Justice League

Screen Shots

Synopsis

The Justice League are returning victorious from an adventure in deep space as the Batman monitors their approach from the Watchtower. Green Lantern is towing the Javelin 7 when a brilliant white pulse of light erupts from the surface of the Earth. By the time the League collect their wits the Watchtower and the Batman have vanished. There is no wreckage so the stunned League continue towards the source of the pulse. They should be landing in Metropolis, but the city is almost unrecognisable. Fascist banners and eagles are hung from every building and a large mural depicts a breaded man who is labelled as the “Leader”.

The League are discussing the change to Metropolis when the Flash rips down a picture of the “Leader” to show them. They are challenged by two armed Storm Troopers who demand to see their papers. Hawkgirl’s reluctance to cooperate forces the Troopers to call in heavy support. The heroes start to fight off their attackers, but are called upon to retreat by the Batman who makes a sudden arrival as a third wave of Troopers shows up. Batman escorts the heroes into the Metro-System and they make their getaway in a rocket powered train.

Batman takes the League to a Batcave in a disused underground station. He blanks their questions and has his own armed detail – many of them apparently quite young – surround them. Batman then demands to know who the League are before he accepts them into his resistance. He relates how the Storm Troopers came to his house when he was 8-years old and murdered his parents for speaking out against the Regime – the ruling power since World War II. Green Lantern argues that the Allies won, but Batman corrects him saying that D-Day – the Allied invasion of Axis controlled Europe – was a disaster.

The Alternate Batman also detected the Pulse in his timeline and traced it to a place he describes as “Vandal Savage’s Research Centre” – Vandal Savage being the name of the “Leader” in all the posters. The League force their away in and find a time travel experiment – a tunnel into the past – still running. Savage used it to alter the course of the Second World War. The aura of Green Lantern’s ring protected them against the changes to history, but they will need to follow Savage into the past to undo his meddling. The Alternate Batman stays behind to lead the Resistance if they are unsuccessful. Wonder Woman takes a last long look at the Alternate Batman before becoming the last person to jump into the tunnel.

The tunnel emerges in a bombed out train station in occupied France (circa 1944). Allied soldiers (American GIs) and Axis storm troopers are firing at each other from either side of a battle torn town square. As the League watch the Storm Troopers move aside to allow a monstrous 5-story tall War Wheel machine to advance. The GI’s tanks can’t even scratch the Wheel, but a single shot from its massive guns can easy destroy a tank. Green Lantern, once a US marine himself, is the first Leaguer to join the battle and shields the GI’s with his ring. The rest of the League topple the Wheel, but are concerned that it contains technology that should not have been invented for decades.

J’onn and Wonder Woman fly to Berlin to investigate the Axis headquarters while the rest of the League stay behind to protect the GI’s from a new group of War Wheels. In Berlin, Vandal Savage dismisses the reports of fighters with magical powers as Allied propaganda. General Hoffman questions his dismissal of the report, but is electrocuted for his lack of faith. Just then the Axis headquarters is rocked by an explosion. During the chaos a blond hair American disables a guard and escapes in a stolen Axis fighter plane until its damaged in a dog fight. The pilot bails out, but he is knocked unconscious by flying debris. J’onn J’onzz and Wonder Woman arrive from the opposite direction and see the American’s plight. Wonder Woman catches him and lowers him safely to the ground.

The grateful American introduces himself as Steve Trevor and tells Wonder Woman that he has vital information about an Axis invasion of England that must be delivered to France. Trevor tells them that the Axis’s weapons came from Vandal Savage. The Axis High Command was so impressed within him that they elevated Savage to the status of Führer. J’onn follows Trevor’s directions and infiltrates Savage’s lab. He discovers a laptop computer containing blueprints of future technology and the previous Führer frozen in cryogenic storage. However, J’onn is discovered by Savage and is captured before he can escape with the information about his discoveries.

The War Wheels continue to advance through France forcing the Allied forces to retreat before them. Green Lantern and the rest of the Justice League try to shield and protect as many of the soldiers as possible, but they are stretched thin. Green Lantern’s ring was already low on power when they arrived in the alternative timeline and he exhausts its charge fighting an Axis War Wheel. He still manages to pull an unconscious GI out of its path. Lantern hands the GI over to Hawkgirl and tells her to take him to safety. She leaves not realising that Lantern is powerless as three War Wheel’s bear down on his location.

Commentary

Alternate Timeline Check-list

1. Single friend who doesn’t make the jump – Check
2. Not knowing you are in a parallel timeline/reality – Check
3. Faces of the Great Dictator – Check
4. Security Officials demands your papers – Check
5. Backup is called – Check
6. Superman is wounded to prove how tough the weapons are – Check for every bloody first season story
7. Duplicate of a friend who doesn’t recognise you – Check
8. Duplicate of a friend who happens to be running the local resistance – Check

Vandal Savage

Vandal Savage was created by Alfred Bester and Marty Nodell for Green Lantern vol. #1 (1943). He was first introduced as an enemy for the original Green Lantern, but he had so much potential as a character that he quickly became  and enemy of the Justice Society and then the entire DC Universe. Savage was a cave-man who had been granted immortality by the radiation from a strange meteorite. He at times appears charismatic and quite civilised, but he never really manages to suppresses his true, brutally ruthless personality. He has opportunistically associated himself with almost every conqueror and warlord in history in an on going attempt to forward this own ambitions. He has even claimed to be more than a couple of them, but those claims have rarely been verified.

The Animated Vandal Savage isn’t given a background in this episode – he’s simply a villain who alters the past for his own gain. It’s not until next seasons episode “Main of Honor” that his origin is revealed. Surprisingly this is actually Savage’s second appearance in Justice League. He was a Justice Society villain during the 1940s and a painting of him, or his equal, makes a very brief appearance on the wall of the villain’s headquarters in the JSA pastiche episode “Legends”.

Vandal Savage is voiced by Phil Morris in the Justice League cartoons. Morris will be better known to DC fans as the actor who now plays J’onn J’onzz in Smallville. He is also the voice of Jonah Hex in Batman: Brave and the Bold, Imperiex in Legion of Super Heroes and King Faraday in Justice League: The New Frontier. The Producers DVD commentary on episode two reveals that Phil Morris had impressed the producers as the Gorilla General from in “Brave and Bold” and was brought back as the voice of Vandal Savage. Morris is actually a comic book fan and knew about the character before he recorded his voice track.

World War II

The War in Europe began with the failure of the victors of the First World War to give the defeated Germany a fair settlement package. Adolf Hitler’s Nazi Party used popular discontent at that settlement as an excuse to seize power in Germany and to begin an invasion of their neighbouring countries. That expansion was finally reversed by a counter-invasion begun on 6th of June 1944 (D-Day) by the Allied forces. The presence of US GIs in France and Batman’s comment about D-Day being a disaster must mean that this episode is set within a couple of months of the real D-Day landings.

The specific battle the League encounter was identified as the Battle for Caen by the DCAU Wiki which leads to the historical inaccuracy of US GIs fighting a battle that was actually fought by British and Canadian forces. A case of the America Wins The War trope, but a fairly understandable one considering limited resources for character models and the target audience.

Vandal Savage’s Regime is certainly Nazi like, but using a DC comics villain as the Führer gives a level of detachment to the historical horrors. Their banner is a single SS style S (presumable for Savage). Also notice that we never heard the world “Nazi” mentioned in this episode. We hear people talk about Allies, D-Day, and World War II, but the word “Nazi” is never mentioned. When Batman makes the reveal about them all he does is put an image of goose-stepping Storm Troopers on the screen and say “them!”

Earth-X

We only get a small glimpse of the present day ruled by Vandal Savage’s Regime, but there is an obvious parallel with Earth-X. This isn’t the more modern Alex Ross Marvel Comics series, but an old Justice League/Society team-up that found them travelling to a parallel world where the Nazis had won the Second World War. The only resistance was a small band of superheroes called the Freedom Fighters led by a super-powered version of Uncle Sam.

A lot of Batman’s fighters look pretty young – an entire troop of Robins. Two of them, a young man with dark hair and pony-tail and a woman with red hair, are shown kissing. They seem to be Dick Grayson and Barbara Gordon. Another boy with dark hair could be Tim Drake.

Steve Trevor

Steve Trevor was Wonder Woman’s original love interest – her equivalent to Superman’s Lois Lane – and the reason she originally left the Amazon’s secret island. He first appeared in All-Star Comics #8 (Dec 1941) as an intelligence officer with the US military. His plane crashed on Themyscira, the home island of the Amazons. A contest was held to find which Amazon would leave the island and escort Trevor back to “Man’s World.” Diana, the daughter of the Amazon Queen, disguised herself and won the contest. She then took Trevor back to the US where she used her Amazon powers and training to aid the war effort as Wonder Woman.

The characterisation and even the presence of Steve Trevor in the Wonder Woman comics has waxed and waned over the years. He had gone from being a heroic colleague to a potential husband – versions of him even married the Earth-One and Earth-Two Wonder Women once their own adventures came to an end.

In the mid-1980s DC Comics radically re-imagined Wonder Woman by strengthening her credentials as a warrior from a mythic race and by erasing the more camp/misogynistic elements that had built up. Steve Trevor, while still the driver of Wonder Woman coming to the outside world, was no longer her love interest and was put out to pasture by marrying him off to another supporting character.

The animated Steve Trevor is once again a James Bond like military intelligence officer. He is voiced by Patrick Duffy who is, of course, most famous for being Bobby Ewing from Dallas. In the 1970s Duffy was the Man from Atlantis for a single season at the same time that Lyle Waggoner was playing Steve Trevor opposite Lynda Carter in Wonder Woman. During the producers DVD commentary to episode two then comment that the visual design for Steve Trevor was based on the look of Milton Caniff’s Steve Canyon.

War Wheels

The War Wheel was a Nazi super-weapon from the old Black Hawk comics. It made its first appearance in Blackhawk vol #1 #56 (Sept 1952) as a monstrous armoured, spiked wheel that was invulnerable to the Allied forces heaviest guns. The Black Hawks were finally able to stop it by targeting its most vulnerable part – the pilots inside. Since then the War Wheels have become an iconic symbol of the war in DC Comics and have made many later appearances.

Notes

• Vandal Savage: “Another report of costumed fighters with magical powers.” Stress on the “another report” – who was the subject of the first report? The Justice League has only just arrived, but we’re never told who this other group is.
• The Bat-Train disappears past a barrier in front of a concealed entrance just like the Batmobile emerging from the Batcave in the Batman TV series.
• Flash: “Colonel Klink” – Kommandant Oberst Wilhelm Klink was a character from Hogan’s Heores, a US sitcom about life in a German POW camp. Klink was the commandant of the camp.
• Green Lantern’s eyes are shown turning black after his ring runs out of power. However, in “In Blackest Night” he still has green eyes despite being stripped of his ring by the Manhunters.

Opinion

Highlights

The Alternative Metropolis and Batman’s Resistance

Oddities

Saturday Morning cartoon heroes in a war zone, sometimes it just gets weird.

My thoughts

The character animation for this episode of fantastic. I take 150-200 screen shots for each episode as I re-watch it and then upload the 36 best captures. I had real problems last episode (“Metamorphosis”) finding enough good screen shots, but this episode is the complete opposite – there are just so many great shots to choose from. Even the basic poses “stunned group reaction shot” or “Green Lantern grimacing as he projects a green beam to somewhere out of shot” are perfectly framed. Certainly the 4:3 framing is better than last episode.

The quiet moment where the Alternate Batman asks the League if undoing his world will save his parents carries a surprising emotional weight and it is a testament to the actors and writers that it wasn’t overwrought or overplayed. I’d liked to have seen more of the Alternate Present Day as it was the strongest part of this episode. The WWII stuff is great, but I just think it could have been left until the middle episode. The image of J’onn appearing spectre-like through the plane and then advancing on the Axis airman is menacing.

4.0