DC is no new to introducing and putting together counterparts of their characters for explosive plot points, storylines, and action sequences. Several Justice Associations across the multiverse, such as Earth One’s Justice League, Earth Two’s Justice Society, and Earth Three’s Crime Syndicate, are already aware of this knowledge (that is the one where the superheroes are super-criminals).
However, there is a second, more intricate Justice League. The Lords of Justice. They’re complicated because, like the Justice League, they started out as a passive organization. When President Lex Luthor’s actions result in the death of the Flash, however, things take a turn for the worst. The heroes reassess their entire system after losing a beloved ally, and eventually embrace a more severe policy.
They begin to control the planet as dictators, losing the people’s love. In this video, we’ll look at how the Justice Lords came to be and their relationship with the Justice League, which is more passive and less violent.
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Mindblowing Story Of The Justice Lords
The Justice Lords make their debut in the Justice League animated series for their 37th and 38th episodes called ‘A Better World’.
In this story, we are taken to a different dimension altogether. In this world, the Justice League started off in the same way as the good ones – a bunch of superheroes trying to save the world. Lex Luthor was, as usual, the bad guy, whose ambitions had taken him far and beyond. He became the President of the United States. However, he executed the Flash and with his policies, threatened nuclear war against the Justice Lords – a war grand enough to destroy the world.
The episode starts off with the League storming into the White House and fighting off Luthor’s henchmen. While Batman and Wonder Woman fight off the Secret Service, Superman heads towards the Oval Office to get Luthor. His original intentions were to arrest Luthor, who acts salty over the people not understanding his grand design for the world – his same old God complex shining through. He heads to press the button that will trigger the nuclear war, knowing that if Superman were to stop him, he would have to use deadly force against Luthor. And knowing Superman, the hero would not kill the villain.
However, Superman is absolutely done with Luthor’s schemes and decides to kill him. And so he does, with his heat vision. Batman and Wonder Woman smell something strange from the outside and storm into the Oval Office to find out that Luthor has been burnt. Superman feels absolutely fine, despite having taken a life. And strangely, his two allies seem to side with him despite them having followed a ‘no kill’ policy so far.
Two years pass by. Within those two years, this dimension had changed altogether. The Justice League (who are known as the Justice Lords) now rule over the planet with an iron fist. There’s little free speech, barely any elections, and threats are lobotomized via Superman’s heat vision. It is revealed that Luthor’s plans which resulted in the death of the Flash made the Justice Lords turn into tyrannical rulers.
The members are summoned to the Batcave by Batman, who shows everyone the image of another world where their counterparts seem to be fighting Lex Luthor. In this world, the Flash is alive. The Lords believe that the Justice League hasn’t changed their ways yet and decide to fix their world for them by doing away with their passive, law-abiding policies. But they cannot do so without a sneaky plan.
The scene shifts to the main universe where the League manages to defeat Luthor. They disassemble his weapon, the power disruptor, and hand him over to the cops. Just then, a portal opens and Lords’ Martian Manhunter arrives. He tells the League that they need their help for a battle in their universe. Batman finds it a bit suspicious and the League’s J’onn J’onzz will not and cannot read the mind of another Martian. Yet, they decide to help.
The League emerges in the other dimension but find themselves in a trap. The Lords try to electrocute them and Hawkgirl fights back by redirecting the electricity with her mace. However, with a lethal attack from Lord John Stewart or Green Lantern, she is taken down altogether and has to be hospitalized. The others are locked in their cell blocks, designed by Lord Batman, to restrict their powers and monitor their heartbeats. Meanwhile, the other members of the Justice Lords travel to the primary universe to establish their law and order.
Just then, a rogue Doomsday lands in the primary universe. The creature goes on a rampage and the Lords cannot do anything about it. They are simply outmatched. Even Superman.
When all seems bleak, Superman uses his heat vision to lobotomize Doomsday and wins the battle. He is suddenly surrounded by reporters, including Lois Lane herself. She finds it shocking that Superman would choose to do something so ruthless and brutal but the others believe that it was about time Superman acted a bit more aggressive. Meanwhile, Luthor watches the news from prison and realizes that this is not the Justice League he knows.
Back in the universe of the Justice Lords, the League members are having a hard time trying to come up with an escape plan. And with another Batman present, there’s nothing our Batman can come up with that his counterpart has not already thought of. And this is where Flash’s unpredictable nature comes in handy.
He is aware of the fact that the Flash in this universe is dead, and Lord Batman has already shown contempt for it. He does not want to see the Flash die again. And so, the speedster uses this to his advantage. He speeds up his heartbeat to the point that it flatlines, which makes Lord Batman panic terribly. He rushes to save the Flash and this is when the Flash knocks him out with a punch. He then rescues the others and they head out to find Hawkgirl.
However, the League’s Batman joins his counterpart in the Batcave. They fight one another but it turns out to be more of a battle of words instead of fists. Thanks to their very different morals. But when Lord Batman tells him that the Justice Lords have created a world where no eight-year-old will lose their parents to crime, the League’s Batman surrenders.
Meanwhile, the others discover that Hawkgirl is being kept in Arkham Asylum, a place where a peaceful Poison Ivy works as a gardener while the Joker is merely a superintendent. He escorts the League members to Hawkgirl, but when he realizes that it’s not the Justice Lords, he allows a bunch of Lord Superman clones to attack them. The League defeats the clones without much of a hassle and escapes with Hawkgirl.
Meanwhile, the two Batmen head towards Arkham in a Batmobile. At the signal, they witness a man getting arrested for a very trivial issue over the bill. This prompts the League’s Batman to chide his Lord counterpart, telling him to think about what his parents would have had to say about this tyranny. This ultimately results in Lord Batman having a change of heart and he decides to help the League out when they get surrounded by the military. With his help, the League members are able to return to their reality.
Here, the Justice Lords’ have taken over the League’s Watchtower. Suddenly, they receive an alert about Lex Luthor breaking out of prison. They head to the prison but fall into a trap similar to the one they had set for the League. Ultimately, a fight breaks out but it is too evenly matched. Lord Superman fights the Flash while the League’s Superman seems to be missing. Turns out, the League’s Superman was responsible for breaking Luthor out. However, the hero had struck a deal with his arch-nemesis.
With the help of Superman’s super help, Luthor’s power disruptor is rebuilt. Luthor uses it to disrupt the powers of the members of the Justice Lords. In the end, he contemplates using it against the League as well but chooses not to do so, as his deal was to defeat the Lords in exchange for a presidential pardon. While the Lords are being taken away, Lord Superman rages by mentioning that Luthor’s next actions will be Superman’s fault.
As the episode comes to an end, Luthor is seen holding a press conference. When asked about his future plans, he mentions how the business world does not challenge him anymore. And that he has been considering getting into politics. This is a key moment in the story as Luthor’s actions as President were what turned the peacekeeping superheroes of the other world into tyrannical rulers.
Members Of The Justice Lords
The members of the Justice Lords are very similar to the League members because of obvious reasons. But they are inherently different people as they do not have the same morals, despite having the same powers and abilities. And they also seem to be perfectly content with their ridiculous world order with little to no freedom.
Superman
Unlike Superman from the primary universe who sports a blue, red, and green outfit, Lord Superman wears a black suit instead of the blue while the red cape is swapped for a white one.
He starts off just like his counterpart, a Kryptonian alien who protects humanity and is in love with Lois Lane. However, he has to deal with losing the Flash. As a superhero who never wants to kill or use his powers for ugly purposes, he allows Lex Luthor to stay alive. This allows Luthor to pursue a Presidential campaign and he even gets elected. Then Luthor uses his political powers to get the Flash executed and even threatens a nuclear war over the world.
Lord Superman blames himself for that. If he had killed Luthor before, this dark day would have never arrived. Luthor even points out how desperate he is to be a hero, for which he needs to keep his villains alive. However, this pushes Lord Superman to his edge and as we know, he overcooks Luthor with his heat vision. While Lord Batman and Lady Wonder Woman wonder about how he feels having taken a life, this Superman claims to feel quite great about it. That too with a smile on his face.
During the two-year gap between this incident and the events with the League, Lord Superman is a brutal and ruthless opponent. He fights brutally and not only does he not let his opponents have it easy, he does something that is far worse than killing them. He lobotomizes them, which basically means that he severs the nerves in the prefrontal cortex of the brain, turning his opponents into vegetables. Some of his victims are the criminals from Batman’s roster such as The Joker, Harvey Dent (or Two-Face), and Poison. They currently work as harmless vegetables in Gotham City’s Arkham Asylum. How else would you turn someone like the Joker into a receptionist slash superintendent?
Lord Superman is also one of the primary people responsible for standing against the elections. His lover, the Daily Planet reporter Lois Lane, is very vocal about being against his policies and morals. However, Lord Superman does not really care about what she thinks and keeps asserting that their brutal and tyrannical way is necessary.
When he later fights the Flash from the Justice League, the Flash tries to tap into his sentiments by bringing up the dead Flash. He believes that maybe Lord Superman will be unwilling to kill the Flash who is alive. However, this Superman is ruthless and one hundred percent ready to kill the Flash. The only reason why the Flash survives this encounter is that Luthor arrives in time and uses his power disruptor on the evil Superman.
Batman
Lord Batman has led a life similar to that of his counterpart. Little Bruce Wayne lost his parents at a tender age when they were shot dead by a criminal. He then swore vengeance upon crime and decided to eradicate it from the face of Gotham City. Despite raving over being darkness himself, he never fell into a darkness that made him want to take away lives and the freedom of the people.
However, with the death of the Flash, he was once again made to experience the pain of losing a close, loved one. So, when Lord Superman kills the man who caused Flash to die, he seems to be absolutely okay with it and believes that it had to be done.
The Justice Lords eventually took over the Earth and Lord Batman was finally able to eradicate Gotham City of both its crime and litter. The world was finally a perfect place, or so he believed.
While the others spent their time and energy enforcing their laws, Lord Batman spent his days in the Batcave, working on his individual projects. With no crime to handle, he developed a device that allowed inter-dimensional travel by opening up a portal. Via this, the Justice Lords accessed the world of the Justice League.
Later, with the League members captured in their cell blocks, his matched intelligence with his counterpart put the League’s Batman in jeopardy as he could not come up with an alternative escape plan which the Justice Lord had not thought of already. However, this tyrannical Batman opened his heart up, even if it was just for a second, to the Flash as he claimed that he would not let him die once again. So, when the Flash intentionally caused his heart rate to flatline, Lord Batman rushed to his rescue, proving that there was still some good in his heart.
Later, he engaged in a battle of fists and wits with the other Batman. They were evenly matched in fists but in a way, Lord Batman won with his words. He dissed his counterpart’s method of scaring away punks and getting them arrested instead of taking stricter actions. He then prompted him to step out of the darkness like he had done as he created a world where no eight-year-old would lose his parents to senseless violence.
Later, he headed towards Arkham with the other Batman and spoke about how following the small rules was necessary. They stopped by the signal and witnessed a customer arguing over his food bill when the waiter noticed Lord Batman. Immediately, cops arrived and arrested the man over this extremely trivial problem. The League’s Batman saw this stupid atrocity and mocked his counterpart as he sarcastically mentioned how his mom and dad would be proud of their son’s ridiculous rule. This ultimately caused Lord Batman to change his mind and help the League members in getting back to their universe.
Wonder Woman
The Justice Lords’ Wonder Woman has a different get-up compared to her counterpart. Her hair is shorter and slicked back and her outfit covers her entire lower body.
She has the same backstory, as a demigod coming from Themyscira and being the Princess of the Amazons. She was there with Batman when Superman killed Lex Luthor. She was a bit shocked by his action but seemed to be quite okay with it. Just like her allies, she was also terribly shaken by the death of the Flash.
She then helped out the Justice Lords in enforcing their fascist control over the world in the name of eradicating crime.
After she went to the primary universe, her main motive was to enforce the Lords’ world order in that universe as well. However, she was shown to do some good. During their fight with Doomsday, the city had taken severe collateral damage. One of them was about to cause a train to fall off the edge, killing all of its passengers. In this situation, Lady Wonder Woman came to the rescue. She saved the train and all the passengers by using her might to stop it from falling over the edge.
Later, she went against the League’s Batman. Just like Lord Superman who was ready to kill the Flash, Lady Wonder Woman was almost about to kill Batman, even though she was mournful over losing the Flash from her world. And she would have done it but Lex Luthor arrived on time and used his power disruptor to take her down.
J’onn J’onzz or the Martian Manhunter
Like most of his teammates, J’onn J’onzz from the Justice Lords changed his costume. He opted for a blue cape. His collar was stiff and high. He added a belt and bands to his shins and forearms. In the middle of his costume was a red Martian symbol with distinguishable black lines. And unlike his previous outfit, the new one projected a blue aura whenever the Martian Manhunter used his shapeshifting powers or his intangibility.
Not only was he okay with the fascist approach of the Justice Lords following the death of Lex Luthor, but he was also an active participant in enforcing this tyranny. However, he was slightly more merciful compared to Lord Green Lantern and Lady Hawkgirl.
Lord J’onn J’onzz was the one who approached the League and lied to them about going to their world to help out the Justice Lords. He knew that their Martian Manhunter would not and could not read his mind as he was a fellow Martian, which made it easy for him to lie.
He later fought his counterpart during their final battle with the League. However, as he shapeshifted into a monstrous appearance, he gave himself a more ruthless form with more limbs and more viciousness compared to his more passive counterpart.
Green Lantern
This John Stewart has the same backstory as the other John Stewart. A military background, being a Green Lantern, and also being romantically involved with Hawkgirl. His costume had the green and black switched while the emblem was an unenclosed Lantern symbol. He also sported bands on his shins and forearms and had a belt.
During the very first scenes, he looks into an unrest that was being supervised by J’onn J’onzz in Sector 31. Following Superman preventing elections, students from Smallville University were protesting against it and demanded an election. Lord Green Lantern proposed to look into it even though Lord J’onn J’onzz mentioned how the police were already there. And yet, a power-driven John Stewart felt the need to show off his power over a group of harmless students standing up for freedom.
He flew to the protest with Lady Hawkgirl and the students who were fighting back immediately retreated after seeing the superheroes. When Hawkgirl mentioned how scared people were of them, John Stewart did the most boomer thing ever. Pointing out how his generation (or rather, his people) had it rough and they just accepted it. Ok Boomer.
After the Justice Lords fooled the League members into their trap, he was the one who lethally attacked the League’s Hawkgirl as she tried to fight back, ultimately sending her to the hospital. He later fought his counterpart and almost killed him twice since the League’s Green Lantern was not the type to use deadly force.
Hawkgirl
The Justice Lords Hawkgirl is from Planet Thanagar like the Hawkgirl from the Justice League. She also seems to be romantically involved with John Stewart and sports a different get-up. She wears a full-sleeved costume with a hawk’s head on the neckline. Her mask does not have winged flaps. Her Nth metal mace generates electricity which is blue instead of white. And what separates her from the other members is that she finds the transition from beloved superheroes to fascist law enforcers harder since she often thinks of the time when people used to like them.
She sides with the Justice Lords when they try to take over the primary universe after trapping the Justice League. Later, when the Justice League sent them to an electrocuting trap similar to the one the Lords had set up for them, Lady Hawkgirl used her mace to conduct the electricity just like her counterpart. However, she actually succeeded and was able to save her allies by directing the lightning toward the League’s Batman. Fortunately for her, the League’s Lantern, who refused to use deadly force, had hit her with a non-lethal attack.
She tried to fight against the League’s Superman but was ultimately incapacitated by Lex Luthor.
Whatever Happened To The Justice Lords
Normally, concepts first arise in the comics and later transpire into animation. However, when it comes to the Justice Lords, the storyline was first conceived in the animated universe. It became a canonical part of the DC Comics in 2015 as a part of Grant Morrison’s The Multiversity Guidebook Issue Number 1. In it, the world of the Justice Lords seems to be known as Earth 50 in DC’s Multiverse.
Meanwhile, the primary universe is dubbed to be Earth 12. The continuity of the DC Animated Universe is essential to this one. This takes place in the world of Batman Beyond, where Terry McGinnis is Batman. There is a new Justice League who find themselves getting entangled with the Justice Lords of Earth 50 once again.
Turns out, the League was forced to help the Lords’ world, Earth 50, several years ago. Martian Manhunter, Green Lantern, and Hawkgirl gave up on their tyrannical ways and left Earth. Meanwhile, Lord Batman decided to reform his ways, much to the displeasure of Lord Superman and Lady Wonder Woman. The two superhumans eventually found love in one another and went against Lord Batman.
The Justice League went back to Earth 50 to aid Lord Batman while a superpowered World War broke out in that universe. After salvaging the situation, Wonder Woman decided to stay back in Earth 50 to ensure its safety. In the process, she also fell in love with Lord Batman. She tried to save this world along with Lord Batman but the other two Justice Lords were too much of a force to be reckoned with.
Their battle grew so intense that the Earth 50 Aquaman had to intervene. In this world, he had never made peace with the surface and as a result, threatened to destroy all life on land if the surface world could not achieve peace. And so, Lord Batman and Wonder Woman devised a plan to kill Lord Superman and Lady Wonder Woman.
But this is where things got nasty. Lord Batman made a suit that could go against Superman and even created synthetic Kryptonite to weaken the Kryptonian. However, Lady Wonder Woman posed as the Wonder Woman from Earth 12 and made Lord Batman drop his guard. She took this opportunity to kill him but it ultimately sent the League’s Wonder Woman into a frenzy. She ended up killing Lady Wonder Woman out of rage with her lasso of truth and the lasso turned to ash. Finally, Wonder Woman joined hands with Lord Superman as both of them were heartbroken, following their respective losses. Together, they indulged in a formal marriage to solidify their joint rule for peace.
Some democracy returned to this previously fascist world. However, the people were divided. One side resisted the rule of Lord Superman, Wonder Woman, and the police, while the other side supported it. And so, the superheroes genetically engineered a child who would ultimately have to make a choice. Things got even more complicated when Brainiac kidnapped this child.
The child was then raised by the Kryptonian criminal Jax-Ur from Earth 12 which is the primary universe. He was named Zod and became a part of the Justice League. Strangely, the League never questioned his origins.
Wonder Woman finally returned to Earth 12, once again. But the others feared that she was Lady Wonder Woman. And so, Terry McGinnis headed to Earth 50 to investigate the matter. He was shocked by the state of this other dimension where his counterpart was a street punk who worked with the Jokerz Gang.
Terry from the League works alongside the other Terry to avoid Lord Superman and the new members of the Justice Lords, who are once again, twisted versions of the present-day Justice League. The Lords are trying to get to Earth 12 but Terry has to stop it. He finds the suit Lord Batman had created to fight Lord Superman and uses it to fight Superman. He eventually wins against him, once and for all. And yet, the League chooses not to kill, once again.
Instead, they trap Lord Superman in the Phantom Zone. In this zone, Lord Superman begins to make future plans with Jax-Ur. Meanwhile, Wonder Woman stays back in Earth 12 while the Justice Lords who attacked Earth 12 go back to Earth 50.
You cannot call the Justice Lords evil. Is their way wrong? Sure, in a way. Humans have free will. Taking that away from them will always cause problems. But they have also achieved peace. However, this clearly depicts the diabolical nature of the world. As long as there is freedom, crime will exist against peace. However, taking away that freedom to prevent crime will once again, create a whole new world of problems. And these problems persisting within the human world are so complicated that even superheroes and super-rich billionaires can’t do anything about it.
And with that, today’s video comes to an end. What did you think of the Justice Lords? Did you enjoy this video? If yes, then don’t forget to like and comment on this video. Till then, goodbye. And have a nice one!