Episode Guide: Justice League/Unlimited

Credits

Cast

Crew

Character Appearances

Featuring

• Green Arrow (second appearance, last appeared in “Initiation”)
• Martian Manhunter (last appeared in “Hawk and Dove”)
• Supergirl (last appeared in “Initiation”)
• The Question (first animated appearance)

Villains

• Unnamed cabal (behind the scenes, controlling all the events and Nuvo-Gen)

Guest Stars

• Galatea

Other Characters

• General Hardcastle (retired US general, coordinated the military response to Superman’s invasion in Superman TAS’s Legacy)
• Gilbert Holstrom (first appearance, scientist for Nuvo-Gen, listed as Hale in titles, but called Holstrom by J’onzz in the actual show)
• Jerry (acquaintance of Lasser, a rival reporter and Nightstalker wannabe)
• Lasser (first appearance; a reporter for Eagle News and Tea’s boyfriend)
• Professor Hamilton (lead scientist of STAR Labs from the Superman TAS, first appearance in this series)

Groups and Henchmen

• Black ops commandos (Conspiracy’s commando unit that attacked the heroes at STAR Labs)

Story Details

Locations

• STAR Labs (Science and Technology Advanced Research Laboratries, a long running fixture in the Superman cartoon and comicbooks)
• Metropolis (Tea/Kara’s fight with the three goons)
• Nuvo-Gen (biotech company that cloned Tea, destroyed this at the end of this episode)
• Hardcastle’s cabin (General Hardcastle’s home)
• JLU Watchtower

Continuity

The secret government has Kryptonite lasers. Martian’s don’t dream. The Question goes through everybody’s trash. Volcana, the Injustice Gang kids, and Galatea were all produced by the same military/business secret network. I think it’s a fair bet that Lexcorp and Lex Luthor are integral parts of the conspiracy.

References

Lex Luthor controlled his own Supergirl in the early 1990s Superman comics, she eventually left him when he tried to clone her.

Comments

The Cartoon Network website lists this as the fourth episode, but it was the sixth broadcast.

This story heavily references the conclusion to Superman The Animated Series. In “Legacy” Darkseid brainwashes Superman and then uses him to lead an invasion of Earth. The military was unable to withstand his attacks until Luthor became involved. Superman’s friends finally managed to break his programming, but he still has to fight against a paranoid military that no longer trusted him and then finally defeat Darkseid. Supergirl was severely injured in the fighting underwent life saving surgery at STAR Labs. This Supergirl was introduced in Little Girl Lost and is not actually Kryptonian — she’s from Krypton’s sister planet, Argos, and has been fostered by the Kents as Clark’s “cousin.”

We see Supergirl’s bedroom at the Kent family farm. This is the same room that J’onn J’onzz stayed in when he visited Clark during the Christmas holidays (“Comfort and Joy”). She has a poster of the boyband W-Boys above her bed. The same band appear on the Question’s clippings wall. Could the W-Boyz be the true secret cabal that directs and controls the fate the animated universe? Probably. I suspect that the W(arner)-B(rother)oyz are actually the writers and directors.

The Question was created by Steve Ditko - the same artist who created Hawk and Dove and co-created Spider-Man. The Question is actually TV reporter Vic Sage. He uses a special gas to affix a featureless mask to his face and to change the colour of his clothing (as seen in the Taxi scene). If you’ve ever read Alan Moore’s Watchmen (the same guy who wrote “For The Man Who Has Everything”; small world isn’t it) then you’ll recognise the Question as the character that Rorschach was based on. Moore’s Rorschach was a fairly objectionable fellow, but a lot of his paranoia and conspiracy fervour has been carried back into this and other portrayals of the Question. I hope Steve Ditko is getting a healthy fee for the use of the characters he’s created as they’ve dominated the new characters seen thus far: Captain Atom, Hawk and Dove and now the Question.

Readers of DC Comics will recognise Tea’s costume as that of the superheroine Power Girl. She was originally adoppelganger of an older Supergirl from a parallel world where Superman was in his sixties. Legend has it that classic Power Girl artist Wally Wood kept increasing the size of her chest from issue to issue to see how long it took to provoke a reaction from the DC management (they either never rose to the bait or noticed). Her origin has changed a few times over the years, but PG remains a fan favourite and is currently a member of the Justice Society (the comic book team that Justice Guild was based on). Galatea was the name of a sculpture created by Pygmalion and brought to life by Aphrodite - the inference is that Professor Hamilton is Pygmalion - the creator.

Wonder Woman’s voice is heard over the intercom. The silhouetted figure seen later in the episode looks sounds and looks like Lex Luthor, the voice artist isn’t credited, but it certainly sounds like Clancy Brown.

The Question has a UFO poster with the legend “I Know”, compare and contrast with Fox Mulder’s now famous “I Believe” poster. The Eagle Network reporter is briefly quizzed by a reporter in a light blue suit - a nod of the hat to Kocharch The Night Stalker. The Question notes that Eagle News is owned by the conspiracy, could the patrotic stance and powerful owner be pointing towards a veiled Fox News Network. The song the Question sings while breaking into Nuvo-Gen is the same one that was playing on the radio in the taxi. TV Tome notes that the Z-8 robots were the original Zeta robots from the Batman Beyond and The Zeta Project series.

The generic secret conspiracy group is sometimes called the Illuminanti by conspiracy theorists. The Illuminanti of the DC Universe is controlled by Vandal Savage - we don’t know if there is any link between the animated Savage and the secret group shown in this episode.

“Trust No One”

Synopsis

Supergirl chases a terrorfied scientist through the streets of Metropolis and is ambushed by a trio of masked assailants. She manages to avoid their attacks and tracks the scientist to STAR Labs. She menacingly tells him that he can “scream now, if you want.” Supergirl then turns the full power of her heat vision against the defenceless man. His screams are replaced by her own, as the horror of the violence jolts Supergirl awake. The Martian Manhunter’s telepathic probes are unable to determine if her nightmare was a suppressed memory or just a dream. She turns to Green Arrow for help, but their conversation is interrupted by the Question. He believes that her experiences are repressed memories from the time she was comatose at Star Labs ( Superman TAS Legacy). He then explains that he believes that this is part of a single conspiracy - a powerful cabal of men who have controlled the world since the time of Ancient Egypt.

GA and Supergirl are sceptical of the Question’s assessment, but there is little they can do to stop him joining them when they visit Professor Hamilton at STAR Labs. Hamilton tries to put Supergirl and easy and assures her that she wasn’t running around on missions while she was meant to be in a coma. As the heroes leave they are ambushed by commandos with black helicopters and a powerful robot. After a short battle GA identifies the robot as a Z-8 trainer, the same sort of training robot the League buys in bulk from the US military. The Question then reveals that the person responsible for commissioning the Z-8 project, was General Hardcastle - the same General that put Supergirl in the hospital in the first place.

They track the General down to a remote cabin and convince him to talk. He retired in disgrace after his failure to stop the rogue Superman, but he knows too much and is only waiting until somebody comes to silence him. He explains that there has been a long standing alliance between the military and big business to study and exploit “metahumans, mutants and aliens” for reasons of national security and profit. Volcana was one of their projects (Superman TAS Where there’s Smoke) and so was the Joker’s Royal Flush Gang (“Wildcards”). However, Hardcastle has been out of the loop too long to known anything specific about Supergirl’s dreams. After the heroes leave he is visited by a girl called Tea who looks just like Supergirl. Moments later Supergirl wakes up from another dream convinced that Hardcastle has “gone.”

The Martian Manhunter reports that the scientist from her first dream has been identified as missing. He worked for a biotech company called Nuvo-Gen. Only one news company had the story, the Eagle Network, and Question is determined to find out why. He “interviews” their reporter who confesses that he’d been seeing a girl who gave him the tip off, a girl that’s been having trouble sleeping and who looks just like Supergirl. Meanwhile Supergirl and Green Arrow infultrate Nuvo-Gen discover the truth on their own. Nuvo-Gen cloned Supergirl and then accelerated the maturation of the clone to early adulthood making the clone faster and stronger than the teenage Supergirl.

Tea, the clone, has been the conspiracy’s secret weapon, but her psychic rappour with her twin sister (the dreams) is a security hole that Tea must be eliminated. Supergirl and Tea slug it out through a virtual Metropolis until Tea gets the upperhand. The Question distracts her by almost proving that she feels guilty for her actions. A shadowy figure watching the battle on a video screen descides that Tea has outlived her usefulness and remotely sets off a series of explosives that destroys Nuvo-Gen. Tea is apparently killed in the explosion. Supergirl checks with Professor Hamilton to see if the DNA sample that created Tea came from STAR Labs and he tells her that all samples were destroyed after her surgery. Shortly after the their conversation he goes to care for a badly injured and comatose Tea.

Review

I don’t know why, but I don’t quite like the animation in this episode as much as I normally do. The animation was done by Dong Yang, the company that also did the animation for For The Man Who Has Everything, and I raved about their work then. I don’t know… it just doesn’t feel as nuanced as other episodes, but that may be a concession to the shear bulk of plot material that has to be crammed into this episode. It’s hard to do much with so many talking heads. One final negative point - I don’t like the cgi for the killer robot in the teaser. Well actually I like the cgi, its just the blend with the rest of the animation I don’t like. Prehaps if they added blacklines around its parts it wouldn’t stand out so much.

Now that the gripes out of the way for one week and I can now gush about how brilliant it was casting Jeffrey Combs (Weyoun from DS9) as Steve Ditko’s Question - a fine blend of Fox Mulder and Rorschach. I particularly like his causal manner for entering Nuvo-Gen. I bet they loved animating the Question (no mouth or eyes). The Supergirl and Green Arrow paring is not an obvious one, but I’m finding Ollie’s surrogate mentor role quite interesting. It’s like he’s the cool friend of the family she can turn to when her parents don’t understand her. Power Girl’s pseudo-appearance was unexpected and welcome, I just hope that they build on the conspiracy storyline.

Stan Berkowitz also wrote Initiation, the season opener that also featured Green Arrow and Supergirl, so I wonder if specific staff writers have their own sub-Leagues to play with. I generally liked this episode, but it didn’t quite deliver enough from the story. I also think this is the first plot that didn’t fit into the new 1/2 hour timeslot and could really have done with being played out over a full hour. As an entire package this was a great, if cramped, story that was let down by excessive, but necessary exposition, and slightly below par animation.

Screenshots