Recap: Justice League "Comfort and Joy"

December is the perfect time for peace and togetherness, and not just because we're all huddling together for warmth.

Sure, it's summer in the Southern Hemisphere, meaning those of you down there might not be huddling together for warmth... and okay, not everybody celebrates Christmas, or Kwanzaa, or Hannukah, or Festivus....

But gosh darn it, we shouldn't need an excuse to appreciate the people we care about. And when the calendar outright gives us an excuse to come together in peace and friendship with the rest of humanity... well, I can't think of any reason not to take the opportunity and spend time with loved ones.

And... well, it has been a difficult couple of years for many of us, hasn't it?

I know it's not much, but I'd like to dedicate this Recap and Review to any and all people out there who need a friend right now, whether you be black, white, green, blue, Jewish, Muslim, Christian, Pagan, Jedi, Pastafarian, pantheist, atheist, straight, gay, bisexual, pansexual, asexual, cisgender, transgender, Republican, Democrat, or anything else.

Happy holidays, God bless us every one, live long and prosper, may the Force be with you, and may the odds ever be in your favor.

The episode opens with two planets about to crash into each other. One of them is an unnamed blizzardy world of ice and snow, and the other one is actually inhabited by peaceful creatures who live in a flooded forest. On the iceworld... well, I know the Justice League probably mentions its actual name at some point, but let's call it "Hoth." Anyway, on Hoth, J'onn J'onnz, the Martian Manhunter, is in psychic contact with the natives of... um... Planet Swamp-Forest-Place. Let's call it "Dagobah." J'onn tells the Dagobah natives to keep calm and carry on while also thanking them for the blueprints to build a "gravitation device" to save their world.

The natives of Dagobah seem utterly bored by their impending doom.

So every Justice Leaguer is on Hoth busy building said gravitation device, apart from Batman and Wonder Woman, who seem to be sitting this mission out. Although if my superhero costume was nothing more than a bikini and jewelry, I might not want to take part in an ice-planet mission, either.
As for Batman... well, somebody's got to stay at the Watchtower and watch for disasters. It's not like they have Mr. Terrific to do that job. Yet.

Anyway, construction on the gravitation device continues. Superman and Green Lantern are doing the heavy lifting with their super-strength and power ring, respectively, while Hawkgirl carries in the computer components needed to make the darn thing actually work. Once the device is assembled, it's up to the Flash to assemble the computer components according to the specifications J'onn beams into his head. With the device built and powered up, it successfully projects a gravity bubble around Hoth with a sound that the subtitles amusingly register as a simple "zap."

Also, is that just Earth standing in for an alien world?

Hoth flies away from Dagobah, and the numerous inhabitants think some thanks into J'onn's head, which he passes on to the rest of the League.
Flash: "Nice way to kick off a Christmas break."
Superman: "I second that."

But while most of the League is ready to get back to Earth in their ship, Green Lantern decides to stay behind. After all, he can just fly home using his ring whenever he's ready, so he can stay as long as he likes. Hawkgirl also stays behind to see exactly what he's up to, and possibly work on some of that sexual tension they've got going on before the season finale.

Flash asks J'onn if he has any holiday plans, and the big green guy answers that he doesn't. Which makes sense, considering that J'onn doesn't celebrate any of Earth's holidays. And Mars orbits the Sun once every 687 days, so any annual Martian holidays aren't really going to sync up with Earth seasons too well.

J'onn: "I'm afraid this season has no meaning for me."

Well, that was blunt. You're a mean one, Mr. J'onnz.

Superman: "We'll have to do something about that."

"A marathon of A Christmas Story should do the trick."

After the opening titles, we see that this planet apparently has some surprisingly Earth-like portions with pine trees and albino squirrels as we cut to Green Lantern having a blast by riding a hard-light snowboard through the mountains.

Albino squirrels. Reminds me of home.

Hawkgirl: "You fly through space all the time but sliding down a snowy hill makes you shriek like a child?"
Green Lantern reminisces about being a kid, when his grandmother would take him sledding, but Hawkgirl simply can't see what all the fuss is regarding snow. So GL builds a snowman the lazy way by using his ring to scoop one together.

Must resist... urge to make... obvious Frozen reference.... Have to put... actual effort... into jokes....

Then he flops back in the fallen snow and starts rubbing himself on it, for reasons Hawkgirl can't fathom.
Green Lantern: "It's a snow angel! See my wings?"

"I find your caricature of my culture to be highly offensive. How would you like it if I rubbed some chocolate on my face and said 'See my skin'?"

In an attempt to get some kind of actual reaction out of Hawkgirl, Green Lantern throws a snowball at her. In response, she uses her mace to cover him in snow.
Green Lantern: "Lady, you are asking for it."

The two of them begin a good old-fashioned snowball fight as we cut to the Central City orphanage back on Earth, where a group of orphans (aka "Future Robins") awaits their annual visit from a jolly man in a red suit.

Flash: "Ho ho ho!"

Man, I love the Flash. You thought Superman's thing was random acts of kindness? P'shaw. The DCAU repeatedly shows that the Fastest Man Alive fills his time by doing favors for the common folk, from painting houses at super-speed to offering up lumbago remedies. Case in point: Flash is going to give these orphans a toy for Christmas, as is his annual tradition.

Flash: "What's it gonna be this year, guys? A video game? Sports equipment?"

"Some Yu-Gi-Oh cards? Those things will never stop being cool!"

I kid, but Yu-Gi-Oh cards were apparently the seventh most-popular toy for boys in 2003, when this episode aired. You might think video games would have the lead, but car/truck toys were the number one toy of the year. But that is a pretty broad category, and it was followed closely by Game Boy Advances and associated games in second place. Playstation games and X-Boxes were in fifth and ninth places, respectively. What makes it sadder for the X-Box is the fact that Leapfrog Learning Devices were in eighth place.
Yeah, you read that right, Nintendo was more popular than either Playstation or X-Box. Having the only actual portable console probably helped. Except the Lynx. And the Game Gear. And the Neo Geo Pocket. So the only good portable console.

And history seems to be repeating itself, between the Nintendo Switch and the NES Classic. You know, the replica NES with 30 games built in. The one that basically sold out immediately.

And speaking of toys that sell out immediately, to end my digression, the orphans all know exactly what they want. And luckily, there's a commercial on TV for it right this very minute.

DJ Rubba-Duckie: "I'm the Rubba Duckie with all the fly moves! Rockin' at his house with my tight grooves!"

Man, this aired in 2003 and they were already making fun of the 90s.

And then DJ Rubba Duckie shakes his tail feathers and makes more fart noises than you'd find in an episode of Teen Titans Go! So many fart noises, in fact, that it actually starts to be funny in how phenomenally unfunny it is. Honestly, I'm surprised that DJ Rubba-Duckie wasn't a real thing.

And did I mention that the fart noises are in rhythm to the beat? Because they are.

Flash promises to track one down, despite the woman working at the orphanage warning him that the stores have been sold out for weeks, just like the aforementioned NES Classics.
Flash: "Please. I made Gorilla Grodd cry uncle. I'm sure Rubba-Duckie will be no prob."

As he runs off to find a dumb toy that the orphans will get bored of in a month, Superman and J'onn arrive in Kansas. J'onn offered earlier to do monitor duty at the Watchtower, since this season means nothing to him, but lost the job to Batman, who apparently really wanted it. It probably gives him a reason to not be on Earth while all the kids are singing 'Jingle bells, Batman smells.'

Clark arrives at the front door, greeted by Ma and Pa Kent who warmly greet their son and start fussing over him.

Ma Kent: "Have you been eating, dear? You look thin!"

"At least you don 't have those dreadful lines on your cheeks anymore.
You looked like Clint Eastwood, and not in a good way."

Clark: "It's good to be back. And I brought a friend."
J'onn awkwardly stands in the doorway for a bit. After all, he's standing in front of a couple old folks from Kansas. Who knows if these two have ever seen a black man before, let alone a green one?

J'onn: "Hello, Mr. and Mrs. Kent. I hope I'm not intruding. Super... uh, Clark was most insistent I join you for the holiday. My name is J'onn. I'm a Martian."
Pa Kent: "Oh, we're no strangers to aliens in this house. You just make yourself at home."

I do love these two.

But not all the family is home for the holidays. Apparently, Supergirl's off skiing with Batgirl. Or maybe they're off making an episode of DC Superhero Girls. Either way, J'onn gets to crash in her room.

Clark: "You should be nice and cozy here, J'onn."
J'onn: "'Nice and cozy'? How odd to hear you speak that way. I've never seen this side of you, Clark."
Clark: "That's why I like coming home for the holidays. I can just relax and be myself."

Clark runs off when Pa prepares to turn the tree on...

Clark: "Pa! That's my job!"

...leaving J'onn alone in Kara's room, with only Kara's boy band poster on the wall and the reference to the Martian Manhunter's goofy '60s sidekick Zook on Kara's bed.

I find his lack of pants... disturbing.

That's not a Star Wars reference, by the way. Zook's nudity is just creeping me out. Everyone else's weird, impish friends at least wore briefs. Bat-Mite, Mr. Mxyzptlk, Qwsp... jury's out on Mopee, though.
But speaking of 1960s sidekicks, Supergirl's cat, Streaky, comes along to meet J'onn, but their time spent together is brief as it hisses at him and runs off. Yeah, my girlfriend's cat is the same way around me, despite knowing me for around a decade.

Back on Hoth, the snowball war is escalating. Green Lantern is tossing snow boulders at Hawkgirl, who counters with her mace to summon waves of snow. In retaliation, he uses his ring to whip up an bunch of hands to make snowballs with.

Hawkgirl hasn't seen so many hands popping up from the ground since she was on Skaro.

The snowball barrage leads Hawkgirl to give in, and Green Lantern wins the frosty fight. He's in a good mood, but Hawkgirl isn't really getting the hang of the warm fuzziness that makes up the Christmas spirit.
Hawkgirl: "I still don't get this whole obsession with the holidays. Although, back on Thanagar, we would celebrate after a successful battle."

But there's no way for Hawkgirl to get back to Thanagar, even though Green Lantern is able to get to Oa, a planet at the center of the universe, in a reasonable amount of time. And in fact, it's probably best for Green Lantern to just ignore Thanagar and not go out of his way to learn anything about its location, culture, or current place in galactic politics.

...No, you're acting suspicious.

Hawkgirl: "I may never get home, but I have found one planet where the people celebrated the same way."

Just ignore the fact that if she can get to this planet she mentions, then she can probably go there and then find her way home.

She teases Jon by telling him he wouldn't like it, but he says otherwise.

Green Lantern: "I have a day off and a fully-charged power ring."

Isn't that line how, like, 97% of erotic fanfics between these two start?

As they head to the Omega Quadrant, Flash zooms through Central City, pausing only for a millisecond to slip some cash into a Santa's bucket. At the toy store, he finds a mob of angry people convinced that the place is stockpiling DJ Rubba-Duckies, but the owner insists that they're simply sold out. And it's the same story everywhere in Central City, which is a story anyone trying to get a Tickle-Me-Elmo in the 90s, or an NES Classic more recently, knows all too well.
But a little decoration of Santa in his workshop gives Flash the idea to go straight to the source. And the manufacturer in Japan is only too happy to let him have the very last one in the factory. The owner, Mr. Hama, says some parting words in Japanese, which I don't think Flash understood, since he simply says "You too."

"Domo arigato."

"Don't touch my mustache."

Back at the Kents', the two humans and one alien are gathered around the table, where the Kents tell stories about how much little Clark loved Christmas.
Pa Kent: "We used to wrap his presents in lead foil so he couldn't peek."
Clark: "...You mean, Santa wrapped them."
Ma Kent: "...Oh, of course, dear."

Well, now we know what really sent Justice Lord Superman off the deep end.

But the time has come for a Kent holiday tradition: No one leaves without a present. And Martha Kent gives J'onn his.
J'onn: "But I brought no gift for you."

Pa-rum-pum-pum-pum.

Ma Kent: "Nonsense. Your company is the only present we need."

He opens it up to find a sweater from the local community center, since they always knit a few extras. It's somehow a little loose on the six-foot, musclebound Martian, but he can literally grow into it.

Seriously, who was that sweater originally for, the Hulk?

Over with Green Lantern and Hawkgirl, they've arrived in some seedy, backwater armpit of the universe, nearly as far from the bright enter of the universe as Tatooine.

Where either Jack Kirby or Edward G. Robinson is apparently living as a head on a robot body. And is that Swamp Thing?

Green Lantern: "You said this is where you go to relax?"Hawkgirl: "No, I said this is where I go to celebrate!"

As she walks off, some slug thing garbles some grunts at Green Lantern. Inside the local dive, Hawkgirl's entrance is cheered on by the rabble inside.

(Sometimes you want to go where everybody knows your name. And they're always glad you came.)

Hawkgirl: "Yo, Fazz. Is the plurb in this dive still as bad as I remember?"
Fazz: "See for yourself, Wings."

And Fazz the bartender hands over a couple frothy mugs of... something. Hawkgirl gulps hers down and lets out a belch before complimenting the plurb. Green Lantern, on the other hand, can't get past the fact that it has worms in it.

Regional foods are always hard to get people into if they didn't grow up with it.

But it's no matter. Hawkgirl gets close to Jon and tells him that there's one thing that would make this evening perfect. So for no reason, she whacks the hand of the big alien next to her before handing the mace to Jon. And with that, the intergalactic bar fight is on.

Look at that. That's just an adorable picture.

Back in Central City, as Flash returns with DJ Rubba-Duckie, he finds that the local museum is being broken into by everybody's favorite criminal simian, the Ultra-Humanite. And there seems to be debris everywhere.
Flash: "Wow. Somebody sure did a number on this place."
Ultra-Humanite: "Actually? I hadn't even started."

Yep. It's a big ol' modern art piece. And the Ultra-Humanite, a super-smart brain in the body of an albino gorilla (don't ask), has decided to destroy it. Not for monetary gain, but merely in the interests of good taste.

Ultra-Humanite: "Do you believe the horrendous amount of public funding spent on this so-called 'art'? It's garbage! An affront to any decent human aesthetic!"

Says the gorilla who walks around in red briefs held up by spiked suspenders.

Flash: "O-kaayyy? I'll just take you back to prison where you won't have to look at the ugly, old sculptures anymore."

Ultra-Humanite nearly makes his Christmas by killing the Flash (which is what more than a few talking gorillas want), but the Flash is too fast for him, dodging the blast and stealing his batteries. He manages to knock down the Ultra-Humanite... right on top of the DJ Rubba Duckie. The last one in the world.

Ultra-Humanite: "What a shame. I broke your toy."
Flash: "It was a present for some kids who really wanted it."
Ultra-Humanite: "A paltry bit of plastic and crude electronics. They'd have been better off with a book."

These days, books are on plastic and crude electronics.

Flash: "Don't you remember what it's like to have your heart set on something and that awful feeling when you didn't get it?"
Ultra-Humanite: "Yes. And I usually have you and your teammates to blame for that."
Flash: "I was talking about Christmas."
Ultra-Humanite: "Oh, that garish, hollow charade."

The Ultra-Humanite is convinced that Christmas is full of "insincere goodwill," and other emotions that aren't real, and even sarcastically drops the title.

Ultra-Humanite: "'Tidings of comfort and joy,' indeed."
Flash: "For a creep that claims to personify human advancement, I'd think you know what it means to pass along goodwill. Especially to kids who needs some. I'd like to think they'd grow up to pass that goodwill along to others."

"Goodwill. Pass it on."

Flash angrily walks away from the Ultra-Humanite, who reluctantly calls Flash's ideal "a not unworthy aspiration." He puts the battery back in his laser gun, but Flash's heart really isn't in the fight anymore.
Flash: "You can go ahead and use that thing for all I care. I couldn't feel any worse."
Ultra-Humanite: "As you wish."

So Ultra-Humanite proves him wrong by pistol-whipping him. When he comes to, he's on the ground in some kind of small lab, where the Ultra-Humanite gets to work repairing the toy. Ultra-Humanite holds out his hand and calls a truce in honor of the holiday, having heard and appreciated Flash's comments.

Ultra-Humanite: "You'll have the toy to give to your young friends. I'm improving it, too."

"So... what, it burps now?"

Flash: "It's not gonna blow up or anything?"Ultra-Humanite: "Flash, it is Christmas."

"Who do I look like, the Toyman?"

Flash: "But why did you hit me?"Ultra-Humanite: "You hit me first."

...Yeah, fair point.

As Ultra-Humanite continues repairing DJ Rubba-Duckie, J'onn J'onzz looks out over the fallen snow under the clear, Kansas sky before ghoting through the floor into the kitchen. After watching the Kents kiss while doing dishes, he ghosts into the living room, where he finds Superman attempting to peer into lead-lined Christmas gifts.

"If I don't get a Game Boy, this world shall burn."

Finally, he flies off into Smallville and transforms into a human (his comic identity of John Jones, for the first time in the series), finding a random couple wishing him a merry Christmas. He watches them meet up with family and friends before walking off to be alone with the stray thoughts of a little girl who wants nothing more than for Santa to visit her and eat the cookies she left out. So J'onn obliges her by audibly sneaking into the chimney and grabbing some Oreos.
After stealing a little girl's Oreos, he listens to some carolers in a church, whereupon his heart grows three sizes. ...Possibly. Does he even have a heart?

"I have a squeedlyspooch. It fulfills basically the same function. Assuming that the human heart is part of the digestive system."

As the barfight across the universe continues in full force, Santa-Flash arrives at the orphanage with a very odd looking helper named "Freaky, the Snowman."

This image. Just... this image.

Ultra-Humanite: "Just give them the toy and take me to jail."
The toy in question neither raps nor farts anymore, but instead beckons the children closer and begins to recite The Nutcracker.

Ultra-Humanite: "Well? An improvement, wouldn't you say?"
Flash: "I kind of liked it when he made the poopy noise."

The orphans, however, love it, so Flash approves. That night, Ultra-Humanite is taken back to his cell, where the Flash awaits with a little gift of his own.

Ultra-Humanite: "An aluminum Christmas tree?"
Flash: "I know; it's kind of cheesy, but..."
Ultra-Humanite: "No, no. We had one just like it when I was..."

"A little girl."
"...It's hard to be surprised by that revelation when you're currently a gorilla."

Ultra-Humanite: "It's very nice. the guard will show you out."
After Flash leaves, Ultra-Humanite turns on the little light show to go with it and simply sits and enjoys it, unaware that the Flash is watching this rare moment of humanity from the Ultra-Humanite.  In space, GL and Hawkgirl take a nap in the arms of one of the alien bruisers. As Hawkgirl plants a little kiss on him...

I'm sure the next episode won't complicate things.

Clark Kent wakes up bright and early to a Kansas sunrise, finding J'onn singing some Martian song in his room. And the Kents hear it, too.

Clark: "And he said he didn't bring a gift."

J'onn is sitting by the window in his true Martian body, singing to welcome the day while petting Streaky.  And as the Martian Manhunter learns the true meaning of Christmas, the episode ends.

So let's review.