Justice League Unlimited S01E12 Review: Magnificent Eight

Justice League Unlimited, Season 1, Episode 12: The Once and Future Thing, Part 1 - Weird Western Tales 

The big finale for Justice League Unlimited is one of the few two-parters to grace the series, a stark difference from its predecessor, Justice League, which had two-parters throughout the season. Season finales for cartoons without an overreaching storyline is a bit hard to do, and while Unlimited has been spreading the roots for the Cadmus plotline, it's not quite there yet and will not be realized until we reach the second season. The first season of Justice League ended with a three-parter involving time travel and a big bad villain, Vandal Savage. The second season of Justice League ended with something that was built up over two seasons, the Thanagarian invasion and everything revolving around Hawkgirl. Here, we take a formula similar to the first season finale, where it's a time travel episode that's... honestly a bit filler-y in the grand scheme of things, but still a huge treat to watch.

Last time in Justice League, the impacts of time travel was felt when Vandal Savage's time-travel and informing his past self of future technology transformed history and created a dystopian future ruled by him. Superman also dabbled with time travel, being accidentally sent to a bad future where mankind was wiped out due to Superman being removed from the timeline and thus no one stopped Vandal Savage from causing humanity's extinction with a weapon, but in both cases the League and Superman (respectively) returned history to what it's supposed to be.

In this two-parter, the villain of the week is Chronos, a.k.a. David Clinton, a.k.a. a freaking loser. David Clinton is truly the definition of a loser, being this stringy man who simply just looks pathetic. Henpecked by his verbally-and-physically-abusive wife, a washed-out scientist, he had apparently discovered time travel but was unable to prove it. The show portrays Chronos's loser status and the verbal abusiveness of his wife very well, because he ends up snapping and going back into the past to steal things that are actually matter. This, of course, brings him into conflict with the Justice League when one of those things is Batman's Utility Belt.

Meanwhile, in the present day, we get some more character work to the main cast, something that's overdue for the main cast. Hawkgirl returns to the fold last episode as a permanent member of the team... and she's not being welcomed with open arms by everyone, and one that's particularly harsh on her is Wonder Woman -- though we don't get to see much of this particular bit. The scene lingers most on Batman and Green Lantern in the cafeteria (I cannot believe I just typed this sentence). Batman acts like any dude does when such an awkward setup does, and asks John about how he's going to deal with Hawkgirl coming back. John claims that he's moved on and is very happy with Vixen, something that Batman scoffs at. John, of course, calls Batman out on his crush on Wonder Woman, which Batman tries his best to deny. It's a bit of a hilarious moment for both characters involved, and suddenly they're no longer these larger-than-life godlike beings that they've been built up as because they're the senior members of the league, but act more like school friends or coworkers.

This little character work gets broken up when Chronos attacks, and this causes Batman, Green Lantern and Wonder Woman to charge after Chronos... and end up in the time era of the cowboys! Yeah, we're going full Legends of Tomorrow and going off to visit the more exotic time periods of DC this time around. We've got the World War era heroes before, this time around we're going to be meeting cowboys, a facet of DC history that is a bit hard to tell a story in a superhero setting without resorting to tricky time travel madness.

It's hilarious to see these three absolutely curb-stomp bandits before dressing up as cowboys, and apparently the town of Elkhorn has been taken over by the villainous Tobias Manning, who beat up Chronos and stole one of his futuristic gun. After going through some of the expected cowboy tropes, we're introduced to a smattering of very welcome minor characters. Jonah Hex is obvious to anyone who's been following this blog for any time, having shown up in Legends of Tomorrow, in a full-feature movie of his own and several other material (Batman: Brave and the Bold, for example) outside of comics. But we also have Bat Lash, Sherrif Ohiyesa Smith and El Diablo (no, not the dude from the Suicide Squad movie), cowboys and heroes from a different age, colourful characters with fun designs and voices. They don't get much each, but there's enough. Ohiyesa Smith is the sheriff driven out of town and a sense of justice. Jonah Hex is the cool one with the fucked-up face. Bat Lash is the smooth-talking con-man who gets captured. El Diablo... er... well, three out of four isn't bad.

The episode itself is simple, our heroes needed to take back the time-travel stuff and the space gun from Manning and his cronies, and we get a glorious, glorious fight as Manning brings an army of robots, mechanical dinosaurs and tanks to fight the magnificent seven heroes (and the tagalong Chronos) as they charge into battle.

It's a simple story, with cowboys and shoot-outs and Batman throwing batarangs, and nothing really much to talk about... but at the same time, it's fun. I've never liked or cared much about cowboys, not really, and it's only things like Jonah Hex and Vigilante, making them far more interesting and very fun heroes. Chronos buggers off to a different timeline... the time of Batman Beyond, a show that has long been cancelled and ended by the time this episode aired, showing yet another nod of respect to another closed-off section of DC lore. And to make it relevant (beyond just the sheer coolness factor of Batman meeting Batman and another Batman), future Justice Leaguer Warhawk sees Green Lantern, addressing him as 'Dad'. Oh yeah, this is going to open up a huge, huge bottle of confusion for poor Lantern.

Justice League Roll Call:

• Speaking Roles: Wonder Woman, Hawkgirl, Green Lantern, Batman, Bat Lash, Batman II, Warhawk, Static
• Non-Speaking Roles: Gypsy, Stargirl, Booster Gold, Supergirl, Commander Steel, Elongated Man
• Major Villains: Chronos, Tobias Manning, The Jokerz (Chucko, Dee Dee, Woof, Ghoul)

DC Easter Eggs Corner:

• Chronos, real name David Clinton, was not from the future in the comics, but he was still a time-travelling villain. He was imprisoned for a crime that he failed to execute due to some bad timing, and thus he studied time while in prison and started off his career of crime as a villain that is synchronized with time and using clock-based gimmicks. He fought the Atom, and eventually developed devices that could actually influence the flow of time and allow him to travel through time.
• The Cowboys:
• Jonah Hex is the iconic DC comics cowboy. Running around with a scarred face and a penchant for violence, Hex was a cowboy who was torn between his loyalties to the South during the Civil War and his distaste for keeping slaves. He eventually became an independent bounty hunter, hunting down criminals according to his own code of honour, mostly bandits and whatnot. He's been known to work with time travelers and become one himself.
• "Pow Wow" Smith (who's called that exactly once in the episode), real name Ohiyesa Smith, is a Native American sheriff who is also a skilled detective. He's the lead feature on Western stories in DC for a fair time, but otherwise there's not much to him. He's since became a bit of a generational character, with his law-enforcing descendants in the present day also calling themselves 'Pow Wow Smith' in his honour.
• Bat Lash, a.k.a. Bartholomew Aloysius Lash, is a violence-hating man with a devil-may-care attitude towards the world. A stark contrast to the stern Pow Wow Smith or the badass Jonah Hex, Bat Lash was a gambling ladies' man that, of course, also had a good sense of justice. Despite having a short-lived series after his debut, Bat Lash proved popular enough to have many, many (also short-lived) revivals over the years.
• El Diablo, a.k.a. Lazarus Lane, bank teller who was put into a coma after being robbed by thieves and struck by lightning. After waking up from the coma, he adopted the persona of El Diablo and became a harsh vigilante -- basically a cowboy Zorro. However, it's a bit of a sinister resurrection -- the real Lazarus Lane is actually slumbering in the body while a minor spirit of vengeance takes over his body as the 'El Diablo'. (This El Diablo is not to be confused with Rafael Sandoval or Chato Santana -- the Suicide Squad one -- both of whom are modern-day DC characters who also go by the name El Diablo.)
• Tobias Manning is a cowboy villain, who would later go on to call himself 'Terra Man', in the comics a villain who did originate from the Wild West era, but was abducted by aliens and modified and/or trained to be powerful. He broke free from his alien overlords and returned to Earth only to find that centuries had passed, and became a minor Superman enemy for a time.
• This isn't Jonah Hex's first appearance in the TAS universe, because Ra's Al Ghul once encountered Jonah Hex in the past during the Batman: TAS episode "Showdown". Batman seems to recognize Jonah in this episode, presumably from Ra's telling him that story way back when.
• The Jokerz and the future members of Justice League Unlimited all first debuted in Batman Beyond. Static debuted in Static Shock.
• The subtitle for this episode, 'Weird Western Tales', is a DC comic title where western-styled heroes like Jonah Hex debuted.
• Jonah Hex's line about having an interesting life and being unsurprised by ray-guns is a reference to how in the comics he had often been time-transported to the present day or the future because he's easily the most popular of the cowboy heroes.