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Made with DeviantArt muro

I've decided to take the time to do another one of my pictures where I pay tribute to various incarnations of a particular character or group of characters.

I found reading the entirety of Garth Ennis' The Boys so distasteful that I desperately searched for conventional superhero media that would help me wash from my mouth the rancid taste that could only come from reading an excessively violent and vulgar comic that was 90% a jejune and unfounded indictment of the superhero genre. Fortunately, I remembered that I had presently been in the process of catching up on the entirety of Super Friends.

I am presently on the World's Greatest SuperFriends iteration of that corny yet fondly remembered cartoon, and the episode I've seen most recently was "Universe of Evil", which reminded me of a particular group I've always wanted to do a Many Faces treatment of who are also in my opinion the most underrated villain team of the DC Comics universe: The Crime Syndicate, who are evil versions of the Justice League from an alternate universe where the heroes are the villains and vice versa.

The Crime Syndicate hail from Earth-3 and the usual roster consisted of Ultraman (an evil Superman who in some versions is actually vulnerable to sunlight and gets stronger by consuming kryptonite), Superwoman (an evil Wonder Woman), Johnny Quick (an evil Flash), Owlman (an evil Batman who in the Forever Evil storyline was established to have arranged his own parents' murder by conspiring with Alfred Pennyworth's Earth-3 counterpart) and Power Ring (an evil Green Lantern who is the unwilling host of a ring containing an evil being called Volthoom rather than a member of an intergalactic group of space cops who I've heard has lately been renamed Emerald Knight, which is a name change I have mixed opinions on).

There have been several different takes on an evil version of the Justice League from a different universe, but it's interesting to note how long it took to do a completely faithful adaptation of the Crime Syndicate. This covers the interpretations of an evil Justice League as shown in Super Friends, the Justice League animated series that was part of the DC Animated Universe, Batman: The Brave and the Bold, the direct-to-DVD animated film Justice League: Crisis on Two Earths and the video game LEGO DC Super-Villains. These cartoons and the LEGO games have been among my most favorite adaptations of DC Comics characters, plus there aren't many other DC adaptations of note that featured the Crime Syndicate.

Before I go in detail on the different versions, I'll make it clear that the only comics featuring the Crime Syndicate I've read are the aforementioned Forever Evil crossover event and the classic Crisis on Infinite Earths crossover event (I read scans on the Internet of the former and actually own a trade paperback of the latter).

1. SUPER ENEMIES

The very first effort to have at least the concept of an evil Justice League from another universe used outside of the comic books was in the Hanna-Barbera cartoon Super Friends, more specifically in the World's Greatest SuperFriends series during the episode "Universe of Evil".

This evil version of the Justice League was called the Super Enemies (and possibly also known as the Injustice League, as they have a Hall of Injustice and the cartoon has used the team names Justice League and Super Friends interchangeably), with the only members seen being evil counterparts to the core members Superman, Batman, Robin, Aquaman and Wonder Woman.

The Super Enemies had the same names as their heroic counterparts, but all had more sinister appearances (with Superman having a red and black costume as well as red eyes with eyeshadow not unlike the vampirized Superman from the New Super Friends episode where they fought Dracula, Aquaman having an eyepatch, Batman and Robin having red eyes as well as a red costume and a mustache respectively and Wonder Woman appearing to just have a costume with somewhat darker colors as well as more wrinkles on her face).

Since this was back when cartoons could only afford hiring so many voice actors at once (and it's always a reliable cost-cutting measure to have clones and alternate versions of a character to be voiced by the same person voicing the regular character), the Super Enemies had the same voice actors the Super Friends had at this time, with Danny Dark voicing Superman, Shannon Farnon voicing Wonder Woman, William Callaway voicing Aquaman, Olan Soale voicing Batman and Casey Kasem voicing Robin.

While the Super Friends are crimefighters who occasionally defend against natural disasters, the Super Enemies instead relished in using their powers to terrorize the world and cause disasters. The whole mess even starts because Evil Superman was trying to make a volcano erupt again at the same time the Superman we know was trying to prevent a volcano from erupting. This leads to Superman trying to avoid the rest of the Super Enemies and law enforcers trying to kill the Man of Steel while the Super Friends had to stop Evil Superman from causing too much damage.

In the end, the two Supermen went back to their proper universes, but Big Blue makes it clear that the job isn't over and that the Super Friends must go to the Super Enemies' universe to end their reign. Unsurprisingly, the rest of the Super Friends are with Superman all the way.

I had long wanted to draw a picture covering the different interpretations of the Crime Syndicate (or at least the general concept of evil alternate versions of the Justice League), but not before seeing this episode of Super Friends was the main obstacle preventing me from getting started on it.

I am glad to have finally had the chance to watch the relevant episode, as it truly is one of the better episodes of Super Friends. The comedic scene of Gleek bickering with the Hall of Justice's computer and then having a blender splatter banana shake all over him was a most welcome bonus.

2. JUSTICE LORDS

The closest thing to the Crime Syndicate that appeared in the DC Animated Universe would be the Justice Lords, who were alternate versions of the Justice League who appeared in the two-part episode A Better World (of course, the majority of the episodes in the DCAU Justice League show were multi-parters anyway).

Word has it that A Better World was originally planned as a Crime Syndicate episode, but the production team got inspiration from reading The Authority to make it so the alternate Justice League would be less "the Justice League as a team of villains" and more "the Justice League as extremists who are driven to turn America into a police state".

The thing with the Justice Lords is that in their world, Lex Luthor was President of the United States and killed The Flash in addition to almost ushering the world into a devastating nuclear war. After President Luthor taunted Superman over his unwillingness to use lethal force, Supes then conceded Lex had a point and summarily killed him using his heat vision, afterwards the Justice Lords put on different costumes and forcibly subjugated the world.

Once again, everyone involved shares the voice actor of their regular counterpart, with Justice Lord Superman voiced by George Newbern, Justice Lord Batman by Kevin Conroy, Justice Lord Green Lantern (John Stewart) voiced by Phil Lamarr, Justice Lord J'onn J'onzz/Martian Manhunter voiced by Carl Lumbly, Justice Lord Hawkgirl voiced by Maria Canals Barrera and Justice Lord Wonder Woman voiced by Susan Eisenberg.

The Justice League we know end up crossing paths with the Justice Lords, but in the end they team up with their Luthor to take down the Justice Lords with a weapon that takes away their powers (Justice Lord Batman had already opted out of the fight after realizing their methods weren't that ideal).

This would be the last of the Justice Lords, except for the Justice League Unlimited episode Divided We Fall, where a fusion of Luthor and Brainiac created android duplicates of the Justice Lords to fight the League, including a construct of what a Justice Lord Flash might have looked like (with the colors of his costume inverted, making him look like Reverse-Flash).

There were also scrapped plans to have an encounter with the actual Crime Syndicate form the basis of a direct-to-video film, but more details on that can wait until the Crisis on Two Earths analysis.

3. INJUSTICE SYNDICATE

Batman: The Brave and The Bold is one of the most polarizing incarnations of the Caped Crusader, but I really appreciated the number of DC characters, both famous and obscure, that were involved with the show. This is technically the first time the Crime Syndicate appeared outside the comics, but there were still a few discrepancies and creative liberties involved.

For one thing, this team was renamed the Injustice Syndicate, and the only member from the source material to appear was Batman's counterpart Owlman, with no indication that Ultraman, Superwoman, Johnny Quick and Power Ring were members at all. It's anyone's guess why Johnny Quick and Power Ring didn't show, as the show had already had guest appearances of the Flash and Green Lantern by then, but the absence of Ultraman and Superwoman is somewhat understandable, as Superman and Wonder Woman were restricted from use at the time (one thing I wish Warner Bros. would stop would use excuses to not use certain characters in more than one adaptation at once, especially since they don't have the excuse of the adaptations being done by different companies, which is more or less no longer an issue with Disney's adaptations of Marvel now that they acquired 20th Century Studios, plus I find the claim of audiences not being able to understand the concept of different continuities to be very insulting to their intelligence).

Other than Owlman (voiced by Deidrich Bader like Batman), the other members of the Injustice Syndicate who appeared were the Blue Bowman (counterpart to Green Arrow voiced by James Arnold Taylor), the Scarlet Scarab (counterpart to the Jaime Reyes Blue Beetle voiced by Will Friedle), Dyna-Mite (counterpart to the Ryan Choi Atom voiced by James Sie) and the Silver Cyclone (counterpart to the Red Tornado voiced by Corey Burton), plus unnamed counterparts to Aquaman, Fire and Plastic Man who never speak.

The Injustice Syndicate were the villains of a two-parter titled "Deep Cover for Batman!/Game Over for Owlman", where Batman finds himself in an alternate world and has to fight the Injustice Syndicate, prevailing with the help of the Red Hood (voiced by Jeff Bennett and heavily implied to be this universe's counterpart to Batman's archenemy the Joker). After foiling the Silver Cyclone's plan to destroy all organic life, Batman returns to his home dimension to learn that Owlman has impersonated him and framed him for various crimes, this time saving the day by teaming up with the actual Joker after Owlman subdued the other heroes trying to stop the framed Batman.

4. CRIME SYNDICATE OF CRISIS ON TWO EARTHS

The story of Justice League: Crisis on Two Earths starts with an unproduced direct-to-video film titled Justice League: Worlds Collide, which was intended to be part of the DC Animated Universe canon, specifically bridging the gap between Justice League and Justice League Unlimited. The project fell through because it was very difficult to work on more episodes of the show and a movie at the same time and, after a fleeting effort to instead rework the story as a tie-in comic, was ultimately retooled as a new movie set in its own continuity that was part of the DC Universe Animated Original Movies line of animated direct-to-DVD films.

The film made an effort to distance itself from the DCAU, using a completely different art style and having different voice actors used for everyone involved, with Superman voiced by Mark Harmon instead of George Newbern, Batman voiced by William Baldwin instead of Kevin Conroy, J'onn J'onzz voiced by Jonathan Adams instead of Carl Lumbly, Vanessa Marshall as Wonder Woman instead of Susan Eisenberg, the Flash voiced by Josh Keaton instead of Michael Rosenbaum and Green Lantern being Hal Jordan voiced by Nolan North instead of John Stewart voiced by Phil LaMarr.

This movie would be the first time the Crime Syndicate was faithfully adapted, with all the core members involved and actually called the Crime Syndicate rather than the Super Enemies or the Injustice Syndicate. The voice cast for them consisted of Brian Bloom for Ultraman, James Woods for Owlman, Gina Torres for Superwoman (who is implied to double as a counterpart for Mary Marvel, too), James Patrick Stewart for Johnny Quick and Nolan North for Power Ring (making him the one member of the Crime Syndicate to have the same voice actor as his Justice League counterpart).

The story is that the Crime Syndicate universe's version of Lex Luthor flees to the regular universe after the Jester (heroic version of the Joker) sacrifices himself to take out two members of the Crime Syndicate (Martian Manhunter and Hawkgirls' counterparts J'edd J'arkus and Angelique), imploring that the Justice League help him take them down.

Everything boils down to having to stop Owlman from wiping out the multiverse by destroying Earth Prime and the Justice League save the day once more.

An interesting thing to note is that in spite of not being officially part of the DCAU continuity, there are still plenty of remnants from the version of the film that was supposed to be canon to the DC Animated Universe (in particular, how the film begins with the League rebuilding their watchtower, has Wonder Woman acquire her invisible jet and the League deciding to expand their roster), which has caused many people to see Crisis on Two Earths as being canon to the DCAU because of how neatly it fills the gap between Justice League and Justice League Unlimited.

Really, the only major discrepancies preventing the film from being canon to the DCAU are Green Lantern being Hal Jordan instead of John Stewart and the main universe Lex Luthor having a cameo in a prison cell when the DCAU Luthor was pardoned for his crimes at that point in the DCAU canon.

5. LEGO CRIME SYNDICATE

I've long been a tremendous fan of the Lego Batman games, especially with how the second and third games used more characters in the DCU (and the latter even having the different colored Lantern Corps play a big part in the plot), and Lego DC Super-Villains was the greatest of the games yet.

The game was loosely adapted from the Forever Evil comic event, mainly with the story involving Lex Luthor and the other villains fighting the Crime Syndicate while the Justice League has disappeared, but since this is a game aimed primarily at children, there aren't as many casualties (with Aquaman counterpart Sea King, Power Ring, Johnny Quick, Atom counterpart Atomica and Firestorm counterpart Deathstorm surviving the events of the game rather than dying).

The game had the twist of making the custom character the protagonist and teaming up with the villains to take down the Crime Syndicate after they try to fool everyone disguised as a superhero team called the Justice Syndicate, with unlockable side missions entailing how the Justice League were stuck on Apokolips until they fought their way through the underlings of Darkseid and made it home.

The game was well-received for having many iconic actors for DC characters reprising their roles, with Clancy Brown reprising his DCAU role as Lex Luthor and Corey Burton reprising his Arkhamverse role as Professor Hugo Strange, even having Mark Hamill reprise his role as the Joker when the last two games instead had the Clown Prince of Crime voiced by Christopher Corey Smith.

The voice actors chosen for the Crime Syndicate weren't anything to sneeze at, either: Nolan North as Ultraman, Gina Torres reprising her Crisis on Two Earths role as Superwoman, Jason Marsden as Owlman, Dee Bradley Baker as Sea King and Power Ring, Anthony Ingruber as Johnny Quick, Laura Bailey as Atomica, Lex Lang as Deathstorm and Bumper Robinson as Cyborg's counterpart Grid.

Who knows what the Crime Syndicate will be like the next time they appear in an adaptation, but one thing's for sure, all these takes on them were very interesting and fun.

Justice League and all related characters (c) DC Comics

Lego (c) The Lego Company

Description

Made with DeviantArt muro

I've decided to take the time to do another one of my pictures where I pay tribute to various incarnations of a particular character or group of characters.

I found reading the entirety of Garth Ennis' The Boys so distasteful that I desperately searched for conventional superhero media that would help me wash from my mouth the rancid taste that could only come from reading an excessively violent and vulgar comic that was 90% a jejune and unfounded indictment of the superhero genre. Fortunately, I remembered that I had presently been in the process of catching up on the entirety of Super Friends.

I am presently on the World's Greatest SuperFriends iteration of that corny yet fondly remembered cartoon, and the episode I've seen most recently was "Universe of Evil", which reminded me of a particular group I've always wanted to do a Many Faces treatment of who are also in my opinion the most underrated villain team of the DC Comics universe: The Crime Syndicate, who are evil versions of the Justice League from an alternate universe where the heroes are the villains and vice versa.

The Crime Syndicate hail from Earth-3 and the usual roster consisted of Ultraman (an evil Superman who in some versions is actually vulnerable to sunlight and gets stronger by consuming kryptonite), Superwoman (an evil Wonder Woman), Johnny Quick (an evil Flash), Owlman (an evil Batman who in the Forever Evil storyline was established to have arranged his own parents' murder by conspiring with Alfred Pennyworth's Earth-3 counterpart) and Power Ring (an evil Green Lantern who is the unwilling host of a ring containing an evil being called Volthoom rather than a member of an intergalactic group of space cops who I've heard has lately been renamed Emerald Knight, which is a name change I have mixed opinions on).

There have been several different takes on an evil version of the Justice League from a different universe, but it's interesting to note how long it took to do a completely faithful adaptation of the Crime Syndicate. This covers the interpretations of an evil Justice League as shown in Super Friends, the Justice League animated series that was part of the DC Animated Universe, Batman: The Brave and the Bold, the direct-to-DVD animated film Justice League: Crisis on Two Earths and the video game LEGO DC Super-Villains. These cartoons and the LEGO games have been among my most favorite adaptations of DC Comics characters, plus there aren't many other DC adaptations of note that featured the Crime Syndicate.

Before I go in detail on the different versions, I'll make it clear that the only comics featuring the Crime Syndicate I've read are the aforementioned Forever Evil crossover event and the classic Crisis on Infinite Earths crossover event (I read scans on the Internet of the former and actually own a trade paperback of the latter).

1. SUPER ENEMIES

The very first effort to have at least the concept of an evil Justice League from another universe used outside of the comic books was in the Hanna-Barbera cartoon Super Friends, more specifically in the World's Greatest SuperFriends series during the episode "Universe of Evil".

This evil version of the Justice League was called the Super Enemies (and possibly also known as the Injustice League, as they have a Hall of Injustice and the cartoon has used the team names Justice League and Super Friends interchangeably), with the only members seen being evil counterparts to the core members Superman, Batman, Robin, Aquaman and Wonder Woman.

The Super Enemies had the same names as their heroic counterparts, but all had more sinister appearances (with Superman having a red and black costume as well as red eyes with eyeshadow not unlike the vampirized Superman from the New Super Friends episode where they fought Dracula, Aquaman having an eyepatch, Batman and Robin having red eyes as well as a red costume and a mustache respectively and Wonder Woman appearing to just have a costume with somewhat darker colors as well as more wrinkles on her face).

Since this was back when cartoons could only afford hiring so many voice actors at once (and it's always a reliable cost-cutting measure to have clones and alternate versions of a character to be voiced by the same person voicing the regular character), the Super Enemies had the same voice actors the Super Friends had at this time, with Danny Dark voicing Superman, Shannon Farnon voicing Wonder Woman, William Callaway voicing Aquaman, Olan Soale voicing Batman and Casey Kasem voicing Robin.

While the Super Friends are crimefighters who occasionally defend against natural disasters, the Super Enemies instead relished in using their powers to terrorize the world and cause disasters. The whole mess even starts because Evil Superman was trying to make a volcano erupt again at the same time the Superman we know was trying to prevent a volcano from erupting. This leads to Superman trying to avoid the rest of the Super Enemies and law enforcers trying to kill the Man of Steel while the Super Friends had to stop Evil Superman from causing too much damage.

In the end, the two Supermen went back to their proper universes, but Big Blue makes it clear that the job isn't over and that the Super Friends must go to the Super Enemies' universe to end their reign. Unsurprisingly, the rest of the Super Friends are with Superman all the way.

I had long wanted to draw a picture covering the different interpretations of the Crime Syndicate (or at least the general concept of evil alternate versions of the Justice League), but not before seeing this episode of Super Friends was the main obstacle preventing me from getting started on it.

I am glad to have finally had the chance to watch the relevant episode, as it truly is one of the better episodes of Super Friends. The comedic scene of Gleek bickering with the Hall of Justice's computer and then having a blender splatter banana shake all over him was a most welcome bonus.

2. JUSTICE LORDS

The closest thing to the Crime Syndicate that appeared in the DC Animated Universe would be the Justice Lords, who were alternate versions of the Justice League who appeared in the two-part episode A Better World (of course, the majority of the episodes in the DCAU Justice League show were multi-parters anyway).

Word has it that A Better World was originally planned as a Crime Syndicate episode, but the production team got inspiration from reading The Authority to make it so the alternate Justice League would be less "the Justice League as a team of villains" and more "the Justice League as extremists who are driven to turn America into a police state".

The thing with the Justice Lords is that in their world, Lex Luthor was President of the United States and killed The Flash in addition to almost ushering the world into a devastating nuclear war. After President Luthor taunted Superman over his unwillingness to use lethal force, Supes then conceded Lex had a point and summarily killed him using his heat vision, afterwards the Justice Lords put on different costumes and forcibly subjugated the world.

Once again, everyone involved shares the voice actor of their regular counterpart, with Justice Lord Superman voiced by George Newbern, Justice Lord Batman by Kevin Conroy, Justice Lord Green Lantern (John Stewart) voiced by Phil Lamarr, Justice Lord J'onn J'onzz/Martian Manhunter voiced by Carl Lumbly, Justice Lord Hawkgirl voiced by Maria Canals Barrera and Justice Lord Wonder Woman voiced by Susan Eisenberg.

The Justice League we know end up crossing paths with the Justice Lords, but in the end they team up with their Luthor to take down the Justice Lords with a weapon that takes away their powers (Justice Lord Batman had already opted out of the fight after realizing their methods weren't that ideal).

This would be the last of the Justice Lords, except for the Justice League Unlimited episode Divided We Fall, where a fusion of Luthor and Brainiac created android duplicates of the Justice Lords to fight the League, including a construct of what a Justice Lord Flash might have looked like (with the colors of his costume inverted, making him look like Reverse-Flash).

There were also scrapped plans to have an encounter with the actual Crime Syndicate form the basis of a direct-to-video film, but more details on that can wait until the Crisis on Two Earths analysis.

3. INJUSTICE SYNDICATE

Batman: The Brave and The Bold is one of the most polarizing incarnations of the Caped Crusader, but I really appreciated the number of DC characters, both famous and obscure, that were involved with the show. This is technically the first time the Crime Syndicate appeared outside the comics, but there were still a few discrepancies and creative liberties involved.

For one thing, this team was renamed the Injustice Syndicate, and the only member from the source material to appear was Batman's counterpart Owlman, with no indication that Ultraman, Superwoman, Johnny Quick and Power Ring were members at all. It's anyone's guess why Johnny Quick and Power Ring didn't show, as the show had already had guest appearances of the Flash and Green Lantern by then, but the absence of Ultraman and Superwoman is somewhat understandable, as Superman and Wonder Woman were restricted from use at the time (one thing I wish Warner Bros. would stop would use excuses to not use certain characters in more than one adaptation at once, especially since they don't have the excuse of the adaptations being done by different companies, which is more or less no longer an issue with Disney's adaptations of Marvel now that they acquired 20th Century Studios, plus I find the claim of audiences not being able to understand the concept of different continuities to be very insulting to their intelligence).

Other than Owlman (voiced by Deidrich Bader like Batman), the other members of the Injustice Syndicate who appeared were the Blue Bowman (counterpart to Green Arrow voiced by James Arnold Taylor), the Scarlet Scarab (counterpart to the Jaime Reyes Blue Beetle voiced by Will Friedle), Dyna-Mite (counterpart to the Ryan Choi Atom voiced by James Sie) and the Silver Cyclone (counterpart to the Red Tornado voiced by Corey Burton), plus unnamed counterparts to Aquaman, Fire and Plastic Man who never speak.

The Injustice Syndicate were the villains of a two-parter titled "Deep Cover for Batman!/Game Over for Owlman", where Batman finds himself in an alternate world and has to fight the Injustice Syndicate, prevailing with the help of the Red Hood (voiced by Jeff Bennett and heavily implied to be this universe's counterpart to Batman's archenemy the Joker). After foiling the Silver Cyclone's plan to destroy all organic life, Batman returns to his home dimension to learn that Owlman has impersonated him and framed him for various crimes, this time saving the day by teaming up with the actual Joker after Owlman subdued the other heroes trying to stop the framed Batman.

4. CRIME SYNDICATE OF CRISIS ON TWO EARTHS

The story of Justice League: Crisis on Two Earths starts with an unproduced direct-to-video film titled Justice League: Worlds Collide, which was intended to be part of the DC Animated Universe canon, specifically bridging the gap between Justice League and Justice League Unlimited. The project fell through because it was very difficult to work on more episodes of the show and a movie at the same time and, after a fleeting effort to instead rework the story as a tie-in comic, was ultimately retooled as a new movie set in its own continuity that was part of the DC Universe Animated Original Movies line of animated direct-to-DVD films.

The film made an effort to distance itself from the DCAU, using a completely different art style and having different voice actors used for everyone involved, with Superman voiced by Mark Harmon instead of George Newbern, Batman voiced by William Baldwin instead of Kevin Conroy, J'onn J'onzz voiced by Jonathan Adams instead of Carl Lumbly, Vanessa Marshall as Wonder Woman instead of Susan Eisenberg, the Flash voiced by Josh Keaton instead of Michael Rosenbaum and Green Lantern being Hal Jordan voiced by Nolan North instead of John Stewart voiced by Phil LaMarr.

This movie would be the first time the Crime Syndicate was faithfully adapted, with all the core members involved and actually called the Crime Syndicate rather than the Super Enemies or the Injustice Syndicate. The voice cast for them consisted of Brian Bloom for Ultraman, James Woods for Owlman, Gina Torres for Superwoman (who is implied to double as a counterpart for Mary Marvel, too), James Patrick Stewart for Johnny Quick and Nolan North for Power Ring (making him the one member of the Crime Syndicate to have the same voice actor as his Justice League counterpart).

The story is that the Crime Syndicate universe's version of Lex Luthor flees to the regular universe after the Jester (heroic version of the Joker) sacrifices himself to take out two members of the Crime Syndicate (Martian Manhunter and Hawkgirls' counterparts J'edd J'arkus and Angelique), imploring that the Justice League help him take them down.

Everything boils down to having to stop Owlman from wiping out the multiverse by destroying Earth Prime and the Justice League save the day once more.

An interesting thing to note is that in spite of not being officially part of the DCAU continuity, there are still plenty of remnants from the version of the film that was supposed to be canon to the DC Animated Universe (in particular, how the film begins with the League rebuilding their watchtower, has Wonder Woman acquire her invisible jet and the League deciding to expand their roster), which has caused many people to see Crisis on Two Earths as being canon to the DCAU because of how neatly it fills the gap between Justice League and Justice League Unlimited.

Really, the only major discrepancies preventing the film from being canon to the DCAU are Green Lantern being Hal Jordan instead of John Stewart and the main universe Lex Luthor having a cameo in a prison cell when the DCAU Luthor was pardoned for his crimes at that point in the DCAU canon.

5. LEGO CRIME SYNDICATE

I've long been a tremendous fan of the Lego Batman games, especially with how the second and third games used more characters in the DCU (and the latter even having the different colored Lantern Corps play a big part in the plot), and Lego DC Super-Villains was the greatest of the games yet.

The game was loosely adapted from the Forever Evil comic event, mainly with the story involving Lex Luthor and the other villains fighting the Crime Syndicate while the Justice League has disappeared, but since this is a game aimed primarily at children, there aren't as many casualties (with Aquaman counterpart Sea King, Power Ring, Johnny Quick, Atom counterpart Atomica and Firestorm counterpart Deathstorm surviving the events of the game rather than dying).

The game had the twist of making the custom character the protagonist and teaming up with the villains to take down the Crime Syndicate after they try to fool everyone disguised as a superhero team called the Justice Syndicate, with unlockable side missions entailing how the Justice League were stuck on Apokolips until they fought their way through the underlings of Darkseid and made it home.

The game was well-received for having many iconic actors for DC characters reprising their roles, with Clancy Brown reprising his DCAU role as Lex Luthor and Corey Burton reprising his Arkhamverse role as Professor Hugo Strange, even having Mark Hamill reprise his role as the Joker when the last two games instead had the Clown Prince of Crime voiced by Christopher Corey Smith.

The voice actors chosen for the Crime Syndicate weren't anything to sneeze at, either: Nolan North as Ultraman, Gina Torres reprising her Crisis on Two Earths role as Superwoman, Jason Marsden as Owlman, Dee Bradley Baker as Sea King and Power Ring, Anthony Ingruber as Johnny Quick, Laura Bailey as Atomica, Lex Lang as Deathstorm and Bumper Robinson as Cyborg's counterpart Grid.

Who knows what the Crime Syndicate will be like the next time they appear in an adaptation, but one thing's for sure, all these takes on them were very interesting and fun.

Justice League and all related characters (c) DC Comics

Lego (c) The Lego Company