Superman: The Animated Series, Season 2, Episode 19: The Hand of Fate
Okay... I'm actually not a huge fan of this episode. I love Dr. Fate, though, and whether it is in the pages of Justice Society of America, or in the small screen as I watched Justice League Unlimited, Dr. Fate has always been a cool-looking sorcerer with one of the straight-up coolest designs ever. Yet this episode is... not one I am hugely in love with. Yes, The Animated Series has been no stranger to introducing guest-star superheroes who our main character seems to have worked with beforehand. B:TAS did it with Etrigan the Demon, and S:TAS did it with the Flash. But here, Dr. Fate's introduction is handled so clunkily in no small part due to Fate himself only showing up halfway through the episode, and Superman's dialogue makes it really seem like we should have some idea about who Doctor Fate is... and it doesn't quite work at all.
The setup of a thief accidentally unleashing a demonic overlord from a sacred artifact is an old trope, and one that works relatively well, as far as these things go. Karkull quickly proves himself to be more than Superman's match, as the Man of Steel is not quite invulnerable to magic. Yet while it could be forgiven that Karkull is a simple, bland mwa-ha-ha take-over-the-world villain, he's unbelievably boring, with the only real saving grace being his wacky tentacle-wraith design and the genuinely creepy modus operandi of turning familiar characters like Lois, Jimmy and Ron Troupe into his thralls. Lois's transformation, and the design of her half-skull demon form, is pretty unsettling.
Yet that's honestly all Karkull has to offer. He takes over the Daily Planet and transforms everyone inside, creates a giant pit to hell, and just mumbles generic evil spooky dialogue throughout the episode, and a good chunk of the episode is just spent on Superman, Maggie Sawyer and Dan Turpin exchanging snarky dialogue about magic. Which, by the way, is a neat display of how improved the writing team has became, but smart dialogue alone doesn't make the episode a full winner. And Dr. Fate himself? Despite his wife Inza's attempts to get him to help, Superman's arrival at the Tower of Fate has Dr. Fate (who, as far as viewers of the show are concerned, is someone we've never seen before) refusing to help out of some weird mystical zen reason that he's beyond good and evil.
So Superman goes into the tower with naught but Inza's amulet and does battle with Karkull... and, of course, Dr. Fate shows up out of nowhere, talks a big game... and proceeds to, halfway through his long incantation, get blindsided and drop the all-precious rock slab that he reconstructed to bind Karkull, leaving it to Superman to fly to hell, get the sealing rock back and generally do all the dirty work. We're supposed to treat Dr. Fate being inspired by Superman as this big, revelationary moment that causes Fate to realize that while evil never stops, good never stops fighting either... and it really boils down to whether you buy Dr. Fate's pathos, something that the episode doesn't do well at all. Overall, despite the neat, creepy imagery, it's actually one of the lower notes of the season.
DC Easter Eggs Corner:
- I've talked about Dr. Fate enough on this blog, in both his Justice League Unlimited and Young Justice debuts, so I'll leave a link to those reviews with his backstory.
- Karkull is named after Ian Karkull, an enemy of Dr. Fate, but in the comics Karkull isn't a Cthulhuesque demon from the seventh level of hell, but rather a man who learned dark magics to transform his minions into shadowy apparitions.
- Superman's other weakness other than Kryptonite is magic, and it's made explicit here.
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