“Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?”
The original “Justice League” series ended with the original five superheroes battling the Thanagarian Hawk warriors, who decided to conquer Earth. After barely surviving the war, the Justice League begins building an army. They’re an army of superheroes and avengers from Earth that they now have housed in their expanded watchtower. “Justice League Unlimited” is the direct sequel to Bruce Timm’s wonderful “Justice League.” After Cartoon Network cancelled the series, it was mercifully revived shortly with a wider array of characters. This time around the Justice League have become somewhat sentient, now with the original five forming a council, and recruiting some of the best superheroes on Earth.
Acting as an avatar for the audience, we meet masked vigilante Green Arrow who is warped in to the Watchtower for recruiting. He has no powers, and doesn’t deem himself worthy of being on a team with super powered aliens and supermen, but what’s bothering him more is the League’s ability to teleport him without his permission. So begins the virtual overarching storyline for the entire series, in where the League suddenly meets an enemy that deem them much too powerful for their own good. Green Arrow poses as the conscience of the group for a majority of the series, second guessing the watchtower, the powers of the council and how they tend to overstep their bounds quite often. True, they tell everyone they’re just doing what they can to protect Earth, but Green Arrow is terrified they’ll eventually become Big Brother.
The arc is set in to play after an attack by all consuming nanobots which force the watchtower to trigger a laser from their weaponry to defeat the threat. This disturbs the US government, prompting them to enact their own plan to take down the League a notch. Much of the menace and adult storylines are still in play with the second leg of Bruce Timm’s iteration of the Justice League. While there are many heroes introduced from second tiers like Supergirl and Black Canary right down to third tier heroes like Captain Atom and Wildcat, the series focuses on some very entertaining stand alone episodes that also spotlight characters way overdue for fan love. We get to meet Booster Gold, Hawk and Dove, Captain Atom, Speedy, and dynamic vigilantes like The Question, and Huntress.
While half of the series provide stand alones, they are still extremely worth watching. Some of the best episodes include Shazam making an appearance and finding himself torn between his childhood hero Superman and his duty to Earth when Superman suspects Lex Luthor of foul play. There’s also the episode involving an illegal fighting circuit involving female heroes that is much more sinister than meets the eye. The animation never suffers and neither does the narrative, as Timm resolves a lot of storylines from past series’ like “Batman Beyond” while entrenching audiences in the very suspenseful arc involving the Government and their Top Secret plans for the group involving the Cadmus Project. You’d assume with a large list of new characters taking up the screen the show would fail, but the show ends up being as great as ever. It’s arguably better than the first series, even.
The Blu-Ray features audio commentary for the episodes “This Little Piggy,” and “The Return.” “And Justice for All” is a segment featuring the creative crew for the series explaining how they revamped the concept and reworked the plot for the series. “Cadmus Exposed” discusses the enemy for the series, and how they approached them creatively. Finally “Justice League Chronicles” explores various favorite moments from the final episodes of the series.