Young Justice, Season 1, Episode 14: Revelation
The Injustice League in this incarnation is seven men strong, although sadly they don't get much personality. Joker and Count Vertigo are the ones that get the most lines, with this incarnation of a Joker that flits between the more psychotic modern incarnation of Joker and the more campy versions of the past being wonderfully portrayed. The rest of the Injustice League -- Wotan, Poison Ivy, Atomic Skull, Ultra-Humanite and Black Adam -- are basically muscle. Poison Ivy did get a bit more lines than the rest, but I think Skull, Adam, and the Humanite don't even get proper lines, with the latter two reduced to brutish thugs, whereas Atomic Skull doesn't even really get to participate until like the last three minutes of the episode.
They're basically the Light's opening announcement to the world, with the combination of nuclear energy, magic, Kobra-Venom cocktail and Poison Ivy's plant manipulation allowing them to terrorize the whole world with monster plants. You can just tell they're really trying too hard to fit every member's powers to facilitate the whole 'super-advanced magitek plants' thing. It's... it's not actually the most elegant distraction, but the Light's plan to stage a big power play, arranging for the Injustice League to basically impersonate the Light as the organization that has been organizing all the recent supervillainy, is sort of sound.
This time around, the Justice League -- including several extra members like Plastic Man and obscure characters Icon and Rocket -- is preoccupied with, y'know, saving the world from the monster plants. It's always cool to see the larger world in play, allowing supporting characters that have been built up throughout the series like Red Arrow, Captain Marvel and Black Canary to have their moment to shine. Moreso than before, the Team is out of their depth, with any chances of help from the JLA being dashed due to the League being super-busy. The montage of JLA members helping out and rescuing people is a very awesome depiction of the larger world at play, but obviously that's not the main focus of the episode.
The Team is constantly being overpowered by the Injustice League. Zatara holds off the evil sorcerer Wotan pretty well, but the rest of the Team barely manages to hold their own against the League and it's pretty cool to watch. There's not much in lieu of an underlying character growth theme going on in this episode, but sometimes you do need a break from all of that. The eventual plan comes to Robin and M'gann managing to evade capture and start to sabotage the one in control of all the plants, Poison Ivy.
There's the obvious question of why the Injustice League doesn't just immediately kill the kids, which the bad guys try to do only after their operation is fucked up. But Aqualad puts on the Helmet of Fate, turning into Dr. Fate and beats down Wotan and the Joker's suicide gas bomb, turning the tide in the good guys' favour. Aqualad had also apparently already struck a deal with Nabu to borrow his powers without being trapped in the Dr. Fate persona. Again, it's a bit of a shame that a good chunk of the bad guys are reduced into angry silent henchmen brutes, and I feel that with the lack of any particularly prevalent storyline for the main characters, we really could've had a better-handled Injustice League story.
Overall, though, despite the fun bit of a gigantic world and multiple colourful villains, the episode kind of falls short at actually being above-average. As a bit of fun 'heroes versus villains' storyline it is satisfactory, but despite the ambition that the episode attempts it still feels a bit hollow. Joker himself is a bit entertaining, but otherwise it's a pretty standard good-guy-beats-bad-guy episode. There are a lot of great bits, of course, in the actual fighting scenes -- with Wolf the wolf joining the team, something I enjoyed a lot. Doggies are cute, man.
At the very least, though, we get to see the true faces of those behind the Light, including several we're familiar with (Lex Luthor, Brain, Klarion, Ra's al Ghul), some that would be familiar if you're paying attention (Ocean Master, Queen Bee) and some new faces to anyone who's less familiar with the DC lore (Vandal Savage). It's not as huge of a revelation as the title promises, because honestly the only big surprise back when I first watched Young Justice was the fact that Klarion is numbered among the upper echelon.
Roll Call:
- Heroes: Robin, Aqualad, Captain Marvel, Zatara, Wolf, Superboy, Miss Martian, Artemis, Kid Flash, Batman, Superman, Hawkman, Hawkwoman, Martian Manhunter, Aquaman, the Flash, Blue Devil, Captain Atom, Red Arrow, Green Arrow, Black Canary, Green Lantern (Guy Gardner), Plastic Man, Rocket, Icon, Dr. Fate, Green Lantern (John Stewart)
- Villains: Count Vertigo, Poison Ivy, Black Adam, Wotan, Ultra-Humanite, Atomic Skull, the Joker, Sportsmaster, Vandal Savage, Queen Bee, Ocean Master, Ra's al Ghul, Lex Luthor, Klarion the Witch Boy, Teekl, the Brain
- Others: Cat Grant
DC Easter Eggs Corner:
- The Injustice League (sometimes Injustice Gang) is a group of super-villains that has had a membership that rotates around multiple villains over the years both in comics and animated adaptations. This particular lineup is original to the show.
- The Joker, of course, is the most iconic and indisputable arch-nemesis of the Batman. Does he need an introduction? An unpredictable maniac that embodies madness, the Joker started off as a common crook with an enigmatic past called the Red Hood, who fell into a vat of acid during a fight against the Batman early in his career. The acid bleached his skin and hair, and broke his mind, turning Joker into one of the most psychotic villains in the world, whose greatest strength is his unpredictability and his unconventional goals.
- Count Vertigo, a.k.a. Werner Vertigo, is a villain who primarily fought Black Canary and Green Arrow, and later prominently associated with the Suicide Squad. A disgraced member of the royal family of Vlatava, Vertigo used implants that allowed him to cause other people to suffer from vertigo.
- Poison Ivy, a.k.a. Dr. Pamela Isley, is one of Batman's more iconic enemies, famously portrayed in live-action in Batman and Robin. She's an eco-terrorist who has an obsession with granting plants the liberty that they deserve. Initially using pheromones to control and seduce men, her repertoire was later expanded to be able to control exotic plants. She's been adapted many, many times alongside Batman in various adaptations.
- Black Adam, a.k.a. Pharaoh Teth-Adam, isn't actually a brute like he's portrayed here. Teth-Adam was the first mortal to obtain the powers of the wizard Shazam, becoming Earth's mightiest mortal, but soon his goals started to break away from conventional morality as he paid more attention to his nation of Khandaq to the exclusion of all else, resulting in his imprisonment by Shazam. Black Adam would alternate between being an anti-hero and anti-villain in the comics depending on what his motivations are at the moment.
- Ultra-Humanite is famous for being the first super-powered enemy that Superman fought. While here he doesn't get a lot of lines, he was famously portrayed in the DCAU's Justice League cartoon series. Ultra-Humanite is a genius scientist who transplanted his brain frmo his dying body into that of a gigantic albino gorilla.
- Atomic Skull, a.k.a. Albert Michaels (identified as Michaels by the producers, and besides he spends most of his time not as a man with a burning skull), is one of Superman's more striking enemies. Michaels is a man transformed by a group of mad scientists trying to cure his epilepsy by using a radium-powered device. The resulting procedure caused him to be able to unleash mental radiation blasts.
- Wotan, briefly mentioned in an earlier episode, makes his first official appearance here. Wotan is an enemy of Dr. Fate and the Justice Society, an immortal body-hopping sorcerer dating back from the Stone Age.
- Vandal Savage, who seems to be the nominal leader of the Light, is a caveman who was bathed in the radiation of a mysterious meteor, granting him intelligence far beyond those of his kin, as well as effective immortality. Over the years Savage has adopted various aliases and ruled various parts of the Earth as a conqueror.
- Other JLA members:
- Guy Gardner: We've seen that both Hal Jordan (the 'classic' Silver Age Green Lantern) and John Stewart (famous for being the main Green Lantern in the DCAU) are members of the JLA, but this is the first appearance of the boisterous Guy Gardner, Earth's second representative to the Green Lantern Corps. Infamous for being a gigantic asshole, Gardner was supposed to receive the ring from Abin Sur, but Hal Jordan was selected instead because he was closer. Guy was famous particularly in the Justice League International years.
- Plastic Man, a.k.a. Eel O'Brien, is a former criminal who fell into a vat of mysterious acid and obtained stretching and body-manipulation powers. He was originally not part of the DC universe, but was one of the many lesser superhero IP's obtained by DC. Plastic Man was famously featured in the pages of Grant Morrison's JLA title, acting as a core member of the team.
- Blue Devil, a.k.a. Daniel Cassidy, is a stuntman who, thanks to a freak accident, was bonded to a high-tech movie costume that he was wearing. Later Blue Devil would be bound to an actual demon, granting him access to actual demonic and magical powers.
- Icon (Augustus Freeman) & Rocket (Raquel Ervin): These two are actually characters I'm unfamiliar with, because they are introduced into the DC comics relatively recently. They are characters initially produced by Milestone Media, and later integrated into the DC comics during the Final Crisis event. Icon is an alien who took the form of an African man, with superstrength and flight abilities. Rocket is his sidekick, a girl who befriended Icon and uses an alien belt to enable her to fly and create force bubbles.
- Batman briefly refers to the Injustice League as the 'Secret Society of Supervillains', a super-villain team-up first introduced in the 70's, and later expanded to contain nearly every single supervillain in the DC comics universe in the 2000's Countdown to Infinite Crisis storyline.
- The Injustice League's headquarters is, of course, another in the long line of proud supervillain bases that homage the Hall of Doom from the old Challenge of the Super Friends cartoons.
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