Justice League, Season 2, Episodes 3-4: Tabula Rasa
I remembered Amazo very fondly from watching this show as a childhood. The original comic-book concept was this humanoid robot with orange hair and sriped green clothes, which had all the powers of the Justice League members. He was consistently one of the League's most powerful enemies, but ultimately he was just... a robot. Justice League the cartoon took a different direction with Amazo, reimagining him as a sleek, solid-gold robot with only eyes, and the power to copy the abilities of any metahuman before him. And, well, he's absolutely powerful. We're two seasons away from seeing it, but seeing Amazo lay waste to the entire Justice League Unlimited, take down the Green Lantern Corps, a fleet of Javelins and all of Luthor's traps... Amazo's a definite badass in my head.
(Now if only the characters in the show will actually call him 'Amazo' instead of just 'Ivo's Android' or 'the Android'...)
But it all stated with this two-parter. See, the stakes are definitely raised from the previous season. After going from alien armies, evil gods of death to a league of supervillains in season one, season two opened with Darkseid and an army of Brainiacs to give the Justice League a threat, the second story of the season opens with Amazo, another heavy-hitter.
The story opens in a somewhat weak note as Lex Luthor, in full 'mwa ha ha super villain!' mode, does battle against the Justice League and gets his mecha suit damaged. He seeks out another familiar face from Superman: the Animated Series, his former chauffeur-slash-bodyguard, Mercy, who has taken up the position of LexCorp's CEO. Despite Mercy's bravado earlier in the episode, it's clear that Luthor still has some sort of a grip on the poor girl, with Luthor's sickening words -- equal parts threats and equal parts reminding Mercy of what he could give her (prior sexual relations are definitely implied) -- worming into Mercy's figurative armour, basically gang-pressing the girl into helping out. First it's just a bit of information given under a threat, then it's Mercy calling Luthor to 'warn him'... the DCAU really loves to explore characters with fucked-up relationships, most famously Joker and Harley Quinn, but man, poor Mercy.
Mercy gets a happy ending at thend, when Luthor, imprisoned, contacts Mercy and gives off his self-absorbed, entitled rant for Mercy to get all the best lawyers and shit, only for Mercy to hang up with a peaceful smile on her face.
But let's not get ahead of ourselves. Luthor seeks out the help of Professor Ivo, one of his scientists, to help repair his armour... and finds Ivo dead. In his house is a tall silver android, Amazo... who's ridiculously powerful but hopelessly naive. Luthor, having had experience manipulating naive characters like Bizarro before, quickly puts the sympathetic friend card, preying on Amazo's desire for companionship and purpose and quickly tells Amazo that, hey, the Justice League wants to put uncle Luthor away, and uncle Luthor is the only one who cares for Amazo. Between Mercy and Amazo, just how sickeningly manipulative and effective Luthor is as a villain without superpowers is on full display, and it's absolutely well-written.
While Amazo goes around fighting the League members one by one -- first copying Hawkgirl's wings and mace, and then progresssively getting stronger and stronger as more Justice League members are involved, with Superman finally giving in and going in -- quite intelligently, Superman uses a bar of metal to cover Amazo's eyes to stop him from copying his powers, something that ended up rendered moot in the end. Everyone chips in with a moment of awesome or two, including Wonder Woman just being absolutely indestructible, Hawkgirl refusing to give up and Batman showing that, hey, he's crazy prepared and he's got Kryptonite.
Also, Batman and Superman hanging out in the Batmobile, with Superman holding a cup of coffee, calmly discussing the situation while four other League members are in the fight of their lives is absolutely hilarious, a stark contrast to the fact that, y'know, Batman keeps a piece of kryptonite in his belt ready for some Dawn of Justice beatdown at any time. Though the fact that Superman lets Batman have a piece of kryptonite is probably a sign of the trust between the two? What makes Batman carrying kryptonite around different from Luthor having a killswitch in Amazo, both having counters for their supposed allies? Well, I think the scene of Batman and Superman actually hanging out and bonding in the Batmobile over coffee is the answer. Batman keeps kryptonite around for emergencies, and otherwise treats Superman as a friend -- a rarity for the Dark Knight -- whereas Luthor keeps the killswitch as a means to threaten Amazo or to get rid of him if he's no longer required. Some nice, subtle juxtaposition in the episode, methinks.
But the League member to get the focus in this episode is definitely J'onn J'onzz. J'onn is easily one of my favourite superheroes of all time, and Justice League plays no small part in cementing that role. J'onn uses his mental abilities to sweep the city in an attempt to track down Luthor, and our human minds and the sheer volume of selfishness we Homo sapiens scum have causes J'onn to basically have a bit of a mental breakdown, causing him to revert to his natural martian form and escape to a forest to avoid it all. It's a very, very touching bit and arguably the strongest and most emotional moment compared to the whole Amazo beat-them-up that took place simultaneously with this. J'onn notes that it's not the hatred that surprises him, but the sheer magnitude of selfishness and attempts to justify selfishness... and, well, what do you know, the main villain in this episode is one Lex Luthor, the zenith of mankind in both selfishness and humankind's achievements.
J'onn has to regain his trust in humanity, so to speak, and his witnessing of a group of villagers searching for a little girl lost in the woods touches J'onn's heart. Is it cliched? Probably. Is it touching as all hell? Yeah, I definitely felt J'onn as the random nameless people think stuff like "poor girl, she gotta be hungry here in the cold" and "man, what if it was my little girl?" J'onn, especially being a father who knew the loss of two children... quickly aids in the girl's rescue and return to his family. And he's given a hero's welcome as he rightfully deserves... and J'onn, used to just standing quietly in the sidelines while more prolific heroes like Superman or Flash handle the swarm of civilians thanking them, doesn't know how to react and phases away, a very touching yet hilarious moment.
Diana sees it all and gives J'onn a hug, though. And finally realizing what he's fighting for, what he's protecting, and the general goodness that can be found in humanity, the Martian Manhunter heads back into battle. The only member of the Justice League to not have his powers copied by Amazo, J'onn arrives at the climax where Amazo is told by no uncertain manner to murder all of the Justice League. And Amazo's nanotechnology has quickly adapted to counteract kryptonite.
But J'onn makes use of his belief of humanity in everyone, including Amazo, and where the other members f the League has fallen, he allows Amazo to copy his telepathic abilities, and Amazo quickly reads Luthor's mind and confronts Luthor for manipulating him. The sad part is, if Luthor genuinely cared for the Android, then he would literally have won. Luthor's self-destruct button is as useful as Batman's kryptonite in stopping Amazo, and Amazo just tears Luthor's suit apart to the point of humiliation, revealing that under his bravado and armour Luthor's just a pathetic bald man.
Amazo notes that there's nothing left for him on Earth, turns golden, and just jets off into space to explore it. There's a bit of an awkward moment of transition from J'onn learning about humanity to Amazo denouncing everything on Earth as being kind of pointless, which I think was something that could've been tweaked a little bit.
A lot of people kind of dismiss this episode as one of the more filler-y episodes, and a good part about it has to do with Amazo being kind of a boring villain for a majority of the episode until like the last one-third where he's finally trying to figure out his purpose in the world and starts to question Lex... but honestly, the J'onn and Mercy bits really help to make this episode one of the more memorable ones for me.
DC Easter Eggs Corner:
- Amazo the android was created by Professor Ivo with the powers of the five original members of the Justice League (Flash, Green Lantern, Wonder Woman, Aquaman and Martian Manhunter), and one of the earlier villains that they faced. Over time Amazo will continue to menace various iterations of the Justice League, displaying various levels of power including at one point being able to copy the powers of any member of the Justice League.
- Professor Anthony Ivo is a mad scientist and recurring enemy of the Justice League. While Ivo only has a post-humous role in this two-parter, in the comics he's a scientist obsessed with obtaining immortality. His attempts at attaining immortality usually involved the creation of androids (notably the superhero Red Tornado), teaming up with fellow mad scientist T.O. Morrow, and eventually it deformed him into having a scaly appearance. Professor Ivo makes several relatively recent appearances as major antagonists in the cartoon Young Justice and the second season of the live-action Arrow.
- When searching for Luthor in the city, Amazo surprises a bald man voiced and modeled after the likeness of Michael Rosenbaum, who plays Luthor in the live-action series Smallville. Rosenbaum is the voice of the Flash in the series, so they didn't even have to bring in a guest star to do this cool little bit.
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