Checking in with Some 'Superfriends'

I’ve had the Superfriends on my mind over the past few weeks, after Jerry and I ended the podcast with our interpretations of the over-the-top voice acting of cartoons like the Superfriends and X-Men. I watched the series religiously from the time my mom learned that the cheapest babysitter in town was the Zenith parked in the living room.

I didn’t care if they didn’t punch anything. I didn’t care that week after week they fought sorcerers and aliens instead of costumed villains straight out of the comics. Ultimately I also forgave the addition of teen characters who regularly brought the show to a screeching halt with their wacky shenanigans. All I cared about was the colorful costumed characters who fought to protect our planet from the forces of evil.

Let’s take a trip down memory lane:



Aquaman owes his longevity to this show! Well, when this series came out I probably didn’t really mind the addition of Marv, Wendy and Wonder Dog because I was too young to care. I do remember watching these episodes as a child and assume it was my indoctrination into the world of comic books. I still love that original soundtrack, but the voice-over by the late Ted Knight is as dated as Wendy’s white bellbottoms. What does it mean that the heroes are created from “the cosmic legends of the universe”?



Everything seems to start off okay. We’ve got that great music, Superman punching meteors, Wonder Woman taking down a dragon, Aquaman not caring about how lame it would be to use two dolphins to travel, and then things go totally wrong—we’re introduced to Wonder Twins Zan and Jayna and their space monkey Gleek. To make matters worse, they would sometimes get their own storylines where they’d have to thwart drag racers (so contemporary) or a crime circus.



Okay, I was seven when this bad boy came out and I still remember peeing my pants. While the Superfriends fought actual comic book villains from time to time, it was pretty sporadic. They usually fought monsters or were taken to other dimensions to fight some villains with an overabundance of kryptonite. But here, the series made up for all of that. We got a cavalcade of real comic book villains… and some of the best: Lex Luthor, Brainiac, Captain Cold, Sinestro, Giganta, the Cheetah, Solomon Grundy, Black Manta and Gorilla Grodd among others. Why the Legion of Doom stories only lasted a season was beyond me, because this season was the best of the series until this point, and would remain so for several years.



The animation here in this opening promises so much more than the series would ever achieve, but it sure is nice to look at. To add insult to injury, this season brings back the Wonder Twins and Gleek. What the hell were the producers thinking?



We were already used to the made up (and racially insensitive) heroes Black Falcon, Samurai and Apache Chief. This series included another new character from south of the border: El Dorado. The ethnic characters had until this point only prominently bared their chests—‘ol El Dorado keeps the goods on display for Wonder Woman and… were there any other women on this team? Someone call the National Organization of Women!



This show had a couple of things going for it. They introduced a new hero that was actually not one of the made up characters we were being force-fed season after season: Firestorm. Here’s a novel idea, we can use a teenager from the comic books and he doesn’t have to have an anthropomorphic sidekick. This was my first taste of Darkseid, Desaad, and Kalibak and I was a happy camper! These were the first episodes to tie into the Super Powers toys that I so coveted. Yes, not everything was He-Man, G.I. Goe, and the Transformers.



Okay, this show saved the best for last—and they were no longer called the Superfriends. As far as the animation went, the series had never been stronger. The character designs for Superman and Wonder Woman were updated and hugely improved. Darkseid was much more menacing looking in these episodes as well. I remember thinking that the series had never been closer to the source material, which I think I had been collecting for about four years by this point. Then it got cancelled. Such is life. At least the show introduced the world to Vic Stone, Cyborg from The New Teen Titans!