Welcome to Adventure(s) Time's 137th installment, a look at animated heroes of yesteryear. This week, the new millennium's Justice League and Super Friends, the cheesy show from the past it just couldn't escape. And if you have any suggestions for the future, let me hear them. Just contact me on Twitter.

"Ultimatum" is the ninth episode of Justice League Unlimited's first season, originally airing on December 4, 2004. The plot comes from producer Dwayne McDuffie, the script is from longtime comics and animation writer J.M. DeMatteis, and the director is Joaquim Dos Santos. The episode depicts the surprise appearance of a rival superhero team, one that seems oddly familiar.

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When magma creatures from the depths of the Earth attack an offshore oil rig, the Justice League are aided by the camera-friendly heroes known as the Ultimen. Immediately, the team suspects something is off about these Ultimen... something more sinister than their cornball dialogue.

Hardcore fans know the young heroes are parodies (or homages, if we're being generous) of several superheroes created specifically for the 1970s Super Friends animated seriesSuper Friends holds a strange place in fandom's heart. No one denies it was 100 percent cheese, but it was a generation's introduction to DC's superheroes, if not the concept of superheroes in general.

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And while the animation quality of any given episode is suspect, industry legends like Alex Toth and Geof Darrow did design work for the show. The voice casting is also legendary, including the return of Adam West as the voice of Batman!

Still, the aesthetic of Super Friends was glaringly opposed to what Bruce Timm and his team were creating with the DC Animated Universe. Geof Darrow has described the heavy hand of censors on Super Friends, restricting anything deemed "too menacing or too scary or too warlike." Justice League Unlimited, while still appropriate for older kids, was a very different world.

The Ultimen's line-up includes Long Shadow (an updated version of the size-expanding Apache Chief), Wind Dragon (an air manipulator inspired by Samurai), Juice (a hero with electricity powers like Black Vulcan, who was himself inspired by Black Lightning), and the twins Downpour and Shifter (nods to Zan and Jayna, the shape-shifting Wonder Twins). Their headquarters is even an homage to the Super Friends' Hall of Justice.

The team works under the auspices of their manager, Maxwell Lord, who scores the team lucrative licensing and endorsement deals. C0-created by DeMatteis as a shrewd and powerful 1980s businessman, Maxwell Lord was influential in the formation of the mainstream comics continuity's Justice League International team. This is a rare instance of a comics writer having an opportunity to script a character he created in a different medium, and to DeMatteis' credit, Lord is more nuanced here than he's been in recent years.

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When the Ultimen's powers act up during battle, they're sent to a lab for testing. As they wait for their doctors, Long Shadow suddenly develops new super-hearing powers, enabling him to eavesdrop on Lord's conversation with Amanda Waller, who is making her DCAU debut. Waller works as the head of the top secret Project Cadmus, a group formed at the behest of the United States government to oppose the Justice League, should they go rogue like their alternate reality cousins, the Justice Lords. 

The Ultimen soon sneak into a secret laboratory and find clones of themselves in suspended animation and other experiments, such as a mutated dog. (Dwayne McDuffie revealed to fans that this beast is a nod to Super Friends' Wonder Dog.) Even worse, they discover their bodies only have a limited time to live. Frightened and enraged, the Ultimen attack the Justice League -- except for Long Shadow, who bonded with Wonder Woman during their brief encounters. Eventually, the Ultimen surrender, although Long Shadow defies the authorities' wishes and joins the Justice League, pledging to serve them for the short days he has left.

"Ultimatum" might initially seem like a one-off wink to the viewer, but it's actually a critical story in the development of this series. And the concept of the League encountering a new superhero team that doesn't seem quite right was certainly showing up enough times in the comics during the turn of the century.

The opening arc of writer Grant Morrison and artist Howard Porter's esteemed JLA stint in January 1997 has the mysterious Hyperclan arriving to public acclaim as they announce their desire to "save the world." Eventually, the "heroes" are revealed to be a super-powered team of White Martians, paving the way for an alien invasion of the planet Earth.

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Manchester Black places his hand on Superman's shoulder and talks to him

Action Comics #775 (cover dated March 2001) is the famous "What's So Funny About Truth, Justice, & the American Way," by writer Joe Kelly and artists Doug Mahnke and Lee Bermejo. In it, Superman encounters a group of metahumans calling themselves the Elite, very clear analogues for the nihilist heroes of The Authority, a cynical take on the superhero concept from creators Warren Ellis and Bryan Hitch. (And a massive seller at the time.) Fans of more traditional heroism embraced the story as a reaction against the bleak view of that hit title. 2004's JLA #100 from writer Joe Kelly and artist Doug Mahnke featured another popular Elite story, pitting the edgy heroes against the League.

March 2002's Justice League Adventures #3, the tie-in comic to the DCAU series, has another tale of new heroes popping up to great acclaim, but causing the League's neck hairs to rise. Writer Fabian Nicieza and artist John Delaney presented a story that has the League rescuing four space travelers from an unknown planet named Daxam. They claim to be freedom fighters exiled by a totalitarian regime, and are granted powers by their exposure to Earth's yellow sun. The Daxamites become acclaimed heroes, but soon go too far, infiltrating the war-torn nation of Qurac (DC's go-to stand-in for Iraq or any other Middle Eastern state since 1985) and using their newfound powers to bring their idea of fair rule to the country. The League forces them to understand they're doing the same thing on Earth they opposed on Daxam.

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But the closest analogue to the Ultimen (outside of the Super Friends, naturally) might've been the International Ultramarine Corps of the Grant Morrison/Howard Porter JLA comics run. A three-part storyline beginning with JLA #24 had the Corps introduced as a government-sponsored group of superhumans to rival the Justice League, which had recently stated its focus will be more global than national.

Like the Ultimen, they act as rival heroes to the League, and are later revealed as the results of a secret government project who also have short lifespans. The Corps serve General Wade Eiling (soon to debut on the show as a part of the ongoing Cadmus arc), portrayed here as deranged due to a brain tumor. The final issue of the arc, which has the General as a mutated beast, will later be adapted as the third season episode "Patriot Act."

DESIGN-Y

The Ultimen version of Wonder Dog is believed to be the same model as the mutated canine monsters in the Batman Beyond episode "Ace in the Hole."

The "Whirly-Bat" Batman uses when battling the Ultimen was apparently a pain to design, per the producers, and they weren't happy with the audience's cold reaction to it.

CONTINUITY NOTES

The League members appearing in "Ultimatum" were the core Super Friends team: Superman, Batman, Aquaman, and Wonder Woman. The lava creatures in the opening also appear to be a nod towards a Super Friends episode entitled "The Lava Men." Additionally, Marvel's hit comic at the time was The Ultimates, an alternate (and media-savvy) take on the Avengers, which might've inspired the Ultimen's name.

HEY, I KNOW THAT VOICE

Maxwell Lord is voiced by character actor Tim Matheson. In addition to portraying Eric "Otter" Stratton in National Lampoon's Animal House and Vice President John Hoynes on The West Wing, he has his own past as a young hero -- Matheson was the original voice actor for Jonny Quest!

CCH Pounder makes her DCAU debut as Amanda Waller, a part she was born to play. It's impossible to imagine anyone else bringing so much gravity to this role. It should also be noted that Robert Foxworth (who played Chase Gioberti for years on Falcon Crest) has replaced Victor Brandt as Professor Emil Hamilton. Hamilton previously appeared as Superman's ally on Superman: The Animated Series, but now works with Cadmus.

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"WHO ARE YOU PEOPLE?"

Clearly, the concept of the League taking on cooler, more modern heroes who turn out to have dark intentions was a favorite of the era. But "Ultimatum" is one of the best examples of the concept. What easily could've been a goofy episode, mocking old Super Friends plots, not only has some genuinely cool action sequences, but solid character work, as well. More importantly, the episode sets the stage for the Cadmus arc, which could be the most ambitious longform animated superhero storyline since the first season of X-Men. 

Bruce Timm has credited Dwayne McDuffie with encouraging the producers to embrace the continuity of their previous shows, enabling something as intricate as the Cadmus arc to exist. "Ultimatum" is entertaining in its own right, but fans remember it now as the opening step into what could be the DCAU's finest moment.

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