This issue is filled with exclusive interviews, among them Gough, Millar and Mercy Reef director Greg Beeman (who provides a number of exclusive photos); and, from Justice League, Bruce Timm, James Tucker, Dwayne McDuffie, Andrea Romano and the full cast, including George Newbern (Superman) and Kevin Conroy (Batman).
Here's a sample from the Justice League episode guide:
Episodes 24-26
“The Savage Time”
Original Airdate: November 9, 2002
Written by Stan Berkowitz
Directed by Dan Riba and Butch Lukic
Guest Starring: Phil Morris (Vandal Savage), Patrick Duffy (Steve Trevor), Fred Dryer (Sgt. Rock), Robert Picardo (Blackhawk)
PLOT SUMMARY: When the League – sans Batman – return to earth, they find that reality has been completely altered, the world being ruled by dictator Vandal Savage. The Batman in this current reality leads rebels against Savage’s soldiers, but it’s a losing battle. The Justice League must travel back in time to World War II and prevent Savage from using advance technology to assume Hitler’s mantle and conquer what the madman could not.
PRODUCTION NOTES: Stan Berkowitz explains that there was a desire on staff to do a time travel story involving World War II. He had been reading a piece in The New Yorker in which a historian asked, “Would the Germans have won the war if they had been less obsessed with committing genocide.
“To kill lots of people,” he muses, “requires effort and manpower that could have been put to use elsewhere better, like defending the country. So the element that I like is that when Vandal Savage takes over he says, ‘The first thing I’d do is get rid of that lunatic,’ referring to Hitler. It’s made explicit that they’re winning the war because of the inventions he’s brought back with him from the future, but it’s hinted at that he has also stopped the genocide and has become, dare I say, professional about the war. Their world history is that Adolph Hitler ran Germany for a while, Vandal Savage took over, and Hitler came back in order to lose the war. In any case, it was that piece in The New Yorker that got me wondering how things might have turned out differently.”
“One of my favorite episodes,” enthuses Timm. “It’s definitely the top two or three of season one, and I think it still holds up even with all of the improvements we made in season two. We were definitely more comfortable with the show at that point, Superman doesn’t get his ass kicked quite as badly throughout that show, because at that point we realized we had a problem and were taking steps to avoid that. He gets knocked around a bit, but at least we gave him some attitude. That was a show that we talked about doing early on. Me being a huge comic book fan, just like the rest of the staff, we talked about doing a time travel story that takes us back to World War II and would give us a chance to play with Blackhawk and Sgt. Rock. It’s just a comic book fan boy’s wet dream for me. Fortunately, I think the story itself was really strong. It gave us the chance to give Wonder Woman a mini-romance, it’s her first kiss from a man. Learning from our mistake from ‘Secret Origin,’ we made sure that the three mini-teams had wildly different parts of the story to play. You had the whole bit where GL has to go back to being a non-super powered soldier by hanging out with Sgt. Rock and the gang; J’onn J’onzz has the espionage story, Hawkgirl and Superman and Flash get to team up with the Blackhawks and do the air war bit, and Wonder Woman has her ground-level running through the fortress with Steve Trevor. It was neat having those three or four distinct storylines go off in their own direction and then dovetail at the end. That worked really, really well. It was just fun as hell.”
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