Season 1, Episode 4: “Phantoms”
Written by Rob Hoegee
Directed by Tim Maltby
Original release: November 4th, 2006
Running time: 22 minutes
Air time: Saturday morning
One of the things that this series arguably does better than the original Superboy stories is dealing with Clark’s curiosity of his future as Superman.
Although the Legionnaires don’t believe that this is particularly healthy.
Interestingly, this might be the version of the Legion that knows the least about Superman.
Although Brainiac 5 definitely knows more about him than he lets on. This episode will be surprisingly vague about it.
As the museum is about to close, Clark notices a device that should be familiar to Superman fans.
Touching the device opens up a portal…
…that frees the villain of the episode, and his pets.
And he’s… NOT a Superman fan.
He’s voiced by Greg Ellis, a British actor who was in the Pirates of the Caribbean movies and has done a lot of voice acting, mostly in video games.
When I watched the episode I was wondering if the actor was doing a British accent on purpose, but no he’s just British.
I don’t think I’ve seen anything he’s voiced (at least not dubbed) so I have no idea if he’s just using his regular voice.
While the words “Phantom Zone” are never said in the episode, that device was very clearly the Phantom Zone Projector.
So you might expect the villain to be a classic Superman villain, but instead they went with an original creation… Drax.
Drax wrecks the museum and leaves, with the Legion showing up to investigate after the title sequence.
Brainiac 5 doesn’t seem to recognize the Phantom Zone Projector, but he’s quickly able to figure out what it does.
Come on, I know that the “speak English” gag is a classic, but I find it hard to believe that PHANTOM GIRL doesn’t know what “noncorporeal” means!
Don’t worry, Phantom Girl is going to redeem herself in the rest of the episode.
We will soon learn that Drax has spent his entire life in the Phantom Zone, so this is actually the first time he walks.
He gets the attention of the Science Police by wrecking a few cars, so he decides to unleash his pets.
This is a good moment to point out that they have an AWESOME design, with those vertical mouths.
They remind me of the alien pet adopted by Bizarro in Superman: The Animated Series.
Although that one had an even weirder mouth, and didn’t have powers.
Between Drax and the pets, the Science Police is hopelessly
outmatched.Strangely they don’t seem to recognize the Legion as they show up to fight.
During the fight, Phantom Girl demonstrates the ability to make OTHER people intangible.
She doesn’t typically do this in comics, and in fact this episode will include a couple of scenes when she does it to a far higher degree that I’d expect from her.
Drax is giving Superman a hard time, since he’s able to match all his powers and is clearly more used to them. And he has the advantage of not caring about innocents.
This looks like a job for Phantom Girl!
While this is a really cool fight scene for her… she keeps disappearing, turning intangible to avoid being hurt, and kicking Drax repeatedly… it’s a weird choice.
Drax was shown to be as invulnerable as Superman, but now her regular kicks hurt him!?
But seriously, Phantom Girl is on a roll here.
As the fight continues, Drax starts to receive telepathic orders. Which seems to hurt him.
Phantom Girl, I like you in this episode, but you REALLY need to stop doing my job.
The voice in Drax’s head just insists that he’s evil and he’s always been evil.
This is bad choice in my opinion… I know this is a children’s cartoon, but this is REALLY talking down to your audience.
It’s also completely unnecessary in-universe because it’s not like Drax was rebelling against his nature or anything; this actually stops him from fighting the heroes!!!
The voice actor for this mysterious voice is not credited; it sounds almost exactly like Drax’s voice, so I assume it’s the same actor. We’re not told who is talking, but it can be deduced fairly easily as we’ll discuss later.
The pets take Drax to safety, surprising the Legion.I do
n’t know WHY they are surprised! Maybe by them having heat vision, since they haven’t used it before this point, but they’ve seen them flying and use super-strength throughout the fight!
The Legion regroups at HQ. Hate to tell you Phantom Girl, but you guys ARE responsible for setting Drax free! Well, Superman is anyway.
First mention in the series that Phantom Girl’s mother is President Of The Galaxy.
They’ll get the spotlight next episode.
Brainiac 5 managed to scan Drax, and it turns out that he’s “almost a genetic equal” to Superman.
More on the mystery of Drax’s nature later.
These telepathic messages feel really out of place. He’s already causing massive damage and is about to conquer the planet, what else do you want???
The next day, the Legion is fighting the pets again.
Phantom Girl once again demonstrates the power to extend her intangibility to others.
Instead of a person, she uses it on an entire supporting cable for those weird 31st century buildings.
One of the pets retreats to the sewers, where he’s hunted by Timber Wolf and Phantom Girl.
She’s weirdly defensive about this.
You’d think these two would go through the tired cliché of “the snotty girl actually does need to be saved by the gruff hero”…
…but no, Phantom Girl actually CAN take care of herself!!!
In fact, Phantom Girl and Timber Wolf manage to subdue one of the two pets.
The other Legionnaires won’t be able to do the same with the other one!
Superman nicknames the pets Comet and Cupid. Various resources consider these their actual names, but Drax never gives them one.
For some reason, the Science Police targets the Legion instead of the pet.
So you can understand Lightning Lad’s frustration.
Drax is absent during all this because he’s gone back to Legion HQ to get the projector back from Brainiac 5.
Not really sure why Drax wears heels, by the way, unless they’re supposed to make him more evil.
Brainy pretends to take it, but he actually brings out a piece of Kryptonite.
Interestingly, the word “Kryptonite” is NEVER said at any point in the episode!
Unfortunately Kryptonite has no effect if you wear heels, so Drax is immune.
The reason why I was so frustrated by the awkward inclusion of that “you’re evil” stuff is that the series is typically more subtle than that.
Case in point, the episode doesn’t outright say that Brainiac 5 has a piece of Kryptonite to keep Superman in check, but you can definitely deduce it.
After Superman shows up for an extended fight sequence, he decides to use the projector to send Drax back to the Phantom Zone.
But he hesitates long enough to allow Drax to use the projector on the Legion AND destroy it.
The fight continues in the Legion’s arsenal. This is the first mention of the Legion’s computer being named Computo.
I’m sure that, had the series continued past its second season, we would eventually have had the evil Computo from the comics.
Meanwhile the Legion is stuck in the Phantom Zone, with the other prisoners.
None of the criminals are named, although they are all inspired by classic Kryptonian villains… and apparently Doomsday.
This is a big problem for the Legion, because Phantom Girl is the only one who can actually hurt the prisoners… while the prisoners can hurt THEM.
The solution is the surprisingly rarely seen force field of Brainiac 5.
Impressive timing. This is at 17:04 into the episode; and the Legion will leave the Phantom Zone at 19:40.
Drax is, let’s face it, a very basic character. But there’s something fascinating about the idea of him having been born in the Phantom Zone.
This is the most explanation we ever get about Drax, so… what exactly IS he???
Since he has a Z on his chest, it’s fair to assume he as actually created by Zod (who is probably the voice in his head).
However I don’t think he’s Zod’s son. Given that Brainiac 5 said Drax is “almost a genetic equal” to Superman AND him talking about his parents making sure he’d be immune to Kryptonite, I think it’s more likely that he’s some kind of clone of Superman.
How exactly Zod managed to do THAT while in the Phantom Zone is anyone’s guess.
Thankfully, Brainiac 5 has figured out how to leave the Phantom Zone.
That will also require Phantom Girl to make all of them intangible. Weird how she’s not sure if she can do it, because when she turned that cable intangible it looked FAR bigger than the whole team!
The fact that she risks getting stuck in intangible form might be the reason why she never uses this power again.
Thankfully they manage to return just in time to prevent Drax from using Kryptonite against Superman.
At the cost of Phantom Girl…
…’s lunch.
And so the day is saved, with the biggest damages being to Brainiac 5’s laboratory.
Again, the episode is subtle enough to avoid spelling out that Brainiac 5 feels guilty about keeping Kryptonite around.
And we end with Superman deciding he’s not going to look for any more spoilers… but the final closeup on Brainiac 5 tells you that he knows MUCH that he’s not willing to divulge yet.
Animated significance: 4/10
The pets are not returned to the Phantom Zone at the end of the episode, so they will make one more appearance. Weirdly enough, Drax never comes up in conversation.
Does any of this show up in regular continuity?
Phantom Girl’s mother (well, Apparition’s) WAS President of the United Planets at the end of the Reboot continuity, but that happened before this episode aired.
General Zod DOES conceive a child in the Phantom Zone with fellow Kryptonian villain Ursa.
The 10 year old Lor-Zod debuts in 2017; I haven’t read any of his appearances, but his origin does sound a lot like Drax’s.
I don’t think he’s immune to Kryptonite though.
Silver Age-ness: 7/10
Drax’s evil evilness of evil is brought up so often to qualify. Not to mention that his look goes so over the top that it becomes laughable.
Does it stand the test of time? 7/10
I have a feeling that this is a watered down version of a much better story. As I’ve mentioned multiple times, the “remember you’re evil” scenes serve basically no purpose, and Drax is incredibly generic.
However, where the episode DOES work, it’s in maintaining a subtext of distrust between several characters and hinting at a darker story behind Drax’s existence.
And Phantom Girl, of course. She’s one of the highlights of this episode, even though I don’t think she should be able to phase more than one person at a time if she has that power.
The decision to avoid saying ANY names connected to Superman’s mythos (nobody ever says Phantom Zone, or Krypton, or Kryptonite, or Zod at ANY point) is an interesting one.
It’s possible there were some legal shenanigans… remember that one of the reasons Superman isn’t called Superboy in this series has to do with those… but it does help making things more mysterious; from their perspective, the Legion is dealing with things from a long-lost era.
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