Justice
League
Eclipsed
Original Airdate - 11/8/03
It is
now the end of December and I'm finally getting around to
reviewing Eclipsed. The episode aired two months ago
and at the time I was so underwhelmed by it that I just couldn't
find the motivation to review it. I also didn't know just
what it was that bothered me, which left me with the answer
of "just because…" Hopefully I'll find the words before reaching
the end of this review.
In the
interest of completion, here, at last, is the review of Eclipsed.
The episode
begins with a team of American soldiers in a desert like country
searching in caves for someone they intend to put on trial.
Hindsight being what it is, we know now they should be looking
in spider holes, not caves. What they end up finding is a
large black diamond.
As one
of the soldiers goes to steal it, the group is attacked by
a strange looking old man named Mophir, the guardian of "the
black heart."
A fracas
follows and while Mophir takes out most of the soldiers, he
is eventually overcome. During the battle, though, one of
the soldiers has snatched the diamond. As he touched it, he
sees a vision of snakes jumping out of it and the image of
a powerful snake man.
You get
the impression that an evil spirit has possessed him and you're
right. The soldier opens fire on his fellow soldiers, throws
a grenade and brings down the roof of the cave they are in.
The possessed soldier walks out of the cave humming an odd
little song, leaving his fellow soldiers beneath the rubble.
Bad timing for that scene.
Meanwhile,
the Flash races through the streets of Keystone City to try
and stop Mirror Master, Captain Boomerang and Heat Wave from
robbing a bank. Flash gets his butt handed to him until a
kid on a skateboard throws him a "Lightspeed" energy bar.
After cleaning up the Rogues Gallery, Flash looks at the camera
and makes his pitch for "Lightspeed" energy bars.
The entire
battle was actually just a commercial and turned out to be
one of many way Flash has been cashing in on his fame lately.
This scam has caught the eye of a television show host named
"Glorious" Gordon Godfrey (think Morton Downey Jr. or for
you younger kids, Fox News.) He labels all "superzeroes" poor
role models and blames them for everything from higher divorce
rates to children not eating their vegetables.
The commercial
also bothered Green Lantern who comes down hard on Flash.
When GL asks Flash why he needs the money, Flash takes him
out back and shows him his pimpin' new Flash mobile. It's
a van decked out in red with yellow lightning bolts, sound
system, velvet interior, refrigerator, love seat, hydraulics
and a rear wheel tire cover that says "Wild Thing." In that
instant Flash goes from being the Fastest Man Alive to the
Most Closeted Homosexual Alive.
Back
at one would assume is the main plot, the evil soldier is
asking questions about weapons. He's in search of one that
will cause the most casualties and before long is able to
break into the local nuclear missile silo. I guess there is
no Tom Ridge in the Justice League universe.
The military
is able to stop the evil soldier from reaching the nukes.
Under interrogation, however, he cannot recall any thing he's
done since being in the cave. The evil spirit that once possessed
him has managed to switch bodies to a General. Upon seeing
Gordon Godfrey's TV show about what a menace to society the
Justice League is, he realizes that they are far more powerful
than the nukes.
The General
asks a nearby soldier how to get the attention of the Justice
League and he sarcastically responds, "put on a gaudy costume
and hurt a lot of people."
And so
enters the familiar Eclipso costume that comic book fans know.
Sure enough the Justice League (Wonder Woman, Flash and Green
Lantern) respond to Eclipso's terrorizing of the population.
Flash and GL save the day while Wonder Woman deals with Eclipso
herself. Unfortunately she becomes possessed by the black
diamond snake gods.
Mophir
shows up again to attack Wonder Woman, but he is quickly defeated.
After being locked up for insanity, Flash stops long enough
to listen to his story of a race of snake men who were oppressed
by mankind (not the wrestler.) They snake men were defeated
and in a last ditch effort transferred their spirits into
the black diamond during an eclipse. Any humans that come
into contact with it will be possessed by vengeful spirits
whose goal is to block out the sun, releasing the snake men
from their captivity.
Mophir
is able to convince Flash that Wonder Woman has been possessed
so he races back to the Watchtower. The entire Justice League
is there and mayhem ensues as Eclipso jumps from body to body.
In a really stupid move, Hawkgirl smashes the black diamond
to try and end their fight but instead shatters it into several
fragments.
The fragments
fly through the air and hit all the members of the team except
Flash who is fast enough to dodge them. Now Flash has to fight
an evil Justice League and stop them from trying to put out
the sun.
Upon
second viewing, the episode wasn't as bad as I remember it.
The action scenes are good and an evil Justice League is always
a sure bet plot device. However, the subplot of Flash trying
to be a celebrity and his exchanges with his agent and Gordon
Godfrey were at times amusing but ultimately not as funny
as the writers wanted it to be.
Flash
is the most likely member of the League to try and cash in
on his fame, but that is really something you expect more
from the Marvel universe (a la X-Statix.) DC's heroes
always have an inherent nobility and morality to them. You
rarely see one pull another one aside and say "knock that
crap off."
Gordon
Godfrey bugged me more than he entertained me but I'm adamantly
opposed to that type of real life sensationalist media ("The
hard truth YOU want to hear!"). He eventually got his comeuppance
but it was too little too late for me.
Although
comic fans know that the main villain is named Eclipso, I
don't believe he's ever actually called that. In fact he only
spends about five minutes in the Eclipso costume. Even the
backstory comes off as sub par. If you're going to retool
a villain's origins, make it more interesting.
The plan
the evil League uses to attempt to extinguish the sun is ludicrous
as is the way Flash saves the day. The weak climax followed
by more mediocre comedy in the epilogue must have been what
left the bad taste in my mouth two months ago. Eclipsed
has a lot of faults but isn't unpleasant, just average. Since
most of the second season has been top shelf, it does stand
out like bright red van with yellow lightning bolts.
Derek's
Continuity Corner
Eclipso mostly holds semi-beloved status for being the first
Silver Age series (in House of Mystery) to be about
a villain. Originally tied to solar physicist Dr. Bruce Gordon,
Eclipso wanted nothing less than the destruction of mankind,
while Gordon and his fiancee Mona did everything they could
to stop him in between solar eclipses, which happen with far
greater frequency in the DCU, apparently.
Eclipso
also held his own title in the nineties, revealing him to
be an ancient god of anger, and, as this episode suggests,
able to leap from host body to host body. After a tremendously
uneven summer crossover, all the heroes in the DCU got together
to take Eclipso down, with the Will Payton incarnation of
Starman apparently sacrificing his life in the final, successful,
battle.
The god
of anger reappeared recently in JSA as one of the "princes
of darkness." However, his new host, brother to one of
his victims, apparently prepared himself well with ritual
scarring and tattoos, and can tap into the powers of Eclipso
and his black diamond without actually unleashing the evil.
The sub-villain,
Glorious Gordon Godfrey, is actually an agent of Apokolips,
used from time to time to subvert the public's faith in superheroes.
His most successful bid along those lines resulted in the
mini-series Legends, which sucked but did launch Giffen
and DeMatteis' take on the Justice League (available
on Amazon here as Justice League: A New Beginning
and highly recommended) after Justice League Detroit had pretty
much wiped out fan interest.
Also,
Flash is sure acting a lot like Booster Gold in this episode.
For a while in the early days of Wally West's book Flash did
rent out his services in order to earn food and rent money.
But it was always pro-social stuff, donor organ delivery and
things of that nature. Booster Gold, however, used his celebrity
status as a superhero for product endorsements. As he had
been an athlete in the future (another story), he was used
to that being what you did with your fame. Heroism came second.
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