by Scott Tipton
October 26, 2005
WHO’S WHO IN THE JLU, PART DEUX: EVEN MORE OF THE LEGION OF DOOM
Previously, in Comics 101: We’ve been taking a look at the membership of JUSTICE LEAGUE UNLIMITED’s “Big Bad” for the current season, Gorilla Grodd’s Legion of Doom. Clearly, based on the number of characters already discussed, Grodd’s membership drive is in full effect. Let us continue:
Killer Frost: A fairly standard “ice” villain, Killer Frost made her first appearance in FIRESTORM back in 1978, and has appeared sporadically ever since both in Firestorm’s various series and in books like JUSTICE LEAGUE OF AMERICA, CRISIS ON INFINITE EARTHS and SUICIDE SQUAD.
The character originally had a kind of high-class debutante look that I always thought was cool and unusual, and this is one case where I think the JLU team kind of missed the boat by making their version of the character a more routine supervillain babe type.
Lex Luthor: probably DC’s second most famous bad guy after the Joker, Luthor has been around for decades, dating all the way back to 1940, when a red-haired Luthor faced off against Superman in a battle of wits and accomplishment. Over the Years, Luthor has lost the hair and undergone many other changes as well, going from a plainclothes mad-inventor type to an armored, superpowered foe to a Kingpin-style corporate bad guy.
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The folks at Warner Brothers Animation have put their Luthor through similar paces, starting him off as the billionaire mogul in the SUPERMAN animated series, then reducing him to the criminal life in the first JUSTICE LEAGUE series (at times sporting both the plainclothes look and the familiar green armor from the early ‘80s), followed by a return to supposed respectability last season on JLU as a Presidential candidate. His season-ending team-up with Brainiac seems to have had some lasting effects, as The current season sees Luthor having to constantly contend with the voice of Brainiac in his mind, providing advice and counsel whether he wants it or not (in what I assume is an intended nod to the John Crichton/Scorpius relationship on the much-missed series FARSCAPE).
Major Disaster: This guy started out as a pretty obscure GREEN LANTERN villain, who at first used high-tech devices to create natural disasters around the word that he intended to profit from, then later gained the ability to generate these disasters (like earthquakes, volcanos, tsunamis, etc.) at will.
He was mostly played for yuks in his frequent appearances in the Giffen/DeMatteis JLI series, first as the leader of the bumbling Injustice League, and later in the short-lived Justice League Antarctica (a team established by JLI administrator Maxwell Lord under the corporate philosophy of promoting someone to the position where they can do the least damage). Most recently, Major Disaster has worked on the side of the angels, as a member of the “black ops” shadow JLA team, Justice League Elite.
Metallo: Metallo always had the catchiest cover blurb whenever he’d appear on Superman comics in the 1970s: “the man with the Kryptonite heart!” There have been several versions of Metallo over the years, but the central idea is always the same: a human brain transplanted into a robotic body, with a hunk of Kryptonite in the chest cavity serving as a power source. That always makes for a great visual, by the way, the robotic Metallo with his chest-plate wide open, blasting green death at a reeling Superman. The initial version premiered in 1959, as John Corben, a journalist and thief, who found himself unwillingly transformed into Metallo after a near-fatal accident, and wound up dead after mistakenly using a dummy Kryptonite prop to power himself. Corben’s brother Roger showed up in 1977 as the new Metallo, having voluntarily undergone the same horrifying brain-transplantation procedure in order to carry out revenge for the murder of his brother.
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When Superman received his post-CRISIS revision, Metallo was slightly overhauled, as small-time con-man John Corben, who similarly met with a gruesome car crash and found himself the subject of an unwilling brain transplant. While the concept was mostly the same the visuals were much different: while the old Metallo had sported a charmingly quaint green metal skin with an orange suit, the new Metallo was very clearly inspired (almost criminally so) by Stan Winston’s design for the exoskeleton from THE TERMINATOR, right down to the dangling flaps of torn skin. In more recent years, Metallo has taken on a more Japanese-mecha-inspired look, as the character has gained the ability to morph his body into any mechanical shape he can imagine.
The animated Metallo was one of the best translations of a Superman badguy to the animated series, thanks both to Malcolm McDowell’s chilling yet still human portrayal of John Corben and the excellent Stan Berkowitz-penned script of “The Way of All Flesh,” Metallo’s debut episode, which very keenly highlighted all that Corben had lost with his transformation to Metallo, a transformation made all the more horrifying by the fact that it had all been engineered by Luthor.
Parasite: Another of Superman’s rogues to be introduced relatively later in the character’s history, the Parasite, who debuted in 1966, has perhaps the best yet dumbest origin of any comic-book villain of the period. Get this: Maxwell Jensen is working as a custodian at a scientific research plant, and comes up with the genius notion that perhaps the company’s payroll is being hidden in one of the plant’s storage containers. So he cracks it open, and instead of neat stacks of tens and twenties, he’s rewarded with weird alien energies from waste materials brought back from space by Superman. The exposure to the materials transforms Jensen into the purple-skinned creature known as the Parasite.
With the merest touch of another person’s skin, the Parasite could absorb that person’s physical and mental attributes, and prolonged exposure would kill.
The character was reconceived post-CRISIS as janitor Rudy Jones, but the basic concept remained the same. The animated series did a great job bringing him to life, making him one of the few villains that really seemed like a threat to Superman, especially since whenever he possessed Superman’s powers, he also possessed his memories, including his secret identity.
The Puzzler: Even among Superman’s villains of the ‘40s and ‘50s, who tended to be little more than portly white guys in business suits (e.g., Luthor, Toyman, the Prankster), the Puzzler was seriously third-rate.
With a strictly “puzzles and games” gimmick, he wasn’t much more than a Riddler knockoff, and with his scraggly Van Dyke and rumpled suit, he wasn’t exactly striking fear into the hearts of the public, either. Although he did take an ugly turn once when he beat the poker champion to death – with a poker…
Queen Bee: There have been a couple different Queen Bee characters over the years, but the one they seem to be cueing in JLU is the original, the alien insectoid babe from Silver Age issues of JUSTICE LEAGUE OF AMERICA.
First seen in JLA #23, way back in 1963, the alien Queen Zazzala would periodically show up with an army of drones and attempt to conquer the Earth, only to be repeatedly stopped by the Justice League. The original was killed off a few years back, with her sister later taking her place.
Rampage: Originally scientist Kitty Faulkner, the good doctor was working on a new pollution-free energy source when a bitter colleague shut off the systems safety protocols, exposing Faulkner to the energy and transforming her into the mindless orange-skinned, super-strong amazon known as Rampage.
Later, an inhibitor collar was devised to allow Faulkner to control her powers, and from time to time she would step away from her duties at STAR Labs for a little superheroics as Rampage, now fully in control of her faculties.
The Shark: The Shark is a Silver-Age GREEN LANTERN villain who was, well, really a shark. At least once upon a time he was, before radiation from an undersea atomic pile transformed a normal tiger shark into a humanoid shark-man with vast mental powers.
The Shark had fought everyone from Superman to the JLA, and even managed to conquer Atlantis’ sister kingdom Poseidonis until Aquaman used his telepathic powers to de-evolve him. The shark has recently made a rather grisly return in the pages of Geoff Johns’ current GREEN LANTERN series.
Silver Banshee: One of the new villains created in Superman’s post-CRISIS period, the Silver Banshee is the living manifestation of a centuries-old Irish curse, with the ghostly figure possessing superhuman speed and strength, a degree of mystical invulnerability, and a siren wail that can kill any within earshot.
She never really caught on to any great acclaim in the comics, making her appearance on JLU something of a surprise; another example of an unusual design most likely garnering the character entry into the Legion of Doom.
Sinestro: Green Lantern’s most well-known adversary, Sinestro of Korugar was once an honored member of the Green Lantern Corps (even having trained a rookie Hal Jordan in the use of the power ring), before he used his power to set himself up as absolute ruler of his planet.
Outraged, his little blue giant-headed bosses the Guardians abolished him to the anti-matter universe of Qward, where the evil Qwardians created a yellow power ring for him and sent him back to the positive universe to seek revenge on the Guardians and the Corps. He’s been a constant thorn in Green Lantern’s side ever since, with even a couple of deaths being unable to keep him down for long.
Sonar: Somewhat less of a formidable threat to Green Lantern was Sonar, a.k.a. Bito Wladon, the foppish monarch of the tiny nation of Modora, who used his mastery of sound technology, including his imposing “tuning-fork gun,” to make a name for both himself and his homeland.
Probably his best appearance was in Gerard Jones and Ty Templeton’s 1992 ELONGATED MAN miniseries. There’s currently somebody else running around the DC Universe calling himself “Sonar,” but without the tuning-fork gun and the epaulets, it’s just not the same…
Star Sapphire: The Guardians of the Universe’s immortal female counterparts, the Zamarons, created their own champion, a warrior queen who would serve the Zamarons’ philosophy, called the Star Sapphire.
Unfortunately for Hal Jordan, his girlfriend Carol Ferris just happened to be the Zamarons’ choice, and she would often find herself transformed by the sapphire gem and hypnotized into battling Green Lantern at the Zamarons’ request. Star Sapphire has shown up a lot on JUSTICE LEAGUE, but any details of her backstory have been short in coming.
The Thinker: The Thinker was a member of the 1940s Injustice Society, an ex-lawyer named Clifford DeVoe who turned to crime after realizing that the reason most criminals failed was a lack of brains, brains he would himself attempt to provide.
Using an array of intelligence-increasing devices, most notably his “Thinking Cap,” the Thinker would be a recurring foe of the Justice Society, and the original Flash Jay Garrick, for decades, before finally dying of cancer. Never one to let even a mediocre name and gimmick go to waste, DC has followed him with a series of new Thinkers using his name and technology, most recently an entirely digital one that even boasted Cliff DeVoe’s brain engrams and personality.
Toyman: Another of Superman’s “fat old guy” villains of the ‘40s, the Toyman was little more than a crooked toymaker who would use explosive, dangerous or otherwise hostile playthings to commit various thefts and robberies in Metropolis. Not a whole lot to it.
DC tried to renovate the character with a more angular, youthful design in the early ‘70s (later seen on CHALLENGE OF THE SUPERFRIENDS, as a matter of fact). More recently, the SUPERMAN: THE ANIMATED SERIES producers really got a silk purse from a sow’s ear with this one, as their rethinking of Toyman as a creepy obsessive midget stalker with a porcelain doll’s head was downright chilling, with actor Bud Cort giving a really disturbing performance.
Volcana: Volcana was one of the few supervillains created entirely by the SUPERMAN: THE ANIMATED SERIES team, a flamethrowing hottie voiced by Peri Gilpin, best known as Roz on NBC’s FRASIER.
As she only had a single featured appearance on SUPERMAN, I was surprised to see her again on JUSTICE LEAGUE teaming up with the Batman villain Firefly, and now she’s resurfaced once again, hanging out in the Hall of Doom.
Weather Wizard: One of the longtime members of Flash’s famous Rogues’ Gallery, the Weather Wizard was small-time crook Mark Mardon until taking advantage of his dead brother’s life’s work: the Weather Wand, a device that allows the wielder to control and generate all manner of meterological conditions, from rain to wind to lightning to snow.
The character debuted in the DC animated universe on SUPERMAN: THE ANIMATED SERIES, in the Flash team-up episode “Speed Demons,” in which the Weather Wizard traded in his domino mask and disco collar for cool green goggles and a Nehru jacket.
So there you go. The Legion of Doom, Model Year 2005. However, don’t be too surprised to see even more members show up in upcoming episodes, if word through the grapevine is any indication. It’s gonna be huge…
Scott Tipton thinks it’s a real shame that JLU producers weren’t allowed to use any Batman villains in the Legion of Doom. That place is crying out for baddies like Clayface, the Scarecrow, Harley Quinn, Poison Ivy and Roxy Rocket. If you’ve got questions about the Legion of Doom or comics in general, send ‘em here.
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