Justice League, Season 2, Episodes 09-10: Hearts & Minds
I had prepared a long Tokyo Ghoul and Hearthstone article for the huge chapter and the ton of card reveals that dropped over the week. But tragedy struck and my laptop fritzed out, so while I recraft those two pages, I'll just move this one JLA episode up the schedule.
Anyway, another space episode! This episode takes out the DC Trinity and has the B-team of the Justice League respond to a crisis in space. And, boy, what a great opening this episode had! We had Kilowog lead a group of other Green Lanterns against a fleet of evil purple-skinned aliens, and we actually see two speaking Green Lanterns -- Gallius and Arkiss -- vaporized to nothingness on-screen. What a sudden and unexpected way to kickstart this episode!
The episodes of the second season do a lot better at highlighting the personal stakes that the characters have in the plotlines. Yes, Superman and J'onn dicking around in War World to free the people controlled by Mongul's propaganda brainwashing is something they would do anyway, but what makes "Hearts and Minds" so much more interesting and engaging is John Stewart's personal stake in what's going on, with him going off to save his teacher and former lover Katma Tui from this monstrous alien tyrant Despero.
In-between having to face his old flame Katma Tui, the episode also explores John's relationship with Hawkgirl, a relationship that budded all the way from 'War World'. There's a nice moment and both the (rather suggestive) voice acting, dialogue and body language between John and Katma when they do meet up with each other on Kalanor shows that they have so much history and attachment between them, and there's a nice little difference between Katma and Hawkgirl, where when John loses his willpower to fight, Katma's plan is just going full-on with training and giving up on John almost immediately, being more focused as a soldier and a boot camp sergeant than a love interest, whereas Hawkgirl recognizes the problem, talks to John in a gentle but firm tone, and doesn't begrudge John and actually forces him to go back to train with Katma. It's a nice bit of relationship maturity writing -- Hawkgirl's attraction to John is very evident, but neither will she sabotage the mission or hurt her friend by taking the chance to steal the man, so to speak. Hawkgirl sees John at a vulnerable moment, and while she could continue being rock-hard as always, she recognizes when it's time to comfort her teammate and friend. And slap that ass. That was hilarious.
But before we talk more about the space stuff, we get a pretty awesome moment as Kilowog, near-dead, crashlands on Earth, and has to be put on full life support in a pretty well-crafted scene. John, uncharacteristically, just zooms straight into space when Kilowog mentions that "they got Kat", leaving his stunned Justice League comrades to take care of the wounded Kilowog. We get some of the best and funniest scenes as Kilowog and Flash muck around John's apartment in search of John's power battery, which includes Kilowog eating a tub of ice cream (tub included) and a VCR tape, while Flash has to fend off John's very protective landlady, who's the coolest old woman in the entirety of DC comics.
Meanwhile, while we wait for Kilowog, Hawkgirl, Flash and Martian Manhunter to show up on Kalanor, John goes up and confront Despero, finds Katma Tui transformed into a zealot dressed in an outfit that rivals Slave Leia in stripperificness and gets executed for his troubles by being thrown into the Flame of Py'tar. John, you really shouldn't mock a person's religion when they're ready to throw you into the fire. Of course, Katma Tui's actually a double agent and the resistance members she's friends with teleports John out of certain death. There are other problems that are quickly evident beyond Despero's despotic rule of the planet, though. John's power ring won't work.
Having Green Lantern's power ring crap out on him isn't something new, not even in the show -- we had him run out of juice back in "the Savage Time", but here the problem isn't in his ring. The "impotence", as Flash points out so utterly hilariously, is in John's head.
Man, taking John's impotence problems while having him deal with an old, harsh ex and a more understanding potential love interest just spins all of this in a hilarious metaphor for dealing with performance issues.
The fight against Despero is ultimately your basic sci-fi plotline, not that it's uninteresting. Despero has this story about how he's ostracized because of his third eye, and him discovering the Flame of Py'tar caused him to be hailed as the second coming of the prophet or some shit like that, allowing him the religious worship of his entire planet. He plans to invade other planets near his system, and only our heroes can stop him. There's a resistance, and Flash, J'onn and Kilowog need to deliver a bomb to get rid of Despero's source of power. We get some pretty cool fight scenes, but when push comes to shove it's John, Katma and Hawkgirl that face off against Despero. Despero threatening to murder Katma and turn Hawkgirl into an "exotic personal attendant" (read: sex slave) causes John to go into full overdrive, punching Despero so hard that he leaves an imprint of his power ring on Despero's third eye.
J'onn, Flash and Kilowog, meanwhile, battle Despero's forces all the way to the Flame of Py'tar, who then makes contact with J'onn and proves that it's actually sentient. It talks about how Despero has perverted its purpose, and after the Kalanorians reject Despero and accept the Flame of Py'tar, it magically turns Kalanor into a verdant paradise and turns Despero and all his troops into trees. Oh-kay.
It's not one of the strongest episodes of the Justice League cartoon, mostly due to its very linear plot, but it's certainly a very enjoyable one. John, Hawkgirl and Katma are realized very well, Flash and Kilowog are fun, while False Prophet Despero is a pretty cool take on the character. I certainly enjoyed this episode, fillery as it might be.
DC Easter Eggs Corner:
- Katma Tui is a pretty prominent alien Green Lantern for a while, being Sinestro's successor as a Korugarian Green Lantern and becoming John Stewart's love interest in the comics and the two ended up marrying. In one of the shittier treatments of minor characters by DC comics, Katma Tui is randomly murdered by Star Sapphire while not wearing her ring in her apartment. Quite bizarrely, unlike many, many other minor characters, she has never really been revived until reboots happened.
- Despero began life in the DC comics as a random alien tyrant with mental powers granted by his third eye, and attempted to defeat the Justice League in a game of, um, chess. It was the sixties, but Despero at least starred in the first issue of the Justice League of America comic released at that time. In subsequent appearances Despero was a lot more powerful and less chessy, and became a greater menace to the Justice League with a combination of his strength and hypnotic powers. The Flame of Py'tar was actually used by Despero to empower himself at a point.
- Kyle Rayner, the then-current Green Lantern in the comics (the fifth human to bear the name Green Lantern) is mentioned briefly by Katma Tui. Kyle has made an appearance in Superman: The Animated Series, and there was slight confusion when the Green Lantern that showed up in Justice League was not Kyle, but rather newcomer John Stewart.
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