Reviewed by Rich Depping
Warner Home Video – 575 minutes – 2002 – Unrated – 1080p 1.33:1 – Dolby Digital 5.1 Audio English SDH Three Discs

Justice League S1 BR cover

After having wrapped up several other successful DC superhero cartoon series’ (Batman: TAS, Superman: TAS, Batman Beyond), the crew at Warner Animation decided to take a crack at the whole shebang – The Justice League. Why settle for one superhero when you can have a whole team of classic heros?

THE SERIES

The series begins with a 3 part episode – man finally visits Mars, and something seems to have gone awry underground, when an astronaut pries open a vault. Upon his triumphant return, the astronaut, now a US senator, announces the world is too fragile, and rallies the nations to disarm their nuclear stockpiles at the U.N.-like World Assembly. Resistance is all but nullified when Superman arrives to voice his support for the plan, offering his assistance in disabling the warheads. Meanwhile Batman has been investigating sabotage and explosions at varying WayneCorp  deep space radar installations, with minimal success. After being attacked during one adventure, his old pal Superman shows up to assist, but is overcome with strange visions, and the strange shape-shifting scientists escape after destroying another dish. Superman gives Batman another one of his emergency communicator watches (outputs a audio frequency so high only Clark can hear it) and returns to Metropolis to continue the disarmament. While Supes smashes nukes, Batman tracks down the shapeshifting scientists to an abandoned Star Labs facility on the outskirts of Metropolis. After breaking in he finds humans in strange cocoons, which he attempts to open and rescue the folks inside. He’s caught in the act and attacked by the shapeshifters, who reveal themselves to being aliens. Batman is incapacitated and trapped, but not before he can signal Superman for help. Superman digs Bruce out of the rubble and flys him back to downtown Metropolis for medical attention – right as the aliens begin landing an invasion party. Without their nuclear arsenal, the planet struggles in vain to fend off these attackers. While fighting off a giant monster, Superman is besieged by another vision, which he suddenly realises is no vision. Bolting from the battlefield, the recovered Batman is confused and follows after him.

Finding Superman smashing his way into a restricted military base, Batman questions the noble do-gooder’s sudden turn to crime. Superman then rips the door off a massive vault, revealing the source of his ‘visions’ to be scrambled attempts at telepathic communications from a strange green creature, inhibited by a stasis field. After being liberated he introduces himself – J’onn J’onzz, the last surviving Martian. The creatures now attacking Earth had conquored and enslaved Mars a millenium ago, until J’onn led one last desperate attack on the invaders, placing them in hibernation, but not until after they had felled all the other remaining Martians. As the last of his kind, he had stood watch over the frozen marauders until the astronaut had accidentally released them from their slumber. J’onn came to Earth to warn humanity, but was caught and imprisoned by the US military. Heading outside, the trio find themselves surrounded by the military, refusing to let Superman leave with the extraterrestial. After several pleas from Superman, the troops reveal themselves to be shapeshifters and attack the 3 heros. Just then, they calvary arrives – Green Lantern, Hawkgirl, The Flash, and Wonder Woman swoop in and help rout the (bad) aliens. J’onn explains he reached out to these heros to help ward off the invaders. An alliance is formed, and they attempt to eliminate 3 primary installations of the aliens, with mixed results. As they slowly learn to work together to succeed, as the heros, of course, they save the day in the end.

Afterwards, Batman & Superman realise the need for unity and Bruce reveals a massive orbiting space station, the Justice Tower, financed by some accounting finagling in WayneCorp R&D. Superman proposes to everyone that their allegiance should become a permanent one, so they can protect the whole planet from harm and evil. ‘As what, like Super Friends?’ jokes The Flash. “No, more like, a Justice League” replies a smiling Superman.

The league then sets off for all sorts of adventures, from Superman & J’onn being kidnapped and forced to fight, Roman gladiator style, on the War World planet, to GL, Hawkgirl and The Flash being sucked into an alternate dimension where clean-as-a-whistle comic heros from the 50’s still fight crime (with the strangest line from the whole series [“You’re a credit to your people, son”]), to attempting to correct an altered timeline where Hitler is put on ice and a madman from our time brings the Nazis technology allowing them to easily conquer Europe, before the rest of the world.

The rogue’s gallery of villians they encounter stretches the DC universe, from Grod, the superintelligent ape to classics animated standbys like The Joker, Solomon Grundy and Lex Luthor.

The stories are very well written, and the character interactions, as they learn to rely on each other in battle and day to day life, progresses beautifully. What struck me the most is the realistic feeling given to them – Batman, as the only member without superpowers, quite often pushes himself above and beyond his own limits to contribute, frequently injuring himself in the process. Lex Luthor, after years of exposure to kryptonite in one harebrained scheme or another to kill Superman, has contracted a terminal cancer and must wear a life support vest built for him by Ultrahumanoid. Diana, princess of the Amazons, having lived for milleniums in isolation amongst the other Amazonians, has no idea how to react to the comments or advances of men, other than with violence towards the more aggressive ones. I honestly don’t recall hearing either J’onn or Diana referred to as the Martian Manhunter or Wonder Woman, respectively. It’s these touches that keep these adventures from seeming, well, like a comic book.

VIDEO

I was sort of shocked when the first disc started up, and I was greeted by Warner Animation logo (Bugs chomping down on a carrot in a tux) suddenly dropping to 4:3 – hey, didn’t they broadcast the ‘encore’ versions of each episode in widescreen?? So I did a bit of research… The first season was produced in standard television 4:3 / 1:33 / SD / whatever you want to call it, and cropped to 1:1.78 for the encore showings. So technically, the widescreen versions were the inferior cut (as content was lost) but it still would have been nice to see on here…

The remastered episodes are breathtaking in 1080p – crisp inklines, background elements I never recall seeing before, enviromental textures (brick walls look like brick walls, etc). The best thing I’ve seen in HD to date as of this writing is the wholly unrelated Justice League: New Frontier home release on HD-DVD, and I was very curious how the tv series would stack up visually. There is a severel dearth of high definition (non-CGI) animation, and I was not dissapointed.

Occasionally though, the HD treatment betrays the source material – some scenes the matte painting backgrounds will stand out garishly, people will be seen talking without mouths, computer rendered storefront signs, and other animation shortcuts that aren’t as glaring on standard cable sneak up on you and slowly tap you on the shoulder when you notice them.

AUDIO

Your basic 5.1 cartoon mix. Nothing special. It does seem to be alot more bass-heavy then I recall on TV, but that was 6-plus years ago…

EXTRAS

Sadly, next to nil – there’s commentary on only 3 out of 26 half-hour episodes, and a few segments that had been produced for the original DVD box set released 3 years ago, which are mostly comprised of roundtable discussions with producers and writers and filler clips of the series, all in 480p still. Each disc is only 15-20GB – surely they could either have tossed in some more goodies for this upgraded release, or turned up the bitrate on the episodes to fill out the discs?

Inside Justice League: Creator’s Discussion Panel
Storyboards: The Blueprint for Justice
The Look of the League: Character Design
Justice League: The First Mission (never before seen promo*)
The Blackhawk Theme music video

* this is a version created for Kids WB!, as opposed to a Cartoon Network version alluded to in comments of having been an easter egg in the DVD set – sadly I did not see the CN cut on any of the discs

BOTTOM LINE

If you love animation in any capacity, you owe it to yourself to pick up this set. Gorgeous visuals, superb writing, stellar voice acting, you name it, Justice League has it. And just think – if the bigwigs see this release as a success, they might just see fit to greenlight the original Batman and Superman series’ for this HD makeover treatment as well as the other 4 seasons of Justice League…

SCORES (Out of 5):

The Movie: 4.0

Video: 4.5

Sound: 3.0

Extras: 2.0

Bottom Line: 4.0