"The Brave and the Bold" is composed of the twelfth and thirteenth episodes of Justice League. It originally aired on March 10 and 17, 2002.
Green Lantern and the Flash uncover a plot by Grodd, an intelligent talking gorilla, to destroy Gorilla City, a hidden city of like gorillas in Africa.
Plot
Part I
In Africa, an archaeologist couple are examining the remains of prehistoric men. Behind them, unnoticed by either of them, a mountain disappears, replaced by an enormous, futuristic city. A dark-haired gorilla on a hover bike speeds out of the city, pursued by a team of other gorillas, who turn back when they see the humans. They return, and the city disappears.
In Central City, Flash is wolfing down burgers in a diner and regaling two nearby ladies with tales of his heroism – or trying to, they look bored to tears. However, trouble starts when a large van comes speeding down the street, shoving aside cars heedlessly. One car comes flying through the window of the diner, nearly crushing the two ladies before Flash saves them. He excuses himself and takes off after the van.
The driver refuses to slow down, while the passenger aims a futuristic-looking pistol at Flash and fires, missing several times. Finally, the chase leads to a bridge over the ocean, where the van skids off the side and teeters on the edge. The van and its occupants are narrowly saved from falling by John Stewart, arriving to give Flash a hand. In the back of the van, they find containers of radioactive isotopes. They check the driver’s IDs and find that both are research scientists at the institute from which the isotopes were stolen. Both men appear to wake up, as if from a trance, and both claim not to remember what they were doing.
At the institute, Flash and Lantern question the scientists’ colleague, Dr. Sarah Corwin. Corwin says that she has no explanation for their behavior, except possibly stress from overwork. While she speaks to Lantern, Flash notices an adult gorilla among the lab’s test monkeys.
While Flash is grabbing a snack, he and Lantern intercept a truly bizarre report: a gorilla has been sighted downtown, terrorizing citizens and is now driving a getaway car to escape the police. Flash chases down the car, and is surprised when the gorilla tells him to get away. Then Corwin, hiding on a rooftop, blasts him with some kind of energy ray.
Flash has a series of bizarre hallucinations, then wakes up inside a jail cell. The police show him a surveillance tape of him stealing the isotopes from the police impound. His interrogation is cut short by the arrival of Lantern, who takes him away, then angrily subjects Flash to another interrogation. Flash insists that he’s innocent, and can’t explain why he was stealing the isotopes. The last thing he can remember is stopping the talking gorilla.
Lantern is skeptical, but they manage to track the gorilla down. The gorilla introduces himself as Solovar, chief of security for Gorilla City, a civilization of hyper-intelligent gorillas hidden from mankind. Their city has been peaceful until recently, when Grodd, a genius scientist, developed a mind control helmet that he tried to use to take over the other gorillas. The authorities developed a resistance to the helmet and chased Grodd out, but now he's sworn revenge on the city. Solovar also says his investigation has found an email correspondence between Grodd and Corwin.
Needing no further information, Flash streaks back to the institute, before Solovar can explain that he has a small supply of electronic headbands that will shield a person from Grodd’s mind control. By the time he and Lantern get to the institute, Grodd has already subdued Flash, and uses him to attack Lantern. Lantern knocks him out with difficulty, but Grodd and Corwin have escaped.
Grodd has used the isotopes to power a machine in the heart of Central City, which he activates before he and Corwin speed away on his hover bike. Lantern and Solovar run to the machine, but then it gives off a colossal energy surge, like an explosion, that covers the whole city and leaves nothing behind.
Part II
From the Watchtower, J'onn notices the apparent absence of Central City and flies down in a Javelin accompanied by Wonder Woman and Hawkgirl. Though there is nothing visible but a crater in the ground, the ship's sensors detect something there – and then the ship glances off something solid but invisible around the city. Landing, they realize there is a force field enclosing the city, which is impenetrable to any of them.
Inside, Central City is intact, only hidden from the outside world as Gorilla City is. Lantern and Solovar awake, and meet with Flash. Grodd is now holding court in the city square, with a crowd of people under his mind control. Lantern, Flash, and Solovar confront him, but Grodd sics his puppets on them, before flying off again. Lantern takes off in pursuit, while Flash and Solovar try to hold the mob at bay without injuring them. When they draw too close, Flash (with an effort) picks up Solovar and runs through the crowd at super speed with him, until they reach safety.
Batman communicates with the Leaguers outside the city and says he has identified similar energy readings from a location in Africa. They agree to rendezvous there. As soon as they arrive, however, they are captured by the city’s security forces, who believe they are spies from the outside.
Grodd and Corwin drive to a nearby military base, where Grodd overcomes the soldiers with his helmet, then arms four nuclear missiles. Lantern, Flash, and Solovar arrive outside the base just as the missiles take off. Solovar realizes they are heading for Gorilla City. Lantern flies after them, while Flash and Solovar run into the base to stop Grodd.
In Gorilla City, the other Leaguers manage to escape their prison, but find themselves trapped by the shield. As they are cornered by the gorillas, the shield malfunctions and shuts down – Grodd left a sabotage device behind. At the same time, the gorillas detect the incoming missiles. To their surprise the League offers to help them.
Flying over the Atlantic Ocean, Lantern manages to catch up with, and disable, two of the missiles; but as the second breaks up, a flying piece of debris hits him in the head, temporarily knocking him cold.
At the base, Grodd sees the two missiles go down, and attacks Solovar in fury; Flash distracts him by patting his helmet down over his eyes. Grodd rounds on Flash, who dodges his punches with ease.
Lantern awakes and catches up with the missiles only in time to see them heading for the city. But the other Leaguers are waiting. J'onn phases straight through one, extracting its guidance system and causing it to crash harmlessly. Hawkgirl smashes the last missile with her mace, breaking it into pieces, but the warhead stage is still heading for the city. As the gorillas scream in panic, Diana flies into the missile’s path and tries to push it off course. She stops it from exploding, but it drags along the ground, finally crushing her underneath before it grinds to a stop.
At that, Batman’s stoicism cracks, and he digs furiously in the rubble under the missile, shouting Diana’s name. When there is no response, he gives up, but then the missile body lifts, and Diana emerges, holding the guidance system. The city is safe (As the gorillas cheer, Batman tries, unsuccessfully, to hide his dirt-caked gloves from Diana’s notice).
Seeing the last missile deactivated, Grodd goes berserk and attacks Flash. Still evading, Flash proposes a fair fight, and takes off his headband, inviting Grodd to take off his helmet. Grodd, of course, does no such thing. Smiling, he activates his helmet – and screams as it feeds back on itself. Flash explains that he crossed some of the helmet’s wires when he patted it down. To his surprise, Corwin turns out to have not been under Grodd’s mind control – instead, she had genuinely fallen in love with him.
The League meets up in Gorilla City, where the leaders thank them for their help. Solovar shows them Grodd, a brain-dead vegetable, bearing an almost comic resemblance to a zoo ape.
However, as the League and Solovar walks away, the vacant look in Grodd’s eyes disappears, and they narrow with hatred...
Continuity
- In "Secret Society," Grodd is revealed to have developed innate telepathic abilities as a result of the accident with his helmet.
- This is one of the first episodes to hint at the growing attraction between Batman and Wonder Woman.
- In the Justice League Unlimited episode "The Great Brain Robbery," when Flash offers to help Grodd defeat Lex Luthor, Grodd replies that he hates Flash just as much as he hates Luthor, if not more. This episode explains why.
Background Information
Production Inconsistencies
- For someone who is the self-proclaimed "Fastest Man Alive," the Flash seems to have a hard time to catch up to a speeding van.
- The men who stole the radioactive isotopes — Professor Arthur Chen and Doctor Mark Stevens — worked for the research center where the isotopes were stolen from. Grodd needed those isotopes to power his device... which was stored in that same building. So why did he mind control the two scientists to steal the isotopes from the building he needed them in the first place?
- Solovar hijacks a car before its owner had had the time to put the key in, but he puts it in gear and drives away anyway.
- Solovar has been chasing Grodd ever since he escaped Gorilla City. After meeting with John Stewart and the Flash he gives them a special headband to protect them from Grodd's mind control, and then Solovar puts one on himself. Why hasn't him been wearing one the whole time?
- Why does Grodd give the mob a speech if he can just mind-control them?
- The crater seen in the end of Part I is nowhere to be seen when the Leaguers rendezvous outside Central City in Part II.
- The Javelin was visibly damaged on one thruster after hitting the force field around Central City. However, it landed outside Gorilla City, the damage was gone.
- Why did J'onn assume Diana was dead? He is a telepath.
- Despite the fact that Part I takes place in Central City, the police cars all have the Metropolis police department logo on their doors.
Trivia
- Superman does not appear.
- Phil Morris, who voices the Gorilla City General, later went on to voice supervillain Vandal Savage.
- Solovar's first line, "Get your stinking paws off me, you filthy human!" is a tribute to a famous line from Planet of the Apes, spoken by the human character to the apes, and surprising them with the fact that humans can talk.
- The blond police man that questions the Flash in Part I bears a striking resemblance to Barry Allen, the previous version of the Flash.
- The guns used by the gorillas are similar in appearance to the hand-held Kryptonian weapons appearing in the Superman: The Animated Series episode "The Last Son of Krypton."
- According to the Watchtower map, Central City is located somewhere in Indiana.
- The title of this episode is a reference to The Brave and the Bold, a DC comic which featured team-ups between two different superheroes and where the Justice League debuted.
- Flash's hallucination sequence features several references to various covers of different Flash/Barry Allen comics:
- The overweight Flash is from the cover of Flash #115: "The Day Flash Weighed 1,000 pounds" (1959);
- The puppet Flash is from the cover of Flash #133: "Plight of the Puppet Flash" (1959);
- The three-sided mirror/distortion is from issues featuring the Mirror Master, such as Flash #105: "The Master of Mirrors!" (1959) and Flash #136: "The Mirror Master's Invincible Bodyguards!" (1963);
- The big-headed Flash appeared on the cover of Flash #177 (1968), Green Lantern #13: "Duel of the Super-heroes" (1960), and Justice League of America #7: "Fun-House Mirror".
- The Flash calls Solovar "Mojo", which is likely a reference to Mojo Jojo, the evil monkey and archnemesis of the Powerpuff Girls, another Cartoon Network cartoon show.
Cast
| Actor | Role |
|---|---|
| Maria Canals | Hawkgirl |
| Kevin Conroy | Bruce Wayne/Batman |
| Susan Eisenberg | Wonder Woman |
| Phil LaMarr | Green Lantern |
| Carl Lumbly | J'onn J'onzz |
| Michael Rosenbaum | The Flash |
| Powers Boothe | Grodd |
| Bill Duke | Detective |
| Virginia Madsen | Dr. Sarah Corwin |
| Phil Morris | General |
| David Ogden Stiers | Solivar |
Quotes
Green Lantern: I'm supposed to believe this? |
Grodd: (after punching Flash) That's for the banana. I hate bananas. |
Green Lantern: Flash, don't heckle the supervillain. |
Grodd You're a bigger fool that I thought. |
Flash: Not bad, huh? I outsmarted a super-genius! |
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