Super Friends

I remember watching this cartoon at 8:30 in the morning if I had a day out of school. At the age of 10 I realize that this is the best superfriends cartoon. The cartoon pit their arch enemies against the superfriends which derives from the DC comics. I enjoy watching Lex Luther always trying to make a way to destroy the superfriends. Especially superman,wonder woman,and the green lantern because they all the most powerful ones of them all. Superman serves as the superfriends leader and at the end they prove that evil never prevails. If you noticed The Challenge of the Superfriends and The Scooby Doo Show(1978) has the same danger background music.

This was an hour long show that was actually two shows put together. Half of it was a continuation of The All-New Super Friends Hour but just a half hour this time. The second part is them fighting the Legion Of Doom. That's the series I remember seeing the most as a kid, it was probably re-run by itself later. This is the only series that came close to the comic book, they even go to the Bat cave. I would highly recommend not watching any series that came before this one.

As a kid I used to watch this show every Saturday morning on ABC. This show featured Superman, Aquaman, Wonder Woman, Batman & Robin, and the Wonder Twins, Zan & Jayna, with their pet monkey Gleek. I did like the Wonder Twins but Gleek was annoying. Aquaman was my favorite character, although he was unfortunately relegated to flying around with Wonder Woman in her invisible jet whenever the action took place on land or in space.

A previous reviewer was correct in the format used: there were three mini-episodes, approximately 10 minutes in length, with one half-hour episode. The first mini-episode featured a pair of the Superfriends battling evil scientists or scheming enemies. The second mini-episode featured the Wonder Twins in stories about adolescents who were either up to no good or were in dangerous predicaments. The third was the half-hour episode with the entire cast, generally battling aliens or other life forms from far away galaxies. The final mini-episode paired one principal Superfriend with a guest Superfriend such as Green Lantern, Flash, Apache Chief, Samurai, Black Vulcan, Rima, Atom, or Hawkman & Hawgirl.

The stories were good but were definitely preachy. I liked the mini-episodes that paired Aquaman and Superman together. My favorite half-hour episode dealt with an evil zombie woman named Minerva or Medusa or something like that(she didn't have any eyeballs, just white eyes!) who, along with her other female assistants, planned to transform all the women of Earth into similar zombies in order to use them to help her rid the planet of all men by changing them into microchips to be stored on tape so that she could ultimately conquer the world. When Wonder Woman and Jayna, thinking they would be undetected as females, infiltrated her base of operations, they were transformed into zombies with white eyes. They then transformed Aquaman, Batman, Robin, and Zan into microchips and stored them on tape. They thought they also did that to Superman, but he had substituted a statute of himself; he then singlehandedly saved the other Superfiends, changed all the women of Earth back to normal, saved all the men by reversing the deeds of the zombies, and finally caught the main zombie woman.

Also, there originally were several brief spots throughout each program that featured the Superfriends dispensing health advice and safety tips to children and teens.

While this time they do fight some super villain type characters(none I've ever heard of), there's still plenty of well meaning scientists/inventors and alien races thrown into the mix. The Wonder Twins are even worse than the original kids. Thankfully they are mostly kept to their own short segments where they teach kids important lessons like don't go joyriding in airplanes. The segments were the best thing about this series. Instead of a tedious one hour story, we are treated to 3(sometimes 4) shorter tedious stories. Other than that, it's the same as the original.

Ah, the Super Friends. Anyone who grew up in the 70's and calls themselves a comic book fan has a special place in their heart for this show; the first cartoon to depict the Justice League of America (well, apart from the Filmation cartoons, but they didn't have the big guns of Superman, Batman and Wonder Woman in the JLA cartoons). Some hated it because it was watered down, with no memorable villains. Other enjoyed its charm and goofy fun. Some of us were glad to see any show with superheroes.

Now, in the 70's, the networks didn't allow much in the ways of violence in cartoons (except for Bugs and company), so we didn't get any slobberknockers with the bad guys. Still, there were memorable conflicts, with some creativity involved. Yeah, most of the "villains" were misguided and not evil, but there was fun to be had.

Some of my personal favorites were the GEEC episode, where a computer controls all of man's machines, only to go haywire when a mouse gets inside it; The planet-splitting episode, where Superman's origin is retold; the Gulliver episode, where everyone is reduced to the size of a doll; and the episode with the Flash.

The series went out of its way to present environmental issues, moral dilemmas, and other thought-provoking conflicts. It had far greater educational value than the "commercial" cartoons of the 80's and was far more entertaining than most. Yes, Wendy and Marvin were annoying at times, but they did have some value. I'll take them over the Wonder Twins any day. Besides, Marvin made it into Alex Ross' Kingdom Come.

If you wanted action in the 70's, you had to find Jonny Quest reruns or catch Speed Racer in syndication. The Super Friends would suffice until something better came along. It took two more series, but arrive it did; and, it still carried the name, Super Friends.