Justice League Unlimited

We watched the Justice League Unlimited episode Ultimatum tonight. I thought it was another great episode for this season. I love all of the little "nods" in this episode - to the old Superfriends cartoon as well as to the DC Universe continuity. I'm also loving the on-going conspiracy subplot that is going on through this season, but more of that in the SPOILER section:

Highlight below to read the SPOILERS:


First of all, I was highly amused at the way that the Ultimen map to various Superfriends. Apache Chief to Longshadow, Black Vulcan to Juice, Samurai to Wind Dragon, and of course (my favorite nod) the Wonder Twins. I was also highly amused by the fact that the Justice League members for the episode were Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman and Aquaman - making the team as a whole almost the "regular cast" for the Challenge of the Superfriends era of Superfriends (or maybe just after that - I'm getting my seasons mixed up, I think). If either Robin or Casey Kasem had been in the episode, it would have been perfect....

And on top of that, the only supervillains seen in the episode are Giganta and Bizarro - a combo who in the universe of Unlimited don't really make sense together, but they were teammates in the Legion of Doom during the Superfriends days, so that amused me as well. (And they were freeing Grodd - another member of the old LoD...)

As far as the plot goes, I liked the progression of the government conspiracy subplot that we first started seeing in the episode "Fearful Symmetry" earlier this season. Seeing Emil Hamilton crop up again and now finding out that he's working for Amanda Waller was GREAT. I imagine that the Ultimen were the animated universe's initial version of Task Force X - we'll see if they get the bright idea to use captured supervillains later.

And Max Lord as the smarmy PR person for the Ultimen amused me to no end. I love how they work these DC Universe characters into the storylines. J.M. Demattias (co-writer of the Maxwell Lord era Justice League International) had a creative credit at the beginning (along with Dwane McDuffie), so I guess that might explain it a little bit.

All in all a great episode. I hope we get to see more of Longshadow too. I was a fan of Apache Chief as a kid (he can get real big - how cool is that? Okay it sucks, but I was a kid), and Longshadow is a much better character than Apache Chief. That's a lousy rationale, but I liked what I saw in this episode.


That's all for now. Another new episode next week! I think its supposed to be Dark Heart, the other Atom episode for this season - I can't wait!