Stephen Chang may refer to:

• Stephen S. Chang (1918–1996), Chinese-born American food scientist
• Stephen T. Chang, Chinese author and scholar
• Stephen M.D. Chang, a Canadian actor and martial artist

This disambiguation page lists articles about people with the same name. If an internal link led you here, you may wish to change the link to point directly to the intended article.

The Justice Lords are fictional heroes-turned-villains who first appeared in the two-part Justice League episode "A Better World" (airdate November 1, 2003).

Biography[link]

The Justice Lords are an alternate version of the Justice League from a parallel Earth. The roster of the Justice Lords was the same as the original DCAU Justice League — an alternate Batman, Green Lantern, Hawkgirl, Martian Manhunter, Superman, and Wonder Woman — with the exception of The Flash, because the Flash from their universe had been killed.^[1]

The Justice Lords' world diverged from that of the Justice League when their Lex Luthor was elected President of the United States. The Flash was executed personally by Luthor for unknown reasons, and Luthor's policies eventually resulted in the country "being on the brink of a war that could destroy the whole planet" according to Superman. The alternate Batman, Superman, and Wonder Woman decided to try to stop the impending war, storming the White House and confronting President Luthor. After Luthor goaded the alternate Superman, that no matter how many times Superman sent him to prison Luthor would find a way back into power all over again in an unending cycle, the enraged Kryptonian targeted Luthor with heat vision and killed him. This decision led to far-reaching consequences, as Superman decided he liked this new brand of "justice". Soon, the other Lords lost faith in humanity's ability to do what was right, as well as their own moral compasses.

The initial act of staging a coup eventually led to the Justice Lords taking over the world's governments and ruling with an iron fist. Using their satellite base for global surveillance, the Justice Lords went on to suppress free speech, outlaw elections, and eliminate all crime by lobotomizing all criminals and supervillains (to the point of having a man arrested for complaining about the food quality and incorrect calculation of cost at a restaurant). Although they justified their behavior to the masses as "temporary," and to each other as for the good of the people, it amounted to tyranny in the eyes of the Justice League.

[edit] A Better World

The Justice Lords learned of their normal Justice League counterparts when the alternate Batman came across the League while experimenting with a dimensional transporter he had built. Bored with their own largely domesticated world, the Lords decided to "assist" their counterparts by taking over the League's world. The Lords tricked the League into coming to the alternate Earth. Upon the League's arrival, they were trapped in a specially designed prison built by the alternate Batman. Later, they were transferred to cells that had been designed to neutralize their powers, except for Hawkgirl, who had suffered serious injuries trying to escape.

When the Lords came to the normal Earth (posing as the 'mainstream' Earth's true heroes), they soon encountered Doomsday, a giant monstrous fighter. Doomsday had apparently come to challenge Earth's mightiest combatants, and went on a rampage. The Lords, particularly Superman, were more than happy to fight him (the Martian Manhunter being the only one skeptical on winning stating "IF we can stop it"). Attacking first and asking questions later, the alternate Superman predicted the Lords would win over the normal Earth people with their brand of justice. The fight ended with the Justice Lords beaten down and the alternate Superman held at Doomsday's mercy, however he managed to lobotomize Doomsday with his heat vision, to the shock of reporter Lois Lane. Lex Luthor, intimately aware of the real Superman's character (and what he would or would not therefore do) was the only one who figured out that the Lords weren't the League, stating "It's not them."

The League escaped from their prisons when the Flash, in an attempt to play on his status as martyr in the eyes of the Lords, sped up his heartbeat to trick the alternate Batman into thinking it had flatlined. The alternate Batman responded by releasing the Flash and was subsequently knocked out. The League then escaped. Most of the League went to Arkham Asylum to retrieve Hawkgirl, except for the normal Batman, who went to the Batcave to hijack the dimensional transporter. There, he engaged the alternate Batman in a fight. The fight ended abruptly with the alternate Batman playing off their mutual tragedy after Batman says the Lords have created a world without freedom or thought by seizing power, countering with, "And with that power, we've made a world where no eight-year-old boy will ever lose his parents because of some punk with a gun." The normal Batman was eventually able to convince the alternate Batman that the Lords' methods were wrong by (like the alternate Batman) playing on their mutual tragedies by sarcastically remarking, "They'd love it here, don't you think? Mom and Dad. They'd be so proud of you." The alternate Batman saw the error of his ways and saved the Justice League from the alternate Earth's security forces, and transmitted them back to their reality, presumably then going on to rebuild his world.

Back on the normal Earth, Superman approached Lex Luthor, offering him a presidential pardon in exchange for his help against the Lords. The Lords were defeated when the League engaged the Lords again to distract them long enough as Luthor used a power disruptor to strip them of their powers. The depowered Lords were then arrested, but it is not known what happened to them afterwards, save the alternate Batman, who never went to normal earth.

At the end, normal Earth Luthor said that he would go into politics.

Long-term effects[link]

The Justice Lords' proposed alteration to the Justice League's world had repercussions in the first two seasons of Justice League Unlimited. The events of "A Better World" added fuel to Amanda Waller's crusade against the destructive capabilities of the metahuman population if the government left it unchecked. Project Cadmus, which was originally created to counter Superman if he went rogue (as shown in the Superman: The Animated Series two-part episode "Legacy"), expanded its threat list to the whole Justice League. It also led to some increasing paranoia and distrust within the rank of the Justice League, including Batman and The Question, who feared that what happened to the Justice Lords' world would eventually happen to theirs when Luthor appeared close to winning the presidency as his counterpart had.

Further examples of the League's degeneration in the public eye — such as Superman’s fight with Captain Marvel over what turned out to be a fake emergency, staged by Luthor and Amanda Waller, and Superman’s later near attempt to lobotomize Doomsday in a similar manner to his Lords counterpart — cast the League, and particularly Superman, in an increasingly bad light.

Fortunately, the League had also taken precautions such as recruiting the ardently populist and politically astute Green Arrow as their political conscience. He in turn is critical in putting the role of Cadmus in a reasonable perspective for the League and thereby prevents them from falling into the same temptation that created the Lords.

[edit] Divided We Fall

As a major insult, Lex Luthor/Brainiac combined creating duplicate androids of the Lords in the Justice League Unlimited episode Divided We Fall. However, Brainiac added an android duplicate of the Flash in a costume design almost identical to that of comic book villain Zoom, to distract the League from his and Luthor's ultimate goal of universal domination. Not only did the androids fight the League, but they also played on their worst fears at the time: Superman was confronted with the possibility of becoming a Justice Lord, Green Lantern and Hawkgirl played off their failed relationship, as well as Hawkgirl's pariah status on both Earth and Thanagar, and Flash confronted his role among the world's greatest heroes. However, the fears of Batman, Wonder Woman, and Martian Manhunter were not revealed (Batman was able to destroy his double the second quickest next to Flash, so that his double never even had a chance to mock him). Only Flash seemed unaffected by his replica's taunts, apparently due to his overpowering sense of self confidence, and also considering that, while he faced off against the Justice Lords themselves, he never actually had a Lord counterpart to begin with. The androids were destroyed after a short fight.

This growing fear concerning the League somehow turning into their Justice Lord counterparts reached a climax in that episode when the Flash surpassed his maximum speed by tapping into the Speed Force in order to destroy the link between Brainiac and Luthor. This caused the Flash to vanish into the Speed Force, to which the defeated Luthor amusedly remarks: “What do you know? I did kill him.”

Unlike the Justice Lords' Superman, who killed the alternate Luthor, the League’s Superman, refused to succumb to such temptation and follow the path of his tyrannical counterpart and states that “I’m not the man who killed President Luthor. Right now, I wish to Heaven that I were, but I’m not.”

A few minutes later, the League succeeded in drawing the Flash back from the Speed Force, saving his life, and avoiding the path traveled by the Justice Lords.

Realizing that they had allowed themselves to become distanced from the very people they were trying to protect and fearful of becoming the Justice Lords, Superman publicly announced the immediate disbandment of the Justice League. After Green Arrow points out that the Justice League had grown to be far bigger than any individual hero and would continue even without the original seven members, and with public support, the League opted instead to open an embassy on Earth which would serve as a second Watchtower.

Toys[link]

All the Justice Lords were eventually released in the Justice League Unlimited toyline in three 3-pack collectors sets and "the big three" were re-released later with a lava Doomsday variant in a 6-pack. The first set featured Superman, Batman, and Wonder Woman. One reviewer criticized for not standing on their own, but noted "represent one of the most popular episodes of the entire Justice League series."^[2] The next pack included Martian Manhunter, Green Lantern and, oddly the Flash. The final set had Hawkgirl and featured the Brainiac copies of Superman and Batman. The characters did not appear in the Justice League Unlimited series, except in flashbacks.

In 2012 Treehouse Kids released the Heroics line of collectable figurines which includes Justice Lords Superman as a chase figure.

Inspiration and Similarities[link]

As revealed in the DVD commentary on the second part of this episode the Justice Lords started out as a straight Crime Syndicate of America story but as the writers worked on it they decided that having it about a Justice League that went fascist had more story potential as the Crime Syndicate was simply evil.

This resulted in the episode being very similar to a saga that Dan Jurgens wrote during his run on Justice League America titled "Destiny's Hand". In that story, the Atom dreams about the original Justice League becoming the oppressive rulers of the world. Doctor Destiny tries to make this "dream universe" absorb the mainstream reality, and the modern Justice League fights the "evil" old Justice League.

The premise of a Justice League-esque superteam establishing a totalitarian state for what they see as the good of humanity has also been taken up in Marvel Comics' original Squadron Supreme miniseries, its recent re-imagining of that story, in Wildstorm's The Authority, and the Titans Tomorrow storyline from the Teen Titans comic book. The idea of metahumans taking control away from humans, and of Superman leading them to make a better world, is also developed in the Elseworlds mini-series Kingdom Come, albeit after Superman had retired only for the new violent heroes to push Earth to the brink of apocalypse. According to the DVD commentary from Bruce Timm, that the plan for Batman's distrust on the League because of the Justice Lords was to have him form Outsiders as a counter-superteam to it, but the idea was discarded. Also in Avengers Annual #2 the Avengers are sent to an alternate world by an earlier version of the time-traveler Kang, where the original Avengers took over the world and imprisoned other super-beings, apparently for their own good. This version seemed to have originally started out like the original Avengers, however just before the Hulk should have left the Scarlet Centurion caused history to diverge.

The idea of having criminals surgically altered to prevent them from returning to lives of crime seems reminiscent of Superman: Red Son, which in turn was inspired by Doc Savage, who brainwashed criminals after his battles with them. It was also a plot point in the recent DC Comics mini-series Identity Crisis—although in that case the alteration was magically-induced rather than surgical and primarily consisted of the heroes erasing the villains' knowledge of their secret identities, save in extreme cases, such as when Doctor Light raped Sue Dibny, wife of the Elongated Man—and in Marvel Comics' original Squadron Supreme miniseries.

See also[link]

Titans Tomorrow

References[link]

http://www.heroicstoys.com/images/check%20list%20for%20heroicstoys.pdf

External links[link]

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: Justice League: A Better World

• World's Finest Online biopage
• "A Better World," Part 1, at tv.com
• "A Better World," Part 2, at tv.com

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Matt Monro (1 December 1930 – 7 February 1985) was an English singer who became one of the most popular entertainers on the international music scene during the 1960s. Throughout his 30-year career, he filled cabarets, nightclubs, music halls, and stadiums in Australia, Japan, the Philippines, and Hong Kong to Africa, the Middle East, Europe, and the Americas.

Early career[link]

He was born Terence Edward Parsons in Shoreditch, London^[1] and attended Duncombe School in Islington, and Elliott School in Putney.^[2] Affectionately nicknamed "the singing bus driver" (because one of his many occupations prior to achieving fame was driving the Number 27 bus from Highgate to Teddington),^{[citation needed]} he got his first break in 1956 when he became a featured vocalist with the BBC Show Band. An important influence on his early career was the pianist Winifred Atwell, who became his mentor, provided him with his stage name, and helped him sign with Decca Records.

In 1957 Monro released Blue and Sentimental, a collection of standards. Despite the album's critical acclaim, Monro languished among the young male singers trying to break through at the end of the 1950s, many of them emulating Frankie Vaughan by recording cover versions of American hits. (Monro even recorded a version of Vaughan's "Garden of Eden" during this period.) A short recording contract with Fontana Records followed.

By the end of the 1950s, Monro's mid-decade fame had evaporated, and he returned to relative obscurity. He and his wife Mickie lived from her wages as a song plugger and his royalties from a TV advertising jingle for Camay soap. In 1959 he recorded a country pastiche song, "Bound for Texas", for The Chaplin Revue, a feature-length compilation of Charlie Chaplin shorts. It would be the first of many Monro soundtrack themes.

International success[link]

Prior to producing the Peter Sellers album Songs for Swinging Sellers in 1960, George Martin asked Monro to record a satirical ditty to help the comedian imitate the song with a Frank Sinatra-type styling. When Sellers heard the recording he decided to use it to open the record rather than record his own version. However, Sellers billed Monro as "Fred Flange," and though it was a demoralizing experience at the time, the incident developed into a lifelong friendship with Martin, who subsequently asked Monro to begin recording with him for EMI's Parlophone record label. Their second single and Monro's highest UK chart success, "Portrait of My Love", penned by Norman Newell OBE reached number three in the UK Singles Chart.

By the following year, he had been named Top International Act by Billboard. In February 1961, the British music magazine, NME reported that Monro had won ITV's A Song for Britain with "My Kind of Girl".^[3] His follow-up hits included that song, plus "Softly as I Leave You" (1962) and the song from the James Bond film From Russia with Love (1963). For the latter, his vocals were not used in the opening titles, as became the standard for the series; they were heard on a radio during the film and over the final credits. At the 1964 Eurovision Song Contest, singing "I Love the Little Things," he finished second behind Italy's 16-year-old Gigliola Cinquetti, despite an "excellent performance of the only English language song of the night."^[4] The Austrian entry "Warum nur warum?", sung by Udo Jürgens, caught Monro's ear, despite its sixth-place finish, and he recorded an English version titled "Walk Away" (lyric by Monro's manager Don Black), earning him another hit single late in 1964. He also had a hit with The Beatles' "Yesterday" in 1965, releasing the first single of the most recorded song of all time, predating even the Beatles' own. The following year, Monro sang the Oscar-winning title song for the film, Born Free, which became his signature tune. The opening scene for the film The Italian Job featured Monro singing "On Days Like These." These two movie themes featured lyrics also written by Don Black, who started his career as a renowned songwriter when Monro challenged him to pen the English lyric that became "Walk Away". On 31 December 1976, Monro performed Walk Away on BBC1's A Jubilee of Music, celebrating British pop music for Queen Elizabeth II's impending Silver Jubilee.

Monro achieved fame in the United States when "My Kind of Girl" (1961) and "Walk Away" (1964) hit the Top 40. In 1966, following the death of Nat King Cole, EMI moved Monro from Parlophone to Capitol. After relocating to California and recording several albums with American arrangers, Monro returned to the UK and began appearing on EMI's Columbia label, his final U.S. album release being Close To You in 1970. This LP contained "We're Gonna Change The World", a semi-satirical song about women's liberation, which was not a hit in either the US or the UK but was nevertheless widely played, and became enduringly popular, on BBC Radio 2.

He continued touring and recording until just before his death, releasing a single and promoting it throughout the UK and Australia in 1984. In one of his final appearances, he praised Boy George, noting the importance of quality recordings in all musical genres.^{[citation needed]}

Death and legacy[link]

Monro died from liver cancer in 1985 at the Cromwell Hospital, Kensington, London,^[5] leaving a widow, Mickie, and three children: Mitchell, Michele, and Matthew. Mitchell, a professional pilot, also died of cancer in 2004. A memorial was held in Harrow.

The twentieth anniversary of Monro's passing spotlighted the continuing interest in his music, with a Top 10 tribute compilation CD (UK), a No. 1 concert DVD (UK), a BBC TV documentary, and an official website^[6] all appearing in 2005. A 2007 compilation CD entitled From Matt With Love reached the Top 40 of the UK Albums Chart during its first week of release. His songs were featured on Friday Night is Music Night on October 8, 2010.

In Autumn 2005 Matt Monro Jnr. toured the United Kingdom with a tribute concert commemorating the anniversary. Also, EMI re-released Matt Sings Monro, a 1995 duet album that combined his voice with the senior Monro's. Another posthumous Matt Monro duet, with Cliff Richard, appeared on Richard's duets CD, Two's Company, in 2007.

Monro never recorded a "live" concert album, preferring the technical purity of the recording studio and wanting his public performances to retain an element of uniqueness. However, in the past few years, commercially-released concert albums have emerged following meticulous remastering of radio and television shows, private recordings he commissioned. These include an intimate 1967 cabaret performance from his first tour of Australia; a 1967 BBC concert with Nelson Riddle; a 1966 arena concert before 24,000 fans in Manila; and one of his final concerts, recorded on the last night of his fourteenth and final Australian tour in 1984.

In recent years, many singers riding the resurging wave of retro-pop have cited Matt Monro as a strong influence, including Michael Bublé, Monica Mancini, and Rick Astley.^{[citation needed]} Musicians' biographies regularly note his stylistic influence on their subjects, including Cass Elliot and Karen Carpenter.^{[citation needed]} He continues to feature prominently on radio stations and CD compilations featuring popular easy-listening vocalists.

His daughter Michele has written a biography, The Singer's Singer: The Life and Music of Matt Monro.

His music[link]

	Matt Monro - On Days Like These excerpt noicon An excerpt from "On Days Like These"
Problems listening to this file? See media help.

Most of Monro's recordings were produced or overseen by George Martin. Unlike his contemporaries, Monro recorded very few Tin Pan Alley standards during his career. (The exception was Matt Monro sings Hoagy Carmichael, one of his most highly-regarded albums.) Instead, he and Martin searched for material written by promising newcomers and commissioned English lyrics for dramatic melodies written by European composers. He also covered many of the most popular stage and screen songs of the 1950s and 1960s. Over the years, his recordings featured arrangements by Sid Feller, Billy May, John Barry, Buddy Bregman, Kenny Clayton and Colin Keyes, and Martin himself. He also had a long and fruitful musical partnership with British arranger Johnnie Spence. Monro also teamed up with American star arrangers Nelson Riddle and Billy May and leading British bandleader Ted Heath, for concerts broadcast by the BBC.

In 1973 Monro released a vocal version of the popular Van der Valk TV-series theme titled "And You Smiled". It was his final hit. In 1977 he recorded "If I Never Sing Another Song", which became a latter-day standard among his contemporaries, its lyrics referring to the "heyday" of fan mail, awards, and other trappings of celebrity that had faded for them.

Hit albums[link]

† Before 1973 the BPI did not have an album/single certified award scheme.

Hit Singles[link]

Marriages[link]

He was married twice, to:

• Iris, in 1953 (divorced); one son Mitchell (died 2004)
• Mickie Schuller (born 19 July 1933 in Berlin; died 25 February 2010 aged 76, in Middlesex, England of bone cancer), married 1959-1985; one daughter Michele and one son, Matt Monro Jnr

References[link]