Superman Homepage reviewer Marc Lax continues reviewing episodes from “Superman: The Animated Series” for those nostalgic for the 1990s.
Check out his review of the Season 3 episode titled “Absolute Power” in which Superman is traveling through space to observe a black hole. Suddenly a runaway ship appears and it’s Superman to the rescue. He uses the ship’s vapor trail to return the ship to their planet. After landing, the occupants are not happy with Superman. Curious. Until they are attacked by fighter ships. Before the ships can do much damage the attack is halted. Superman is then greeted by their leader. Mala welcomes Superman to New Krypton! It appears that Jax-Ur and Mala escaped the Phantom Zone when two meteors crashed close to the black hole, tearing a rift in to the Phantom Zone. They were rescued by the aforementioned aliens and brought to their planet. Since then the two Phantom Zone villains have been ruling the planet. They tell Superman that they helped bring order to the planet and built factories. Superman suspects things are not as they seem. Realizing he can’t prove anything’s amiss and there’s no immediate danger, Superman decides to head home. But he doesn’t get far. He meets Cetea one of the planet’s denizens who is opposing Jax-Ur and Mala. She tells Superman that the two leaders didn’t tell Superman everything. She shows him the tech they are building. Machines built for destruction. Superman surmises that Jax-Ur and Mala are planning to invade Earth. The two villains discover Cetea and Superman and capture them, planning to send them in to the black hole. Mala’s guard Alterus causes a disruption so the villains become occupied. He then saves Cetea and Superman. Soon an escape pod with two occupants flies away, but Superman stays back to fight his fellow Kryptonians. The fight ends in space where Superman, with just a few seconds of air left, takes an escape pod. Unfortunately Jax-Ur and Mala are not so lucky and get sucked into the black hole. Later, back on the planet, Cetea people reward Superman for saving them. Superman then heads back to Earth.
Rating – 4 (out of 5): This is an action packed episode, and that’s great, but there’s more action than story. Superman helps save a runaway ship. Their planet turns out to be run by villains. Villains attack. Superman saves the day. That probably could have been my synopsis! Though an appearance by Mala and Jax-Ur is always welcome. And who doesn’t like seeing Superman punching out villains and coming to the rescue?! It’s just after the last couple of episodes this seemed like a placeholder.
It is a good episode, which was the intention, but I think when you have the Phantom Zone villains they should play a bigger role. Having a continuation with them actually attacking Earth would have been a lot of fun. But then knowing what’s to come, maybe it was better they held off. I still would have liked to learn more about Cetea and Alterus’ planet, which I don’t believe ever gets a name. They seem like interesting characters and I would have loved to see them again. But they’re just used as a means to an end and it’s wasted potential.
I love Sarah Douglas as Mala, who of course is a sort of a stand in for Ursa. It’s interesting that this show didn’t use Zod at some point. But Jax-Ur was used a lot more in the comics. Zod was not as visible. It was the Christopher Reeve movies that brought him to the forefront. Since then he has been treated as Superman’s ultimate super villain (second only to Luthor) across all media. It still would have been nice to see what the STAS writers could have done with him.
This was still a great episode despite all that. It just left me wanting more.
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