Finally, The Justice League gets together. The Big Seven (Batman, Superman, Wonder Woman, The Flash, Green Lantern, Martian Manhunter, and ... Hawkgirl? (take that, Aquaman) assemble and form one of the most important superhero teams in comic history (the original version, The Justice Society, won't show up until later in our continuity).

I didn't watch this show when it originally came out. After following several seasons of the Batman Animated Series, I stopped watching superhero toons for a while. It was in the early 2000s when a coworker in a comic book store told me JLU was worth the watch that I decided to go back and watch all of the Justice League cartoon. I was not disappointed.

While I've excised some episodes of the list because this is intended to be The Best Of The Best Episodes, I don't remember a single episode of either Justice League of Justice League Unlimited ever being boring. Preachy, maybe, but never at the expense of the audience.

Of course, we'll still be seeding Batman and Superman episodes in, as well as some later DCEU movies because the loose continuity of the DCEU is fun to play with.

​

Episodes 51 - 53: Batman Gotham Knight

A group of kids each claim to have encountered Batman, and tell their stories. Each story has a different animation style, a completely different looking Batman, and an enemy reminiscent of a Batman villain, but not quite the same. Its a visually cool set of episodes, and a fun way to start a new season.


Episode 54: Superman In Brightest Day

Continuity in this series is definitely squidgy, so please excuse the fact that Hal Jordan has appeared as The Green Lantern precisely once, and yet in this "Superman: Animated Series" episode we see the ring passed to Kyle Rainer, who battles with Jordan's nemesis, Sinestro.


Episodes 55 - 57: Wonder Woman

We didn't bother touching on Superman's origin, and Batman's origin has been told ad nauseum in flashbacks. Here we get the origin story for The Big Three of The Justice League. I'm not especially fond of this version of her origin, but she doesn't get as much screen time as the others, and I feel not as many people are familiar with her background.


Episodes 58 & 59: Batman Demon's Quest

Ra's Al Ghul shows up in the Batcave claiming his daughter was kidnapped, shortly after Batman believes Robin was kidnapped in the same manner. A Lazarus Pit and World Domination adventure follows alternating between Batman and Ghul working together, and being at odds.


Episodes 60 - 62: Justice League Secret Origins

An invasion from Mars sparks Superman to enlist Batman, Wonder Woman, Martian Manhunter, Green Lantern, and Hawkgirl's help, thus leading to the founding of  The Justice League. (Finally, it's season three already, geeze.)


Episodes Justice League 63 & 64: In Blackest Night

How are we already on our third Green Lantern? John Stewart (not The Daily Show guy) ends up on trial for destroying a planet, and The Justice League must figure out how to prove his innocence.


Episode 65: Superman Demon Reborn

Ra's Al Ghul shows up in Metropolis and causes enough havoc that Batman has to come into town to save him.


Episode 66: Batman Read My Lips

Scarface and The Venriloquist head up the newest gang in Gotham.


Episodes 67 & 68: Batman Shadow Of The Bat

When Commissioner Gordon is framed for taking bribes, his adopted daughter Barbara goes to Batman for help, and thus we get the origin of original flavor Batgirl.


Episode 69: Batman Mudslide

Clayface is falling apart. Literally. And he believes the cure to his condition lies at Wayne Biomedical Labs. That ... can't be good for anyone.

Episodes 70 & 71: Justice League Injustice For All

Look, if the good guys are going to have an all-star team, it's only fair that poor Lex Luthor gets to create on of his own. 


Episodes 72 & 73: Justice League The Brave And The Bold

Why do all the team ups have to have Batman and/or Superman in them? The Flash teams up with Green Lantern (John Stewart) to take down one of the many ridiculous gorilla-themed hijinks of Grod.


Episodes Justice League 74 & 75: Legends

Flash, Green Lantern, Hawkgirl, and Martian Manhunter close out the season when they're whisked into the world of comic book superheroes (meta, right?) The Justice Guild Of America (based on DC's Justice Society from the Golden Age of comics). This is a fun dventure where, once again neither Supes nor Batsy is the focal point. 

The American superhero mythology begins with Superman. He's inarguably the most important superhero character in pop culture. But he's hella boring. While I only enjoy Batman stories about 50% of the time, I enjoy Superman stories somewhere between 5 -10% of the time. He's fine in a group setting but I don't enjoy his regular adventures, I don't care about his origin story or Kryptonian heritage, and I've never bought the whole Clark Kent secret identity thing. I was born way too late for any of his attributes to connect with me or impress me. Even other companies attempts to make a Superman character interesting (Marvel's The Sentry, The Boys' Homelander, The Mighty's Alpha One, Irredeemable's Plutonian, The Authority's Apollo, etc.) are usually intriguing for about ten to twelve issues before the idea gets stale.

So there won't be a ton of Superman stories in this chronology. Which also makes sense given how short Superman: The Animated Series run was vs. Batman: The Animated series. Also, Batman: The Animated Series spawned The Batman, Batman Beyond, Beware The Batman, and Batman The Brave And The Bold. Superman spawned ... The Justice League.

Still, Supes Kent gets liberally sprinkled into the Justice League series here, while we still include a ton of Batman.

Episode 26: Superman Brave New Metropolis 

Lois Lane gets stuck in an alternate dimension where Supey and Lex Luthor are besties, and she is totally dead. Her death even led Supey to go rogue. She decides she must get back to her own universe and tell the big blue boy scout that she loves him.


Episode 27: Superman Ghost In The Machine

Braniac invades Lex Luthor's computer system, and forces Luthor to build him a new body.


Episode 28 -30: Superman World's Finest

The Joker and Lex Luthor team up to destroy Superman, but, awww buddies, Batman happens to be in town, too, leading to a Super Team Up.


Episode 31 & 32: Batman Robin's Reckoning

How will Robin (original flavor, Dick Grayson) react when a local crime boss turns out to be the person who murdered his parents?


Episode 33: Superman The Late Mr. Kent

When Clark Kent survives a murder attempt (because he's Superman, duh), the original Krytpo-currency hero must figure out how to balance his dual identity.


Episode 34: Batman The Man Who Killed Batman

A very petty criminal seems to accidentally kill Batman and becomes the most popular man in Gotham's underground. This is another Paul Dini masterpiece.


Episodes 35 & 36: Batman Heart Of Steel

Everything goes higgledy-piggledy in Gotham and the Batcave when one of Bruce Wayne's old friends turns up for dinner.


Episode 37: Batman If You're So Smart, Why Aren't You Rich?

The Riddler's capitalist origin story.


Episode 38: Batman Joker's Wild

An insurance fraud scheme designed to ensnare The Joker almost toally works.


Episodes 39 & 40: Superman Apokolips ... Now

Darkseid invades Earth and defeats Superman. Can Orion from New Genesis, and mere common humans hold back the invasion?



Episode 41: Batman The Laughing Fish

Fish tainted by Joker toxin are just part of the clown prince of crime's plans to capture Batman and seed chaos in the city. Just another Tuesday in Gotham.


Episode 42: Batman Harley & Ivy

The relationship between these two pseudo-villains is one of the purest evil things in the DCEU, and this is where it all gets started.


Episode 43: Superman New Kids In Town

It's The Legion Of Superheroes going back in time to stop Braniac, who has gone back in time to kill Superman soon after he lands on Earth.


Episode 44: Batman Zatanna

Paul Dini is as important to this chronology as Bruce Timm (who designed and set up The Animated Serieses and several other shows). He created Harley Quinn, and he wrote this great episode where super magician Zatanna is framed for a crime, and Batman swoops into help her, and the two of them don't even remotely fall in love. There's more sexual tension when he teams up with Superman. It's great.


Episode 45: Batman Almost Got 'Im

The rogues gallery sits around a table discussing all the times they almost beat Batman. Meanwhile, Harley Quinn decides to off Catwoman because she keeps helping Batman. Yeup, it's Paul Dini again.


Episode 46: Superman Knight Time

Batman has disappeared! And it's up to Robin to deal with the entire rogues gallery, luckily Superman stops by and puts on the Batsuit to help Robin figure out what happened to the caped crusader.


Episode 47 - 50: Superman Red Son

We started with Lois trapped in an alternate reality, now we see an entirely different world where baby Supe Supe's space crib lands in Russia, and instead of the US, the entire superhero boom takes place in the Soviet Union. The graphic novel is one of the best things Mark Millar has ever written. The movie adaptation is ok, and at least an intriguing Elseworlds tale.

In the Marvel vs DC debate (which, in my opinion, was won by Image about a decade ago), I'm mostly Team Marvel. I significantly prefer their comics. DC may have done wonders with about half their 20th century Batman movies while Marvel movies were originally trash, the 21st century Marvel movies have left DC's movies in the very dark, very boring dust. I prefer Marvel's politics to DC's. Working in the industry, I prefer the way Marvel has treated their retail customers. But when it comes to animated TV shows, no amount of Spider-Man goodwill can overcome DC's dominance. From Superfriends to the DCEU movies, DC rarely missteps with its cartoons.

That said, I tried to watch Superfriends a few months ago, and was physically in pain watching it, but that's because, unlike everything DC has done since the mid-80s, it had no interest in speaking to adults, it was a cartoon for very young children whose frontal lobes hadn's developed yet. That's a totally viable audience to shoot for.

But while the comics started to go Dark and Adult in the mid-80s, the late 80s saw DC create Batman: The Animated Series. It wasn't ADULT. There was no swearing, no hyperviolence, no sexual tension as plot device. It was a show for kids that was written so well that older teens and adults could enjoy it. From then on, DC's series were always well-targeted for specific demographics, and seemed meticulously planned to make a universe akin to what Marvel has done with their live action movies in the 21st century.

This series will focus on the members of the justice League: Batman and his Batfamily, Superman, Wonder Woman, Green Lantern, Flash, etc. It will have A Lot of Batman because there have been a ton of very good Batman series and animated films in the last forty years. While it is somewhat chronological, it will not start with Bruce Wayne's parents dying. We will not watch Superman's home planet explode while he's tossed in a space crib. I don't think we'll see The Flash get struck by lightning for a while. I assume, because the stories have been told a billion times, and almost Never Well, that people know the basic premises of Bruce Wayne and Clark Kent, and don't need to see every second of the characters' lives and development. This is a Best Of watchthrough. There will be timejumps, as some more modern series, like Young Justice, had massive timejumps between seasons. But it should all be easy to follow, and mostly fun.

Season One is mostly Batman because without The Animated Series, the whole Justice League cartoon history might look more like the old Superfriends cartoon than what we, thankfully, were given.  

Episodes 1 & 2: Batman Year One

Frank Miller's "Year One" reset Batman in the mid-80s, and established Gotham as a gritty city full of mob bosses and petty criminals struggling to take control of a city patrolled by corrupt cops. It sets a cool tone that DC has struggled to overcome ever since it came out. It's still a masterpiece, and introduces crime families who will be extremely important to the series, as well as introducing Catwoman and Jim Gordon.


Episode 3: Batman Nothing To Fear

Batman's origin story is exhausting. I never want to see it again. I stopped watching Gotham during its first episode when I realized they were telling the same story I'd read/watched hundreds of times, but they were going to tell it poorly. So instead of seeing baby Brucey being traumatized outiside of Zorro, or The Lone Ranger, or Space Jam, or Air Bud, or whatever movie he watched with his parents, we're going to watch adult Bruce deal with his trauma courtesy of Scarecrow's fear toxin. It's a way better experience.


Episode 4: Batman Heart Of Ice

The story that made The Animated Series a classic show. This is the story of Doctor Victor Fries, and how a supervillain can be forged by relatable events, as opposed to The Desire To Take Over The World. Oh, he goes way too far, and is clearly a Bad Dude, but you do see where he was coming from.


Episodes 5 & 6: Justice League New Frontier

The Animated Series takes place at some point in the 20th century. When is unclear. There are police blimps, noir-era architecture and weapons. It's a shrug. But we open in the 1950's Silver Age era of comics with the foundation of The Justice League. While this is definitely a different animation style than the rest of the season, it is a gorgeous, bright, Darwyn Cooke story that gives us all the major players for the series meeting for the first time to fight a mysterious crisis much bigger than The Joker or Lex Luthor could pull off. 


Episode 7 & 8: Batman Feet Of Clay

It's  the origin of Clayface, as Bruce Wayne is framed for the murder of Lucius Fox.


Episode 9: Batman Pretty Poison

It's Poison Ivy's turn for the origin treatment, as District Attorney Harvey Dent is poisoned during a dinner date with Pamela Isley and Bruce Wayne.


Episode 10: Batman POV

When a police bust goes awry, three GCPD cops: Bullock, Wilkes, and Montoya are interrogated and each explains how things went bust from their own perspective.


Episode 11: Batman Joker's Favor

It's almost criminal how far we've come already without Mark Hamill's Joker, as he calls in a favor in order to kill Jim Gordon. This episode also features the franchise debut of Harley Quinn.


Episode 12: Batman Appointment In Crime Alley

Leslie Thompson makes her debut, as she's taken prisoner by a mob boss who wants to destroy the landmark where Bruce's parents were killed.


Episode 13: Batman Mad As A Hatter

There are A Ton of Terrible Alice In Wonderland stories in the Batman universe. Sam Keith has only written 1/3rd of them. This origin story for The Mad Hatter is probably the best version, and is an actually compelling story based on the Lewis Carrol classic.


Episode 14: Batman Perchance To Dream

Infamous DC Overlord, Dan Didio pounded his fists on tables and made it clear that Batman should never be married. Yet, here, Bruce Wayne wakes up married to Selina Kyle in a world without a Robin or a Batcave. What has happened?


Episode 15: Batan The Strange Secrets Of Bruce Wayne

Evil psychiatrist, Hugo Strange, tries to use brain technology to learn the secrets of wealthy industrialist, Bruce Wayne!


Episode 16: Batman Dreams In Darkness

Scarecrow escapes Arkham and wants to make the whole city succumb to his fear toxin. Wait, isn't this the plot to Batman Beg....oh! this is the cartoon based on a comic that the movie was based on. Cool!


Episodes 17 - 20: Batman The Long Halloween

An astounding follow-up to "Year One", Gotham's crime families are all hit with a murder spree that sees pretty much every villain in Gotham as a potential suspect. Batman, Catwoman, and Harvey Dent all work together to figure out whodunnit.

Episode 21: Batman Beware The Grey Ghost

Batman teams up with an actor who portrayed a hero that inspired Batman to stop a series of bombings. Featuring Adam West (aka Batman from the 1966 live action series) as The Grey Ghost.


Episode 22: Batman I Am The Night

Bruce just can't get over his parents death, as he and Leslie Thompson visit Crime Alley when he Should be helping Jim Gordon, who ends up getting shot. Will he hang up his cape and pointy ears?


Episodes 23-25: Batman Gotham By Gaslight

An elseworlds tale set in Victorian-era Gotham, featuring all the familiar Bat-characters. This is more violent than the rest of the series, and even has a few naughty words in it. It's still pretty great.