Last year I took some photos of my son's Justice League 4.5" action figures to test out the close-up feature on my digital camera. Then later I did some drawings based on the photos to test out my Wacom tablet. The results of this screwing around may be found here.

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Tonight's bedtime conversation with Sam (5).

SAM. Is tomorrow a school day?
DAD. No.  It's Presidents' Day.  Do you know who the Presidents are?
SAM. Yes.
DAD. Yeah?  Can you name one?  Who was a President?
SAM. (patiently, as though to a dull toddler) George Washington.
DAD. Do you know what the President does?

This Sam is less clear on.  Which is just as well at this embarrassing point in our nation's history. 

I start to say that if the United States is the DC Universe, you could look at George Washington as Superman, but then I realize that if I say that, the next question will be "Then who is Batman?" and I don't have a clear answer for that.

Clearly, George Washington is Superman.  He was the first, arguably the most important, debatably the best, and most importantly the "original."  But then, indeed, who is Batman?  Is it Adams, contemporary of Washington and close second in defining the young nation's ethos?  Or is it, say, Lincoln, the most beloved of the presidents, the tall, dark, brooding loner president, the tortured insomniac, haunted by the deaths of his loved ones, the one who broke the rules for the sake of the greater good?

Does that make Wonder Woman Thomas Jefferson, the warrior for peace, architect of our most precious freedoms?  Or is she more like Franklin Roosevelt in that regard, giving our enemies a bitter fight while generously giving our poorest and weakest a fighting chance of their own?  That would make Truman Green Lantern, saving the world with his magical do-anything world-saving device.

And who would be an analog for colorless chair-warmers like Millard Fillmore and Chester Arthur?  Are these men Booster Gold and Blue Beetle?  Clearly Rorshach is Richard Nixon, Alan Moore practically begs us to see the parallels, but what of Kennedy, Nixon's shining twin?  Is that Ozymandius, or is he a simpler man, a purer spirit, someone like Captain Marvel?  Or is he Superboy and his "best and brightest" cabinet the Legion of Superheroes in the 31st century?

And how to categorize corrupt, incompetent disasters like Grant, Harding, Hoover and Bush II?  Is Reagan Plastic Man, effortlessly escaping ceaseless attack with a smile and a quip?  And what about Johnson, weak on foreign policy but a genius in the domestic realm, who is that?  Or William Henry Harrison, who caught pneumonia during his inaugural parade and died a month later?  Or Grover Cleveland, who served, left office, then came back and served again?

Or perhaps the metaphor is imprecise, perhaps the US presidency is unlike the DCU after all -- perhaps it's more like the X-Men, where weak individuals are granted extraordinary powers and yet are still hampered by their combative attitudes toward each other and their under-developed social skills.  In the X-Men you have heroes who might not turn out to be heroes after all.  And vice versa.

Or maybe we're looking in the wrong direction, perhaps the US presidents aren't the "good guys" at all.  While Bush II has so far shunned the metal mask and hooded cloak of Dr. Doom, he has certainly succeeded in turning the US into his own private Latveria.  And any given Republican of the 20th century can lay claim to being the Lex Luthor of the bunch, brimming with brilliant, short-sighted schemes to make himself rich while destroying other people's lives and property.

And, if they were given the choice, is there any serious doubt as to whether Americans would elect a comic-book character over a living, breathing human being?

For your romantic inspiration, some tender moments from Justice League.

The man who started it all.

In the spring of 1940, an unidentified criminal fell into a tub of goo.  From this tub of goo emerged The Joker, and the world has never been the same.  Clayface, Mr. Freeze, Two-Face, Solomon Grundy, Parasite, all fell victim, in one way or another, to tubs of goo.  Christ, the Creeper fell into the same tub of goo as the Joker!  You would have thought that having one person turn into a raving psycho would be enough for that company to stop manufacturing that particular brand of goo, but that's corporate America for you. 

(In the film Batman and Robin, even Poison Ivy falls into a tub of goo, although her comic-book counterpart did not seem to need to take it that far.)

Where would we be without tubs of goo?  How many of our psychotics, mutants and monsters owe their existence to tubs of goo?

And not just villains, good guys too.  Flash fell into a tub of goo too, and was struck by lightning to seal the deal.  Metamorpho, Plastic Man, Swamp Thing -- all goo-produced phenomena.

Over in the Marvel universe, in addition to having their own swamp thing called Man-Thing (who fell into the same tub of goo as Solomon Grundy but with vastly different effect) they actually have a tub of goo from outer space, one that will actively seek out people and jump on them, turning super-heroes bad and bad guys evil. 

(It should be noted that the Marvel Universe seems to be plagued with radiation instead of tubs of goo, perhaps as a symptom of coming of age after the H-bomb testing began.)

Where is the anti tub-of-goo legislation?  Or just lids, what about lids?  Just put some goddamn lids on the tubs of goo, would that be so hard?  Bruce Wayne needn't have changed his life and become a fearsome creature of the night, he could have just sprung for some lids and his city would have been perfectly safe.

Martian Manhunter David Odgen Stiers fights middle-aged spread, while Green Lantern wonders if he can turn to confront Miguel Ferrer with a straight face.

Strangely enough, in 1997, while the world was waiting for Bruce Timm to create the show Justice League, CBS commissioned a pilot for a live-action Justice League of America. And as it happens, my local video store happened to have a copy of this little-seen pilot. As a "free rental," no less. How could I resist?

A perfect example of how wrong a thing can go, Justice League of America shows what can happen when a decent idea falls into the hands of the uncaring. Now mind you, I never thought the original comic books (that is, in 1960) were any kind of ground-breaking miracle (they are mostly busy-work potboilers), but the makers of Justice League of America do not seem to have given a thought as to what their show is even about.

The lineup of this particular Justice League, for those interested, is Martian Manhunter, Atom, Flash, Green Lantern, Fire and Ice. The key thrust of the show seems to be "What if the Justice League were ordinary people, trying to lead their ordinary lives, trying to love and work and make friends, but then periodically having to dash off to save the world?"

Now, I'm all for superheroes behaving like human beings (that is, in fact, what makes the Bruce Timm show so successful), but there are limits. In Justice League of America, the superheroes aren't just ordinary, they are desperately ordinary -- sub-par slackers, halfway between The Incredibles and Mystery Men.

Take the Atom, for instance. In the comics, the Atom, Ray Palmer, is a brilliant physicist. That isn't just a plot convenience, it's the whole character. Ray Palmer must be a brilliant physicist because he invented the suit that enables him to get microscopic. In Justice League of America, Ray Palmer is a doughy, dull-witted, bespectacled high-school science teacher, unable to fix a television, much less rearrange the molecules of, say, an alien menace's brainwaves.

Or the Flash. For the purposes of this show, it has been decided that Barry Allen can't get his life together, attract women, or hold down a job. And so there is much "comedy" mined from Barry's job misfortunes, lack of money and boredom. Why can't he hold down a job? Well, because he moves too quickly, of course. Because apparently, in the world of this show, speed in one's work is something that is frowned upon.

Or Green Lantern Guy Gardner (well, he's called Guy Gardner, but he wears Kyle Rayner's outfit, and of Lanterns, most closely resembles Rayner in temperament). The man who carries the most awesome weapon in the universe is a blithe, jokey ad executive, a man who has never given a moment's thought to the responsibility he carries or the lineage he serves. I once wrote that Green Lantern is a job, but for Guy Gardner it appears to be more of a hobby.

Instead of watching Earth from their Watchtower up in space, this Justice League lives in a dumpy, retro apartment, where they bicker about chores and their love lives. That's right, it's Friends with superpowers. Far from protecting the world from intergalactic menace, it takes the whole team to protect one city from a terrorist with a plan that Dr. Evil would pass on as too absurd.

Now then: there is plenty in comics history to suggest that a group of superheroes with screwed-up personal lives could click -- something 2000's X-Men did beautifully -- but what happens here is, disaster of disasters, the protagonists, dull as they are, become less interesting when they don their colorful outfits and fight crime. Their costumes are atrocious and laugh-inducing; they look like idiots dashing around their fake city in their bulky, ill-fitting suits and masks, rescuing tykes and dragging cats out from underneath porches. They have no ideas for fighting a menace or saving the city, they just kind of plod along, putting out fires while they wait for evidence to fall into their laps.

For those interested in viewing some representative clips, they may be found here.

The cast and crew of the pilot is a solid bunch of TV professionals, which makes it all the more perpexing that the show feels more like the production of some enthusiastic amateurs, not quite as polished as this.

As I've noted in the past, my son Sam's favorite TV show is Justice League Unlimited.  The problem is, there are only a couple dozen episodes of Justice League Unlimited, and there are 365 days in a year.  This creates a gap for Sam of Justice League Unlimited stories.

This gap is filled, somewhat, by the existence of Justice League Unlimited comics, which keep coming out even though the TV show ended its run last year.  These comics, more often than not, are what I read to Sam at bedtime.

I know relatively little about the superhero comics biz, but I'm guessing that the job of "imitating the character designs of a TV show for a superhero pamphlet" is not the prime job for most comics artists.  And it often shows in the sloppiness, abrasiveness and lack of coherence in these titles, which may seem like simple product to many artists and readers, but which form a vital link to another world for people like my son.

An exception, I've found, is Carlo Barberi, an artist I'd never heard of before buying Justice League Unlimited for my son, but who has quickly become one of my favorites.  Click for larger views.



There's something about the "plastic" qualities of the characters that matches the subject matter well, invites the reader in.  It's light, brightly lit and colorful.  The poses are dynamic without being emphatic.  There's something a little "freeze-dried" about the line that makes it fun and pliable.  And I like his page layouts; they have a fluidity and spareness of design that makes the action clear and lucid.  Look at all that blank space; and yet it doesn't feel "blank," it lets the reader follow the action swiftly and easily (believe me, I've gotten such headaches from trying to follow the action in some comic books myself, much less trying to explain what's going on to my son).



I love this panel of Dr. Fate in his office, the camera angle, the big blank ceiling, the magical, mystical objects floating in air, the colors, and then the humor of it being sold with Dr. Fate's petty concerns.



Even better is this page where Blue Beetle is left on monitor duty.  Bored to tears, he tries paddle-ball, trying on the other hero's outfits (note that he's already tried on Wonder Woman's clothes before moving on to the Flash's), and, finally, the purest expression of superhero boredom, googling himself.  Again, the elegance and cleanliness of the designs helps sell the action.  This page made me laugh out loud, even if Sam didn't quite get all the jokes.



Speaking of action, here are two terrific pages.  I love how Parasite is flinging Wonder Woman clear off the page (Barberi will often have characters' faces disappear off-panel to create tension) and how he's tilted the camera to make the action more chaotic.  Then, at the other end of the story, the dry, unemphatic line and empty space provides an ironic counterpoint to the cataclysmic action of Steel crushing Parasite with the Daily Planet globe.




Finally, he seems to be a master at these moment-to-moment kind of exchanges.  Sometimes for comic effect, sometimes for silent, understated drama, all these exchanges leave it to the reader to fill in the blanks (no small feat in this often frantic, overstated genre, believe me).  Best of all (and I realize these are script issues, not drafting issues), all these beats work for character reasons -- these beats arise out of conflict between personalities, not machinations of plot.

A:




Yes, it's a Justice League chess set, and my son Sam has instantly learned chess.

I'm not the kind of dad who insists that his 5-year-old play chess, but Sam has been playing this Justice League video game, "Halls of Injustice," in which his heroes move on a grid and make specific actions to defeat their opponents, and it's about five time more complicated than chess, so I thought I'd give it a shot. No problem at all. He grasps the principles without a second thought. I doubt I have another Mac Pomeranc on my hands -- although I would not complain if I did -- but it's a huge leap forward for the boy and, as usual, I have the Justice League to thank for it.

The players, for those curious, are:

White (let's call them white, even though they're silver) Superman is King, Wonder Woman is Queen, Flash is Bishop, Batman is (Dark) Knight, and Hawkgirl is Rook.  Green Lantern is the Pawn. 

Black (gold) are: Shade is King (What?  No Lex Luthor?  I guess he's too much of a Superman villain), Star Sapphire is Queen (well, better than Cheetah, I guess) , Solomon Grundy is Bishop (Solomon Grundy?  They let him run the diagonal length of the board?  Solomon Grundy?) Ultra-Humanite is Knight, Copperhead is Rook (Copperhead, right -- guy in a snake suit is going to go up against a flying alien with an indestructible weapon), and an alien robot called a Manhunter (Sam had to remind me which episode they appear in) is the Pawn.

All of this makes sense to me except Hawkgirl, who doesn't seem to be very rook-like in her attitude.  But it was either her or Martian Manhunter, and someone had to get the axe -- might as well be the creepy green guy from another planet no one likes.

Martian Manhunter's mother: "You can change your shape, J'onn, why don't you change it to look more like that nice Superman boy?  I'd bet you'd get your own chess piece then."

J'onn J'onnz: "Moo-oommm..."



Captured on the sidelines, the Amazon queen steals some time with her Dark Knight.  Batman, of course, plays it cool.



John Stewart: "Wait a minute, why is the black guy a pawn?  What are you trying to teach kids?"



Superman, for some reason, looks a little put out at having been made King.  Little pouty.  Like maybe he said "Ooh!  I'll be King!"  And then he found out that he can only move one space and everyone wants to kill him.

It's a little weird to hear things like "Are you sure you want to move your Wonder Woman there?  Because my Copperhead could capture her and that would put your Superman in Check.  Why don't you move your Batman there, 'cause that would block my Ultra-Humanite from capturing your Flash," but one gets used to it quickly.

The pantheon.  Click for much larger view.

As we see, the Justice League takes up the top shelf, as befitting their status as supreme beings.  The order of the seven is taken from Justice League publicity materials, which always order them in this way. 

But then, curiously, the Justice Lords (the evil Justice League from an alternate time-stream) are placed on the same shelf, and in the same order (minus Justice Lord Flash [or Reverse Flash], who is not featured as a member of the Justice Lords proper [except for the false Justice Lords generated by the Luthor/Brainiac monster]).

Below the Justice League are the second-tier Leaguers: Plastic Man (a custom job bought on eBay), Vixen (posed below her current boyfriend, Green Lantern) Shining Knight (who should be posed beside Vigilante, who has not yet been acquired), Black Lightning and Isis (two more eBay custom jobs), Robin (Robin?  The hell is he doing here?), Atom Smasher (the lone Justice Leaguer who claims Jewishness as part of his identity in this otherwise areligious team), Green Arrow (mysteriously, not posed next to Black Canary), Aquaman (note that the Aquaman posed here is the one without the cape; this is the real Aquaman), Batgirl (partially obscured) (Batgirl?!), Huntress, Atom, Red Tornado, Hawk, Dove, Metamorpho and Zatanna.

(Sam is loath to place one character in front of the other -- they are all equal [on their shelves] to each other.  It pained him to place Aquaman in front of Batgirl but he was forced to due to space considerations.)

Then, we have the third-stringers, or supporting characters: Supergirl (whom I would have placed in the second tier), Orion, Black Canary (another second-level hero, imho), Starman, Booster Gold (a third-shelfer, even though he has his own episode of JLU, Elongated Man (yes, the official Elongated Man is trumped by a custom Plastic Man, as he should be), Nightwing (Nightwing?) Steel, Wildcat, Waverider, Dr. Light (that's Dr. Light II, not the rapist of Elongated Man's wife), Aztek, Dr. Fate, Rocket Red, The Creeper.

I do not know what system Sam uses to rank these figures.  Black Lightning is a second-shelfer, even though Sam knows very little about him and has not seen him featured on the show, and while he's never seen a Plastic Man comic and he is not featured on any of the Justice League shows, Sam somehow understands that he outranks Elongated Man (comics fans, of course, know that Plastic Man did not begin his life as a DC hero, he was purchased from another publisher; Elongated Man was the pale imitation DC cooked up so they could have their own stretchy guy).  Isis has never been featured on the show or even in the tie-in comics; Red Tornado he finds compelling enough to put on the second shelf, even though the character only has the most passing moments on the show.  Robin, Nightwing and Batgirl get included, even though they are not part of the League (and are presumably either off with the Teen Titans or guarding Gotham City, dating Bruce Wayne (Batgirl only) (I think) and growing old while waiting for Terry McGuiness to take up the Batman mantle).  (And before anyone starts complaining about Robin and Nightwing being featured at the same time, the Robin featured here is Tim Drake, not Dick Grayson.)  The Green Lantern Corps (Katma Tui, Kyle Raynor, Arkkis Chummuck, Tomar Re, Kilowog), although they dominate several key episodes, currently reside in a bench on the other side of the room (presumably the bench is the same relative distance from the shelf as Oa is to Earth).  Vixen is posed beneath Green Lantern, but Zatanna is not posed beneath Batman, although they have been romantically linked.


The underworld.  Click for much larger view.

On the bottom shelf, crammed together, we have the villains, with the most powerful in the center, growing less powerful (or relevant) as we move to the edges.  Thus, Lex Luthor, Joker and Brainiac take center stage (with the Very Tall Darkseid, Doomsday and Bane behind), flanked by Poison Ivy, Amazo, Mr. Freeze and the ultra-lame Copperhead to the left, and Catwoman (seated), Sinestro, Two-Face, Bizarro, Harley Quinn (obscured by Bizarro), and the ultra-lame Mirror Master to the right.

Even casual Justice League viewers will note the preponderance of Batman villains here.  Strictly speaking, Joker, Bane, Mr. Freeze, Catwoman, Poison Ivy and Harley Quinn shouldn't be here at all (although some of them put in a brief appearance in a couple of episodes).  It is, I'm guessing, their overwhelming importance to the Batman/Gotham City mythos that warrant their inclusion in the Legion of Doom.

I cannot explain Poison Ivy's outranking of Amazo.  The Amazo character in Justice League is one of the key stories of the whole series, second only to the Justice Lords scenario.  We even have two other Amazo figures (one gold and one clear, symbolizing different levels of Amazo's evolution), which have been banished along with the Green Lantern Corps (perhaps for similar thematic reasons -- Amazo does, after all, leave Earth when it has nothing more to offer him).  Similarly, I cannot explain why Catwoman is seated; Sam is adamant about this point however and has corrected her posture on more than one occasion.  The Joker's distance from Harley can be explained for character reasons (Joker seems to spend half his time distancing himself from Harley) (He's even gotten Bizarro to hold her off).

Reverse Flash, who until recently lived between Harley Quinn and Mirror Master, now mysteriously resides in a box under the desk.

The Magazine Editor was visiting the other day and conversation turned, as it often does in my house, to the Justice League.

My son Sam (5) is, to say the least, obsessed with the Justice League, an obsession I've done little to discourage.  He sleeps under a shelf full of Justice League dolls action figures (he has 80 or so, not including the inevitable copies, and also not including the various members of the Green Lantern corps, who, although appearing on Justice League, are not actually members of the Justice League), as well as banks, comic books, encyclopedias, posters, and a wall covered with his own drawings of various members.

TA. I don't know -- I think I might have gone too far with the whole Justice League thing.
TME. Could be worse.  You could send him to Sunday school.
(laughter)
TA. I mean, I don't mind, you know, the intensity of it -- and it's not violent like Batman is violent -- but I just worry that he's watching something that he isn't really getting.  I mean, there are all these moral and ethical concepts in the show that are just too sophisticated for him --
TME.  That's what I mean.  It could be worse, you could be sending him to Sunday School.

So be it.  Sam likes Justice League because it's more interesting to him than Superfriends or Magic School Bus (both of which delight his four-year-old sister) and he's too old for Maisy or Thomas the Tank Engine.  Its moral lessons are couched in high drama, well-drawn characters (in every sense of the word) and fluid, exciting, colorful action, more so than any Sunday school class I remember (although the Bible is certainly not lacking in colorful, absorbing, morally complex action stories).

Sam confessed to me the other night:

SAM.  Dad?
DAD.  Yeah?
SAM.  I believe in superheroes.
DAD.  Sure.
SAM.  No, I mean I really believe in them.  I think they're here, I think they're hiding, so they can be there if we need them.

Well, okay, he's five, so I'm not too concerned about him having actual paranoid delusions.  If he believes there really is a Superman who is good and strong and (mostly) invulnerable, a vastly powerful being with an unerring sense of right and wrong (or at least a team who will correct him if he's wrong), if he believes in a collection of smart, quick-witted, eloquent heroes who will help him out when he really needs it and never let him down, well, that's the message of Justice League, but it's also the message of Sunday school.  And as far as I'm concerned, as far as belief systems go, I would rather have him believe in the brightly-colored pop-culture fantasy of Justice League than in the blood-encrusted gothic tales of organized religion any day.

When a child first sees a cool new superhero, the first question is usually "What does he do?"

This is a fitting query regarding characters of action, but it is no way to structure a TV show. And yet, it is seemingly how the producers approached the structure of Superfriends. In contrast, the producers of Justice League took the "What does he do?" question for granted and instead asked the far more important question "Who is he?" The characters in Justice League are individuals with points of view, motivations and personalities, the characters in Superfriends are merely agglomerations of abilities.

The cape is not the man, and this, I opine, is the basis of why Justice League will be treasured for generations to come while Superfriends will always be regarded as a camp classic fit only for the simple.

In Superfriends, Batman has a computer and a cave full of gadgets, Wonder Woman has a magic rope and an invisible plane, Green Lantern has a magic ring, Flash is fast, Superman has his multitudinous powers, Aquaman talks to fish. Those are all fine attributes, but they do not, in and of themselves, constitute character. If all that mattered was the number of powers, Martian Manhunter would be a more popular superhero than Superman. What the producers of Superfriends chose to do is give all their heroes the exact same personality, whether they are the Last Son of Krypton, the Dark Knight, the Amazon Princess or The Guy Who Talks to Fish. The heroes of Superfriends are uniformly game, brave, chipper, chatty, easily startled and, paradoxically, unflappable. No sooner do they exclaim "Great Krypton/Hera/Gotham/Neptune!" than they pull some improbable solution out of the air and calmly implement it (as Seanbaby mentions, this solution often involves "spinning around" the bad guy/explosion/missile/lava/monster/lava-monster until the spinning affects it somehow).  This conceptual blunder, not the dumb plots or the cheap animation, is why Superfriends is so reviled.  Television can soar on dumb plots and cheap animation, it cannot survive without characters.  This is why episodes of Superfriends feel so shallow, repetitive and lame; there are seven main characters and they all think and act exactly the same way.  Think about it: Hanna-Barbera actually gave the members of the Justice League less personality than they gave to the members of the Mystery Gang.

Because their protagonists have no personalities (or, if you like, they all have roughly the same personalities as Batman and Robin do on the Adam West Batman show, the source of Superfriends' most likely inspiration) there is no dramatic tension in the scripts.  That means that the writers must come up with ever-more-improbable, ever-more-lame, ever-more-fantastic, ever-more-bizarre plots of exhausting, spiraling action to put their heroes and their various abilities through their paces.  These plots can be wonderful diversions, but they do not constitute drama.

The producers of Justice League, coming from the success of their Batman and Superman animated series', understood from the beginning that it actually doesn't matter what a superhero's abilities are; what matters is who the superhero is. 

Take Green Lantern.  The beauty of Green Lantern is not that his ring can make anything happen, it's that his ring can make anything happen within the bounds of his imagination and that that magic is limited to the force of his will-power.  Green Lantern is not about a magic ring, it is about Imagination and Will.  If the wearer is a dullard, he makes a very poor Green Lantern indeed, and his ring is useless if one can wear down his will.  (The creator of Green Lantern borrowed the magic-ring idea from Arabian Nights; the first Green Lantern's name was originally to be Alan Ladd, off of Aladdin.)  Green Lantern's appeal lies not in his ring, the ring is a tool, like a badge or a gun; Green Lantern's appeal lies in the personality of the man/woman/space-creature wearing the ring.  Like a western or police drama, it's doesn't matter that one carries a badge, what matters is who carries the badge.  One can be a great policeman, a corrupt policeman, a shy policeman, an incompetent policeman, a sly policeman, a duplicitous policeman.  The same principle applies to doctors, lawyers, detectives and space explorers, to name only the most prevalent of TV professions.  And yet, in the minds of the producers of Superfriends, Sherlock Holmes, Hercule Poirot, Philip Marlowe, Sam Spade, Mike Hammer, Jim Rockford and Barnaby Jones are all the exact same person.

In Justice League, what was important to the producers about Wonder Woman is not that she's super-strong or has a magic rope, but that she's a princess who has led a coddled, innocent, priviledged life apart from man's world.  The strength and the rope are tools that happen to be sitting around, useful in fighting alien menaces, but the point is that her naive personality and optimistic attitude give rise to drama as she clashes not with bad guys but with Batman's scowling cynicism or Hawkgirl's brazen forthrightness (favorite Hawkgirl line: "Less talking, more hitting!").  The producers of Justice League didn't get around to mentioning that WW's lasso is a lie-detector until the third season, and even then it was total surprise to WW.  What makes Flash work in Justice League is not that he's fast but that he's a careless goofball.  What makes Batman work is not that he's a brilliant detective but that he's bitter, remote and scornful.  And, as I've mentioned before, what makes Martian Manhunter a different character from Superman is not his powers but his soul.  The characters in Justice League aren't a bunch of superheroes, they are a bunch of people who happen to have super-powers.  This seems like an obvious distinction to make, and has been in the comics since their inception, but it never occurred to the producers of Superfriends.

When any seven people are thrown into a high-stakes, high-pressure situation, drama inevitably occurs.  While the plot contrivances of Justice League are more carefully, logically and elegantly presented than those of Superfriends, they are not more interesting or believable.  A talking gorilla, an evil computer or an alien overlord are of the same narrative value whether they are designed by Alex Toth or Bruce Timm.  What keeps Justice League alive is the drama that arises from the clash of personalities responding to the crisis.

Martian Manhunter, his wife and child, drawn by Sam (5), from looking at his Justice League action figures.

"I'm trying to really look!" he exclaimed in the middle of his work.

left: the Man of Steel.  right: creepy green loser.

Superman: super-strength, super hearing, super breath.  Telescopic sight, X-ray vision, heat vision.  Can fly and travel at super speeds.
Martian Manhunter: super-strength, super breath, heat vision, can fly.  In addition, can read minds, communicate with spirits, walk through walls, change his shape.

Superman: the last surviving member of his race, the only living Kryptonian (except for Supergirl, Krypto, Streaky the Supercat, Comet the Superhorse, Beppo the Supermonkey and the entire city of Kandor -- Jesus, did anybody but Superman's parents die when Krypton blew up?).  An alien on Earth, doomed to a life of loneliness, except for Lois Lane and the billions of people who adore him.
Martian Manhunter: the last surviving member of his race, the only living Martian.  An alien on Earth, doomed to a life of loneliness.

Superman: invulnerable, except to an ultra-rare metal.
Martian Manhunter: invulnerable, except to not-rare-at-all fire.

On paper, Martian Manhunter is the more powerful figure, much more powerful than Superman and possessing a richer internal and emotional life.  And yet everyone follows Superman as a natural leader, while Martian Manhunter is the creepy guy who always stands in the back of the group photo.  Why?

In the comics, Martian Manhunter has his back-of-the-bus position simply because of seniority.  Superman had been around for twenty years before Martian Manhunter showed up, and while MM might come in handy blowing out a forest fire or lifting up a bus, the Justice League in the '60s couldn't find much use for his talents.  It took Bruce Timm and Co. to not only bring Martian Manhunter to life but to make him the most soulful, introspective and interesting member of the team.

The most obvious difference between Superman and Martian Manhunter, of course, is their looks.  They're both tall (MM is actually a good six inches taller than Supes) but Superman is white and handsome with a lantern jaw and a cleft chin, gimlet eyes, oodles of charisma and a charming spitcurl while Martian Manhunter is green, sepulchural, bald, sullen, beetle-browed and red-eyed.

But apart from the looks thing, why is it that Superman leads the Justice League around the world, punches robots, melts buildings and spaceships, destroys alien menaces and makes speeches to governmental bodies about the wise use of power, while MM can be found, every day, chained to a desk at the Watchtower, administering shift-changes and delegating task-work?  Why does Martian Manhunter get no respect?

I think it has something to do with when their respective planets were destroyed.  Superman was a baby when his father blasted him off of Krypton; he has no memory of it.  All he knows is his his home planet was great and his parents loved him enough to give him a new lease on life, on a planet where he would be worshipped like a god.  Martian Manhunter, on the other hand, was already married with a child when Mars was destroyed by an alien invasion.  Superman has nothing but fond memories of his home, MM watched his wife and child murdered and his civilization destroyed before his eyes.

It's broken him.  He can't just fly around smashing things because he's seen too much flying around and smashing things in his life.  It's turned him into a scold and a gloomy gus.  He's always staring out windows and chastising the other members for being too quick with the violence.  This sometimes makes him a wet blanket and a stick in the mud as he intones about the lessons he learned in seeing his home destroyed (in one issue of the comic, Flash, upon hearing the umpteenth iteration of MM's origin story, finally sighs and says "Were all the Martians as whiny as you?").

Then there's the fire thing.  The fire thing is lame.  A shape-changing, building-lifting superhero should not be afraid of fire.

Maybe the fire thing has made MM gunshy.  Maybe, despite his awesome powers, he's happier in his administrative position, high above the Earth, unlikely to be caught in the clutches of a supervillain who might have, say, a book of matches and a pile of oily rags.  MM stays in the Watchtower to avoid the embarrassment of a headline like "JUSTICE LEAGUE TRIUMPHS!  Martian Manhunter felled by kid with Zippo."

Then there's the self-hate thing.  MM failed his family, his civilization and his planet.  In his mind he will never be free of his survivor guilt.  Maybe that's why he chooses to look like a tall, green creepy guy.  I mean, keep in mind, the way we see MM is not how he sees himself.  MM, in his "natural state," looks like this:



That's right -- the creepy-green-guy look is how MM changes his appearance so as to look normal and not creep people out too much.  He could look like Brad Pitt if he wanted to, but the MM look is what he chose.  (In case he's not creepy enough for you, keep in mind that the cape, trunks and pirate boots are all artificial; that is to say, MM is actually always naked.  So when, say, Hawkgirl stands around the Watchtower with MM, she's aware on some level that she's standing next to, you know, a naked shape-changing Martian.)

But, point is, he has chosen to look the way he does.  He has chosen to creep people out, to stay on the fringes of the group; his choice of look throws up a barrier to anyone who might get too close to him.  Compare MM, moping around in his artificial creepy-guy state, with X-Men's Mystique, who prefers to strut around in her blue scaly state and only uses her shape-shifting powers to rob an armored car or bust a guy out of prison (there is the famous exchange between Nightcrawler and Mystique in X2: Nightcrawler asks "If you can change the way you look, why don't you?" and Mystique sniffs "Because I shouldn't have to.")  MM is not proud of the way he "naturally" looks, but at the same time he refuses to look "normal."  He shifts from "repulsive-looking" to "differently repulsive-looking."  It's as though a Jew were to flee Poland and change his name from Greenberg to Lopez in order to sound "less Jewish."  That's a level of self-disgust I'm not sure children should even be exposed to.

Then there's the mind-reading thing, which, truth be told, is a burden to MM as much as it is an asset, and something he only uses when he really needs to.  Otherwise, he is exposed to what everyone around him is really thinking, both about him and about the world.  Martian Manhunter couldn't live like Clark Kent, live a normal life with a job and friends and a love-interest.  Because the natural, everyday masks that people wear don't work for him.  How could he be married if every time his wife kissed him good morning he could feel her resentment towards him or her subtle yearnings for the man next door?  How could he go to work and carry on a job if he knew what petty, self-involved, disgusting thoughts were bubbling under the surface of the most mundane of everyday transactions?

Left to right: Alan Scott, Hal Jordan, Guy Gardner, John Stewart, Kyle Rayner, Arkkis Chummuck -- all entirely different people.

I was in New York recently, having dinner after a show (as one does) with some friends.  At the table were the Magazine Editor, the Famous Actor, the Rock Star and the Primatologist.  Conversation turned to Justice League.  (Conversation has, no doubt, been edited to be more self-serving.)

TODD.  My son has turned me into a geek.
PRIMATOLOGIST.  (apres spit-take) Turned you into one?!
TODD.  Hey, before Sam started watching Justice League, I had never heard of Arkkis Chummuck.  Now I know who Arkkis Chummuck is.
ACTOR.  Who is Arkkis Chummuck?
TODD.  Arkkis Chummuck is a Green Lantern that Hal Jordan was teamed up with for a while.  Arkkis is from a planet of werewolf-looking creatures who practice cannabalism.  And Hal Jordan kind of held Arkkis Chummuck at arm's length, thinking that he was some kind of a savage for his cannibalistic ways.  But as we get to know Arkkis and his culture, we come to learn that there are deep, spiritual aspects to their practices that Hal simply didn't bother to think about because of Arkkis's appearance and habits.  So Hal --
EDITOR.  Wait -- what do you mean he's "teamed up" with Arkkis Chummuck?
TODD.  Hal Jordan is only one Green Lantern.  The Green Lantern Corps, you see, is based on a planet called Oa, where the the Oans have the magic Power Battery, which happens to look like a green lantern.  And that's where the Green Lantern Corps is based.  Hal Jordan is only one of, I think, 36,000 Green Lanterns, and each Green Lantern polices a certain zone of the universe.  Hal Jordan was only the Green Lantern of the zone that includes Earth, since that's where the intelligent life is in our sector of the universe.  If you --
ROCK STAR.  And who is the "Jon Stewart" guy?
TODD.  He --
ACTOR.  There's a Green Lantern named Jon Stewart?!
TODD.  He -- yes, he spells it with the "h" --
EDITOR.  I wonder if Jon Stewart named himself after --
TODD.  John Stewart was an "angry black guy" living in Detroit in the late sixties, and Hal Jordan got teamed up with him --
PRIMATOLOGIST.  Wait, why did Earth get two Green Lanterns?
TODD.  John Stewart was being trained as Hal Jordan's backup.  And in the Justice League cartoon, John is still from a bad neighborhood in Detroit but they made him a marine --
ACTOR.  Wait, so "Green Lantern" isn't a guy --
TODD.  No, although there is a Green Lantern named Guy Gardner, redhead with a bowl haircut who nobody likes --
ROCK STAR.  And isn't one like a cartoonist or something?
TODD.  That's Kyle Rayner --
ACTOR.  -- "Green Lantern" is a, an office.  A position.
TODD.  That's exactly right.  "Green Lantern" is a job.  So when people say they don't like Green Lantern, it's like saying they don't --
EDITOR.  I had no idea --
PRIMATOLOGIST.  Are there any female Green Lanterns?
TODD.  Are there?  Why, one of the most important Green Lanterns is Katma Tui, a dark-red-skinned alien who trained John Stewart --
ROCK STAR.  But the whole thing with the, you know, the color yellow --
TODD.  Ah, yes.  But, according to one story, you see, the power ring is not vulnerable to the color yellow -- rather, the Guardians merely tell Green Lantern that his ring has a flaw, because otherwise he would eventually be driven mad with power.  But the important thing is, people, they -- all these Green Lanterns are entirely different people.  Hal Jordan is a test pilot and John Stewart is a marine and Kyle Rayner is a cartoonist and they've all been given this responsibility and they all respond differently to the job.  It's like the word "Policeman."  You have all kinds of different policemen and all kinds of different stories you can tell about policemen.  You have Hill Street Blues and Dirty Harry.  Or "Lawyer."  Or "Doctor."  So that's why Green Lantern, a character I'd never even thought about, suddenly has become, I don't know, vital and interesting to me, just that one twist -- Batman is a guy, Superman is a guy, but Green Lantern is a job.  And I think he's the only one who is a job, I --

The Justice Lords would like a word with you.

My son has turned me into a geek.

I never read comic books as a kid. I think the first comic book I ever read was Watchmen in 1985. I read Dark Knight Returns after Tim Burton's Batman movie came out. I didn't start reading comics until Joel Silver asked me to work on the Wonder Woman movie in 1999.  Even then, it was all "just research." It was more fun than reading Dickens (mostly), but I never considered it a pursuit in and of itself.

My son has changed all of that.

He loves superheroes. He can't get enough of them. When he wakes up, his first thought is about someone he needs to look up on Wikipedia so that he can draw a picture of them. The Marvel splash-panel I posted last week is only one of dozens of superhero drawings that lie scattered in heaps around the house. His walls, floor and shelves are plastered and stacked high with drawings and figurines. (Strangely, every time I've tried to interest him in an actual poster showing the same superheroes, he's never interested; they never "look right" to him.)

Part of it, I know, is related to his interest in dinosaurs, which recently reached its saturation point. That is, like the dinosaur world, the superhero world comprises another world of tiny pieces of information for his rapidly-expanding mind to categorize. In dinosaurs, you have plant-eaters and predators, in superheroes, you have good guys and bad guys. Among plant-eaters you have long-necks and short-necks, among predators you have therapods and oviraptors; among good guys you have metahumans and "regular guys in costumes," among bad guys you have aliens and robots. And all combinations of the above. (His interest in dinosaurs supplanted his interest in trains, which occupied the first half of his life.)

So a conversation between us will go something like this:

S. Dad, what do you know about Magneto?
D. Magneto can control metal with his mind.
S. Is he a good guy or a bad guy?
D. Magneto is a bad guy.
S. And does he have superpowers or is he a regular guy in a costume?
D. He has superpowers. He can control metal with his mind.
S. Yeah, but he's not super-strong, and he doesn't have, like, heat vision or anything.
D. Yeah, but he can control metal with his mind. That's his super-power.
S. But how did he get like that?
D. He was born like that. He's a mutant. That's the difference between X-Men and The Avengers. The X-Men were all born with their powers, the Avengers are all regular people who had accidents.
S. But what about Wolverine?
D. Wolverine is an X-Man.
S. But he's in the Avengers! And so is Storm!
(one trip to the Marvel Encyclopedia later)
D. Okay, but Wolverine and Storm were in the X-Men first.
S. And is Elektra a good guy or a bad guy?
D. Elektra is kind of like Catwoman. Sometimes she's a good guy and sometimes she's a bad guy -- it kind of depends on where you happen to be standing at the moment.

And so on.

(Of the many differences between DC and Marvel, one of the most striking, from an "adult trying to explain comic book heroes to a child who can't read yet" point-of-view anyway, is that the lines of good and bad are drawn much more clearly in the DC universe; in Marvel, characters are zipping back and forth over the line all the time. How do I explain that the Punisher, who slaughters people with guns, is a good guy, while Batman, who despises guns and never kills anyone, is also a good guy? Or for that matter, how do I explain that the Hulk is a good guy, when no one, not even the Hulk, thinks he's a good guy? And how do I explain how the media in Spider-Man's world shapes the public's perception of him, making a good guy look bad?)

Anyway, long story short, there's this show, Justice League, that a year or so ago just hit my son like a truck.

I can't explain it. He liked the Bruce Timm Batman show, but it was always a little too scary for him. He liked the Bruce Timm Superman show, but the plots were a little too complex for him (typical conversation: Sam: Who's that? Dad: That's Lex Luthor. Sam: Is he the bad guy? Dad: He's the bad guy. Sam: Then why isn't Superman fighting him?). But Justice League hit him just right. Something about the family dynamics of the group, Superman and Batman and Flash and Green Lantern and Wonder Woman and Martian Manhunter and Hawkgirl all in the same show, bouncing off each other and having their own adventures, somehow that clicked in his brain in a way that the individual heroes' shows did not.  The complications, which I would have thought would have made the show more difficult to follow, instead gave him more to feast on.

Now then: none of this means that I've been watching all these shows with him.  Normally, these shows exist as something for Sam to watch while mom and dad get to spend 23 minutes having a conversation or eating dinner.  But one night a few weeks ago, I called my wife to dinner and she didn't come.  Ten minutes later she wandered up from the TV room as though in a daze and said "I'm sorry, I got caught up in Justice League."  And I made a sound like Scooby-Doo does when he's confused, and when after everyone went to bed I stayed up to see what the hell was so interesting about this episode of Justice League.

Check this out: the episode (it's a two-parter) is called "A Better World."

The show begins like this: Lex Luthor has somehow become president and is, apparently, about to destroy the world.  Superman busts through White House security and confronts him in the Oval Office.  Lex sneers at him and says "Go ahead, arrest me, put me in jail, I'll just get out again, I always do, you'll never be rid of me, you know that," and Superman sighs and says "Yeah, you're right," and kills him.  Just kills him.  Just turns on his heat vision and zaps him, right there in the Oval Office.  And Luthor falls over in a heap.  Because Superman could totally do that, you know.  Who would stop him?  No one can stop him.  Why didn't he do it a long time ago?

And Superman just stands there over Luthor's body.  There's no triumph or release, just grim silence.  And Wonder Woman comes in and sees the dead body and says "...Oh. (beat) Well, I guess it had to happen at some point."  And the crisis is over, poof, all the world's problems are solved.

Fade out.  Roll titles.

Cut to: two years later, and the Justice League has all new uniforms, a new name (The Justice Lords) and they never leave the Watchtower (that's their spaceship), because they never have to, because there is no crime.  There is no crime because, as we come to find out, the Justice League has lobotomized all the criminals.  We visit Arkham Asylum and find Joker and Poison Ivy and Two-Face and everyone else cheerful, model prisoners, milling around the grounds like pleasant, happy zombies.  Gotham City is so clean and bright it looks like Metropolis.  There's an incredible scene where Justice Lord Superman is battling Doomsday (whom, aficianados will know, once killed Superman in the comics) and, just as Doomsday is about to go into his "MWAH HA HA" victory laugh, Justice Lord Superman zaps him in the forehead and we watch his brains melt down the sides of his face and Doomsday gets a queer, disconnected, disappointed look in his eyes as he slumps to the ground, still alive but no longer dangerous; somehow, it never occurred to him that Superman possessed the power to lobotomize him.

With no crime to fight, Justice Lord Batman has turned to science and has made an important discovery: he's stumbled across a parallel dimension, where the normal, regular old Justice League with their colorful costumes and bickering ways are still wasting their time, struggling through a world filled with supervillains.  The Justice Lords take pity on the poor old alternate-dimension Justice League (who we realize, in time, are our dimension's Justice League; that is, the whole first part of the show is taking place in an alternate dimension and the protagonists don't enter until the beginning of Act II) and, in a gesture of kindness, kidnap them and take them prisoner so that they can clean up the other dimension too.  And so Act III has the Justice League taking on the Justice Lords, which, you can imagine, is difficult because they are, in fact, the exact same people, only a teeny bit more ruthless.  And on the one hand, you don't like the Justice Lords because of that ruthlessness, and on the other hand, it's like -- well, how come the Justice League took this long to get their act together?  And the tension is unbearable because, as the title suggests, the Justice Lords have truly made their world better, and the Justice League is actually fighting to make it more chaotic and dangerous.

Bizarre enough?  It gets better.  To solve the problem of the Justice Lord Superman, whom no one can subdue, the Justice League must turn to Lex Luthor, who is still alive in this world, and who has the scientific knowledge to build a super-power-sapping device ("device" being the operative word here).  Luthor will zap the Justice Lord Superman so that the good-old Justice League can take back control of our world (or, rather, relinquish control of our world).  In exchange for his super-power-sapping device, the Justice League grants Lex a full pardon for all his past crimes and makes him a free man.

In the epilogue, we see a sobered, grateful Lex at a press conference, vowing to give up crime forever and -- you knew it had to come -- announcing his bid for the presidency.  And the cycle begins again.

And I'm sitting in front of the TV with my mouth hanging open.  This is a far cry from Superfriends.  In the span of a 45-minute superhero cartoon, Bruce Timm and company have just told me more about society, civilization and justice than I ever learned in a season of Law and Order.  Sure, Superman could just kill Lex.  Of course he could.  Why doesn't he?  That would make everything better.  All it takes is the will to do so.  And that goes for all the Justice League.  Why bother negotiating with murderous thugs?  Why not just kill them?  They obviously have the power to do so.  Why put up with giggling psychopaths who have nothing to contribute to society?  Why not just kill them?  And then, dumb as it sounds, it hit me: that's why they call it Superman's "Never Ending Struggle for Truth and Justice."  The whole point of the Justice League (and their real-world counteparts) is not to rid the world of crime, but to be vigilant in the fight against it.  And then I was reminded about something regarding God as well.  The DC superheroes were always modelled after the Gods, were they not?  Well here's the answer to the great question, Why do the Gods allow evil to exist?

Okay, enough for now.  I've barely scratched the surface of my thoughts about this show.  There's a three-part episode where, get this, the Justice League goes back in time to World War II, in order to...restore Adolf Hitler to power.

Suffice to say, it's no longer Sam saying "Hey, let's watch Justice League!"  Instead, it's him saying "Can I watch Scooby-Doo?"  And I'm saying "No, c'mon, let's watch Justice League!"  Now I know who all the characters are and what their backstories are (Did you know Hawkgirl was a detective on her home planet?) and what's more, I care about them in ways I never have before.  And I will get into the reasons for that in Part II.

I leave you for the moment with what is probably my favorite moment in the series, and emblematic of its genius.  There's a robot (AMAZO) who has the ability to imitate the powers of any superhero it sees.  If it sees the Flash, it can run at the speed of light, if it sees Green Lantern, it can fashion a magic power ring, etc.  It sees Superman, and acquires all his powers, and starts smashing stuff up.  Batman, who has no powers to acquire, is the only one capable of fighting it.  Thinking fast, he takes a lump of Kryptonite out of his pocket and lobs it at the robot, who collapses like a ragdoll and falls into the river (Batman reasoning that if AMAZO has acquired Superman's strengths, he might also have acquired his weaknesses). 

And Wonder Woman comes out from under a piece of rubble and says "So, what, you just always carry around a piece of Kryptonite with you?"  And Batman scowls and mutters "Call it insurance," and dashes off into the night. 

Because he's seen the "Better World" episode, probably.