Justice Lords (JL/U DCAU spoilers)

[Gojirob]

More than a few fan-boy-ish questions come up about this world. Here are some speculations on my part.

1 - They would have had to have struck hard and fast, to take the villains out. Once it was realized by the bad guys that the not-so good guys were serious, they would have played rougher and dirtier than ever. Problem for them : the rule always seems to be that when the good go bad, they know dirty tricks the likes of which the worst sorts have never dreamed of. Prediction : It was some second or third-tier villain that went down the hardest. The primaries would all think 'They're not going to do it, are...'

2 - My brother asked me why the GLC would tolerate Stewart doing what he did. My best guess was, so long as he had no statues built and the decisions made seemed like they really were for the good of the people, the Guardians waited, reluctant to bring down their best - again.

3 - Hawkgirl may have allowed the Thanagarian scout force in, and then betrayed them to get even better tech for the Lords' rule. Possibly the JL used the thwarted invasion as a further pretext.

4 - Wonder Woman's a harder call. But then again, the Greco-Roman gods are fickle, and Hippolyta might allow this in exchange for safety guarantees. Still, cases of hubris are known to bring down the lightning.

5 - Batman, sadly, would know as no other how to shut down his allies, and probably showed no restraint in doing so. He might have had to put Dick in stasis.

6 - Having decided to kill his number one foe, its not hard to imagine Superman killing many others, minus those seen by the League in Arkham.

7 - I'm guessing that the clampdown either meant Dakota's 'Big Bang' never happened, or that the Bang Babies were quickly rounded up or cured. Since the timeline seems a little ahead of what we know, maybe the clampdown saved the life of Virgil's Mom.

8 - This one has no basis from on-screen, but I wonder if the other superheroes weren't used as cannon fodder for taking out Apokolips. A good many of them I could never see letting the Lords go fwd unchallenged. But tricked into dying on a pre-emptive crusade? Maybe.

9 - Any government efforts, ala Cadmus, would have been either used by President Luthor or taken out soon after the villains were. Of course, this leaves the issue of new supers rising, but a society that paranoid would turn them in pretty promptly.

10 - One really wonders what kind of world J-Lord Batman faced. Many of his foes were still alive, and the idea that some unknown source could un-lobotomize them is not out of the question. If even he could operate in that world ever again also comes to mind. He might have had to settle for making sure the first new elections weren't stolen and then retired--yeah, right. Still, it would be like the end of TDK on steroids, situation-wise.

One last OT thought : Do you believe that, though entirely unseen in the DCAU-Timm-Diniverse, there is a version of the Titans running around, maybe with both Tim and Dick as members? Or should Batman's remark to Static be discounted entirely?

 

[Christopher]

7 - I'm guessing that the clampdown either meant Dakota's 'Big Bang' never happened, or that the Bang Babies were quickly rounded up or cured. Since the timeline seems a little ahead of what we know, maybe the clampdown saved the life of Virgil's Mom.

I pretty much assume that the timeline as a whole was a few years more advanced, given that Luthor was already president. As the Question said in "Question Authority," it was a whole cycle repeating itself, earlier in one history than the other. If "A Better World" took place in, say, 2002 in the main universe, it may have already been maybe 2005 or later in the J.Lo universe (yes, I use J.Lo as my abbreviation for Justice Lords; JL obviously doesn't work). So the Big Bang would probably still have happened in 2000 in both realities. (It was probably 2000, since in the second season, Virgil was using "so Y2K" to mean "so last year." I've found that the timing of the DCAU works out pretty well if you assume the various series -- aside from the two set in the future -- took place in roughly the same years they were broadcast.)

One last OT thought : Do you believe that, though entirely unseen in the DCAU-Timm-Diniverse, there is a version of the Titans running around, maybe with both Tim and Dick as members? Or should Batman's remark to Static be discounted entirely?

I'd like to think the Titans exist; there's no reason why they couldn't. In fact, sometimes I wonder if the TT animated series could be rationalized as an in-universe fictionalization of the adventures of the "real" Teen Titans of the DCAU, a kids' show that wildly exaggerated their actual, more realistic adventures. After all, their civilian names were never used, except for one reference to Beast Boy as Garfield (and then there's the "nosyarG kciD" in the episode with the Batmite-esque "Larry" character).

 

[ElScoob]

You definitely bring up some interesting points, Gojirob. I have to admit I've never given that much thought to the issue of the Justice Lords.

Was there any reference to the Lords having taken down Apokolips? I don't recall... and yet, it makes sense to assume that if Superman in particular decided to go all-out and neutralize any potential threats he'd never be able to let Darkseid and co. go unchecked.

The Green Lantern issue is a thorny one. I have a hard time imagining that the Guardians would let John get away with what the Lords were doing, and if the Guardians did step in I can't imagine that the Lords could plausibly hold off the Green Lantern Corps...

As far as other heroes go... I want to think that some of them might well go along with the Lords (Justice Lords Unlimited, anyone?). On the other hand, just to pick a glaringly obvious example, there's no way in hell Oliver Queen would stand for any of this. Ollie must certainly either have been killed/lobotomized early on, or else he's gone deep underground and he's biding his time.

(And I mean deep. It'd take a lot of work to hide from x-ray vision, a Power Ring, Martian telepathy, interrogation of captured confederates with a lasso that forces them to tell the truth, and the greatest set of detective skills the world has ever seen...)

One last OT thought : Do you believe that, though entirely unseen in the DCAU-Timm-Diniverse, there is a version of the Titans running around, maybe with both Tim and Dick as members? Or should Batman's remark to Static be discounted entirely?

I'd like to think the Titans exist; there's no reason why they couldn't. In fact, sometimes I wonder if the TT animated series could be rationalized as an in-universe fictionalization of the adventures of the "real" Teen Titans of the DCAU, a kids' show that wildly exaggerated their actual, more realistic adventures. After all, their civilian names were never used, except for one reference to Beast Boy as Garfield (and then there's the "nosyarG kciD" in the episode with the Batmite-esque "Larry" character).

Christopher, that is just about exactly the approach I've taken with regards to the Titans. I've been running a DC Heroes RPG set in the DCAU, picking up where JLU left off, and that was an issue I felt like I had to deal with. Mostly I've avoided getting too specific about it in-game, but whle doing my GM homework I found it was useful to get the timeline straight in my head. By calling the TT series an in-universe fictionalization, you can discount the difference in tone while assuming that some version of the events actually took place. Largely, I felt I had to have answers to questions that my players might pose, especially in regards to Flash's backstory.

(I could get into my version of that, but it's a longish story which involves not only bringing the Titans fully into the DCAU but also the JSA... the short version is that Wally, as Kid Flash, was Jay Garrick's sidekick prior to taking on the Flash mantle as a young adult.)

At any event, I think I'm gonna have to go back and give "A Better World" another look... there are clearly a lot of unanswered questions there, and a lot of potential fodder for game ideas.

--g

 

[Christopher]

Was there any reference to the Lords having taken down Apokolips? I don't recall...

No, it never came up. There were no references to the broader universe beyond J.Lo Earth.

and yet, it makes sense to assume that if Superman in particular decided to go all-out and neutralize any potential threats he'd never be able to let Darkseid and co. go unchecked.

Well, going by my theory that the J.Lo-verse was actually a few years in advance, then "Twilight" would already have happened some time before Superman killed Luthor, so presumably Darkseid would be dead and Apokolips would be torn by civil war, rendering it mostly irrelevant as a galactic-level threat for the duration.

The Green Lantern issue is a thorny one. I have a hard time imagining that the Guardians would let John get away with what the Lords were doing, and if the Guardians did step in I can't imagine that the Lords could plausibly hold off the Green Lantern Corps...

Well, Sinestro manages to get away with doing even worse. So I guess it's possible. (Though I still wonder how Sinestro ended up being relegated to second-string status in a couple of Earthbound Secret Societies run by Grodd.)

As far as other heroes go... I want to think that some of them might well go along with the Lords (Justice Lords Unlimited, anyone?).

Oh, that would've been cool.

(And I mean deep. It'd take a lot of work to hide from x-ray vision, a Power Ring, Martian telepathy, interrogation of captured confederates with a lasso that forces them to tell the truth, and the greatest set of detective skills the world has ever seen...)

Well, DCAU Diana didn't get the truth-lasso power activated until "The Balance." Presumably in J.Lo-verse, Hippolyta never activated that ability and it was still just a really strong rope.

Christopher, that is just about exactly the approach I've taken with regards to the Titans. I've been running a DC Heroes RPG set in the DCAU, picking up where JLU left off, and that was an issue I felt like I had to deal with. Mostly I've avoided getting too specific about it in-game, but whle doing my GM homework I found it was useful to get the timeline straight in my head. By calling the TT series an in-universe fictionalization, you can discount the difference in tone while assuming that some version of the events actually took place. Largely, I felt I had to have answers to questions that my players might pose, especially in regards to Flash's backstory.

(I could get into my version of that, but it's a longish story which involves not only bringing the Titans fully into the DCAU but also the JSA... the short version is that Wally, as Kid Flash, was Jay Garrick's sidekick prior to taking on the Flash mantle as a young adult.)

Well, my version of the DCAU continuity includes the 1990 live-action The Flash with John Wesley Shipp as Barry Allen (because the same Mark Hamill version of the Trickster appears in "Flash and Substance," because TF has the same Dark-Deco look as B:TAS, and because Shirley Walker did the music and her Flash motif from TF showed up in S:TAS: "Speed Demons"). So there's no Jay Garrick in my DCAU, and Wally would've been Barry's sidekick sometime in the mid-'90s.

In my DCAU chronology, I conjecturally have Wally becoming Kid Flash in early 1997 and Barry retiring and passing along the Flash mantle about a year later, not long before the Flash races Superman in "Speed Demons.") I actually can't reconcile that with the idea of Teen Titans being a dramatization of actual DCAU events, because at that time, Dick would've been travelling the world training to become Nightwing and Tim wouldn't have become Robin yet. (True, TNBA did begin in '97, but I pushed back Tim's debut as Robin as late as possible given that he still has to be fairly young in the Return of the Joker flashbacks.) So my suggestion was more of a conjecture than an actual expression of my approach to the issue.

But maybe the in-universe TT series isn't an exact recreation; maybe it blends young heroes from different "real-life" time periods. So Kid Flash meeting the Titans might be a fictional event in-universe, or maybe it was a dramatization of something involving the adult Flash. (If we go by Static Shock: "Hard as Nails" and assume it was Tim/Robin who partnered with the Titans, then that would be sometime in the 2000s, during JL/U.)

Meh, I don't know. What's cool about TT is its sheer weirdness and wildness, its unique reality, and I'm not crazy about the idea of "domesticating" it into part of the DCAU. Better to let it be its own unique entity, like Batman: The Brave and the Bold is.

 

[Gojirob]

You definitely bring up some interesting points, Gojirob. I have to admit I've never given that much thought to the issue of the Justice Lords.

*Nor did I til a recent viewing. Though I've had a fic in mind wherein Virgil and Richie have their hero and personal lives messed up by their Lords-Earth counterparts, the only young heroes autho'd by the Lords to operate there, and wanting revenge. One scene I had in mind is Static taking out another Juice clone, just after mocking Batman that he has nothing that can even touch him. It was trying to put that together in my head that lead to these questions and the re-viewing.*


Was there any reference to the Lords having taken down Apokolips? I don't recall... and yet, it makes sense to assume that if Superman in particular decided to go all-out and neutralize any potential threats he'd never be able to let Darkseid and co. go unchecked.

*There was no ref at all. But most 'Supes loses it' AU/dream stories seem to have taking down Darkseid as one of alt-Supes first acts. And if 'Legacy' happened in that world, then its not hard to imagine the last sight Darkseid sees is S's fist and the words 'You're Not God--Anywhere'.*

The Green Lantern issue is a thorny one. I have a hard time imagining that the Guardians would let John get away with what the Lords were doing, and if the Guardians did step in I can't imagine that the Lords could plausibly hold off the Green Lantern Corps...

*That one is really tough, but the fact is...they seem to have allowed it somehow. Maybe the power vaccuum caused by Apokolips being taken out (If that happened) forced the GLC to not address this for the present.*


As far as other heroes go... I want to think that some of them might well go along with the Lords (Justice Lords Unlimited, anyone?). On the other hand, just to pick a glaringly obvious example, there's no way in hell Oliver Queen would stand for any of this. Ollie must certainly either have been killed/lobotomized early on, or else he's gone deep underground and he's biding his time.

*I have no more evidence for this than for anything else, but I've a feeling this JL wanted to remain Limited. More members meant more opinions, and they seemed done with all that. Even obedient members would have to be watched, and so they may have just done what they had to put the others down, away, in hiding, or just retiring. Again, a difficult concept, but what we saw onscreen leads me there. I allowed for Virgil and Richie, since, being teens, they would be the easiest to indoctrinate.*

(And I mean deep. It'd take a lot of work to hide from x-ray vision, a Power Ring, Martian telepathy, interrogation of captured confederates with a lasso that forces them to tell the truth, and the greatest set of detective skills the world has ever seen...)

*Ollie would likely not wait for them to come knocking. I see him disappearing himself ASAP, as soon as the news about Luthor hit. I can see him meeting up with other JLU-alts, maybe even Captain Atom, who saw his jerkass but legal POTUS incinerated. They would have to focus entirely on hiding, though, and hope that Batman decides to keep them secret when he figs them out, maybe as a hedge against his secret doubts.*

One last OT thought : Do you believe that, though entirely unseen in the DCAU-Timm-Diniverse, there is a version of the Titans running around, maybe with both Tim and Dick as members? Or should Batman's remark to Static be discounted entirely?

I'd like to think the Titans exist; there's no reason why they couldn't. In fact, sometimes I wonder if the TT animated series could be rationalized as an in-universe fictionalization of the adventures of the "real" Teen Titans of the DCAU, a kids' show that wildly exaggerated their actual, more realistic adventures. After all, their civilian names were never used, except for one reference to Beast Boy as Garfield (and then there's the "nosyarG kciD" in the episode with the Batmite-esque "Larry" character).

Christopher, that is just about exactly the approach I've taken with regards to the Titans. I've been running a DC Heroes RPG set in the DCAU, picking up where JLU left off, and that was an issue I felt like I had to deal with. Mostly I've avoided getting too specific about it in-game, but whle doing my GM homework I found it was useful to get the timeline straight in my head. By calling the TT series an in-universe fictionalization, you can discount the difference in tone while assuming that some version of the events actually took place. Largely, I felt I had to have answers to questions that my players might pose, especially in regards to Flash's backstory.

(I could get into my version of that, but it's a longish story which involves not only bringing the Titans fully into the DCAU but also the JSA... the short version is that Wally, as Kid Flash, was Jay Garrick's sidekick prior to taking on the Flash mantle as a young adult.)

At any event, I think I'm gonna have to go back and give "A Better World" another look... there are clearly a lot of unanswered questions there, and a lot of potential fodder for game ideas.

--g

That is an excellent take on it, both yours and Christopher's. I see the JSA as a possibility because maybe the whole team suffered a 'Flash Of Two Worlds' syndrome, and was actually forgotten for a time, their only remnant being the 'Guild' comics based on them.

 

[darkwing_duck1]

As far as the Guardians are concerned, there is precedent for them allowing a ruthless GL to continue to operate: Jack T Chance.

 

[hyzmarca]

I imagine that the Lords' actions skirted the edge what was permissible under the Green Lantern's code, but never crossed the line. It's not like the Guardians were particularly big on things like fair trials, after all.

 

[ElScoob]

That is an excellent take on it, both yours and Christopher's. I see the JSA as a possibility because maybe the whole team suffered a 'Flash Of Two Worlds' syndrome, and was actually forgotten for a time, their only remnant being the 'Guild' comics based on them.

Thanks (and I have to say, I like Christopher's take--connecting to the live-action Flash via Hamill-Trickster never occurred to me... though I don't know how well the respective versions of Captain Cold and Mirror Master might line up).

The way I did things broke down about like this:

--I moved the JSA up about twenty years, so they first appeared in the late 50s-early 60s rather than 30s-40s. I substituted JFK and the Cold War for FDR and WWII (a bit more of a liberty than I really wanted to take, but I wanted to keep the timeline and the characters' ages at least a little more realistic for a world where the 'Silver Age' was coming at the end rather than the middle of the twentieth century). Instead of McCarthyism forcing their retirement in the early 50s, they bowed out in the early 70s under pressure from Nixon to intervene in Vietnam. I also envisioned the JSA as being very much more 'mystery men', keeping to the shadows rather than being public figures. They were less a team than a literal 'Society', meeting as a club to swap stories and only very occasionally taking the odd special assignment from the government (inspired by their first appearance).

--Teen Titans took place sometime prior to Batman: TAS, with Dick as Robin (and thus allowing for the appearances of Speedy and Kid Flash).

--The "Flash of Two Worlds" scenario did come into play, based on Grant Morrison's post-Crisis revamp of that story from Secret Origins. The Thinker, the Fiddler, and the Shade managed to put Keystone City in a kind of suspended animation, just out of phase with the rest of the world. Young Wally West, as Kid Flash, accidentally discovered Keystone across the river from Central City and revived Jay. Working together, they beat the villains and freed the city... and Jay came out of retirement to mentor the young speedster.

--The JSA, or at least its founding members, disappeared under mysterious circumstances a few years later. The only founders still around were Wesley Dodds (who had been forced to bow out of the JSA's mysterious final mission following a heart attack) and Dr. Fate (who had withdrawn from Earthly matters to deal with more mystical threats). It turned out that the Russians had gotten into a bit of trouble... back during the Cold War, a UFO crashed in Siberia. The only thing recovered intact was a strange device that KGB scientists were unable to figure out; it was locked away and forgotten until the 90s, when it fell into the hands of some Russian mobsters who accidentally activated it. The device opened a portal to another dimension, from which emerged a horrific pandimensional Cthuluish abomination. Unable to deal with the threat themselves, the Russian government begged the U.S. to send the JSA (whom the Russians remembered as occasional intractable foes during the height of the Cold War). The JSA founders managed to fight the thing back into the portal, and closed the doorway behind them, thus being stuck in a timeless void fighting the thing for all time (my update of the JSA vs. Ragnarok business from the comics). Of course, the League eventually found out about this and helped push the monstrosity back into its own dimension, thus freeing the JSA.

--I decided that the JSA went 'founders only' on this last mission, by the way, so as to explain the presence of Dr. Mid-Nite and Wildcat in JLU (the Hourman from JLU was Rick Tyler, in my version; Rex himself went along with the other founders). Apart from playing a part in the Flash backstory, I wanted to deal with the JSA issue so as to explain the presence of characters like Sand, Obsidian, and Atom-Smasher in various JLU episodes. Furthermore, I've had players expressing an interest in both the Jack Knight and Will Payton versions of Starman, so I wanted to set up some backstory there and establish Ted Knight as the first Starman.

Overall it's been a lot of fun playing with this continuity, taking what was established in the shows and running with it, and taking advantage of the fact that the DCAU is kind of a done deal to do anything I want with the continuity. Well, within reason, anyway... I've decided not to be too beholden to Batman Beyond if it's not convenient. On the one hand, Tim Drake is still running around as Robin in my game universe (and, in keeping with what Batman said, is running around with a modern incarnation of the Titans--though I have yet to get into that in detail in the game). On the other hand, I had fun doing my take on the Near-Apocalypse of '09 (which involved Ra's al Ghul freeing the inmates from Arkham, and offering the Joker a lot of money to lead them on a cross-county crime spree to attract the attention of Batman and the League while Ra's finalized his master plan: using earthquake-generating machines to trigger an eruption of the Yellowstone mega-caldera in hopes of creating an extinction-level event to wipe out human civilization and let the planet start over from scratch).

At present, I'm in the middle of rehabilitating Sinestro from being an also-ran in one of Grodd's little super-villain chowder societies by having him start up my DCAU version of the Sinestro Corps. He managed to get himself captured and tried by the Guardians in order to get himself imprisoned in the Central Power Battery, having deduced that the Guardians have Parallax penned up in there. Once that happened, he awakened Parallax and the two of them escaped to Qward, where Sinestro means to use Parallax to prime the yellow Battery the Weaponers have built for him.

Meanwhile I've also been dropping hints toward the next big story arc, which will be a loose adaptation of Geoff Johns' Superman and the Legion tale. I've decided that the DCAU Superman actually had a career with the Legion as Superboy, but that when he resigned Saturn Girl had to telepathically lock off his memories of that period. I had Superman notice three mysterious yet strangely familiar youths in the background of Jonathan Kent's funeral (I killed Pa off during the Near-Apocalypse). And more recently, Martha found an unfamiliar gold ring with an 'L' insignia on it in a box of Clark's old stuff, and questioned him on it... but Clark has no idea what the ring is or where it came from.

Holy moley. I just realized that I broke down and went off on exactly the threadjacking tangent I didn't want to in the first place. But I've typed it all up now, and I'll be hanged if I'll erase it now...

But in the hopes of veering a little closer back to the topic... we never saw the exact details of Sinestro's initial fall from grace in the DCAU, but one presumes it must have been close to the original comics version (abusing his power to set up a dictatorial regime on his homeworld of Korugar, all in the name of 'order'). I'd think that the Justice Lords' actions, and John Stewart's consent and participation in same, would tend to attract the Guardians' attention for being awfully darn close to what Sinestro did.

Oh, and Darkwing... while Jack T. Chance was admittedly a bit of a loose cannon compared to the Corps' rank and file, I don't think anything he did could be characterized as coming close to what Sinestro or the Lorder John Stewart did. That was more of a case of the Guardians recognizing that they needed a Lantern for that planet who could contend with the degree of lawlessness it represented.

--g

 

[CaptainCanada]

2 - My brother asked me why the GLC would tolerate Stewart doing what he did. My best guess was, so long as he had no statues built and the decisions made seemed like they really were for the good of the people, the Guardians waited, reluctant to bring down their best - again.

The Guardians haven't exactly been all that vigilant supervising their members at times; Sinestro ran Korugar as a dictatorship for years, after all.

4 - Wonder Woman's a harder call. But then again, the Greco-Roman gods are fickle, and Hippolyta might allow this in exchange for safety guarantees. Still, cases of hubris are known to bring down the lightning.

JL-Diana has no connection to either the gods or Themyscira; she's not the gods' champion, nor is she the Amazons' ambassador. Heck, Polly kicked her off the island.

 

[darkwing_duck1]

Oh, and Darkwing... while Jack T. Chance was admittedly a bit of a loose cannon compared to the Corps' rank and file, I don't think anything he did could be characterized as coming close to what Sinestro or the Lorder John Stewart did. That was more of a case of the Guardians recognizing that they needed a Lantern for that planet who could contend with the degree of lawlessness it represented.

From the few times we've seen the planet he's assigned to, I'd respectfully disagree. Jack was basically given carte blanche to do what he had to in order to clean it up.

Given how it seems that everything MAJOR going on in the universe seems to sooner or latter involve Earth, I could see the Guardians giving JLo Stewart the same authority.

 

[darkwing_duck1]

JL-Diana has no connection to either the gods or Themyscira; she's not the gods' champion, nor is she the Amazons' ambassador. Heck, Polly kicked her off the island.

Only at first. In latter years she did indeed become Themyscera's ambassador.

 

[Christopher]

Thanks (and I have to say, I like Christopher's take--connecting to the live-action Flash via Hamill-Trickster never occurred to me... though I don't know how well the respective versions of Captain Cold and Mirror Master might line up).

I think Mirror Master could be the same individual, though Captain Cold seems to be different (not an albino, and more a working schlub than TF's master assassin). Still, going by my chronology, there's a good 14 years between the Flash episode "Captain Cold" and JLU's "Flash and Substance." The Flash is a legacy hero, an identity passed down from one person to another, so there's no reason there couldn't be legacy villains as well; the JLU Captain Cold could've inherited the name and schtick from the live-action series' Leonard Wynter (who seemed to be dead at the end of his episode anyway).

In my model, I suppose that Wynter's freeze-ray tech would've been the prototype for Mr. Freeze's gun, which then was refined further to become Captain Cold II's weapon.

There are a couple of problems with putting TF into the DCAU -- one episode where Barry walks by a movie theater showing Superman and Batman, and one where Barry refers to a reporter as "Lois Lane." By my chronology, in 1990-91, Batman would've been around for a few years but still a wanted vigilante (as hinted in the flashbacks of "The Mechanic"), but Clark and Lois would've still been in college and Superman wouldn't have come into being yet. So none of those references are reconcilable. But then, there was an early Static Shock episode where one of the characters said "Even Clark Kent has a secret identity," implying that Superman was a fictional character there, and that show was still retconned into the DCAU. So I'm willing to overlook the Flash references. After all, "Ghost in the Machine" (and maybe "Fast Forward") pretty solidly dated the show in 1990-91, and you couldn't move the Barry Allen Flash forward without running into trouble reconciling him with Wally.

--Teen Titans took place sometime prior to Batman: TAS, with Dick as Robin (and thus allowing for the appearances of Speedy and Kid Flash).

Not sure that would work chronologically. By my calculations, the in-universe chronology corresponds pretty closely to the actual passage of time. Dick was starting college at the start of B:TAS, so he would've graduated four years later, shortly after the end of B:TAS. The Lost Years comic had him travel the world for nearly three years in training, so his return corresponds well to the premiere date of TNBA. Then allowing a year or two between S:TAS: "Legacy" and the start of JL, it again corresponds pretty well to real time.

B:TAS premiered in 1992 and JL in 2001, so the real-time interval would be roughly 9 years as well. In JL, the Wally West Flash seems pretty young, mid-20s at most. I'd say he would've been born in maybe 1979, say (assuming he was around 19 in "Speed Demons"). So in the pre-B:TAS period, he would've been a preadolescent, 4-5 years younger than Dick. So his Kid Flash career would've had to come after B:TAS, not before.

(By the way, this chronology puts Batman in his early 40s at the end of JLU. Somewhat implausible, since athletes who live that strenuously tend to age pretty rapidly and wear out their bodies well before 40. But not as implausible as Batman continuing to operate until he's around 60 as Batman Beyond would have it. Despite what "Out of the Past" established, I keep wondering if maybe Bruce did take advantage of a Lazarus Pit at some point.)

JL-Diana has no connection to either the gods or Themyscira; she's not the gods' champion, nor is she the Amazons' ambassador. Heck, Polly kicked her off the island.

Only at first. In latter years she did indeed become Themyscera's ambassador.

Indeed. See "The Balance" (where she's recruited on a mission for the gods and her exile is rescinded) and "To Another Shore" (where she's acting as Themiscyra's ambassador).

 

[Gojirob]

Another thing I wondered about, based on reading the TNG novel, 'Dark Mirror'. Was the Lords' world already somewhat tilted towards a possible tyranny? I know that takes some of the bite out of what happened, but look at it this way. in the DCU proper, people elected Lex despite accusations and acquittals. In the DCAU-Lords world, they elected him despite outright exposure of years of nasty, murderous schemes followed by convictions and imprisonment. I've heard the 'yeah, but Nixon is still liked in the South' argument, but Tricky Dick had nothing on our Lex. Despite what a fine line the League ended up walking, maybe the Lords - which sounds both more imperial and more like gangers - already started out a couple of feet down the path, even prior to Flash's death.

Also, I just wish the writers had League-Superman mutter 'Not Again' on seeing the Lords' world, a ref to the S:TAS ep with his slippery-slope AU counterpart - presuming Lois told him all that happened. Also in retrospect, would Superman-BB want to wear the same color suit as his Lords' counterpart, or nearly so? Maybe he did it as a reminder never to abuse his power? When Bruce said in 'The Call' ' that 'he's gone rogue' before, was it 'Legacy' or an unnamed incident?

 

[Christopher]

Another thing I wondered about, based on reading the TNG novel, 'Dark Mirror'. Was the Lords' world already somewhat tilted towards a possible tyranny? I know that takes some of the bite out of what happened, but look at it this way. in the DCU proper, people elected Lex despite accusations and acquittals. In the DCAU-Lords world, they elected him despite outright exposure of years of nasty, murderous schemes followed by convictions and imprisonment. I've heard the 'yeah, but Nixon is still liked in the South' argument, but Tricky Dick had nothing on our Lex. Despite what a fine line the League ended up walking, maybe the Lords - which sounds both more imperial and more like gangers - already started out a couple of feet down the path, even prior to Flash's death.

On the other hand, even in the main DCAU, Lex was quite effective at convincing the people of his rehabilitation and waging a presidential campaign that was widely perceived as having a good chance of success. If his Brainiac possession and the Cadmus situation hadn't sidetracked his plans, he might've actually won the election (particularly if he didn't have a strong rival; we've had a few elections, notably 2004, that seemed to be chosen on "the lesser of two evils" rather than any really great nationwide trust or admiration for the winning candidate).

So I don't think it's necessary for the J.Lo-verse to have been any more "evil-friendly" than the DCAU. Indeed, that was the point of the Cadmus season: that the JLU had the potential to go to the same place if they weren't very, very careful.

Also in retrospect, would Superman-BB want to wear the same color suit as his Lords' counterpart, or nearly so? Maybe he did it as a reminder never to abuse his power? When Bruce said in 'The Call' ' that 'he's gone rogue' before, was it 'Legacy' or an unnamed incident?

Superman had been possessed by Starro for several years prior to "The Call." He could've adopted the costume after that. I'm not sure which costume he wore in the flashbacks before he was possessed, though.

 

[ElScoob]

--Teen Titans took place sometime prior to Batman: TAS, with Dick as Robin (and thus allowing for the appearances of Speedy and Kid Flash).

Not sure that would work chronologically. By my calculations, the in-universe chronology corresponds pretty closely to the actual passage of time. Dick was starting college at the start of B:TAS, so he would've graduated four years later, shortly after the end of B:TAS. The Lost Years comic had him travel the world for nearly three years in training, so his return corresponds well to the premiere date of TNBA. Then allowing a year or two between S:TAS: "Legacy" and the start of JL, it again corresponds pretty well to real time.

B:TAS premiered in 1992 and JL in 2001, so the real-time interval would be roughly 9 years as well. In JL, the Wally West Flash seems pretty young, mid-20s at most. I'd say he would've been born in maybe 1979, say (assuming he was around 19 in "Speed Demons"). So in the pre-B:TAS period, he would've been a preadolescent, 4-5 years younger than Dick. So his Kid Flash career would've had to come after B:TAS, not before.

(By the way, this chronology puts Batman in his early 40s at the end of JLU. Somewhat implausible, since athletes who live that strenuously tend to age pretty rapidly and wear out their bodies well before 40. But not as implausible as Batman continuing to operate until he's around 60 as Batman Beyond would have it. Despite what "Out of the Past" established, I keep wondering if maybe Bruce did take advantage of a Lazarus Pit at some point.)

That's a series of fair points. Admittedly my setup works a little differently because of a few slightly different assumptions in the timeline... not the least of which is that, since the game began in 2008 and was supposed to directly follow on from the end of "Destroyer", that "Destroyer" (and thus all of JLU's last season) were set in 2008 rather than when they originally aired. There's also an assumption that to some degree B:TAS and S:TAS run concurrently rather than placing S:TAS strictly in the time period of TNBA. The upshot of it is, my chronology (which works for my purposes, but probably wouldn't work ideally as a 'real' timeline of the shows) presumes Wally and Dick are roughly of an age, and that perhaps six years (rather than nine) pass between the beginning of B:TAS and the beginning of JL (Wally being perhaps 24-25 around the start of JL).

Incidentally, this makes Bruce about 38 by the end of JLU--a little better, but not by much.

--g

 

[CaptainCanada]

Indeed. See "The Balance" (where she's recruited on a mission for the gods and her exile is rescinded) and "To Another Shore" (where she's acting as Themiscyra's ambassador).

Neither of which had happened in the Justice Lords' timeline.

 

[Gojirob]

To bring up a prior question : How do you think the Lords' world did after they were brought down? Pure chaos, tension that was worked off after the chains were lifted, or a sharp shift into 'normalcy' for that world, with no everyday wild schemes and destructive incursions? I think its safe to assume the Lords really went hunting during their reign, so who would even be left to so much as open a portal, besides Batman?