Justice
League
A Knight of Shadows
Original Airdate - 9/20/02
Understandably,
The Demon had to calm down a bit for animation. No actual
ripping out people's hearts, though he does make a few threats
along those lines. If Etrigan didn't actually look like a
demon, you might mistake him for just another drunken bully
at the end of the bar. Granted, when he screams at you to
"burn in hellfire," he actually shoots hellfire.
For Justice
League, Etrigan's origins become a little more streamlined,
and his motivation far clearer than it is in the comics. Here
Jason Blood appears as a traitor to Camelot (all for love
of Morgaine LeFay), cursed by the wizard Merlin to be bonded
to "…the demon within."
Though
on Batman: The Animated Series Blood took on Klarion
The Witch Boy for kicks, his real goal for over a thousand
years has been to get revenge on the witch LeFay.
Comfortably
enough, the story begins as Batman investigates the beating
of an old bookstore clerk (not an out and out murder - for
a show featuring a denizen of Hell, this episode is terribly
squeamish about actual death). Blood shows up and informs
Batman that that clerk was in his early thirties, and had
had in his possession information about the legendary Philosopher's
Stone. (Sorcerer's Stone for our ignorant American cousins…wait…I'm
American…)
With
the Stone, LeFay will revive the glory of Camelot, with her
son Modred as King in Arthur's stead. And though at first
Batman and Blood are enough to track the immortal succubus,
soon the famed Kirby doggerel must be uttered and Etrigan
enters the fray.,p. Even then he's not enough, and most of
the rest of the League gets called. As too often happens,
mysteriously two members simply don't show up. When it's Hawkgirl,
you wonder. At least Superman does have the excuse of being
vulnerable to magic, even if nobody actually uses it this
episode.
Etrigan's
basic attitude has not been toned down, making him into an
even bigger jerk than Batman. There's something strangely
appropriate, then, that Timm and company have cast the two
as friends. At least, Batman seems to treat Etrigan with more
overt respect than he does the Justice League. Only near the
end of part one, when Etrigan has made four or five too many
disparaging remarks about "…don't trust the Martian," does
Batman feebly offer a defense.
(Offscreen, you can imagine Batman defending Etrigan to the
rest of the League. "If only you could see what I see,
you'd really like him.")
To be
fair, J'onn does earn that distrust. Attempting to locate
Morgaine telepathically, he gets sucked into a vision of dead
Mars, and never really thanks Etrigan for violently snapping
him out of the spell. J'onn might really prefer living in
the fantasy. (One thematic reason for Superman's absence:
the same crap could be pulled on him, making it kind
of redundant, though J'onn's loss is far greater and more
poignant.)
It's
a credit to this series that the producers don't shy away
from the emotionally complex aspects of their characters.
They've even given a subtle character clue to The Demon. Michael
T. Weiss (The Pretender, Tarzan in Tarzan & Jane)
voices Jason Blood with a very aristocratic tone, but Etrigan
sounds an awful lot like Bill Sykes in Oliver!. Without
spelling it out, we understand his brutality from the moment
he speaks.
The only
flaw in this episode lies in a conveniently forgotten plot
device. At first, Morgaine has a pendant that tells her when
Etrigan is near, enabling her to avoid him for over a millennium.
But when Batman sets a trap for her, she blunders in, even
though Etrigan is hiding in a tree just a couple of hundred
yards away.
However,
a thinly disguised Hugh Hefner inviting Wonder Woman into
a Playboy Mansion party more than makes up for it. For The
Flash, this is heaven.
Next
week, it will be Hell.
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