Justice League Unlimited

This episode starts with a nice touch - neatly wrapping up the Lex Luthor plotline from the Superman Animated Series, which is somewhat of a relief: it's about time he was brought to justice. Watching Lex get away with it episode after episode (and comic book after comic book issue) gets tiresome after a while. Now if they'd just follow up on some stuff from the Batman animated series as much as they do with Superman here (and later in Twilight)



After that it's Lex's show. One supposes he hid away a lot of money elsewhere (or he's just bluffing the other villains and can't pay them), but each of those villains gets their little moment. If anything, the episode is a little too rushed. All the villains get _are_ little moments. This is probably inevitable, given we've got all of them and the Justice League en masse.



The Ultra-Humanite fares best (and stuff here foreshadows his final fate in part 2). The Shade is well done, altough he's a pale *heh* shade of his current comic book incarnation as an immortal hero/villain. Solomon Grundy is a big tough brute kinda lpayed for laughs. Cheetah doesn't get much to do here, and Copperhead isn't given much time before he becomes capture-fodder.



And the last few minutes give us...the Joker. Mark Hamill tends to upstage everyone, unfortunately - a credit to the actor's voice-presence. Only Clancy Brown can really hold his own (he had plenty of practice in World's Finest :) ). The Joker captures Bats pretty easily, but we find out why in Part 2.



While this is mostly a villain episode, we finally get to see the League in action as a full team for the first time since the premiere movie and this is more the kind of thing they should be doing in this reviewer's opinion, rather than these 3- and 4-member team-ups. Hopefully we'll continue to get more full team efforts. While not everyone gets the screen time you'd hope, the writers do a great job of balancing seven heroes and eight villains.

While not the classic "Legion of Doom" (which comes later), Lex Luthor's "Injustice Gang" is a great Season 1 matchup for the fledgling Justice League, and draws on each hero's Rogues' Gallery to create an interesting and challenging threat.



The guest villains are good, but my favorite "new" voice has to be Stephen McHattie as Shade. Talk about a voice fitting the drawing of a character PERFECTLY.



Other highlights: the resentment Batman feels about being "protected" by his super-powered teammates that leads him to strike out alone and get trapped by the Joker; Lex Luthor's fall from grace; and some great whole-team battle royales. Character development does not take a back seat to the action, but complements it. It's writing and stories like this that make "Justice League" stand out in the DC animated universe.



It's great to hear Clancy Brown again. Like other voice actors in these shows, it is his voice I think of when I read Lex Luthor in comics now. Plus, we get the return of Mark Hammill as the Joker...best villain from "Batman: The Animated Series" and a heck of a voice performance! I'm glad he and Kevin Conroy got some scenes in Part 2 to play off of each other like in the old days.



The show would top this villain team-up later (with "Secret Society" and other episodes), but "Injustice for All" is a great introduction to the supervillain teams that would pop up over the next several seasons of "Justice League."

This episode marks an interesting turning point for the series as it starts out with Lex Luthor, who has been trying to portray himself as an honest businessman while hiding his evil doings. After briefly menacing Superman with kryptonite and finding himself unexpectedly trapped by the rest of the Justice League, Luthor tries to flee but passes out before getting far. When he recovers, the master criminal finds himself in prison ( not a surprise ) and has been diagnosed with a blood disease resulting from long term kryptonite exposure that appears to be terminal ( ok, that was a surprise).



Not content to spend the rest of his days in prison, Luthor escapes with the aide of a fellow inmate, a large ape like man named Ultra Humanite. By the way, the ease that the prisoners escape suggest that the warden should hire new guards or check what is brought into the convicts a little more closely.



Once free, Luthor quickly brings together a gang of super criminals for the sole purpose of destroying the Justice League. Unfortunately, the criminals he hires fail miserably in their first encounter with the heroes and barely escape with their freedom intact. At this point, the criminals' moaning are interrupted by the arrival of the Joker, Batman's chief foe and ably voiced by Mark Hamill.



The Joker concocts a plan to capture Batman, who was weakened from the first battle, and succeeds relatively easily to end the episode.



Overall, this was a fairly good episode with a nifty storyline. The idea of finally ripping away Luthor's businessman disguise was one that this viewer thinks was long overdue. The characters shown in this episode pretty much stay in character though they do try to pump up Batman's value to the League a little too much.



An episode worth watching more than once.....