What do you think happened to the Justice Lords after they were beaten?

[Lorendiac]

Okay, I just refreshed my memory by watching the JL episode in which the Justice Lords from a parallel Earth invade the Earth of the DCAU's main timeline, and then the Lords are brought down in crushing defeat. Superman apparently brokered a deal (behind the scenes) between the government and Lex Luthor, whereby Luthor gets a full pardon for any past crimes if he will just use a sneaky weapon he must have previously built for a rainy day -- a power disruptor -- to depower the Justice Lords versions of Superman, Wonder Woman, Green Lantern, Hawkgirl, and Martian Manhunter.

Luthor holds up his end of the bargain and the five Justice Lords in question are rendered helpless. As the episode ends, nobody has said a word about what is going to happen to those five prisoners!

Meanwhile, Justice Lords Batman is still lurking in his Batcave in his native timeline; he had reached some sort of deal with the regular Batman earlier, and the Justice League doesn't seem terribly interested in traveling back there all over again to place Justice Lords Batman under arrest -- or at least they never mentioned any such plan before the episode ended.

So the question is: What do you think the League actually did with the Justice Lords after they were defeated? One thing that worries me about this is that the Lords still had their memories, and presumably knew each other's secret identities. Any one of them could start yelling out to the general public, "Hey! Betcha didn't know your Superman is secretly Clark Kent, and your Batman is secretly Bruce Wayne, and your Flash is secretly Wally West!"

I can think of a few possibilities for what happened after the Lords were captured:

1. Imprison them right there on the Justice League's Earth. Which leaves them able to spill their guts in press conferences.

2. Transport them back to the Justice Lords Earth and turn them over to the authorities for punishment. Granted, this still leaves them able to spill their guts about secret identities and other awkward subjects, but the only person left on that Earth who would really be inconvenienced by this is Justice Lords Batman, and he's filthy rich and a master of disguise; I'm sure he could disappear into another identity somewhere and never be caught by the FBI or anyone if he just abandoned his Batman persona.

3. Mindwipe the prisoners so they don't remember anything about the personal secrets of any superheroes (including themselves?). [Whether or not you then turn them over to one penal system or another is optional.]

4. Shove them into the Phantom Zone or some other place, so that the depowered Lords were still "prisoners," but not under the control of any state or national government on either Earth. That way they would have precious little chance to spill their guts about Superman's secret identity (for instance) to anyone who didn't already know.

Or I may have missed some other alternative.

What do you think happened to those five depowered Justice Lords?

[Silverstar]

An interesting question. However, there's already a thread for it. (http://www.toonzone.net/forums/showthread.php?t=230328&highlight=Happened+Justice+Lords%3F)

[Dreyfus]

I think that's the kind of thing we're not supposed to think about.

[Anthonynotes]

I posted my thoughts on such (in a snarky-but-amusing manner) here in the original discussion thread:

http://www.toonzone.net/forums/showpost.php?p=1585012&postcount=57

(Scroll to bottom)

[Lighthammer]

Well. if they remained in "our" dimension, there would have no doubt been some sort of development during the Cabnus Arc.

Something I always assumed was that this power distributor only temporarily suspended their powers. If something existed to permanently remove the powers of pretty much anyone in the DC Universe, don't you think an entire arch would almost be dedicated to this potentially dooms day weapon?

Thus I see three real possibilities:

1.) Phantom Zone

2.) Sent back to their own dimension and went about business as usual, except now Batman of that dimension has a little different perspective. I would tend to believe if this is true, Batman convinced them to scale back their rule.

3.) Batman of their dimension keeps them on lockdown pretty much forever.

[Yojimbo]

I think that's the kind of thing we're not supposed to think about.Yep.


I'm fairly sure that after Waller and her Cadmus team took them into custody, the Justice Lords, now powerless, were questioned, interrogated, and probably tortured for any relevant information about their secret identities, choices they made in their reality, etc. and this was added to a few of the folders and files that the Question later stole in that 3 TB download from "Question Authority" such as Multiverse, Metawar Dec., DC Siege - 6 hr, Oval Office, Could It...[Q], Counter Measures, W.C. Scenario, and/or Conclusion.

Then the Cadmus scientists extracted DNA samples for the Bio-Vault (seen in "Patriot Act") and for Professor Hamilton's Genetics Division to play around with. Then the powerless Justice Lords were executed and the bodies were destroyed, then all knowledge of said interrogations were disavowed. I'd say only Amanda Waller, General Eiling, Professor Hamilton, and the President of the United States were privy to what really happened to the Lords. Maybe less.