S:TAS reviews: The Hand of Fate

This piece of filler scripted by both Stan Berkowitz and Hilary Bader pits Superman against both a demonic lord bent on enslaving humanity and the self-defeating cosmic isolationism of his former friend and ally, Doctor Fate. Both writers seem at a loss for handling dialectics, fumbling by with platitudes about good and evil and the point of doing right in the world without producing any convincing rhetoric. On a moralistic level, The Hand of Fate functions admirably as a gut-level statement against defeatism and inaction that surely appeals to kids, but its didacticism is too cut from a mold to get anyone else to care.

And yet this dialecticism is borne of a relationship between heroes developed off-screen that broadens the reach of the DC Animated Universe. Fate represents a particular genre and philosophical attitude—magical fantasy and metaphysical attunement—and The Hand of Fate sufficiently lays down building blocks, even in its simplification. His position on life is unexplored and the dramatic conflict duly suffers, but the similarly unexplored trans-dimensional bewilderment of his ancient stone spire bids imaginative gap filling and the potential for future exploration. That we are invited to ponder a sub-realm of mysticism treated matter-of-factly in spite of the fact that we are only now introduced to it conjures a conception of this universe as a surface just waiting to be probed in greater depth.

Compared to the Flash of Speed Demons, the only previous team-up episode we have been treated to in S:TAS besides World’s Finest, Fate is a more obscure character featured not as road-movie foil, but more ambitiously as an ideological position. It is implied that Superman first met Fate long ago, and this in media res leap into a relationship history stimulates the imagination in the same way the slight inklings of visual information on Fate’s boundless fortress do. Though Superman and Fate’s dispute is axiomatic, the producers’ boldness in ridding themselves of the impulse to lather on back-story and follow every detail of the former’s growth as a hero is refreshing and, on hindsight, a masterstroke. Making the most of each new character spotlight to cover all the bases fails to anticipate any future chance of development; Fate is featured again later on, and so retrospectively the decision not to do as much with the character as possible in his debut is the right one.

Even more attractive than either the story or the implications about continuity is the disarmingly retro look. The sharp angles of Karkull’s minions, airbrushed backgrounds, and bright green swirls of magic energy seem cribbed from a miscellaneous fifties sci-fi magazine. The zigzag declivities of the cavernous walls of Karkull’s vertiginous lair are undoubtedly modeled on the slants and sharp edges of German Expressionism. The stylistic homage extends to the subject matter: long-buried supernatural horror unearthed due to some poor fool’s selfish opportunism. For all of The Hand of Fate’s narrative weaknesses as a morality play, it has a surprisingly firm grasp on both the aesthetics and thematic elements of its source material.