Understandably, The Demon had to calm down a bit for animation. No actual ripping out people’s hearts, though he does make a few threats along those lines. If Etrigan didn’t actually look like a demon, you might mistake him for just another drunken bully at the end of the bar. Granted, when he screams at you to “burn in hellfire,” he actually shoots hellfire.
For Justice League, Etrigan’s origins become a little more streamlined, and his motivation far clearer than it is in the comics. Here Jason Blood appears as a traitor to Camelot (all for love of Morgaine LeFay), cursed by the wizard Merlin to be bonded to “…the demon within.” Though on Batman: The Animated Series Blood took on Klarion The Witch Boy for kicks, his real goal for over a thousand years has been to get revenge on the witch LeFay.
Comfortably enough, the story begins as Batman investigates the beating of an old bookstore clerk (not an out and out murder – for a show featuring a denizen of Hell, this episode is terribly squeamish about actual death). Blood shows up and informs Batman that that clerk was in his early thirties, and had had in his possession information about the legendary Philosopher’s Stone. (Sorcerer’s Stone for our ignorant American cousins…wait…I’m American…)
With the Stone, LeFay will revive the glory of Camelot, with her son Mordred as King in Arthur’s stead. And though at first Batman and Blood are enough to track the immortal succubus, soon the famed Kirby doggerel must be uttered and Etrigan enters the fray. Even then he’s not enough, and most of the rest of the League gets called. As too often happens, mysteriously two members simply don’t show up. When it’s Hawkgirl, you wonder. At least Superman does have the excuse of being vulnerable to magic, even if nobody actually uses it this episode.
Etrigan’s basic attitude has not been toned down, making him into an even bigger jerk than Batman. There’s something strangely appropriate, then, that Timm and company have cast the two as friends. At least, Batman seems to treat Etrigan with more overt respect than he does the Justice League. Only near the end of part one, when Etrigan has made four or five too many disparaging remarks about “…don’t trust the Martian,” does Batman feebly offer a defense. (Offscreen, you can imagine Batman defending Etrigan to the rest of the League. “If only you could see what I see, you’d really like him.”)
To be fair, J’onn does earn that distrust. Attempting to locate Morgaine telepathically, he gets sucked into a vision of dead Mars, and never really thanks Etrigan for violently snapping him out of the spell. J’onn might really prefer living in the fantasy. (One thematic reason for Superman’s absence: the same crap could be pulled on him, making it kind of redundant, though J’onn’s loss is far greater and more poignant.)
It’s a credit to this series that the producers don’t shy away from the emotionally complex aspects of their characters. They’ve even given a subtle character clue to The Demon. Michael T. Weiss (The Pretender, Tarzan in Tarzan & Jane) voices Jason Blood with a very aristocratic tone, but Etrigan sounds an awful lot like Bill Sykes in Oliver!. Without spelling it out, we understand his brutality from the moment he speaks.
The only flaw in this episode lies in a conveniently forgotten plot device. At first, Morgaine has a pendant that tells her when Etrigan is near, enabling her to avoid him for over a millennium. But when Batman sets a trap for her, she blunders in, even though Etrigan is hiding in a tree just a couple of hundred yards away. However, a thinly disguised Hugh Hefner inviting Wonder Woman into a Playboy Mansion party more than makes up for it. For The Flash, this is heaven.
Next week, it will be Hell.
