Justice League: In Blackest Night Part Two

Screen Shots

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Episode Credits

Synopsis

Previously in Part One: The Manhunters, a force of android soldiers, arrive on Earth and demand that Green Lantern John Stewart surrender himself to them. The Justice League are astonished when Stewart willing teleports away with the Manhunters before giving his friends an explanation. The Manhunters take Stewart to a vast stadium-like court on Ajuris 5 where he is charged with destroying the world of Ajuris 4 (albeit accidentally). His friends in the League know none of this and follow Stewart and the Manhunters to Ajuris 5. They arrive just in time to see space pirate Kanjar-Ro’s damning testimony against Stewart. He then stuns his team-mates by admitting that he really is guilty of Ajuris 4′s destruction.

Maybe it’s Clark Kent’s journalistic instinct, but Superman doubts Kanjar-Ro’s story and is determined to investigate it for himself. The Flash and Hawkgirl are left to slow things down in court – an ironic task for the fastest man alive. Stewart doesn’t intend to defend himself, but the Flash objects and agrees to become GL’s defence lawyer. In doing so he unwittingly agrees to share Stewart’s sentence if he’s found guilty.

Hawkgirl notices that the other Green Lanterns have left the public gallery. She finds them drowning their sorrows in a nearby bar having given up on their friend’s innocence. She finds their lack of loyalty dishonourable and starts a fight by calling them cowards. She betters four Green Lanterns, but Kilowog, the largest and toughest of them, just watches. He eventually steps in to stop the bar-room brawl and agrees with Hawkgirl to stand up for Stewart. Flash calls Kilowog as a character witness and he gives a spirited defence of John’s past conduct, but the Prosecutor is able to use his testimony to challenge the authority of the Green Lanterns. The Prosecutor’s question of who gave Green Lanterns the right to hunt criminals is answered by the arrival by a delegation of the Guardians of the Universe.

Superman and J’onn J’onzz visit the moon where Stewart’s confrontation with Ro precipitated the destruction of Ajuris 4. It is Superman who realises that the moon is still orbiting the position where Ajuris 4 use to be. The moon should have been thrown out of its orbit when Ajuris 4 was destroyed, but something is still holding it in place. Their search eventually reveals a large unmanned machine – a massive holographic projector. Before they can investigate further they are attacked by Kanjar-Ro. He tries to bury them, but comes under attack by Hawkgirl who had noticed him talking to one of the Manhunters. Hawkgirl and Kanjar-Ro dog fight until she gains the upper hand.

Back on Ajuris 5 the Manhunter leader is addressing his assembled soldiers. He promises them that they will soon regain their power and dignity after a thousand years of grievances. He tells them that their plan to discredit the Lantern Corps has worked tell and that they have also managed to draw the Guardians away from their home planet of Oa. Meanwhile, a Guardian tells the court that, while they may control the Lantern Corps’ power source, each Green Lantern has total autonomy. The Prosecutor then suspends questioning and demands that the Tribunal make their judgement. It only takes a few seconds for the High Tribunal to come to a decision. They find John Stewart guilty of the destruction of Ajuris 4 and rule that he and his advocate (the Flash) should face immediate termination.

A gas chamber rises from the floor of the court room and the guards herd the Flash and Green Lantern towards it. Even at this stage Stewart refuses to escape – he tells the Flash that even they must be held accountable for their actions. Lethal gas floods the chamber. The heroes are moments away from death when Superman crashes back into the court room and rips his friends from the chamber. He them signals Hawkgirl to destroy the holographic projector. The stunned High Tribunal and spectators watch as the debris field fades and is replaced with the correct vista of the untouched and remarkably undestroyed Ajuris 4.

Stewart’s anger turns towards Kanjar-Ro and the coward admits that he set him up in exchange for money from the Manhunters. Ro’s barely finished his own confession before the Guardians move to leave the court room. The Leaguers’ sense there are move revelations to come and catch up with the Guardians at the Manhunter’s barracks. However, the androids have already left and the Guardians are forced to confess their own sins. The Manhunters were the Guardian’s first attempt at creating an army of crime fighters, but their computer brains could not comprehend the subtle shades between good and evil. They were replaced by the living Green Lantern Corps and were assigned to lesser duties. However, the Manhunters felt dishonoured and swore revenge against their masters and replacements.

While the court case has diverted the everybody’s attention the Manhunters have attacked the Guardian’s citadel on Oa. They intend to seize the Central Power Battery that broadcasts power to the Green Lantern Rings. The Guardians that remained on Oa pool their own power into their defences, but they are nearly exhausted by the onslaught of hundreds of hundreds of Manhunters. The arrival of the Justice League and the other Guardians decimate the Manhunters forces, but the overwhelming odds remain with the invaders. The balance of the battle shifts back and forth. The Manhunters turn Oa’s automated defences against the Leaguers, but the arrival of Hawkgirl and the Green Lanterns who had attended Stewart’s trial bolsters the defenders.

Despite the counterattack a group of Manhunters continue to attack the fading energy barrier erected by the Guardians. The Lead Manhunter momentarily breeches it and makes his way to the massive Battery. John Stewart follows him, but is ambushed and is thrown aside after a brief fight. The Lead Manhunter enters the Battery and begins to absorbs its power. He grows to gigantic size and continues to draw in the emerald energy. In the process he drains the Green Lantern Rings and the life out of the Guardians. John Stewart refuses to give in and matches his own willpower against that of the synthetic Manhunter. Stewart recites the Green Lantern oath as he wins the battle of wills and drains the Manhunter’s stolen power temporarily into his own ring. He then pour it back into the central power battery where the Manhunter’s intellect is dispersed.

The Guardians remark that they choose wisely when they gave John Stewart his ring and then thank him for saving them. The other Green Lantern’s apologise for not believing in him, but Stewart snubs them and leaves them to deal with the clean up on Oa. He rejoins the Justice League, who never doubted him, leaves to return home.

Commentary

The confrontation of the Lead Manhunter and Green Lantern John Stewart echoes Sinestro’s confrontation with Green Lantern Kyle Rayner from Superman TAS: In Brightest Day. Both characters come together pressing power-ring to power-ring or power-ring to energy baton in a very similar fireworks display.

A random aside: Destroying a planet is actually rather hard and is something that science fiction is gloriously bad at. The common Krypton-like explosions that we’re all familiar with take a massive amount of energy. Take a planet the size of the Earth for example. It has a radius of 6400km. In a typical science fiction explosion all that material will be dispersed to many times that radius in a matter of seconds. Lets for simplicity sake say that all the material moves 5 earth radii in 2 seconds (a relatively slow explosion by movie standards). That means that the material is going to be moving at approximately 5 x 6,400,000 / 2 = 16,000,000 m/s. That’s 5% of the speed of light which is fantastically fast. The amount of energy you’d need to move an Earth’s worth of material to 5% of lightspeed is 0.5 x 6×10²⁴ x ( 1.6×10⁷ )² = 8×10³⁸ J. Which is equal to the entire energy output of the Sun for 65,000 years.

The League arrives and leaves Oa via a Green Lantern bubble. One assumes that they left the Javelin parked on Ajuris 5 and had to go back to pick it up after the end of the episode.

The credits misname the Green Lanterns or at least they’re using slightly different spelling than in the comics: Galius Zed is called Graz and Kilowog is called Killowog.

The Forian mystery remains. The characters in each episode that haven’t got a credited voice actor, but who speak include the Lead Guardian and the three Judges. Personally I think Auberjonois voiced the Lead Guardian and as Maria Canalis is the only female on the voice list I assume that she voiced the female judge. That leaves the possibility that the lead judge is called Forian, but I’ve have thought he’d have been listed as “Lead Judge” rather than by name. That leaves the possibility that Forian is their name for one of the Green Lanterns – Arkkais speaks briefly – or that he is simply a character that was cut out for reasons of running time.

Martian children had toys called Illusitrons which were crude holographic projectors.

Great Moments

The Hawkgirl versus the Green Lantern Corps bar room brawl.

Oddities

In the recap Kanjar-Ro uses dialogue that didn’t appear in the first episode. He says “his aim was off, way off”, but in the original episode he describes Stewart’s energy blast bouncing off the starship’s deflector shields and says nothing about his aim.

My thoughts

I find Superman’s role in all this interesting. He’s the one who while everybody else is declaring that GL is innocent is actually looking to investigate the crime. He’s also the one who breaches the walls of the court room – twice – over riding the authority of the High Tribunal. He is diplomatic the first time, but the second time he effectively over rules their death sentence. It’s not obvious and his presence is rather understated in the episode, but Superman is definitely willing to stand up as a greater moral authority than even those who style themselves as the legitimate authorities.

Despite all those Green Lanterns there is a distinct lack of ring constructs from any of them beyond the usual shields, energy beams, and bubbles. That should be quite a problem with for Green Lantern mythology episode, but the strength of the storyline and the script carry it through. The animation also feels sharper than last episode – in particular I loved the Hawkgirl/GLC fight. I remember In Blackest Night as one one of the strongest stories in the first half of Season One and it holds up well.