In the flashback sequence in Justice League, Steppenwolf’s Mother Boxes are divided up between the humans, Amazons and Atlanteans that helped defeat the evil New God’s invasion.
The Amazons were led by Hippolyta and some of the Olympian gods (specifically Zeus, Artemis and pre-evil Ares), and the Atlanteans were led by King Atlan (a figure in Aquaman’s backstory).
But it’s never explicitly stated whether the humans involved were anyone from the DC canon, but the design of the men burying humanity’s Mother Box appears to bare some similarities to one of the versions of Atlantis from Grant Morrison’s Seven Soldiers series, specifically the one where Ystin/a is from.
Admittedly Ystin/a (they’re Ystina in Morrison’s work, but in their later appearance in Paul Cornell’s Demon Knights they’re coded as trans, gender fluid, or intersexual, and go by Ystin) is from 8,000 years BCE compared to the movie’s invasion 30,000 years ago.
Indeed, the idea that Camelot is a reoccuring event (something aided by the immortal Merlin deliberately trying to rebuild it) strikes Ystin as a blow, as they had spent THOUSANDS of years wandering the Earth mourning the fall of Bronze Age Camelot when could have hung around in the British Isles and seen it born again in the early Middle Ages.
Anyways, if those dudes are meant to be the DCEU version of the Knights of the Round Table (one of the early, early Morrison versions rather than the Medieval ones), it’ll be… curious if Ystin shows up in the movies at some point. I wouldn’t say no, they’re awesome!
Morrison tried to play the Knights of the “Broken Table“ as a form of proto-superhero team which… kind of works. Most of the knights had odd powers back in the old stories, heck, even Guinevere had magic powers (and an evil identical sister) at some point.
This kind of plays into Morrison’s meta arc about superhero stories within the DCU are Explicitly Superhero Stories. Running on what the Discworld novel’s called “Narrative Casuality“, but without the internal resistance Pratchett’s characters felt to being made to fill certain expected roles or follow expected plots.
Everything’s archetypes, no one is aware enough to realise they’re in a story. Which is ironic, as Grant has actually written himself into his own works, such as Animal Man, several times.
The Knights totally had superpowers. I mean, LOOK AT THIS!
It was pretty good from what I remember, acting as a kind of bridge between the DC versions of the characters and the more folkloric incarnations (for example, Arthur in the above art is how he appears in a lot of flashbacks involving Etrigan or Shining Knight back in the day, but flashbacks to Mordred’s origin story have the characters in more traditional armour and a more grim tone).
Strictly speaking Camelot 3000 didn’t really take place in the DCU, per se, but it did involve a lot of character designs which were similar to those used in the aforementioned DC Arthurian stories.
So at some point Legends of tomorrow is heading to Camelot. I think there are a ton of fun characters that they could pick up there but I really hope the bad guys pick up a powerful woman in Gold to put at least one chick int he Legion of Doom.
Arthurian Legends 