The Smark DVD Rant for Challenge of the Superfriends Volume 2: United They Stand!
– Yes, to quote Richard Marx, I don’t know why I keep coming back. In fact, it’s probably due to a masochistic streak, the same kind that allows me to quote Richard Marx in a cartoon review WITHOUT A HINT OF IRONY.
So yeah, I was browsing Future Shop today, and caught completely unawares, I discovered that Warner had released another wave of their ever-so-slowly proceeding run of classic superhero animation. So I picked up Batman volume 3, and this one. Honestly, I’d do the Batman reviews instead, but they’re actually good and I’m apparently at my best when I’m tormented by unstoppable waves of crap. It’s a curse and a blessing.
The Film
You young whippersnappers don’t how good you have it with quality cartoons like Batman: The Animated Series and Justice League these days. Back in MY day, we had mass-produced crap shoveled onto our plates every Saturday morning and we LIKED IT THAT WAY, consarnit! Continuity in the animation and well-thought out storylines? BALDERDASH! Give me cheaply-produced Korean animation with Superman’s “S” drawn 16 different ways in the same show any day!
But seriously
This disc covers episodes 5-8 of the 1978 SuperFriends series (with 16 in total, Warner can again go to hell and die for not just doing a two-disc set of the whole series and being done with it), and things actually improve a bit story-wise over the first four eps. For those who are new to the game or not part of Generation X in general, Challenge of the SuperFriends featured 8 of the big DC heroes teamed with 3 ethnic creations of the writers, opposing 13 of the supposed baddest villains in the DC universe. For the silly roll call of members, you can check out my review of volume 1. For now, let’s jump right into the action
“Trial of the SuperFriends!” Scientists have discovered the most powerful source of energy on Earth, “liquid light”, which is harnessed from the sun’s photons and turns into something resembling bright yellow lava. It’s apparently so destructive that it can eat through anything on the planet. Except of course for the container that’s holding it. Anyway, this is apparently something that the Legion of Doom might wish to use for evil purposes, so Batman & Robin, Wonder Woman and Green Lantern are all assigned to guard it. Good enough, but what if it gets loose? It’s liquid sunlight. Sunlight is YELLOW. What is Green Lantern going to do, cheerlead? Well, as you might expect, the LOD sends the best and the brightest (well, maybe the best) in the form of Cheetah, Sinestro and Scarecrow (okay, maybe not the BEST per se, either) to do their dirty work. Ah, but they don’t just want to steal the liquid light, they have zanier schemes up their sleeves. Specifically, through cunning and guile, the villains manage to steal the “power weapons” of the foursome. Cheetah tricks Wonder Woman into roping a dummy robot, which puts the magic lasso in Cheetah’s hands. Sinestro uses what looks like a vacuum cleaner to suck the ring off Green Lantern’s hand. And Scarecrow uses birds to steal the utility belts from Batman & Robin. Immediate internal logic problem here — Green Lantern doesn’t need to be in contact with his ring to use it. Or at least Hal Jordan didn’t, I don’t know if they’ve changed the rules since Captain Dumbshit took over the job in the 90s. Not only that, but it would become useless to whoever stole it after 24 hours anyway. But I digress. So anyway, as far as the viewer is concerned, our heroes are now powerless. Well, okay, really it comes down to Wonder Woman missing a piece of rope and Batman being under-accessorized, but Green Lantern is pretty f*cked, yo. And then it’s just like Law & Order (without the good acting, plot, characterization, ripped from the headlines stories, Lenny Briscoe and Dick Wolf) as Lex Luthor (complete with purple and green judge’s robes, just in case such an occasion arose) charges the powerless heroes with aggravated do-gooding and condemns them to death. Again, I should stress that Wonder Woman still has all her powers — you know, super-strength, speed, flight, etc — and Batman could probably take half these losers with his bare hands. But the sake of plot advancement, they submit to the trial and get transported to remove parts of the Earth to fight androids who look like them and are equipped with their weapons. Now again, not to be a huge comic geek here, but the Green Lantern rings are dependent on the willpower of the wearer, and androids don’t have will. They actually do think of this by suggesting that Toyman has somehow used computers to simulate telepathy and willpower, but really if that was the case, what kind of android would then want to spend his life dressed like Green Lantern on the off-chance that they capture him? I mean, just think about what you’re doing to the psyche of that android — you build the thing, give him simulated willpower, dress him like Hal Jordan, and then leave him in storage for what could be years while you wait for a plan to capture him, and then when you release him it’s solely for the purpose of destroying the one person who you’ve been programmed to emulate. I’d rebel and kill all the bastards, personally. Anyway, unfortunately the androids are also total idiots, as they use completely ineffective methods to hunt down the “powerless” Superfriends. The Evil Green Lantern, for instance, armed with the most powerful weapon in the universe, is unable to catch Hal Jordan, on foot mind you, and then stupidly announces his strategy, giving Hal a chance to hide behind a yellow sign and thus watch the energy beam bounce back and hit the android. And don’t even get me started on Batman carrying an invisibility projector around on his utility belt, just in case it ever gets stolen and they’re trapped in a giant spider web. Meanwhile, while our heroes get their trinkets back, the Legion attacks the research facility and unleashes liquid light on a nearby town, and the remaining SuperFriends spring into action to save the people. Amazingly, everyone in the town manages to get away from the deadly liquid with no advance notice, allowing Flash to run in circles (why does every solution for Flash come down to him running in circles?) and suck the stuff into the atmosphere where it falls as “harmless shooting stars”. Well, that’s a pretty iffy theory, there, Flash. Shouldn’t you maybe test the idea before you launch 20 tons of the most awful substance in the universe into the air we’re breathing? And what’s the guarantee that it’s all gonna be “harmless shooting stars”? What if a big glob of the stuff lands on someone’s HOUSE and kills their dog, pal? You know what, I’m GLAD you’re dead, you heartless jerk. I’m getting too worked up here, let’s move onto the next episode
“Monolith of EVIL!” I love those titles. You know this one’s doomed from the start, because the brilliant plan comes from Solomon Grundy. You know, the big albino zombie who talks like Forrest Gump? Anyway, we get a quick retelling of his secret origin (he was lying dead in the swamp and something woke him up — hey, I said it was quick) and from this he concludes that there’s an evil monolith at the center of the earth, which powers all the lesser evils in the world. So that explains HHH. So of course they set the controls on the Hall of Doom for “down” and tunnel right into the center of the earth. Now, since I’m the kind of guy to believe what Hollywood tells me, I’m gonna have to defer to “The Core” as far as scientific theory on going to the center of the earth goes and assume that the Hall of Doom probably couldn’t make the trip itself. So anyway, they drill down to the center of the earth in record time (but then this is the same show where people travel “trillions of miles” via a segue from the narrator), and amazingly it’s not only cool enough to survive, but there’s even breathable oxygen down there! In fact, the atmosphere is hospitable enough to not only prevent instant death, but it actually supports a huge dragon, which lives in the lava. Forget the monolith, they should capture that thing and have Steve Irwin fight it on PPV. They’d make billions. So anyway, they venture into a cave and find the monolith, which is guarded by the requisite giant lava monster. Grundy can’t get past it, and so concludes that they’re gonna need Superman to beat the monster. Um, hello, you’ve got BIZARRO, with all the same powers as Superman, right back on the ship, dude. Not to mention Sinestro, equally powerful. Or Giganta, who can grow as big as the giant lava monster. No wonder these guys get beaten every time — they not only give up on the first try, but don’t even stop to think about the easy way to do things. No fear, though, Riddler already has the perfect set of devious riddles to lure Superman to the center of the earth and get the monolith for them. He must shop at Hallmark in the “Lure Superman to the Center of the Earth” section. The devious plan involves Luthor & Brainiac shrinking the entire United Nations building and taking it hostage, and truly the loss of that institution would be a crushing blow to world peace. Heck, without the UN around, someone like George W. would be able to just go invade whoever he wanted, without sanction! Oh, wait. Anyway, don’t worry, it turns out to be a clever trick (although they’re clever enough to disguise the monolith as a shrunken UN building to trick Superman into getting it for them, but not enough to figure out that Bizarro could have handled it in the first place), as Superman, Hawkman and Black Vulcan fly to the center of the earth (based on a Riddler clue about going down in the swamp sounds more like a kinky evening with Dr. Alec Holland) and inadvertently deliver the monolith into the hands of Grodd and the Legion of Doom. To make sure they don’t escape, they attach a kryptonite ball-and-chain to Superman’s foot. Just to get off on a quick rant here, one of the main problems with comics in the 70s in general was that there was kryptonite EVERYWHERE. I mean, it’s bad enough that you could find chunks big enough to form a ball-and-chain out of the stuff, but besides regular green you had red (unpredictable effects), gold (permanent loss of powers), blue (only works on Bizarro), white (only works on plants) and the lamest of them all, jewel (releases criminals from the Phantom Zone). It became such a running joke within the medium that at one point, a writer had all the stuff floating around the earth collected in a story, and there was enough to reform the entire planet of Krypton for the millions of survivors of the total destruction of the planet. So basically the planet blew up, all the fragments went in the direction of Earth at the same rate, and pretty much everyone on the entire planet survived except for Jor-El and Lara. As planetary disasters go, I’ve seen worse. Anyway, back to our thrilling story, as the only thing that can break the chain is a nuclear laser, which they of course don’t have. You’d think that, being in the hottest point in the entire planet, they might just try dipping the thing in the molten lava, but that would kill the drama somewhat. Now, another group of you might be thinking to yourself “Wait a second, if you need a nuclear laser to cut kryptonite, how did they make that ball-and-chain?” The obvious answer is, of course, with a nuclear laser, and then you’d ask “What the hell kind of accountant do they have if they’re wasting millions on lasers and kryptonite balls-and-chains?” and really I can’t answer that one. I’m just the reviewer. Now where was I? Oh yeah, the monolith wreaks havoc in the hands of the Legion, including extinguishing the sun. Yes, THE SUN. Now certainly sending a beam of energy from the Earth to the Sun in a little under 2 seconds and having it be powerful enough to snuff out an entire star is bad enough so we’ll let it lie without getting into the permanent ecological damage that would result from the sun being out for even 10 minutes. Not to mention that the Earth would go spinning off into the void. We’ll get back to that in a minute. Meanwhile, Flash and Green Lantern mount a rescue effort into the center of the earth, as GL just happens to know how to make a nuclear laser with his ring (I know, it’s creative license, but he would NEVER be able to make something that specific without detailed knowledge of the mechanisms) and cut Superman free, while Flash vibrates to prevent them from turning to stone from being down there so long. Don’t ask. So with everyone free and ready to kick ass again, once again the Hall of Justice’s computers do the thinking for them, playing deus ex machina (rather apropos, being that it’s a machine and all) and informing them that the monolith isn’t evil, it’s just a source of power like any other. Great, a nature v. nurture argument written into a superhero cartoon, just what I needed. So anyway, Wonder Woman suddenly decides that she can telepathically control the monolith, and she restores the sun. Now, let’s stop and think about this — the earth is spinning at about 1000 miles an hour, so being generous and estimating that the sun was out for an hour and not even getting into the rotation rates and orbits of the other celestial bodies in the solar system, that means that the monolith not only has to have the power to recreate an entire star, but bend the energy beam in space and locate the exact spot would the sun would be had it continued burning an hour before. And what if the thing’s calculations were off by a few degrees? You could kill everyone on the planet! Although actually, a few episodes down the line that DOES happen, sort of. Anyway, the Legion gets away, and the SuperFriends vow to catch them again. Hey, here’s an idea — CHASE AFTER THEM.
– “The Giants of DOOM!” Have I mentioned how much I love these titles? This one is like the Citizen Kane of idiotic superhero cartoon plots. Okay, first flaw — Bizarro has a plan and the others LISTEN TO HIM. This is the guy who’s so stupid that he can’t grasp the proper use of first-person pronouns, and they’re gonna put the fate of the Legion of Doom in his hands? So here’s his plan — he knows the secret formula to make people into 100-foot tall giants, and thus they can conquer the world! I know, I know, there’s a logic gap there. Giganta is the first one to point it out, as she rightly states that she can already make herself 50 feet tall. Ah, but Bizarro counters, they’ll be a HUNDRED feet tall. You can’t argue with logic like that. But hey, stupidity aside, the rest of the gang is always up for the looting, pillaging and irritating the SuperFriends required to get the rest of the formula, so off they go. First up, the moon, as one half of the needed ingredients is located at the center of it. Now, you might be asking, if it’s located at the center of the moon, how does he know that it’s there, since it’s in the center of the moon and not easily accessible by chemical surveyors and all? Again, I’m just the reviewer. So not being part of the school of thought that does things the easy way, Sinestro decides to slice the entire moon in half. 10 points for style, minus several million for common sense. Just to add pointless dramatic tension, it turns out that there’s a moonbase, and it just happens to be located exactly where Sinestro is sawing through the moon like a giant apple. So the SuperFriends are called, and when you think “Mission in space”, you of course think “Batman & Superman”. Sure, Superman is a given, but BATMAN? Not only that, but Batman just happens to have a “Bat-Rocket” that is capable of making the trip from the Earth to the moon in what appears to be 1.5 minutes. The villains get the first element, and Superman is left to weld the moon back together with his heat vision while Batman fools around with Robin. And how does THAT work? The welding, I mean, not the unstated gay relationship. I mean at the least Superman should use a planetary vise grip to make sure the pieces don’t slip around. Maybe Batman, too, but really I don’t wanna know. I bet Galactus has one laying around the garage. Sinestro & Bizarro are captured, but presumably hide the element in their jockstrap or something. Next up, Captain Cold & Toyman head to Greece and freeze the Parthenon to get the second element, but they too are captured, and soon all four evildoers are left inside the Hall of Justice in a flimsy energy cell. The Hall of Doom makes a daring raid on the Hall of Justice (it can fly, you see), and in a burst of tactical brilliance that would probably make the entire French army stand up and applaud, Superman decides that the ENTIRE JUSTICE LEAGUE should go deal with the flying Hall of Doom, leaving Green Lantern alone to guard the four villains, one of whom is the only person in the universe with the ring that can counteract Green Lantern’s sole means of protecting himself. Amazingly, the villains escape. And hijack the computer to create their growth ray, leaving us with 100-foot tall Bizarro, Sinestro, Captain Cold and Toyman. Cold freezes the entire team into a giant ice-bullet, and Toyman launches it with a slingshot into space, where it lands on Saturn. That’s a pretty accurate slingshot. I won’t even bore you with talking about how the block of ice would burn up upon leaving the atmosphere and then again when it lands on Saturn, because something even stupider occurs later. So the villains go on a rampage — Bizarro attacks Washington and claims it for himself, Sinestro takes China (and if you thought the French were pathetic, the Chinese government surrenders on behalf of the billions of people in the country just because Sinestro creates a giant tiger with his ring), Toyman takes Britain and Captain Cold takes Egypt. Now, here’s where I got taken out of the story a little bit. In order to hold up the country for ransom, he uses his giant ice-gun to freeze the entire desert, which then prompts the leaders to pay him millions to unfreeze it. So let me get this straight — he dumps, say, 3 million liters of water onto an arid desert area covering a huge chunk of the earth, thus enabling food and water for those who have never had it before, and he’s a BAD GUY? And they’re gonna pay him billions of dollars to CHANGE IT BACK? And then, as we’re on Saturn with the frozen Justice League, Batman’s utility belt activates a heater that melts the ice and releases them all. That’s not the dumb part. Well, it is, but there’s a dumber part. Which is this — he notes that it was lucky he had that device, “for just such an occasion”. Just such an occasion? Getting frozen in a giant ice-suppository and deposited on Saturn? So you mean to tell me that if they had landed on, say, Jupiter, they would have been f*cked? So then Flash justifies his pay by creating a giant tornado to propel them back to Earth (see, running in circles, that’s his whole job with the group), but I say “what the f*ck?” to that, too. And not because of the totally retarded notion of riding a tornado through space, that’s just par for the course with this show. No, I say, what about Samurai? It’s not bad enough that he’s there on the Equal Opportunity Superhero program, but what’s basically his ONLY SUPERPOWER? That’s right — creating tornadoes! He should sue the f*ckers for stealing his job! So anyway, back on Earth, they discover the Hall of Justice in a shambles and the giant Doomers running amok on the Earth, but aha, they’ve left small portions behind and thus they can create their OWN growth ray. So Superman, Batman, Flash and Green Lantern all grow to 100 feet tall wait a minute. Again, I must stand up for the rights of minority superheroes, as Apache Chief, hired under the Minority Superhero Act of 1977, is RIGHT THERE with powers perfectly suited to fighting this menace, and do any of the white SuperFriends stop and say “Hey, Chief, there’s some 100-foot dudes terrorizing the earth, you up for growing that big?” No way, man. They probably just assume he’s drunk in an alley or doing his rain dance ceremony somewhere. What’s next, sending Black Vulcan off to sweep the back room and fix the Batmobile? So the climactic battles last about 10 seconds, good triumphs again, but AT WHAT COST? Remember, their mission is to fight injustice, but apparently not RACISM.
– “Secret Origins of the SuperFriends” Time travel stories give me a headache. And here’s another one. This is also more of an excuse to see the origins of the three big members of the group, but that’s okay. The ingenious scheme this time around: In order to stop the heroics of the SuperFriends in the present, Luthor decides to travel back in time and prevent them from being created in the first place. Luckily, the Hall of Doom has a “Time Travel” pedal right next to the gas and brake, and off they zoom back in time to change things around. First stop — Paradise Island in the 1940s, as Cheetah takes the place of Diana in the contest of the gods and becomes Wonder Woman by CHEATING TO WIN. Next, they head to California in the 60s and Luthor coaxes Hal Jordan out of the flight simulator before Abin Sur can summon him to be the next Green Lantern, and Luthor ends up getting the ring. Finally, off to Krypton, as they deflect little Kal-El’s rocket away from Earth and send him towards a red sun instead of ours. So back in the present, suddenly no one remembers Wonder Woman, Green Lantern or Superman. This effectively leaves the SuperFriends crippled, and the Legion of Doom attacks and captures them. This, I should note, was actually a pretty smartly-executed idea and story, which is why I’m sparing it the same treatment as the others. Anyway, the sole bit of silliness is when the narrator notes that the remaining SuperFriends travel back in time “in their own ways”, never really specified (like, I’m sure Black Vulcan can just wrap himself in lightning and go back in time), and of course reverse the damage done by using the records in the Hall of Doom’s computers. The time travel stuff is, while incredibly stupid, at least internally logical, so I can overlook it because this was otherwise a good episode.
Overall, more extremely campy superhero silliness aimed at young’uns, who will eat it up with a spoon, I guarantee. For us Gen-Xer’s, though, it sure doesn’t age well. Oh well, no one ever said nostalgia is pretty.
The Video:
In a word, terrible. Colors are bland and washed out (although better than the first release, kinda), dirt and scratches are everywhere, and it’s basically a lazy dump of the original 1978 tapes onto DVD. The clarity is great compared to syndicated versions out there right there, but there was really no effort put into cleaning this stuff up at all and it shows.
The Audio:
Dolby Digital 1.0 Mono. Which means that the only thing used is the center channel. That’s how it was originally intended, but I’m frankly shocked they didn’t even have a stereo mix of it. It sounds fine for what it is, however.
The Extras:
Nothing really — quickie episode introductions by the writer of the shows, Jeffrey Scott, as well as a silly guessing game disguised as trivia, and superhero dossiers. Nothing exciting.
The Ratings:
The Film: ***1/2
The Video: *
The Audio: *
The Extras: ½*
