WOMAN: At least 50 dead in the embassy massacre.
And not just dead, dismembered. Burnt alive, sucked of their blood.
A virtual house of horrors.
But what about our terrorist organization? What about the Justice League?
This story could not happen in the DC Universe.
If I deliver justice with a heavy hand, it's because I've been on the receiving end.
We see him do physical things that we have never seen Superman do before.
They're not as hesitant to use lethal force as the traditional Justice League are.
It always kind of amuses me when fans freak out whenever a superhero kills anybody.
CARLIN: This is a complete separate and original place.
If you know the DC Universe...
...it's gonna be Easter egg time for an hour and a half.
SIVANA: They're warning us to stop. -Fair play is already done, Sivana.
WOMAN 2: I want you to know that Forensics...
...is further implicating the Justice League in these murders.
Get out of my house.
TlMM: So I had taken some time off from the DTVs to do a couple...
...other projects, some development of the Batman 75th Anniversary short.
Around the same time, DC Comics was doing The New 52.
The big reboot across the entire DC Universe.
A lot of the fans were kind of freaking out.
"They're gonna throw away all this continuity." It turned out that the reboot...
...was probably not as radical as everybody was dreading.
LlU: This is an entirely different Justice League. lt's an Elseworld story.
I think Bruce has done so many stories...
...that I think he just wanted to do something a little different.
CARLIN: ln the comics, we used to do these things called Elseworlds.
Or, in the older days, Imaginary Stories.
And it really gives you a chance to play with the toys...
...in unusual storylines.
But it got me thinking about how in the late '50s...
...when DC brought back the Flash and Green Lantern...
...they basically took the name and the gimmick...
...of each of those characters from their Golden Age incarnations...
...and threw everything else out.
The costumes were completely different, and both of those characters...
...were, like, really big hits.
Those are the iconic versions of Green Lantern and Flash that people think of to this day.
So I was thinking, wouldn't it be kind of cool to do that kind of radical transformation...
...on not just Green Lantern and Flash, but basically the big three.
Bruce, the whole time was like, "No, we gotta be more shocking.
We gotta do something a little bit different."
Knock, knock.
CARLIN: These are completely unique characters.
This world is a tougher place to live.
The DC Universe is...
...represented around them...
...in terms of supporting characters and settings...
...like Metropolis and things like that.
But this is a complete...
-...separate and original place. -Wondered when you'd mention that.
TlMM: As far as we know, Superman does not have a Fortress of Solitude.
Batman does not have a Batcave. He's got a lab and he has a home...
...but it's not a palatial manner, it's just kind of this ramshackle building up in the hills.
LlU: Very isolated, very cold.
He's detached, basically, from society.
Yet he keeps his few human ties that were important to him when he was younger.
TlMM: Metropolis is basically New York City.
You know, it doesn't look really any more elaborate...
...than you would actually see in a normal American city.
Except the Justice League Watchtower is of course this big fancy building.
But everything else, we tried to keep it as grounded in reality as much as possible.
MAN: Nice little bloodbath.
Was this really necessary?
They got rambunctious.
TlMM: The blessing and the curse of starting from scratch with everything is...
...you have to kind of decide how much of the established DC Universe...
...do you wanna keep, and how much of it do you re-imagine.
We kind of wanted to put a spin on every aspect of it, starting with Superman.
All those little dots down there connected to a single productive purpose.
A world brought together as one.
-Under us? -Under us.
You just got less sexy.
If he's not the Superman that we know and love, who is he?
Then l thought, well, maybe he's not the son of Jor-El.
Maybe he's the son of Zod.
-He looks like you. SUPERMAN: He's my biological father.
CARLIN: Who is, as everybody knows...
...a military and scary and anything-goes kind of character.
TlMM: Even once he gets to Earth...
...he has quite a different origin story than Clark Kent did.
SUPERMAN: I come from a simple people, Miss Lane.
I was raised by a migrant couple. I've seen the harshness of life.
ROMANO: He's got this anger inside him, this evil inside him that is hereditary.
It comes from his father.
So he's got this constant battle within himself.
CARLIN: lt makes him a character who might do something...
...that the real Superman would not do.
That immediately made me think, "Wow, that's really different."
Because then you bring in the whole issue of, you know, nature versus nurture.
Because he's literally got a megalomaniacal-- You know, super villain genes in his veins.
He's incredibly violent.
TlMM: So then l tried to apply the same kind of...
...re-imagining rules to both Batman and Wonder Woman.
Batman, um....
I've always wanted to make Batman a vampire.
Kirk Langstrom is the Batman in this story.
He is not Man-Bat. He does not grow wings.
ROMANO: Kirk Langstrom has cancer.
He's got lymphoma.
And he himself is a scientist, and he's trying to figure out how to cure himself...
...and he's trying every concoction he can, and one of them is bat venom.
And, uh, in an effort to cure himself, he has created a monster.
TlMM: And again, he has a completely different kind of drive than Bruce Wayne did.
We don't really quite know why he's Batman...
...other than the fact that he turned himself into a vampire accidentally...
...and figured, you know:
"Well, l'll put that to good use. You know, if l have to feed on human beings to live...
...I'll at least feed on criminals."
You know, "l won't kill innocent people, I'll kill bad guys."
WONDER WOMAN: I belong to no man.
Not Superman, not you.
-You belonged to someone once. ROMANO: Wonder Woman has a fantastic story.
We kind of went round and round with Wonder Woman.
It's actually kind of interesting, because l had done a design for her...
...which was kind of Jack Kirby inspired.
Alan and l both, almost at exactly the same time...
...we remembered this character from the New Gods named Bekka...
...who, in the established DC Universe, was Orion's wife.
So that kind of gave us a kind of a starting point with her.
MAN 2: He was Darkseid's blood.
One of countless bastards in a line of endless betrayal.
There's no way he could do a Justice League: Gods and Monsters story...
...without having Darkseid be involved...
...and without having Apokolips be represented.
There is no redemption for me.
ROMANO: Unlike a lot of the Justice Leagues that we've done, or Batman or Superman...
...or any of the various movies we've made, this one is very noir.
There are several murders that start the whole piece off.
CARLIN: A bunch of prominent scientists in the real DC Universe are used in this story...
...to set up a mystery.
The mystery is obviously who's killing these scientists...
...and why are they killing these prominent people?
TlMM: There's, like, Ray Palmer and Michael Holt...
...and Victor Fries.
BATMAN: This is Victor Fries, the thermal expert.
Nobel and Kyoto Prizes.
They found his body at the bottom of a ravine. It wasn't the fall that killed him though.
TlMM: They don't play exactly the same kinds of parts they do in the traditional DC Universe.
These are all characters who...
...in this universe, have not become the Atom.
They have not become Mr. Freeze.
[SCREAMS]
SUPERMAN: So now what?
We got a house full of dead scientists and we're no closer to solving this thing.
There is someone who could help.
But you're not gonna like it.
CARLIN: Lex Luthor is a scientist in this universe.
And he's-- I think he's really one of the most interesting characters in the story.
He has some physical issues...
...in this particular piece, and so we see him sometimes with a cane...
...we see him in a wheelchair. Um....
He's kind of like Stephen Hawking in some ways.
I never really cared for power.
I walked away from it.
What l coveted was knowledge.
LlU: He's almost become sort of like a demigod figure...
...that he only interacts with humanity when he feels like he needs to.
In some instances, he's clearly benevolent. He's clearly doing things for good.
But there's always that concern that Luthor has an ulterior motive.
Brilliant, brilliant character.
These mysterious disappearances...
...are something that the public is blaming...
...on the Superman, Batman and Wonder Woman of this world.
Heh. We're being framed. Someone's actually trying to frame the Justice League.
Who would have the balls?
If you are under the impression that we're surrendering, let me relieve you of that notion.
LlU: l think the New 52 is trying to modernize the DC superhero genre.
For us, we have to follow suit and we have to keep pace with that.
CARLIN: There's a lot of cachet to Bruce and his history...
...with the real DC characters.
There's something about seeing what Bruce Timm would do left to his own devices.
And that's always more exciting to us...
...because we all get to see something we've never seen before.