You Can Own The Word “Justice”
Episode 4 of The Guardians of Justice begins with the Guardians preparing for a big PR campaign. Specifically, they’re going to appear on the Phil Hart Show to try and save face. Just before they do though, an explosion rocks Lockwood Industries. Meanwhile, Awesome Man phones Speed and tries to arrange meeting up together. He struggles to get his words out and eventually tells her he’s lonely. Since Marvelous Man and Sepia Spider’s death, he’s realized that life is short. Speed understands how he’s feeling and the pair agree to meet for a date. Hawk heads back to base after interrogating King Tsunami, learning some rather juicy scandalous details. Now, it turns out Marvelous Man’s partner, Laura, was cheating on him with King Tsunami. Hawk shows up to see the latter, who admits it was exhausting being with the world’s most perfect man. The trouble stemmed from the fact the pair had nothing in common. Laura felt like she was drowning in his shadow and the pair slowly drifted apart. Remember Mellow Devil? It’s something Dr Ravencroft mentioned before and it seems like it’s actually a drug. It connects their users to “something higher” and promises “true happiness”. The drug has completely exploded across the city, with the police force unable to handle just how widespread this has become. Investigating further, Hawk learns that Black Bow and Blue-Scream – another two Guardians – were heavy users of Mellow Devil and Marvelous Man sussed them out. Marvelous Man threatened to revoke their membership to the Guardians and tell the media everything. The night Marvelous Man died though, both Black Bow and Blue-Scream have an alibi. They were both getting high, deciding to have one more night of blocking out the horrors they’ve experienced through their time as heroes. This is something Hawk can relate to but implores them to stand up and reach out to all those addicts, bringing them to the citadel. He promises to instill hope again, remaining dead-set on finding Marvelous Man’s killer.
The Episode Review
The Guardians of Justice returns and this time the episode dives deeper into investigating this Mellow Devil drug. We’ve heard snippets of this before in the past but it appears this is actually quite integral to the case as a whole. Specifically, the issue stems from Marvelous Man investigating this before everything turned upside down. Could it be that he was manipulated into killing himself as a result of this drug? Either way though, this episode does quite well to touch on the subject of substance abuse, with a pretty decent thought provoking inclusion of these two Guardians that are suffering from PTSD. Whether Marvelous Man was actually killed by someone else or did just commit suicide is up for debate but one thing’s for sure – this conflict is far from over.
