Justice Lords
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The Justice Lords are fictional anti-heroes who first appeared in the two-part Justice League episode, "A Better World" (airdate November 1, 2003).
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[edit] Biography
The Justice Lords are an alternate version of the Justice League from a parallel Earth. The roster of the Justice Lords was the same as the original DCAU Justice League — an alternate Batman, Green Lantern, Hawkgirl, Martian Manhunter, Superman, and Wonder Woman — with the exception of The Flash, because their Flash has been killed.
The Justice Lords' world diverged from that of the Justice League when their Flash was killed. Later on, their Lex Luthor was elected President of the United States and established policies that eventually resulted in them "being on the brink of a war that could destroy the whole planet". The alternate Batman, Superman, and Wonder Woman decided to try and stop the impending war, storming the White House and confronting President Luthor. After Luthor goaded the alternate Superman, the enraged Kryptonian targeted Luthor with heat vision and killed him. This decision led to far-reaching consequences, as Superman decided he liked this new brand of "justice". Soon, the other Lords lost faith in humanity's ability to do what was right, as well as their own moral compasses.
The initial act of staging a coup eventually led to the Justice Lords taking over the world's governments and ruling with an iron fist. Using their satellite base for global surveillance, the Justice Lords went on to suppress free speech, outlaw elections, and eliminate all crime by lobotomizing all criminals and supervillains. Although they justified their behavior to the masses as "temporary," and to each other as for the good of the people, it amounted to tyranny.
[edit] A Better World
The Justice Lords learned of their normal Justice League counterparts when the alternate Batman came across the League while experimenting with a dimensional transporter he had built. Bored with their own largely domesticated world, the Lords decided to "assist" their counterparts by taking over the League's world. The Lords tricked the League into coming to the alternate Earth. Upon the League's arrival, they were trapped in a specially designed prison built by the alternate Batman. Later, they were transferred to cells that had been designed to neutralize their powers, except for Hawkgirl, who had suffered serious injuries trying to escape.
When the Lords came to the normal Earth, they soon encountered Doomsday, a giant monstrous fighter. Doomsday had apparently come to challenge Earth's mightiest combatants, and went on a rampage. The Lords, particularly Superman, were more than happy to fight him. Attacking first and asking questions later, the alternate Superman predicted the Lords would win over the normal Earth people with their brand of justice. The fight ended with alternate Superman lobotomizing Doomsday, to the shock of reporter Lois Lane. Lex Luthor was the only one who figured out that the Lords weren't the League.
The League escaped from their prisons when the Flash, in an attempt to play on his status as martyr in the eyes of the Lords, sped up his heartbeat to trick the alternate Batman into thinking it had flatlined. The alternate Batman responded by releasing the Flash, and was subsequently knocked out. The League then escaped. Most of the League went to Arkham Asylum to retrieve Hawkgirl, except for the normal Batman, who went to the Batcave to hijack the dimensional transporter. There, he engaged the alternate Batman in a fight. Although the fight ended abruptly with the alternate Batman playing off their mutual tragedy, the normal Batman was eventually able to convince the alternate Batman that the Lords' methods were wrong.
Back on the normal Earth, Superman approached Lex Luthor, offering him a presidential pardon in exchange for his help against the Lords. The Lords were defeated when the League engaged the Lords again to distract them long enough as Luthor used a power disruptor to strip them of their powers. The depowered Lords were then arrested, but it is not known what happened to them afterwards.
At the end, normal Earth Luthor said that he would go into politics.
[edit] Long-term effects
The Justice Lords' proposed alteration to the Justice League's world had repercussions in the first two seasons of Justice League Unlimited. The events of "A Better World" added fuel to Amanda Waller's crusade against the destructive capabilities of the metahuman population if the government left it unchecked. Project Cadmus, which was originally created to counter Superman if he went rogue (as shown in the Superman: The Animated Series two-part episode "Legacy"), expanded its threat list to the whole Justice League. It also led to some increasing paranoia and distrust within the rank of the Justice League, including Batman and The Question, who feared that what happened to the Justice Lords' world would eventually happen to theirs when Luthor appeared close to winning the presidency as his counterpart did.
Further examples of the League's degeneration in the public eye — such as Superman’s fight with Captain Marvel over what turned out to be a fake emergency, staged by Luthor and Amanda Waller, and Superman’s later near attempt to lobotomize Doomsday in a similar manner to his Lords counterpart — cast the League, and particularly Superman, in an increasingly bad light.
[edit] Divided We Fall
As a major insult, Lex Luthor/Brainiac combined creating duplicate androids of the Lords in the Justice League Unlimited episode Divided We Fall. However, Brainiac added an android duplicate of the Flash in a costume design almost identical to that of comic book villain Zoom, to distract the League from his and Luthor's ultimate goal of universal domination. Not only did the androids fight the League, but they also played on their worst fears at the time: Superman was confronted with the possibility of killing Luthor, Green Lantern and Hawkgirl played off their failed relationship, as well as Hawkgirl's pariah status on both Earth and Thanagar, and Flash confronted his role in the "Big Seven". The fears of Batman, Wonder Woman, and Martian Manhunter were not revealed, though. Only Flash seemed unaffected by his replica's taunts, considering that, while he faced off against the Justice Lords themselves, he never actually had a Lord counterpart to begin with. The androids were destroyed after a short fight.
This growing fear concerning the League somehow turning into their Justice Lord counterparts reached a climax in that episode when the Flash surpassed his maximum speed by tapping into the Speed Force in order to destroy the link between Brainiac and Luthor. This caused the Flash to vanish into the Speed Force, to which the defeated Luthor amusedly remarks: “What do you know? I did kill him.”
Unlike the Justice Lord's Superman, who killed the alternate Luthor, the League’s Superman opted not to kill Luthor, stating that “I’m not the man who killed President Luthor. Right now, I wish to Heaven that I were, but I’m not.”
A few minutes later, the League succeeded in drawing the Flash back from the Speed Force, saving his life, and avoiding the path traveled by the Justice Lords.
Realizing that they had allowed themselves to become distanced from the very people they were trying to protect (and after some convincing from Green Arrow), the League opted to open an embassy on Earth which would serve as a second Watchtower.
[edit] Inspiration and Similarities
As revealed in the DVD commentary on the second part of this episode the Justice Lords started out as a straight Crime Syndicate of America story but as the writers worked on it they decided that having it about a Justice League that went fascist had more story potential as the Crime Syndicate was simply evil.
This resulted in the episode being very similar to a saga that Dan Jurgens wrote during his run on Justice League America titled "Destiny's Hand". In that story, the Atom dreams about the original Justice League becoming the oppressive rulers of the world. Doctor Destiny tries to make this "dream universe" absorb the mainstream reality, and the modern Justice League fights the "evil" old Justice League.
The premise of a Justice League-esque superteam establishing a totalitarian state for what they see as the good of humanity has also been taken up in Marvel Comics' original Squadron Supreme miniseries, its recent re-imagining of that story, in Wildstorm's The Authority, and the Titans Tomorrow storyline from the Teen Titans comic book. The idea of metahumans taking control away from humans, and of Superman leading them to make a better world, is also deveolped in the Elseworlds mini-series Kingdom Come.
The idea of having criminals surgically altered to prevent them from returning to lives of crime seems reminiscent of Superman: Red Son, which in turn was inspired by Doc Savage, who brainwashed criminals after his battles with them. It was also a plot point in the recent DC Comics mini-series Identity Crisis and in Marvel Comics' original Squadron Supreme miniseries.
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