Inspiration and Similarities
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.
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