Justice League: Gods and Monsters was on my watch list on HBO Max and I decided to give it a try the other day. I honestly had no idea that this movie was about an entirely different universe of superheroes from DC Comics.

In this universe, the main change was instead of Jor-El being the father of Superman, General Zod instead artificially fertilizes his DNA into the egg that belonged to Superman’s mother Lara Lor-Van.

And the baby is sent to Earth right before Krypton explodes, but it seems to have landed closer to the Mexican border rather than Kansas.

This Superman was raised by Hispanic family and is definitely not genetically the same as the Superman we know. As a Kryptonian, Hernan Guerra has extremely similar powers to Clark Kent, but he’s not afraid to use lethal force against bad guys.

And for some reason Diana of the Amazons is out of the picture, instead we have Bekka as the new Wonder Woman. I actually liked her a lot and I was surprised how much so.

Then we have the new Batman, Kirk Langstrom who was actually Man Bat in the more traditional DC Comics storyline. He is a humanoid vampire that isn’t afraid to be lethal either. It was watching this that made me realize that Marvel did indeed rip off this character with their character Morbius.

This variant Justice League is strong but they only have three members. One day weird robotic monsters come up out of nowhere, all three having powers similar to Superman, Wonder Woman, and Batman. And there’s a big mystery of why they’re doing it, but they’re definitely framing the Justice League for some reason.

To be perfectly honest, Justice League: Gods and Monsters is actually one of their best animated movies. It could have been longer and better, but it definitely took me by surprise. In 2023 superhero tales can be kind of predictable and stale, but this one was definitely a fresh breath of air, even though it came out in 2015.