I hadn’t watched the JLA animated series for a while, mostly ’cause I was watching so many names of people I know scroll past in the credits and getting bummed out that no one’s ever asked me to write a script for them. But I tuned in last week because, hey, Supergirl was on it, so I just had to.
And then I watched last night’s and we’re about a minute into the episode, with Batman and Wonder Woman entering the Fortress of Solitude talking about Superman’s birthday, and I’m thinking, Dang, this seems familiar for some reason. Then the moment I saw Superman with the tentacled thing on him, I realized it was the Alan Moore annual story.
More than that: An astoundingly faithful adaptation by DeMatteis, right down to the key dialogue phrases that I remembered (including Superman’s terse “Burn” as he switches to heat vision and nearly lasers Mongul in half).
It was seriously cool, and if you missed it, check Cartoon Network listings to try and catch it.
PAD
• 
SPOILER ALERT
Peter,
Yeah, the episode was great…but there was one part that I thought was a letdown. If memory serves, wasn’t there at least one panel at the end of the book showing the “heart’s desire” of the villian? I’m guessing the cartoon didn’t want to show it because it would be too gruesome and/or inconsistant with the “All bad guys must be punished and punished well” philosophy, but as it was the ending was unsatisfying.
But hey, half an Alan Moore is better than none. And if you want Supergirl…word has it that an upcoming episode stars both her and THE QUESTION (!) in a story with manchurain Candidate overtones. Sign me up!
I thought it was great, though I never read the original story.
I’m assuming “Unlimited” is just the current season of Justice League, and not a spin-off — I was hoping it was a spin-off that was intended to focus on 2nd-tier, if not 3rd-tier characters, and the pan over the crowd in the first episode (featuring Aztek, Red Tornado, and a bunch of Geoff Johns’s JSA members, among others) helped lead me to this idea.
The new episode was fantastic as well, and seeing it was directly adapted from an Alan Moore story was pretty nice. I tend to like stories like that one, where there are no secret identities to protect. “Clark” and “Bruce” just adds to the feel that it’s serious character exposition.
Batman was a bit silly in this story, I notice — whining, “what do you get for the man who has everything?” I would think that another man who has everything might have some idea. Spring for a Super-computer or commission the building of the Supermobile. Sure, Supermanium doesn’t exist post-Crisis, but you’re millionaire playboy Bruce Wayne!
It didn’t bother me, though. This was some good stuff.
With all the things going against it: The almost sacred and emotional attachment one developes over time to those “one of a kind” stories you never forget long after first reading it, the necessary evils of rewrites due to continuity no longer relevant, making a pretty gritty tale a bit more child friendly for the medium… with all that in mind …writer J.M. Demeteis (I know I spelled that wrong) without a doubt captured the heart and soul of the story.
While I can’t presume what Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons (I got those right) might think of the final product, I’m inclined to believe they were pleased.
I know I was. I can’t praise this episode enough
“Yeah, the episode was great…but there was one part that I thought was a letdown. If memory serves, wasn’t there at least one panel at the end of the book showing the “heart’s desire” of the villian?”
Yes, and I can take a couple of guesses as to why it was ambiguous instead.
The comic sequence depicted Mongul killing the JLAers, conquering the earth, and being worshipped. So effectively, from Mongul’s POV, he won and was rewarded.
First of all, it might not have sat well with standards and practices that the villain does all this evil stuff and ends up feeling as if he triumphed, rather than being “punished.” Second, part of what made it work in the comic was the narrative captions that not only summarized what was happening (there were no dialogue balloons) but had a bring-it-full-circle resonance to captions that were in the beginning of the story.
Based on all of that, they obviously decided simply to leave it nebulous. It avoids trying to replicate (unsuccessfully, no doubt) the Moore omniscient narrator captions, and it doesn’t show Mongul “winning,” even in his imagination.
PAD
I forgot to mention– Jeffrey Combs is the voice of The Question. Did I mention I am so there?
Peter–your analysis is spot-on. Though, wouldn’t it have been kinda cool if it had turned out that Mongul’s greatest desire turned out to be something much like Superman’s–a happy home, loving family, a daddy who hugged him, whatever? Like slapping it on Hitler and discovering that he really wanted to be the world’s greatest watercolorist.
I thought the episode was great. The only thing missing was the “almost intelligent, huh?” line from the end of the comic.
This episode blew me away.
I’ve been often disappointed by the animated Justice League, but this week’s episode was absolutely fantastic, capturing the spirit of the original Alan Moore story faithfully.
When I saw that the episode was written by J.M. DeMatteis, from the story by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons, I knew I was in for a treat. These three professionals are real favorites of mine. This episode was extremely well-crafted, in that every frame worked and had meaning, emotion, character drama, and resonance. Plus, I was a tad disappointed that in the 50+ episodes of Justice League, there wasn’t an episode that focused solely on the big three.
If you missed it, I think the episode airs again this afternoon, I believe around 5:00pm Eastern time, though I may be off, so check your local listings. It’s definitely worth a look, and probably one of the finest half-hours of any animated series I’ve ever seen, ranking right up there with some of the best episodes of Batman: TAS, Gargoyles, Filmation’s He-Man and the Masters of the Universe, and Filmation’s She-Ra: Princess of Power. (Though the latter two series may lack truly stunning animation, outstanding writers like Paul Dini, JMS, Larry DiTillio, Bob Forward, and Michael Reaves, among others, contributed to these series with some incredible stories, also worth a look if you can find any of the episodes released on videotape back in the 80s.)
I too missed the part where Mongu was dreaming about conquering the universe. The other thing I kept asking was “Where’s Robin?” Did they leave him out of the cartoon because of “Teen Titans Go”? Still an amazingly good adaptation. Say what you will about the comic book movies. I think there are many classics in the recent Batman, Superman and Justice League cartoons. If you haven’t been watching them, you should be.
Bill Mulligan said [quote] forgot to mention– Jeffrey Combs is the voice of The Question. Did I mention I am so there?[quote]
I love Jeffrey Combs. I’m currently watching the 6th season of DS9 on DVD and he does such a great job. (Actually, he’s one of the only bright spots on Enterprise).
As for JLU, really good series. I only caught a few episodes of the first 2 seasons, but I don’t plan on missing any of these. A DC fans dream with all the heroes. The Alan Moore story was great.
It reruns at 5 p.m. today Eastern time. I missed it last night (haven’t seen JL stuff in a while), but I absolutely love the Moore story. If it’s adapted as well as everyone’s saying, I’m absolutely there this afternoon.
Thanks for the heads-up!
TWL
It was a pretty good episode. While a lot of the Justice League cartoons have the heroes just rishing the villains (and usually getting knocked back), this one had more strategy and style.
I’m surprised it took PAD a few minutes to recognize that this was based on the Alan Moore story. During the opening credits there was a, er, credit saying that this was based on the story by Alan Moore and someone else.
Could they have gotten away with the original ending (where Mongol seems to kill the heroes, conquers the world, sits on a throne in triumph, and we then see it’s all the plant-induced fantasy)? I can understand the fear that showing the heroes getting snuffed could cause cries of outrage from parents and concerned groups. Last season, though, an episode began with Superman killing Lex Luthor (offscreen) then being glad about it; and then the League took over the Earth, turning it into a dictatorship. It wasn’t until 10 or 15 minutes into the episode that we learn this was an alternate dimension; the “real” Justice League eventually wound up defeating these Justice Lords.
And nekouken, JUSTICE LEAGUE UNLIMITED is the latest season of JUSTICE LEAGUE, if you go by the IMDB. It’s basically an anthology show, allowing them to team up just about any heroes from the DC universe at a time. (Of course, if they were being realistic this means they could just pile a slew of heroes on any problem and take care of it in 5 minutes — imagine suddenly facing Green Lantern, Superman, Firestorm, Dr. Fate, Wonder Woman, and the Martian Manhunter! — but they’ll probably keep sending 4 or 5 heroes for each mission.) In the 1st episode of this season, the roster looked as big as the Legion of Super-Heroes!
W.R.T. the ending:
If you listen carefully, as they close in on Mongul, you hear the sounds of people screaming in horror…I’m assuming that this was how they chose to depict Alan’s ending without annoying BS&P.
I was reading an interview with Bruce Timm. He said that he called up Alan Moore to get his permission to make this cartoon (even though he didn’t need to.) He also seemed an anxious about making something that Alan Moore would approve of.
And, actually, I like how they did the ending. Having just the screams leaves a lot to the viewer’s imagination, and that is usually much better than what any animator can come up with.
And as for why no Robin, the reason why they did this episode is because Bruce Timm realized they never did an episode with just Superman, Wonder Woman and Batman. That was his goal, and Alan Moore’s story was perfect for that.
Oh, yeah, and I think it was the best episode so far, including the first two seasons.
You can find the article about the episode on the Comics Continium website at:
http://www.comicscontinuum.com/stories/0408/05/index.htm
Also, Dwayne McDuffie answers some of the questions about the ending on his Delphi forums last night. basically, Mongul’s dream would step on Batman’s last line and also risks confusing the audience.
Personally, I thought it was great, especially the little things like Kal’s wife having Lois Lane’s voice (Dana Delaney) and Jor-El’s voice turning briefly into Pa Kent’s.
As soon as I saw Moore’s name in the opening credits I got really pumped. Then when Batman said “What do you get for the guy who has everything?” I was really excited.
I’m also looking forward to episode about Mr. Miracle wirtten by Jim Sterenko(being that Kirby based Miracle on Sterenko).
Personally, I thought it was great, especially the little things like Kal’s wife having Lois Lane’s voice (Dana Delaney) and Jor-El’s voice turning briefly into Pa Kent'”
It does give Alan Moore credit in the opening titles. I also like the new series so far, but I miss Hawkgirl and hope she comes back to the League.
Question: Was Superman’s wife supposed to be Lois? Except for the auburn colored hair, I thought it was, but that’s where it got confusing. In the cartoons, Lois’ hair has always been black. In the book her hair has been brown since the reboot. I’ve always wanted to know the reasoning behind that too. Anyone know?
I believe Kal’s wife was named “Leana.” So I guess she’s part Lois and part Lana.
I thought that Lois’ hair changed color around the time of the TV Show (Lois and Clark). I remember that Allred wasn’t allowed to give Lois black/blue hair when he did the Superman/Madman crossover book a few years ago.
“Question: Was Superman’s wife supposed to be Lois? Except for the auburn colored hair, I thought it was, but that’s where it got confusing. In the cartoons, Lois’ hair has always been black. In the book her hair has been brown since the reboot. I’ve always wanted to know the reasoning behind that too. Anyone know?”
I think she was supposed to be a cross between Lois and Lana. Lana had red hair in the animated series.
“I’m surprised it took PAD a few minutes to recognize that this was based on the Alan Moore story. During the opening credits there was a, er, credit saying that this was based on the story by Alan Moore and someone else.”
Ah ah ah. You underestimate me, sir. Go back and reread my original posting. I said that I suspected and then knew for sure when we saw Superman with the creature on him. That was all pre-credit, about sixty seconds into the teaser. I know because once I recognized it, I said, “Boy, I sure hope they give Alan Moore up-front credit for it.” And a minute or so later, once they started running the credits, where was not only Alan’s name but Dave’s.
PAD
Without a doubt, an excellent adaptation. I was disappointed that they left out Mongul’s “Which of you would it be polite to kill first?” line, but other than that, I enjoyed the heck out of it.
I missed it last night, so I’m catching today’s rerun. But on a related note, DC is rereleasing the “GREATEST SUPERMAN STORIES EVER TOLD” in October, and they don’t have that story in it! How the hëll is THAT possible? Yeah, it’s reprinted in the Alan Moore DCU book, but still, I think this story is good enough to have reprinted in more than one place. *sigh*
Sorry. Had to vent.
“I miss Hawkgirl and hope she comes back to the League.”
One of the upcoming episodes features Solomon Grundy and teases a return of an old member…so maybe Hawkgirl is coming back.
I just hope at one point they include the line “Solomon Grundy want pants too!”
Now that I’ve actually seen the ep in question, a few comments. Minor spoilers.
The JLU folks keep maintaining that “hawkgirl” won’t be back. This has led speculation that she’ll be “Hawkwoman” when she comes back.
Personally, I think the Grundy episode means a return of one of the “fake Defenders,” either Dr. Fate or most likely Aquaman.
I LOVE THE JLA CARTOON!!!!Last week they had three of my all time favorites(green arrow,john stewart ,captain atom)all teaming up.Sorry not a real supergirl fan.This week was good and like others have mentioned the screams of horror at the end were meant to represent Mongul’s dream.
Thought Wonder woman was used particular well,with her throwing down on Mongul like the warrior princess should.Like the line where Mongul said he felt a certain weapon was more suitable for a woman.
In the opening sequence The Question is shown.Yet another one of my all time favorites.Some of Denny o Neil ‘s best work was on that series (too short lived if you asked me)
Sad that i am a grown man whose highlight of a saturday evening is Teen Titans and JLU.No wonder im still single 🙂
Just a heads up: according to the schedule posted on http://www.cartoonnetwork.com, this episode (“For The Man Who Has Everything”) will be rebroadcast on Saturday, August 14 at 11:30am EST.
PAD:
Had the same ‘deja vu’ kind of experience, watching as Wonder Woman and Batman get out of the Invsibile Plane/Sub, then there’s mention of a gift… I was sorry, though, that Robin had to be cut, if for nothing more than to hear Batman politely chastise his sidekick for his appreciation of the Amazon’s… attributes.
Perfect story for the series.
Catullus
Someone on r.a.c.dc.universe brought up an interesting analysis of one point in the episode, which differs slightly from the comic. In the comic, when the Black Mercy takes control of Bruce, there’s a fairly quick scene of Thomas Wayne stopping Joe Chill, but then we don’t see anything further. At the end, Bruce comments that his fantasy had ended up with him married to Kathy (pre-Crisis Batwoman’s other id) Kane.
But in the cartoon, the scene with Thomas Wayne beating up Joe Chill just goes on and on, and Bruce never mentions anything happening after it. The analysis is that, and I can well believe DeMatteis would have consciously done this, Bruce is incapable at a gut level of imagining what his life would’ve been like if he hadn’t been shaped by his tragedy and happy, so his happiness would be limited to just seeing his father take down Chill. Had the Mercy been on him for a year, he’d still be seeing that.
Btw, Teen Titans is also in new eps, with their first run showing just before JLU. Believe it or not, last night they managed to do a Bat-Mite (OK, Robin-Mite) episode. So he’s never actually called something-Mite; it was really obvious to anyone familiar with Bat-Mite that that was the basis for the character.
Re: the NYT article. Gustines has been active on r.a.c. (under the screen name GusNYT) and come across as a good and knowledgable type, just who we’d like writing about comics for the NYTimes.
I’ll be dámņëd, tyg. I’ve seen GusNYT’s name around and about on r.a.c, but didn’t make the connection. Thanks for the added info.
TWL
It was a great episode and really well adapted even though they didn’t use Robin…
In the comic he had all the great lines…He also saved the day…
Still love Bats looking at him and saying, “Think clean thoughts chum”
Also Bats created the Krypton rose and Diana had replicated the bottle city of Kandor…not sure if Kandor exists in the animated universe…
It did, without being an exact replication of the story, really grasp the point of the storyline and I have watched it about 10 times so far thinking to myself this is what animating comics is all about!
One of the upcoming episodes features Solomon Grundy and teases a return of an old member…so maybe Hawkgirl is coming back.
I thought that Grundy basically “died” on the show a season or two ago. BTW, that episode was a great tribute to the Defenders…you had Grundy(Hulk), Dr. Fate(Dr. Strange), and Aquaman(Namor) as a team.
I thought that Grundy basically “died” on the show a season or two ago.
If you ever read Starman, or other ones… Grundy dies all the time and comes back with a different personality all the time… this was covered in Starman when Woodrue, Batman, Jack (Knight) and Alan Scott had an adventure in Grundy’s brain or soul. Great issue with art by Sjenburg (sp?)…
Travis
I thought that episode, and the other one (the quasi-official pilot, with Green Arrow being dragged along with GL, Supergirl and Captain Atom) were terrific cartoons.
One of the producers of the series has said (I forget the quote and I’m away from my computer) that he doesn’t know how long AOL Time Warner will keep making the DC Universe-style cartoons. (Given the Superman movie re-entering Development Hëll, and the lousy reaction to “Catwoman,” no wonder some execs might want to pull the plug.) My hope is that some of the characters in “JLU” will prove popular enough to sprout one or more other series to keep the franchise alive.
The only down side involved with the show was someone on rec.arts.animation who made a snotty remark about “I’ll wait until they do some ORIGINAL stories.” Yeah, kid. Like your own great script that was so fantastic that DC Comics couldn’t bear to publish it. Guess they don’t take script submissions with geometry homework written on the other side of the lined paper.
I loved the episode. My only qualm was that Robin was missing. When I read the original story, I quite enjoyed the sight of Mongul being taken down by this little punk wearing those huge honking gloves.
I thought JMD did a great job in adapting the story. As pointed out earlier, I did miss the line about whom it would be more polite to kill first. Still, great job.
So….
Uhh… PAD… Mr Pad… Bad Pad Leroy Brown…
You do realize Cartoon Network is owned by AOL Time Warner, and the toon in question is a Warner Production? You literally went back on your boycott the very minute you began.
Irony must be one of your stronger suits.
Peter knows that… that letter to Time Warner was a joke in order to prove a point made in another thread. He wasn’t serious about that…
And JLU is the new season of Justice Leage…. hmmm… I’m not sure I want that. I mean, I’m sure the guest stars is interesting… but that’s a whole lot of cast members to deal with.
having never read the story, but reading PAD’s post I’m a HUGE fan of Alan Moore’s WATCHMEN and KILLING JOKE so I had to watch this. I had also read about the mongol/ Superman “Burn.” moment months ago in an interview about Superman and I couldn’t wait to see it.
however, i live in Canada. no way to see it. Me sad. But, I found a bit torrent link at http://www.suprnova.org and downloaded it immediately.
really good stuff, I’m gonna try to find the original one-shot ASAP.
In fact, it was so good I had a feeling it was a tad rushed. Moore’s story probably fleshes it out more. While Superman’s tearful goodbye with his “son” was very moving – his realization from Fantasy to reality happened in the space of 2 minutes. I get the feeling Moore’s book has it play out much more naturally. Rushed though it may be, that scene still worked great.
I think my favourite brilliant piece of writing was Batman’s fantasy was so simplistic as opposed to Clark’s elaborate reality. Batman was simply watching his dad beat the bejesus out of Joe Chill over and over for all eternity. That’s a really in-depth look into Batman’s mind if you think about it.
Mongol’s fantasy, having never read the book, played very well from my perspective. I just made up all these horrible things in my mind and that worked great.
I must go find the story. “Superman For All Seasons”, right?
Oh and PS – I’m pretty sure SHOOTER MCGAVIN (from “Happy Gilmore” AKA the guy Tasha Yar falls in love with in “Yesterday’s Enterprise”) was the voice of JOR-EL! Don’t believe me? Listen to it again!
I don’t know if PAD is gonna read this post, but hopefully he’ll get a kick out of that factoid. (unless he knew it already)
To TallestGuyEver:
No, it’s not “Superman for All Seasons” (that’s a completely different tale from the team of Loeb and Sale). The JL episode is adapted from an old pre-Crisis Superman Annual (#11, from 1985). If you can’t find that single issue, you might want to go ahead and shell out the cash for the “Across the Universe: The DC Universe Stories of Alan Moore” trade paperback published last year. The TPB may be more costly than the single back-issue, but you may have a better chance of finding the trade.
Also, regarding Greg’s comment about the “rerelease” of the Greatest Superman Stories Ever Told, unless you’ve seen something different than I have, the book is listed in Diamond’s Previews in the relist section (a rerelease is usually included in the main section with the other new release solicitations).
While I can’t lay hold of my copy of the GSSET at the moment (I bought it in hardcover when it first came out), it seems to me that the Moore-Gibbons story was included in the book. I’ve also seen reviews of the softcover edition which mention the story is included.
My wife laughed at me throughout the episode, I was so geeked. She thought it was eerie the way I could anticipate lines of dialogue from an episode I had never seen before (I KNEW they would keep the classic exchange: “Happy Birthday, Kryptonian. I give you oblivion.” “Burn.”) So I enjoyed the episode.
However…it seems to me they made a rather significant change in reformatting it for TV. Probably unintentional, and subtle, but still, it kind of bugged me.
The plant is supposed to give you your heart’s desire, keeping you in a vegetative state while it (presumably) feeds of you for eternity or until you die, who knows? In either case, as far as you’re concerned, it’s permanent.
In the Alan Moore story, the world Superman/Kal-El finds himself in is initially golden, perfect. However, more and more sour notes are heard (Jor-El aligning with a cult, Kara beaten to the point of hospitalization, chaos in the streets, civil war) until Kal finds himself surrounded not by a utopia but a wasteland.
Now, I always thought that the deterioration was a manifestation of Kal fighting the plant…after all, if there was one being that could resist the plant, it would be Superman, right? If fact, Batman even comments on this when he begins to notice a little give in the plant where there was NONE before; he comments to Robin that he must be fighting it.
In the TV episode, instead of Kal winning a mental/emotional battle with the plant, it seems to be because of Bruce’s efforts in pulling the plant off that Kal is able to be freed. The Heart’s-Desire-Life was comparatively perfect compared to Moore’s original script.
Thus not as much irony in TV Mongul’s statement that freeing himself must have been like tearing off his arm. In the comic, Kal’s vision of what SHOULD have been a perfect world actually tearing itself apart is what fueled his rage.
Like I said, subtle, but I think there is a difference. And maybe that difference is an arguable change of theme in the story. It was just a little jarring to me.
But I’d still give it 9.5 stars out of ten. You really can’t go wrong with Dematteis.
Other high points: Diana getting the crap kicked out of her, and still she keeps getting back up. As my wife said, “Tough chick.” The scene with her crawling over to Bruce was extremely effective.
Bruce’s heart’s desire: unlike the comic, where he grows up with two parents, marries Kathy Kane, etc., the episode depicts his fodest wish is to see is father give the mugger a savage beating. Forever.
Mongul’s face towards the end of the episode: so that’s what a can of whup-ášš looks like.
I loved it. Sorry for the long post.
…Grundy dies all the time and comes back with a different personality all the time…
Cool…just as long as they explain his return in JLU. His “death” was pretty significant in his last appearance.
This was kinda done before. In one of the Batman animated episodes there was a dream sequence that borrowed heavily from the part of Frank Miller’s classic “The Dark Knight Returns” when Bats fights the gang leader and the dialog was almost word for word.
I wish I could tell you which season, but it’s worth looking for.
-hey
For the man who has everything
Last weekend I watched an astoudingly cool bit of animation—a episode of the new Justice League Unlimited on Cartoon Network. I was going to write something about it but Peter David beat me to the punch: I hadn’t watched the
It was nice to see Herbie the Robot picking up some “Hollywood extra” work in his cameo as “Brainiac” in this episode…
Speaking of Superman, I was looking at the Netscape “celebrity” page of top 10 superheroes
http://channels.netscape.com/ns/celebrity/toptenwrap.jsp?archive=0408&slot=8
Here’s a quote from the comment about Tom Welling and is approach to the role of Clark Kent:
“Welling chose not to research the Marvel superhero…”
Either someone didn’t bother to do their reseach, or Marvel made a major character acquisition coup I hadn’t heard about.
Rick
The sole voice of discontent!
Honestly! This episode was a huge let down for me! Huge! I see now why Alan Moore won
As I said before, I think the changes were necessary for adapting to a half-hour television show…but something else occured to me. The original story was a Superman Annual. This is a Justice League cartoon…and the resulting changes to the script seem to lean more towards teamwork than Kal’s individual battle. So he needed Batman to pull him out of it, because that’s what the league is for.
Schmaltzy, yeah, but…it works in my head.
And all that Kryptonian stuff, while brilliant on the page, would have died a heavy death in the TV format.
Ain’t-It-Cool-News had a list of the guest stars in the coming episodes. My favorite should be the one with Zatanna teaming up with Batman.