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The Not-So-New 52: Justice League — Doom (2012)

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Welcome to The Not-So-New 52, your digital Swampflix comic book (adaptation) newsstand! Starting in 2007, DC Comics and Warner Premiere entered the direct-to-home-video market with animated features, mostly in the form of adaptations of well-received event comics or notable arcs. This Swampflix feature takes its name from the 2011 DC relaunch event “The New 52,” and since there are (roughly) fifty-two of these animated features as of the start of 2024, Boomer is watching them in order from the beginning with weekly reviews of each. So, get out your longboxes and mylar sleeves and get ready for weekly doses of grousing, praise, befuddlement, recommendations, and occasional onomatopoeia as we get animated for over fifteen years of not-so-new comic cartoons. 

A direct sequel to Crisis on Two Earths, Justice League: Doom does not follow up on the apparent membership drive that ended the previous film. It seems that only one new recruit has joined the team since that movie’s finale, but it’s still a continuation, if one knows that this is the case and what to look for. This was another one that I had seen a few times even before beginning this project, not so much out of any particular fondness for it, but because it was the last one that was released before I finished grad school and moved back to Baton Rouge, so it was an easy one to put on in the background and do some unpacking or chores. It’s not as strong a film as Crisis was, but it still has some of the same magic, and it’s pretty good, even if it’s a little thinner than its predecessor. 

The Royal Flush gang, a villainous group that is characterized by their costumes taking inspiration from the highest point cards for the suit of spades, has been engaging in a series of break-ins, and Batman is on the case. He discovers that they have been using a piece of technology that allows them to pass through walls in order to complete their crimes, and when he engages them, the rest of the Justice League gets involved. During this distraction, Flash villain Mirror Master is able to use his ability to hide in reflections to surreptitiously enter the Batcave via the Batmobile’s rear view mirror, where he downloads files from the main computer. Some time later, each member of the League is attacked while they are alone. The man behind the attacks is Vandal Savage, an immortal who has been alive since the dawn of mankind, and he offers each of the League’s individual nemeses the opportunity to finish off their archenemy once and for all. While in his civilian guise, Martian Manhunter is given a drink by an attractive woman who turns out to be his enemy Ma’alefa’ak (another shapeshifting Martian and, depending on the continuity, J’onn’s brother), and the drink turns out to contain a compound that will result in the Manhunter sweating out highly flammable magnesium. Wonder Woman faces off against Cheetah, who manages to land a cut on the Amazon, resulting in an infection that causes her to see everyone around her as Cheetah, so that she will fight until her heart gives out. Superman is lured to the top of the Daily Planet building because a downsized reporter is planning to jump off of the roof, but is in fact a disguised Metallo, who is armed with a gun with a kryptonite bullet. Flash ends up with a bomb drilled into his wrist which will explode if he goes under a certain speed, Green Lantern is lured to an apparent hostage situation that goes south in a way that leaves him feeling unworthy of his powers, and Batman is tricked out of his home by the apparent disterment of his parents’ graves, only to find himself taken off guard by Bane, who knocks him out and stuffs him in his father’s casket (with the late Thomas Wayne’s skeletal remains) and reburies them in Thomas’s grave. 

It’s the darkest hour for the Justice League, but Batman breaks free first by digging himself out of his father’s grave and then finding Green Lantern and showing him that the people who were presumably killed by his failure were animatronics designed to shake his confidence, and along with newest ally Cyborg, they are able to rescue the others from their various traps. Batman reveals that all of these plans were actually his, that they were his failsafes should any of the other members of the League go rogue (or fall under brainwashing or magic compulsion, or any other manner of things that can and do happen in these four color fantasies). The others are not pleased with this revelation, but they still have to work together to face off against Vandal Savage, whose current plan is nothing short of genocidal: induce a solar flare that will ravage half of the planet’s surface and rewind the clock on mankind’s technological level to that of the Industrial Revolution. 

As a movie, this one doesn’t really feel like a sequel to the film that preceded it. While that one began life as a part of the Justice animated series, it had an entirely new voice cast that relied on some of the stunt casting that this series was known for, while this one mostly brings back the voice cast of that show. Kevin Conroy is back as Batman (as it should ever be), Tim Daly returns to voice Superman, Susan Eisenberg again voices Wonder Woman, Carl Lumbly is once again Martian Manhunter, and Michael Rosenbaum also returns to play Flash (albeit a different Flash). The only major casting change is that this film has Nathan Fillion as Green Lantern, as it features the Hal Jordan version of the character rather than the John Stewart version (voiced by Phil LaMarr). This is Fillion’s second time playing the character following his appearance in Emerald Knights. The character designs are a little different, too, and I watched this one several times without ever realizing it was supposed to be connected to Crisis, despite that one being one of my favorites. This time around, the connections were a little more apparent, especially in the musical choices; the opening title theme for this one very clearly incorporates the distinctive notation from the first. You can hear the exact same motif when the title appears here in Crisis and here, but I don’t think I’ve ever watched them close enough together to notice that before. There’s also fun new voice talent in this one, and it falls to me as one of the carriers of the Farscape fandom flame to call special attention to Claudia Black’s performance as Cheetah, which is absolutely delightful. The scene where Wonder Woman sees everyone as Cheetah gives Black the chance to do some neat little work as different variations on the same voice, which I liked a lot. 

Speaking of villains, however, this one falls a little flat in that department. Whereas Crisis had two interesting villains in the form of the nihilistic Owlman and the unhinged Superwoman, this is one of the thinner portrayals of Vandal Savage. Phil Morris’s voice acting is strong, but the characterization is a bit light, especially when you compare him here to his presence as the overall big bad of Young Justice, which admittedly had a lot more time to flesh him out. While both Owlman’s plan to destroy all universes and Vandal’s here to rule by reducing the population to a manageable half are very much schlocky comic book evil plans, the former had a sense of reality to it based on character motivation, while the latter feels broad and out of proportion for the motivation, like taking a bulldozer to a hangnail. Doom hinges on two major axes: the emotional core of the League’s feelings of betrayal due to Batman’s distrust, and the narrative plot point of the doomsday plan. The climax of the first is much more interesting and comes fairly early on, while the evil plot itself—despite being smaller in scale than in the preceding film—feels very cackly, Saturday morning cartoony. 

It’s unfortunate that this one is a bit of a dull note to end our time with Lauren Montgomery, who directed this film and several previous, starting with Superman Doomsday, when she was only twenty-seven years old(!). She was also a storyboard artist for that one, before she directed Wonder Woman, First Flight, Crisis on Two Earths, Apocalypse, and Year One. She was a storyboard artist on virtually all of the others, and she would continue to do this up through Batman: Bad Blood, at which point she became very heavily involved with a series called Voltron: Legendary Defender. These days, it looks like she’s gearing up to direct an as-yet-untitled animated film that is being released by Avatar Studios (she had previously been a storyboard artist on eight episodes of Avatar: The Last Airbender and was a supervising producer on The Legend of Korra in addition to doing some storyboard work for that program), so she’s still working, but this will be her last feature for this franchise. I wish her well! If they ever do another follow-up in this sub-series, I would love to see her return. For now, though, we say goodbye, and choose to remember her work at its best.

-Mark “Boomer” Redmond

The Not-So-New 52: Superman/Batman — Public Enemies (2009)

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Welcome to The Not-So-New 52, your digital Swampflix comic book (adaptation) newsstand! Starting in 2007, DC Comics and Warner Premiere entered the direct-to-home-video market with animated features, mostly in the form of adaptations of well-received event comics or notable arcs. This Swampflix feature takes its name from the 2011 DC relaunch event “The New 52,” and since there are (roughly) fifty-two of these animated features as of the start of 2024, Boomer is watching them in order from the beginning with weekly reviews of each. So, get out your longboxes and mylar sleeves and get ready for weekly doses of grousing, praise, befuddlement, recommendations, and occasional onomatopoeia as we get animated for over fifteen years of not-so-new comic cartoons. 

The creators of Justice League Unlimited had a real stroke of genius in casting CCH Pounder as Amanda Waller in that animated series. Since then, she’s reprised that role five more times: thrice for the Arkham video games, once for an adaptation thereof, and once, here, in Superman/Batman: Public Enemies. She’s not the only returning player, either, as Kevin Conroy returns to once again voice Batman, Tim Daly is back as Superman (having voiced him in the self-titled Superman animated series but not the Justice League shows), and the inimitable Clancy Brown once again gives voice to supervillain Lex Luthor. One could almost mistake this as a continuation of that franchise, given the high amount of character crossover, but there are certain elements that make that impossible (most notably the presence of Power Girl, here voiced by Smallville alum and cult leader Allison Mack, when the equivalent in JLU was a Supergirl clone named Galatea), although no one can stop you if that’s what you want to believe. 

This animated film, which is the first of the movies in this project that was a first time watch for me, loosely follows the plot of the 2003 comic arc of the same name. In the comics, that arc began the end of an ongoing DC comics story, namely the ascendancy of Lex Luthor to the presidency (starting in Action Comics #773 in November 2000) and the resultant fallout. This movie wisely skips over his election and inauguration and skips through a montage of unrest that gives way to order as Luthor enacts his agenda. One facet of said plan was to deputize several superpowered people to act as his national response squad, while other heroes with good reason not to trust him refuse to join up with his enforcers, notably the two named in the movie’s title. They’re still out there doing what they do, of course, simply without the spotlight. This becomes more complicated when astronomers observe an inbound city-sized meteor made of Kryptonite on a collision course with Earth. Lex makes a show of extending an olive branch to Superman, only to use their meeting as a trap to force an altercation between Supes and Metallo, here imagined as a Terminator with a Kryptonite heart. Outmatched, Superman is rescued by Bats and they escape into the sewers, but Luthor uses doctored footage of his meeting with the Man of Steel to make it look like Superman attacked the president, with Lex not only framing him but blaming the inbound meteor’s effects as the cause for Superman’s sudden change in morality and putting out a bounty on the hero, driving him and Batman completely underground, where they must try to figure out a solution to prevent the apocalypse raining down on them should Lex fail. 

With that stacked cast and a fairly decent plot outline, this one had a lot of potential, but unfortunately, it’s ugly as shit. No offense to anyone who worked on this movie; I know that this is a corporate product that required strict adherence to the approved character design (and in this case I do mean design, singular – the current page image for the TV Tropes page for “Heroic Build” is a still from this movie, in which three men have essentially identical bodies to one another, which are also identical to those of every other man on screen), but it looks awful. One thing you could never say about the other movies before this one was that they never looked or felt cheap, but this one more than any of the others I’ve seen, before or after this one in production, looks like such garbage. There appears to be an insistence on maintaining consistent lighting/shadow on certain characters’ faces in order to make their faces dynamic (this is particularly evident on Luthor; I think they’re trying to create the impression of cheekbones, but I can’t be sure), but those light/shade spots remain the same no matter how the angle or lighting changes within the scene. The giant faces, combined with exaggerated musculature on a body that’s not quite proportionate as a result of said exaggeration, makes this look like it took design inspiration from The Super Hero Squad Show – a series aimed at preschoolers based upon a toy line of the same name, wherein Marvel heroes had deformed bodies that were easy to grab with little dexterity and difficult to choke on (think Fisher-Price Little People). It’s not the aesthetic that you really want your audience to think about when you’re trying to get adults on board with your little direct-to-video for-a-more-mature-audience mandate. In the film’s defense, this is pretty similar to the comic from which it takes inspiration, but this is proof positive that what works on the page won’t necessarily translate to the screen. 

If you can get past that (or just get used to it), there’s a decent enough story here, although the throughline with Power Girl transition from working for Lex’s government squad to working with Superman and Batman is the weakest element. Mack was riding high at the time of release; Smallville was still on the air, and Chloe Sullivan was the show’s breakout character (at least until Justin Hartley’s Green Arrow came along), and the comic had enough time to devote to showing her questioning her allegiances that it didn’t feel rushed. Here, the decision to keep this unsure loyalty as an element of the narrative while sprinting towards getting her on the side of our heroes makes the whole thing feel rushed and cheap, just like the rest of the plot. Amanda Waller is a welcome presence, but she’s given almost nothing to do, other than to try and convince Luthor to come up with a backup plan in case his plan to detonate the Kryptonite meteor with nukes fails (it does). The most interesting thing about his movie ends up being the relationship between its two leads, who genuinely feel like friends—very different people, obviously, but with a casual easiness between them that speaks to years of caring about each other deep down—in a way that’s usually absent from most adaptations, and most comics, if we’re being honest. Their banter, which at times is so familiar that it borders on loving, is rather fun, and will be the only positive thing that I remember about this movie when all of the chaff of its failures is burned away. 

The “Lex loses his mind because he’s juicing himself with Kryptonite steroids” angle is goofy, but once he’s ‘roided out and in that green and purple mech suit, he’s still pretty scary. I will say that this movie has been largely forgotten (as have a lot of these earlier animated flicks from Warner Premiere), but unlike the others we’ve discussed, its tangential connection to real world politics means that this one does still generate some interest and friction in certain corners of the internet. Lex’s ascension to the U.S presidency predated the 2016 election by over a decade and a half, but there are people online who can’t help but bring up the “evil businessman becomes President” connection even when the comparison is vapid and facile. It’s not that there’s not a long history of Luthor/Trump correlations that goes back to even before I was born; Luthor’s reimagination as a businessman instead of his traditional “mad scientist” persona came about in 1986 as a response to real life anxiety about corporate power, with Trump as the model. 

For most of these movies, edits of the pages relating to them on the aforementioned TV Tropes are all but ancient; for instance, the “Your Mileage May Vary” tab for First Flight was last edited in May of 2022 for grammar reasons. In comparison, the same tab on the article for this film was last edited eleven days ago as of this writing, which is bananas for a fourteen-year-old movie with such little public awareness, but there are still ongoing editing wars about whether or not this movie is “Harsher in Hindsight” because a supervillain did become our president for a while. Comparing Trump to this Luthor is a mistake, though, as this one only descends into madness after introducing a period of relative pax Romana, improving the economy and, in the words of one of the characters, he “put that formidable intellect to work doing such a good job [that] no one will have a choice but to respect him.” Although that statement is immediately followed up with “It’s all about ego now,” which is true about the former president, one would be hard pressed to identify him with the first statement. The comparison here does a disservice to Lex Luthor and paints a real person who struggles to rise to the level of “competence” as some kind of talented mogul. 

Compare this to the presentation of Luthor in the series Young Justice, where the Lex of the first two seasons (which aired in 2010 and 2012) is a formidable enemy because he’s always several steps ahead of the protagonists, to seasons three and four (which aired 2019-2022), where he becomes much less of a threat at the same time that he starts paraphrasing and/or quoting Trump, including soundbites about “fake news” and “good people on both sides” and tweeting “SAD!” I didn’t like that plot development there at all, not because I have any sympathy for the orange bastard, but because it turned a well-developed character into an SNL parody. For what it’s worth, the currently running Harley Quinn series’ choice to play Lex as more of a parody of Elon Musk—a businessman whose “inventions” are just ideas he purchased from others and whose self-proclaimed supergenius is a facade that only fools morons—is a much funnier bit. That having been said, the Lex of Public Enemies does turn into a madman at the end, more interested in allowing the extinction level event to occur so that he can rule over the ashes than preventing the meteor from hitting the Earth, which is something that I can see 45 doing, so there’s that. 

That’s enough discourse for one day. This one has a pretty good narrative, but if you’re following these movies for frenetic action and dynamic animation, you can skip it. You’ll spare yourself some trouble. 

-Mark “Boomer” Redmond