Justice League

Screen Shots

Synopsis

Previously in The Savage Time Part One: June, 1944 should have been the turning point of World War II. It was when the Allied counter-invasion of occupied Europe began, but a genius called Vandal Savage has time travelled into the past to bolster the Axis forces with advanced present-day weaponry. His actions have turned D-Day into a disaster and created an alternate history where is the Führer and the conqueror of the United States. The Justice League have travelled into the past to undo Savage’s tampering. J’onn J’onzz has been captured in Berlin by Savage as Wonder Woman and US agent Steve Trevor race to France with urgent details concerning the Axis invasion of Britain. On the Normandy coast, Hawkgirl, Superman, and the Flash try to shield the retreating Allied forces, but Green Lantern’s ring has been drained leaving him powerless and separated from his team-mates.

On the beaches of Normandy, Superman, the Flash, and Hawkgirl try to protect the trapped soldiers and get them to their transports. A squadron of Axis fighter plans loom into view and Superman tells Hawkgirl that “all bets are off” as they engage the fighters. Their efforts are bolstered by the arrival of the Allies’s elite Blackhawk fighter squadron. They help turn the tied of the battle as Superman lasers and rips his way through the Axis fighters. The Axis pilots eventually retreat and the Blackhawks’ fly past of the beaches elicits cheers from the evacuating Allied soldiers. Meanwhile, Wonder Woman flies Steve Trevor to the ruined French Chateau where he was meant to rendezvous with a man named Ernst – a genius codebreaker who Trevor needs to crack a new Axis coded communicator. Wonder Woman is bemused that Steve appears quite happy to relax in the ruined Chateau until Ernst arrives.

Superman and Hawkgirl continue to muck in with the GIs, but the Flash tells them that he couldn’t find Green Lantern anywhere. He is angry that Hawkgirl left Lantern behind, but she points out the Allied casualties would have been far higher if they’d waited for him. The Blackhawks land and introduce themselves properly. Their leader, also called Blackhawk, explains that they are a coalition of pilots – Andre from France, Hendrickson from Holland, Olaf from Norway, and Blackhawk from Poland – and that they will “bow to no authority” until their homelands are free.

Green Lantern had forced Hawkgirl to leave him behind whilst she evacuated US service men. However, his power ring’s charge is exhausted he is only saved then the Axis forces move away from his area. Green Lantern, as plain John Stewart, escapes from the Axis controlled area by hiding beneath a truck. He then finds himself face-to-face with a company of US soldiers who are hunting for an enemy air field. He tells them that his ring had been a “secret weapon”, but it’s now “out of juice”. The GI “Bulldozer” questions John’s metal and gets himself floored for his attitude. John tells them that he was once in the US Marine Corps which further aggravates Bulldozer, but Rock, their Sergeant, tells Bulldozer to be quiet and hands John a rifle with the quip “Welcome to Easy Company Soldier!”

J’onn J’onzz is strapped to a bench in Vandal Savage’s Berlin laboratory. Savage tells him that his only aims have been “Peace. Process. Unity.” – with him in charge naturally. Savage reveals that he is not from the future, but the laptop containing the blueprints he’s used to transform the Axis’ fortune is from the future – “a gift to myself”. He then shows J’onn the message his future self sent him detailing the history of the war and how he should replace the “raging lunatic” who originally led the Axis. Savage then leaves J’onn to the careful ministrations of his chief torturer.

As night falls Trevor offers Wonder Woman a candle light dinner of caviar and French wine scavenged from the Chateau’s kitchens. Wonder Woman finds it hard to understand how Steve can be so relaxed. He keeps calling her “Angel” and its obvious that she is rather taken with his attention. However, their dinner is rudely interrupted by Axis soldiers who have encircled the Chateau. Trevor hands Wonder Woman the communicator and then kisses her before rushing out to confront the soldiers. However, Wonder Woman has them pacified before Trevor can fire a single shot. She then forces a captured soldier to tell them where Ernst is.

Hawkgirl and Superman follow the Blackhawks back to their secret island airfield. They had been doing routine reconnaissance work when they spotted a massive new Axis factory complex – if Superman, Hawkgirl, and the Flash can take out the anti-aircraft guns the Blackhawks can destroy the factory.

Stewart and Easy Company flank an Axis machine gun nest with Sgt. Rock giving the orders. Wildman is injured by a sniper and Stewart is forced to fire at the sniper knocking him out of his tree. Rock disables the machine gun, but Bulldozer blames Stewart for letting Wildman get injured.

J’onn escapes from Savage’s laboratory by disguising himself as his torturer. Savage is furious and orders “Operation Endgame” to begin immediately. However, he’s told that they can’t send the order yet because one of their coded communicators is missing (the one stolen by Steve Trevor). Meanwhile, Wonder Woman and Steve Trevor trace the codebreaker Ernst to a castle prison. They fly in silently and Wonder Woman smashes through the exterior wall. The find Ernst’s cell, but discover that he has been bound and gagged. Once free he tells them that they shouldn’t have come – they’ve been lured into a trap designed to recover the coded communicator. They then find that the castle is surrounded by a division of tanks and war wheels.

Commentary

Bruce Timm on the Savage Time

The Savage Time is most of the most successful first season episodes, but producer Bruce Timm still felt it had some weaknesses that they address for the second season.

“Savage Time” is a really good show, but there’s still a little bit of blandness in the dialogue I think. There’s a reliance on clichés just to get the story going. What you tend to do is write a first draft that will have a certain number of clichés as placeholder dialogue so that you can tell the story, then you take a second pass at it and say, “Okay, how do we put a spin on this dialogue so that it flows better or sound a bit fresher?” and rewrite it so that even if what they’re actually saying are clichés they’re not saying it in a cliché way. But what happened with “Savage Time” was that there were a whole lot of things going on at the time internally.

We were really rushing to finish the season, and there were some problems with the first draft and the second draft structurally. That was a very difficult show to beat out properly, because there was a lot happening. We had three or four major plot threads that had to pay off by themselves and then also had to dovetail into the main plot. That ate up time we had for rewrites. So the final draft of the script was not quite as polished as I would have liked, but it’s still a really good show. The story is ultimately the key. As long as it’s a good story and holds your interest, you can forgive some lapses in logic and lapses in dialogue.

Modern Masters VIII: Bruce Timm, pg. 75-76

Producers Commentary

The DVD for his episode features an audio commentary by producers Bruce Timm, James Tucker, Glen Murakami, Dan Riba, and Rich Fogel.

Having the Blackhawks and Sergeant Rock in this episode was described as “Geek Nirvana”. WWII was the hey day for comic books so the era lends itself well to the adventures of superheroes. Butch Lukic is a huge WWII buff and bought in a lot of reference. He storyboarded all the scenes with Sgt Rock in this episode. Bruce Timm insisted on the War Wheel from the Blackhawk comics. The first volume of Blackhawk Archives came out just when they were doing this episode and was heavily used for reference. Bret Blevins story-boarded the kiss between Wonder Woman and Steve Trevor.

There were interesting comments about how this was the biggest show they’d yet done and was something they wouldn’t have even attempted on the Superman or Batman cartoons, yet it’s also something they now wouldn’t bat an eyelid about.

Adam Van Wyk storyboarded an aerial battle that was five-times longer than the final version. Many of the shots were rearranged in editing. This was all done before they started using computer modelling so the producers sent a little plastic model of a Blackhawk plane (an XF5F Skyrocket put together by Bruce Timm) to Korea for the animators to copy.

During the first season there was a technical problem with the US background painters and the Korean animators having different colour profiles on their computers. This meant that all the backgrounds appeared brighter in the episodes than they’d originally been painted. They now have a fortnightly calibration of their computers colour calibration.

Many of the cast had to do double or triple action as German soldiers so everybody got to try out their dodgy German accents. Robert Picardo is the German who tells Wonder Woman and Steve Trevor that they are completely surrounded at the Chateau. Fred Dryer or Dave Thomas is one of the guards outside the torture camber and Josef – the officer who tortures J’onn – is voiced by Michael Rosenbaum.

The Blackhawks

It can sometimes be hard for us to now understand just how diverse comics were during the 1940s. The superhero did not have the medium entirely to himself and had to complete with adventurers, detectives, aviators, soldiers, and practically every other action/adventure format possible. These weren’t niche titles either (ala Vertigo) these were mainstream books. One of the more popular of forms was the aviator comic and the most famous aviator was Quality Comics’ Blackhawks.

The Blackhawk Squadron, named after their leader Blackhawk, was a group of elite WWII-era fighter pilots who flew modified XF5F Skyrockets. They first appeared in Military Comics #1 (August 1941) and were created in Will Eisner’s studio by Chuck Cuidera and Bob Powell for Quality Comics. The Blackhawks have had a rather long publishing history. Quality got out of the comics business in the 1950s, but DC Comics bought out the remaining title and Blackhawk continued until 1968. During their peak the Blackhawks had their own movie serial and radio show.

The Blackhawks weren’t American, each of them was drawn from a different country in occupied Europe. They were an early example of an international hero group (we’ll politely ignore their horrendously stereotyped Japanese sidekick). Blackhawk himself was something of a cypher and represented all those people who no longer belonged to a country because their home land had been conquered. The War Wheels that form a significant part of Vandal Savage’s Axis army originally appeared in the Blackhawk comics.

The producers commentary notes that the Blackhawks have their own theme in this episode. They did have their own song during WWII, but the theme in this episode isn’t the original WWII version. However, the producers did give composer Lolita Ritmanis a copy of the lyrics to base her tune on. In the 1952 Blackhawk movie serial the role of Blackhawk was played by Kirk Alyn, the man who had originated the role of Superman in the movies. The closest we’ve come to a modern day Blackhawk movie is probably the fantastic Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow (I even called it Blackhawk The Movie when I reviewed it).

In Justice League Blackhawk is voiced by Robert Picardo who is most famous as the holographic Doctor from Star Trek: Voyager. Pircado also voices Amazo  from next season’s “Tabula Rasa” onwards. He also had a minor role in Batman: The Animated Series as a gangster called “Eddie G” in “The Man Who Killed Batman.”

Sergeant Rock and Easy Company

Sergeant Frank Rock is a WWII era soldier, the leader of Easy Company, but his stories are actually from the 1960s and reflect an entirely different attitude to war and war comics. Rock first appeared in Our Army at War #83 (June 1959) and was created by Robert Kanigher and Joe Kubert. He was so popular that Our Army at War was eventually rechristened Sgt. Rock and ran until the late 1980s.

Unlike earlier war comics Srg Rock’s adventures were lethal and represented the deadly nature of soldiering. His supporting characters in Easy Company were diverse. His second-in-command was Colonel Horace “Bulldozer” Canfield (who John Stewart brawls with). Other members include Private Joseph “Wildman” Shapiro, a former history professor who was nicknamed for his big-red beard. He gets winged by a bullet in this episode as he’s throwing a grenade. The last member named in this episode is Phil “Ice Cream” Mason so called because of his coolness in combat.

Kanigher once commented in a letter column that:

As far as I’m concerned ROCK is the only authentic World War II Soldier. For obvious reasons. He and Easy Company live only, and will eventually die, to the last man, in World War II.

This has led to the legend that Sgt Rock was killed by the last bullet fired during WWII.

Rock is voiced by former American Footballer Fred Dryer. He may otherwise be most famous for playing Det Sgt. Rick Hunter in the Hunter TV series. Bulldozer is voiced by Ted Levine who also voices Sinestro in his various DCAU appearances and Karkull (Dr Fate’s enemy) in Superman: The Animated Series.

Notes

• Batman does not appear in this episode.
• Ernst’s prison is reminiscent of the infamous Colditz Castle which was used to house Allied officers who had been caught escaping from other camps.
• The German fighter planes appear to be Messerschmitt Bf 109s based on the smooth nose (the later Focke-Wulf’s had a more stubby snout) and the general shape of the pilot cabin.
• Savage’s Immortality: While being interrogated J’onn comments “you age gracefully” to which Savage replies “You have no idea.”
• Vandal Savage: “Who would have known that the Übermensch would be green?” The Übermensch is german for “overman” or “superman” and is often associated with the writing of Friedrich Nietzsche.
• When Hawkgirl shows the Flash the wounded soldiers one of them has a full face bandage – a nod to a DC character called the Unknown Soldier.
• Wonder Woman makes a lassoed German tell the truth. This foreshadows Hippolyta’s revelation of the lasso’s real powers.
• The codebreaker Ernst is voiced by Dave Thomas who had voiced the Hugh Hefner character in “Knight of Shadows”.
• TV.com notes that then Superman crashes through a German fighter he turns into a human-shaped flame similar to original android Human Torch.

Opinion

Highlights

Either the Blackhawks or Sergeant Rock’s Easy Company depending on your tastes.

Oddities

The map on the wall in the office on Blackhawk Island shows both North and South Korea – a split that wouldn’t occur until after the Second World War.

My Thoughts

Another great episode. The division into the four parallel plotlines is daring in a 22-minute cartoon and each of them is handled well. However, we never really scratch the surface of Rock’s Easy Company and the Blackhawks are a little over used. I do love the Blackhawks and their first act appearance, but I can’t help shake the feeling that they are showing off. The animation in the aerial battle is amazing. Too often in cartoons you’ll notice that solid machines can look a little floppy when hand-animated, but this sequence is amazing solid. I was surprised when the producers commentary revealed that there was no CGI at work.

This is a cartoon set during the height of WWII. A lot of people died in these conflicts, but the cartoon carefully skirts about the issue of whether the heroes from the future are participating in the killing. Take Easy Company’s raid on the machine-gun nest. Wildman getting injured by a grazing shot is the gravest injury we see – the sniper just falls out of his tree and the Germans in the machine-gun dive out of their position moments before Rock’s grenade explodes. Some of the other scenes appear more lethal – Superman vs. the Messerchmitts in particular – but even there its probably safe to assume that all the Axis pilots survived.

3.5