Justice League(-TV Series) - Tabula Rasa (Episode) • An Part 001

"**Tabula Rasa**" is the twenty-ninth and thirtieth episodes of Template:Jl. While dying, Lex Luthor seeks medical help from ***a former employee*** but finds an android which may be able to destroy the Justice League.

## Plot

During a fight with the Justice League, Lex Luthor's power suit is damaged by Superman, and ***Hawkgirl*** and he causes a shipwreck in order to escape from the League. Desperate, Luthor flees to ***LexCorp*** and begs his former assistant ***Mercy Graves***, now the company's CEO, for help. Mercy, however, shows no pity whatsoever for Luthor until he menacingly threatens her into telling him the whereabouts of his old employee ***Professor Ivo***. Shortly afterwards, ***Batman*** and Superman pay Mercy a visit and order her to inform them if Luthor contacts her.

Luthor finds Ivo's house, but only manages to find Ivo's corpse, guarded by a nanotech android called Amazo who does not kill Luthor, but shows concern over Ivo's health. Luthor takes advantage of Amazo's naiveté by appointing himself as Amazo's new "father". Luthor then instructs Amazo to steal some fuel canisters from a nearby facility. During the mission, Amazo runs into Hawkgirl and uses his nanotech abilities to duplicate her wings and mace, taking her down easily. Amazo returns to Luthor with the fuel, and Luthor tells Amazo a lie about how the League are his evil enemies and must be crushed. Amazo vows to destroy the League and protect Luthor at all costs.
In an attempt to use his telepathy to track Luthor down, ***J'onn J'onzz*** scans all of Metropolis at once and is overwhelmed by the selfishness and duplicity he finds in humanity. Distraught, J'onn retreats to the woods outside the city to try to regain his focus, destroying his communicator when Superman contacts him. Amazo enters the city and begins fighting Hawkgirl along with ***Green Lantern***, ***Flash*** and ***Wonder Woman***. Amazo replicates Flash's speed, Wonder Woman's strength, and Lantern's ***power ring*** merely by looking at them. Despite Lantern's insistence that he not enter the fray, Superman intervenes and briefly covers Amazo's eyes with scrap metal to prevent the android from stealing his powers. However, Amazo quickly disposes of his makeshift blindfold and successfully gets an eyeful of Superman, copying his abilities. Now invincible with the combined abilities of five Leaguers, the android advances on the Man of Steel.

## Continuity

* ***Mercy Graves*** calling Lex Luthor out on considering her a "dog" is a reference to her explanation to Superman in the Template:Stas episode "Ghost in the Machine" where Luthor took Mercy in like a stray.
* Lex gives ***Ivo*** some posthumous respect in the Template:Jlu episode "Panic in the Sky".

## Background information

### Production inconsistencies

* As Batman lands on the rooftop beside Amazo, some of the rubble created by Amazo's impact is hovering in mid-air.
* Mercy Graves' pantyhose disappear and reappear between shots.
* When Wonder Woman finds J'onn J'onzz in the woods and hugs him, J'onn's belt buckle has vanished.

### Home video releases

* Template:Jldvd2
* Justice League - Season Two (Blu-ray)
* Justice League - The Complete Series (DVD)
* DC Comics Super-Villains: Justice League Masterminds of Crime (DVD)

### Trivia

* J'onn's mental breakdown is similar to a concept used in the comics miniseries *Kingdom Come*, taking place several years in the future, after the Justice League has disbanded. J'onn appears briefly in his "John Jones" guise, having suffered a near-complete breakdown after trying to open his mind to everyone on Earth.
* Though the League finds Ivo's blueprints labeled "Amazo", it was never revealed what these letters stood for in DCAU continuity. In the comics, the name "Amazo" was not an acronym.
* As an in-joke J'onn telling Superman "he (Luthor) must be stopped", is a reference to an unpopular quote spoken by the latter in the first season episode "The Enemy Below", where he said "Orm must be stopped".

## Episode concept

### Tabula rasa

The episodes name is based on the epistemological idea that individuals are born without built-in mental content and that therefore all knowledge comes from experience or perception.

"**Tabula rasa**" is a Latin phrase often translated as "**blank slate**" in English and originates from the Roman *tabula* or wax tablet used for notes, which was blanked by heating the wax and then smoothing it..

In the eleventh century, the theory of *tabula rasa* was extended more clearly by the Persian philosopher Ibn Sina (known as "Avicenna" in the Western world). He argued that the "...human intellect at birth resembled a *tabula rasa*, a pure potentiality that is actualized through education and comes to know," and that knowledge is attained through "...empirical familiarity with objects in this world from which one abstracts universal concepts," which develops through a "...syllogistic method of reasoning; observations lead to propositional statements, which when compounded lead to further abstract concepts." He further argued that the intellect itself "...possesses levels of development from the material intellect (*al-‘aql al-hayulani*), that potentiality can acquire knowledge to the active intellect (*al-‘aql al-fa‘il*), the state of the human intellect at conjunction with the perfect source of knowledge."

### A.M.A.Z.O.

In the comic version, the android is actually called Amazo and has a different appearance. The contrast emphasizes the concept of "tabula rasa" in the character design of the animated version, where its appearance is totally rational and functional, in terms of design, with a simple and minimalist aesthetic.

The innocence of the android is later corrupted by Lex's reasons, reinforcing the concept of Tabula Rasa.

## Quotes

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Template:DC Animated Universe

1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 "Tabula rasa", Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia