pinned down in the jail by gunfire from Manning’s goons, but the guns quickly go silent as three lawmen make their appearance. The local Sheriff, Ohiyesa Smith, had put out a call for help and Jonah Hex, El Diablo and Bat Lash had responded. Smith readily accepts the League’s offer of help.

The seven heroes ride out to Manning’s ranch, but find themselves wandering into a strange world here cowboys ride robotic dinosaurs and stomp around in giant mech. The battle is fierce, but brief and it eventually comes down to Smith against Manning. Smith had been Elkhorn’s sheriff until Manning road him out of town, so the other heroes stand back to allow the man to do what he feels he has to do. As Green Lantern destroys all the future artefacts, Clinton double crosses Batman and escapes into another time tunnel. The Leaguers quickly dive after him and find themselves face to face with their own successors.

Review

This was an interesting episode, the first two-parter Justice League story that has been written as a two separate parts rather than as a larger story that has been split for normal broadcast (e.g. the first two seasons). This subtle difference clearly shows in the distinct flavour and tone in each episode. This first part is fairly whimsical and light in tone where as it’s follow-up is dramatic and at time quite dark. The setup, the time lost heroes in the Old West, is one of those great old staples of comic book time travel (along with Camelot, the Second World War, and a 1,000 years hence). It left like a cross between the Justice Riders Elseworlds one-shot from a few years back and Gerry Conway’s time travel story from JLA (original series) #198.

The four new western characters were fun and it was particularly nice to see the light fingered Bat Lash and the frightful Jonah Hex. I wasn’t too sure about the inclusion of El Diablo as he didn’t seem to do much. And where did Manning get that gun, must be a mule to aim. I really liked the use of the Western cliches, including the homage to the first season opening titles as the team rides off to confront the bad guys. It’s hard to deny that this episode comes off as a bit of a homage to the Magnificent Seven, and while the cliches and homages come thick and fast it never descends into parody. A great episode that easily balances the darker second part to this story.

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