The SmarK DVD Rant for Challenge of the SuperFriends: The Complete First Season
– Yes, in one of those odd marketing decisions, Warner decided to annoy the hell out of me by issuing two four-episode collections of the short-lived Challenge of the SuperFriends series last year, and then royally pissed me off by putting the entire 16-episode series in a 2-disc set this year. But since I have no common sense or self-control when it comes to comic geekdom, I bought it so I can vent my frustrations on it for y’all. However, much like Warner, I’m going to be lazy and just reprint my previous thoughts on the 8 episodes already reviewed in my previous rants, because I CAN.
The Film
The specific season of the SuperFriends being used here is the 1978 one, subtitled “The Challenge of the SuperFriends”. The concept is simple: You have the SuperFriends, and you have the evil Legion of Doom (no relation to either the hockey line or the Road Warriors), comprised of 13 of the most evil people in the universe. Those people:
– Lex Luthor (Superman’s arch-enemy, very evil),
– Brainiac (#2 heel for Superman, also very evil),
– Sinestro (the yellow-wielding nemesis for Green Lantern, and his NAME is sinister, so he must be evil),
– Bizarro (getting pretty far down the depth chart for Superman’s villains now, as he’s really more of a tragic figure than a villain, but as an evil anti-Superman, he works I guess).
– The Riddler (In the words of Luthor, “humorous but SINISTER” what, was the Joker having his makeup retouched?)
– Captain Cold (Flash’s arch-enemy and about as scary as Crash Holly)
– Black Manta (Aquaman’s arch-enemy, although he doesn’t really demonstrate any POWERS in the show, but then neither does Aquaman)
– Solomon Grundy (We’re kinda reaching now with an obscure GL villain)
– Gorilla Grodd (Flash villain, he’s a big talking gorilla and that’s about it maybe Gleek got into the juice and went nuts)
– Cheetah (Wonder Woman’s nemesis, she dresses like you guessed it a Cheetah. No appreciable powers, except maybe PMS)
– Scarecrow (A D-level Batman villain whose power is to induce fear, thus making him basically useless for group attacks)
– Toyman (Are you KIDDING me? Luthor wouldn’t even invite this idiot to his parties)
– Giganta (A 50-foot woman who didn’t exist in the comics except briefly as a Wonder Woman villain in the 40s, and is only there as a counterpoint to Apache Chief)
Keep in mind, these are supposed to be the most evil people available at the time. Granted, Joker was something of a comedy figure in the 70s thanks to the Batman TV show, but even Flash had better villains to choose from if they needed warm bodies. More disturbing, however, is the ludicrously huge technology advantage that the Legion had over the heroes they had mind-control devices, time machines, matter transporters EVERYTHING. They could make TRILLIONS of dollars selling this crap to the highest bidder and just BUY the world.
And on the side of good, the SuperFriends!
– Superman (Man of Steel, alternates in the show between being able to move planets with a shrug and being unable to escape a force field)
– Batman (Total pansy reduced to letting computers do his detective work in these shows who basically serves no purpose in a field of super-powers)
– Wonder Woman (Token chick, presumably there to clean the kitchen and turn tricks to support the cost of the Hall of Justice. Sometimes uses her magic lasso to do rodeo tricks for the guys)
– Flash (Fastest man on earth. Ouch. Bet Wonder Woman gave him that nickname)
– Green Lantern (Much like Superman, alternates between moving the Earth with a thought and shrieking “Oh no, it’s YELLOW” like a little girl. Bed-wetting issues, perhaps?)
– Aquaman (King of the seas. Talks to fish. Must be lonely down there or something. Peter David saved his career in the 90s)
– Hawkman (He can fly. Big whoop, so can Superman)
– Robin (Batman’s gay lover, as voiced by Casey Kasem. Sidekicks should never be in the main team)
– Apache Chief (An invention of the show’s writers, he’s a native American who grows really big on command. I hear he left to do porn)
– Samurai (A Japanese dude who creates tornadoes with his body. Damn Japanese, stealing work from the Red Tornado)
– Black Vulcan (Based loosely on Black Lightning from the comics, he’s black and he shoots lightning. Not to be confused to Tuvok, a black Vulcan)
Armed with the knowledge of the protagonists, it’s time for the Challenge of the SuperFriends!
Disc One
– “Wanted: The SuperFriends”. The debut for the 16-episode run sees Luthor calling a meeting of the Legion of Doom and introducing everyone. Everyone gets to demonstrate their powers, except for Brainiac, who presumably does 1500 crossword puzzles in his 2-second allotted time using his super-brain. Before they can even get to the super-villain kegger or a gang-bang of Giganta, they have to complete Luthor’s first super-scheme. He has a dream machine, with which he can hypnotize the SuperFriends into doing his bidding while they dream. We have to take it on faith that this thing can not only control their minds, but can locate the specific people anywhere in the world, even in their unshakeable disguises, like Clark Kent. They all dutifully steal the world’s loot and wake up to find it stashed in the Hall of Justice, and when the police come calling, they decide to turn themselves in. Good enough so far. However, when the scene changes, we clearly see a sign marked “POLICE HEADQUARTERS”, so of course we need the narrator to add “Meanwhile, at police headquarters”. Anyway, our heroes get locked in a ceremonial cell by the cops, even though they can break out whenever they want, but it’s a SWERVE! Turns out that the “police” are Bizarro and Cheetah under masks (although how someone could still wear Cheetah-ears under a rubber mask and not be discovered as a fake is beyond me) and they’ve got a mind-control device that freezes the SuperFriends in place! You know they’re frozen in place because someone stops to say “I can’t move! They must be using some kind of mind-control device!” Apparently it freezes everything but the mouth. You’d think a device like that, whereby the poor saps would bore each other to death with years of mindless exposition, would be evil enough, but it gets worse, as Bizarro launches the cage into space, on a collision course with the sun. Now I know what you’re thinking here Wouldn’t sending it into space be enough, what with the total vacuum instantly killing them and all? NO! You obviously don’t understand the devious mind of the super-villain. Using only solid fuel rockets, the cage is sent from Earth to the sun in a little under 2 minutes, making me think that the Legion of Doom should just sell the formula for whatever they’re using to power this thing and they could make billions on the stock market. Once into space, Wonder Woman uses the power of telepathy to command her lasso to move the rockets and send them into a collision course with a comet, which shatters the mind-control device. Superman warns her of the pinpoint precision needed to avoid being destroyed by the comet. They’re flying through space in a cage without suffocating to death and he’s worried about the COMET killing them? Further, if pinpoint precision is the order of the day, I’d say that using a telepathically-controlled magic lasso wouldn’t be my first choice of precision instruments. But naturally they make it back to Earth, where the Legion of Doom has hatched an even MORE insidious scheme using a mind-control ray to transform everyone on Earth into Bizarro and Cheetah. Complete with little cheetah ears, that’s the really impressive bit. An evil Bizarro street cleaner tries to run Superman over with what appears to be a giant car-buffing machine, as I wonder what exactly the threat here is supposed to be. I mean, sure Kryptonite got pretty cliché after a while, but aside from a slightly cleaner uniform, I don’t really see the need to even stop this guy. Maybe after being transformed into a Bizarro, he went on a street-cleaning rampage that we missed due to time constraints, where he wantonly removed debris from the streets without consideration for the bums who might have living in the garbage piles. These are the questions I’m left thinking about. The heroes return to the Hall of Justice, all dressed as Bizarro or Cheetah depending on gender (I guess there’s a costume-rental place around the corner), and get into the climactic battle with the Legion, which they win handily. The highlight is Batman trapping Bizarro inside a big inflatable plastic bubble, from which he can’t escape. A GIANT PLASTIC BUBBLE. See kids, Saran Wrap CAN be dangerous. The Legion of Doom escapes and the SuperFriends face no repercussions from all the countries they looted, because the UN are just a bunch of understanding guys, even the Middle Eastern ones. Gets you right there.
– “Attack of the Fearians”. Even the title of this one is stupid. It seems that Luthor has contacted the Fearians, who have three heads and live on Venus, about a plan for conquering the Earth. All the LOD has to do is raise the temperate of the Earth, increase the humidity, and overrun it with vegetation, and then it’ll be just like Venus. I don’t even know where to start dissecting that sentence, so I’ll leave you to think it over yourself. Anyway, they discuss all this on an Earth-Venus conference call, which is pretty neat for 1978. Maybe they had like beta-version 1600 Gigahertz cordless phones or something. The Fearians promise to deal with the SuperFriends, assuming they keep their end of the bargain. So Captain Cold brings his giant freezing ray and starts traveling the globe, encasing entire cities in ice. Pretty soon the entire North American continent is like Edmonton in January. The Flash is there to foil him, however, so Cold drops a building on him. To show you the quality of dialogue we’re dealing with here, with a building about to fall on him Flash stops to say “I have to stop that building before it falls on me! I’ve only got a few seconds.” So he uses the wires supporting the Brooklyn Bridge to hold the building up. This of course would probably collapse the bridge and kill everyone stuck on it, but Flash IS all about the instant gratification. Flash runs really fast to melt all the ice, sending steam into the atmosphere. Next up, Black Manta is setting the ocean on fire. The writers, god bless them, don’t actually stop to ask how the f*ck you set a giant mass of water ON FIRE, but just take it on faith that it’s happening and by god Aquaman is the guy to stop it. The implication is that it’s happening in the Pacific, which is weird because the Hall of Justice is on the East Coast and Aquaman (whose only power in the show is the ability to TALK TO FISH) gets there in about 20 seconds. Holy logic gaps Batman. His solution to the problem of course involves talking to fish, in this case telling them to cause a giant tidal wave to put out the flames. You’d think that the water that the fire was burning on to begin with might have done, but no. Sadly, Aquaman doesn’t think ahead and consider that causing tidal waves near populated areas might be bad, and soon the West Coast is being flooded. Finally, Sinestro creates six yellow comets and sends them towards the Earth, so Green Lantern heads out into space to foil him. At this point Robin suspects that there might be something going on. I guess Batman just keeps him around for his looks. One comet on a collision course with Earth would be enough to kill all life on the planet, so naturally six is just the right number for their purposes. Green Lantern averts this disaster by MOVING THE PLANET, which is pretty much impossible in both the real world and the comic-book world, and the comets fly by harmlessly. However, now the damage is done, and the steam from Flash has increased the humidity (although in reality the whole Flash-Cold exchange breaks all the laws of thermodynamics), while the floods have caused vegetation to spontaneously grow all over the planet. And now Earth is just like Venus. Where, presumably, there’s lots of plant life. Yup. So the Fearians “invade” (although it’s only actually one Fearian) and to deal with the SuperFriends, they encase them in a big bubble. Well, geez, BATMAN could have done THAT. The SuperFriends quickly trick the Fearians into letting them out again, repel their attack, and then clean up on the Legion of Doom to save the day. Damn Venutians, I never liked that planet anyway.
– The World’s Deadliest Game. No, not Australian Rules Football. The Legion of Doom have a new scheme so devious that it would make a snake envious, and the writers were obviously on some REALLY good shit when they wrote this one. The plan is threefold: First of all, Brainiac will use a cloaking device to make the entire planet appear invisible from space. Oh, wait, it gets better. The victims of this scam are Black Vulcan, Hawkman and Wonder Woman, all of whom are hanging around in space fixing a ship for NASA (You know it’s space because Wonder Woman has a bubble over her head to protect her) and suddenly realize that the Earth has disappeared. Toyman sends them a fake distress call from “Sector 751”, which is apparently trillions of light-years away, and so they go there. Just like that. The narrator helpfully compresses the necessary millennia that it would take to fly there by noting that “Later, trillions of miles away ” and we’re there. Neat trick. Once there, they discover that there’s nothing there. Presumably they can arrive at an endlessly vast region of space, take a look around, and deduce that there’s nothing there. Ah, well, except for the black hole, which sucks them in (Racism! Racism!) and where they find a planet constructed by Toyman within. Now, sometimes you just have to go on faith and assume that Toyman, a C-level Superman villain at best, would be able to not only construct an entire planet, but somehow situate it in the middle of a black hole. Really, if you can accept the planet, you can accept the black hole without much more of a leap of faith. Back on Earth, the Riddler jerks around the others by giving clues that lead them into traps, from which they narrowly escape. One classic moment has them trapped in a mine in the Grand Canyon, with Superman barely holding up the ceiling while everyone else stands around going “Just hang on a bit longer, Superman!” With friends like that, who needs arch-enemies? The next clue has Riddler telling them to tighten their belt, from which Batman makes the logical assumption that he wants them to go to the constellation of Orion’s Belt, which is a mere hop skip and a jump away from Earth. Back on the deadly planet of toys, our heroes get stuck in a giant game of space pinball and then fight a 50-foot tall mechanical baby. I’ve gotta try whatever they were drinking when they thought this one up. The last clue for the others is “Follow your noses or get left in the dark”, from which Batman deduces that they have to fly into a black hole to find them. He is truly the World’s Greatest Detective. So they do, and Superman and Green Lantern combine forces to extricate the helpless Wonder Woman and her group from the collapsing black hole, just in time to stop the Legion of Doom from blackmailing the entire world out of billions of dollars. Brainiac does get one witty line, when he tells an incoming jet that it’s cleared to land as long as it’s carrying $10 million in cash. But then androids do have a dry wit.
– The Time Trap. The DVD wraps up with the first time-travel story of many in the series, as Grodd builds a time machine that can take you pretty much anywhere. Their plan: Steal the world’s treasures before they become treasures. So first up, Black Manta & Giganta lure Aquaman & Apache Chief out to the middle of the ocean and then take them back to 70,000,000 BC when water dinosaurs ruled the earth. Then, Sinestro & Captain Cold lure Green Lantern & Samurai back to 500 AD, when Arthur was King of Camelot (although Arthur didn’t exist and there was no Camelot, but bear with me here) and finally Batman & Robin chase Grodd & Grundy back to ancient Rome, where everyone speaks English. All the heroes get stuck there while the villains escape and plot a looting of the gold rush. Luckily, Aquaman’s radio has a battery with a life of 100 million years (wouldn’t keeping nuclear material with that kind of half-life in your POCKET sterilize you pretty quick? At the very least, he should have cancer) and he buries it under the future site of the Hall of Justice with a timed alarm that will go off in exactly 70,000,000 years (plus 1978 and 252 days). Good thing they went back EXACTLY to 70,000,000 BC, otherwise the math alone would take them another 10 years to figure out. Superman finds the radio, realizes the dilemma with the help of carbon dating (apparently carbon-14 dating can tell you the exact year dirt was left on a radio you learn something new every day) and just kinda flies back in time to save everyone using the most bizarre leaps of logic I’ve ever heard. This is course leads more observant viewers to wonder “Well, if Bizarro has all of Superman’s powers, why doesn’t he just do that same thing?” but then that’s ruining all the fun. The SuperFriends regroup at Sutter’s Mill in the 1800s, foil the Legion of Doom, and once again the villains escape in the nick of time.
– 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 BRIGHTEST 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.
Disc Two
– 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.
– Revenge on Gorilla City. Going into the Flash mythos now, Grodd is PISSED at Gorilla City, the secret home of superintelligent gorillas the world over, and the place that expelled him years earlier. Presumably for messing with Solivar’s TiVO, who knows. Anyway, he penetrates their impenetrable forcefield (without so much as COMMENTING on the irony) but the gorillas prove smarter and banish him again. DISSED! The situation is so humiliating that even faggy Toyman is scoring off him. Well, that’s enough motivation to come up with a new evil scheme, so he invents a mind-control device, and this time gets Sinestro to penetrate the impenetrable forcefield of Gorilla City. If I was Solivar I’d serious consider getting a refund on that thing. Maybe he bought it from Joe’s Discount Impenetrable Forcefields or something. However, even though Grodd enslaves the entire city, Solivar’s, er, “gorilla telepathy” warns him of the danger and he escapes in a teleporter that looks unsettlingly like an electric chair. And boy, wouldn’t HE have egg on his face if it turned out to be one? So yeah, he escapes and goes to warn the SuperFriends B-Team, who proceed to get whupped by a bunch of primates. I mean, Apache Chief getting routed I can buy, but Batman? No way, dude. Luckily for the LOD, Luthor has a device that neutralizes their powers, leaving Batman & Robin with useless utility belts. You have to wonder what the thought process was while writing this stuff. The gorillas play a rousing game of “Hunt the SuperFriends”, while the rest of the LOD invades Africa. Solivar rescues the heroes and calls in Superman and the REAL heroes, but Supes is bested by a Kryptonite toy plane, as the other annoying trend of the show overdependence on Kryptonite comes back again. Luckily, Batman and Flash break in and unplug the mind control, allowing the gorillas to save the day and the SuperFriends to mop up again. This was pretty good, except for super-strong Bizarro tied up with a piece of rope at the end.
– Swamp of the Living Dead. Now there’s a really scary title. The LOD decide to torment a poor old hag, accusing her of being a spy for the SuperFriends, thus proving themselves to be paranoid and stupid, a deadly combination. Must be the swamp weeds, if you know what I mean. Being an accommodating sort, however, she takes them to a remote part of the swamp, which is so remote that even Scarecrow doesn’t know where it is! This normally wouldn’t be shocking, but I happen to know that Scarecrow studied topography and mapmaking in college, just in case the supervillain gig didn’t work out. So the witch naturally summons a floating head (I mean, duh, right?), and he agrees to give Luthor the secret of ULTIMATE EVIL in exchange for the SuperFriends. But then he really rubs it in, pointing out what a group of losers the LOD are. Geez, just because you have the source of ULTIMATE EVIL doesn’t mean you have to be an ASSHOLE. Anyway, our villains decide to step up to the plate, and use a fake summons from Hawkman to lure Batman & Robin to the swamp, where they exact a plan of cunning and ruthlessness: They jack the Bat-Buggy! They’re EVIL! So then two more SuperFriends go to help THEM, falling into the LOD’s devious trap themselves. Oh, the irony. Even worse, they got caught by TREES. TREES! I bet the environmentalists feel stupid now. Superman goes to investigate himself, and tells the rest to converge full-force if he doesn’t return. Oh yeah, GREAT PLAN, dude. If something is powerful enough to stop Superman, then send everyone in, even the useless ones. Superman of course gets trapped, by “Kryptonite under the swamp”, which leads me to wonder how of the stuff is actually on the planet at that point. So with all the heroes caught, the Big Giant Head gives them an army of swamp-zombies. Where’s Bruce Campbell when you really need him? Ah, but then the inevitable occurs, as Luthor engineers a coup against their new master, and they screw him over. Because they’re right bastards. Well, that just pisses him off, and soon the zombies are after THEM. The only solution? Release the SuperFriends of course. Apparently tying a dead zombie to a dead tree with a dead vine kill it. BORING. Where’s the gore? However, with the Hall of Doom found, the witch saves the LOD and sends our heroes away again. Geez, that must make the LOD feel all manly and stuff, having been saved by a 120 year old swamp hag. Good job, guys.
– Conquerors of the Future. There’s a weird outbreak of good deeds from the Legion of Doom? Yes, they’re now the Legion of Good, and really we all know they had it in them all along. However, Luthor quickly reveals the swerve, because it’s all an EVIL PLAN. How Russo. The SuperFriends are stupid enough to trust them, too. The Hall of Doom uses the distraction to travel to the year 3984 (don’t ask HOW, silly), where they recruit some troglodyte morons right out of the Time Machine. So the SuperFriends travel to a planet “trillions of light-years away”, where a whiny alien cries about solar flares destroying his world. Oh, BOO FUCKING HOO. The SuperFriends can’t be responsible for the whole damn UNIVERSE. Riddler, however, leaves them a clue that is supposed to mean Egypt, and off they go. So having conquered post-apocalyptic Earth in record time, the LOD sets off to conquer the UNIVERSE. So the SuperFriends go 10,000 years into the future (gotta love this kind of scale, man), as a result of a false clue from Riddler. How devious. However, the POWER OF BOOKS gives them the true year, and the rout is on, which is a relief because apparently everyone in the universe is a bunch of pussies who even surrender to Black Manta. Black Manta can’t even get past a maitre d’ at a busy restaurant, that’s how scary he is. The SuperFriends return Earth to its “rightful rulers”. Now, wait a second who’s to say who’s rightful? What if they’re a bunch of Nazis? Don’t the writers think of this stuff? Well, that’s why I’m here, I guess.
– The Final Challenge. This is a pretty cool episode, all things considered. First up, it starts out with a Big-Ass Brawl between the LOD & SuperFriends out in space, with the entire team fighting each other. However, an alien power kidnaps most of them (well, the useful ones) and brings them to a parallel universe (ANOTHER parallel universe?), and he wants them to fight TO THE DEATH. First up, it’s Riddler v. Batman in the LABYRINTH OF DEATH. I’m not making that name up. Batman escapes first, since he’s not an idiot and all, and it’s 1-0 SuperFriends. Next, Aquaman v. Black Manta in the LAKE OF TERROR. I wonder if the writers got drunk and thought up those names? This one is like watching the Special Olympics in terms of superhero coolness, of course, but at least they’re evenly matched. Aquaman stops to save Manta from a giant clam, and it’s 1-1. Yes, someone lost to BLACK MANTA. How useless are you when you lose to Black Manta? In the B-story, Robin gets attacked by uh a bunch of evil geometric shapes. No wonder he’s Batman’s bitch. Wonder Woman beats Cheetah to the top of a volcano by surfing the lava, making it 2-1 good guys. Next, Apache Chief v. Scarecrow in an oddball battle, in the SWAMP OF THE LIVING DEAD. Oh, no, wait, that was the title of an episode, sorry. It’s lame, at any rate. DUD. The main event is Superman v. Bizarro, however! Yeah! Er, fighting a giant robot. Whoops. Didn’t those go out in the 40s? Superman wins easily, and the alien dude tries to off the losers (ie, EVERYONE), until Superman again carries the load for the team and saves the day, and they join forces to escape the universe. I was hoping for the Pulp Fiction ending where they call in Ving Rhames and some hard, pipe-hitting well, you get the idea.
– Fairy Tale of Doom. This one HAD to come from someone slipping LSD into the rotisserie chicken. Awesome title, at any rate. Toyman invents a machine that allows you to become part of a book. Yes, actually go INTO the book. You’d think that the obviously undersexed Luthor would put himself into a porno mag or something, but no, they have more EVIL ideas. Namely, using it on the SuperFriends, by sending Hawkman into “Jack and the Beanstalk”, Wonder Woman into “Alice in Wonderland”, and Superman into “Gulliver’s Travels.” The LOD thus takes the Hall of Justice over (what with the rest of the team at an intergalactic wife-swapping convention or whatever it was) and ready the world for a SUPER CRIME WAVE. Back in the books, the Lilliputians have Kryptonite? Now that’s a bit too silly. Anyway, the suspense comes from the heroes having to escape within 12 hours or else getting trapped in the books forever or something, which actually raises more philosophical questions about the nature of existence than it solves. And why not just burn the books to kill them? Anyway, the remaining SuperFriends trick the LOD into giving them access to the books, and they all escape. LAME.
– Doom’s Day. The LOD attack an aircraft carrier (using a “radiation neutralizer” to kill the engines. Why not just put sugar in the gas tank, HUH?) but the SuperFriends chase. Aquaman is a pussy bitch as usual, but they still manage to capture Sinestro, Cheetah and Black Manta. Off-screen, all the SuperFriends mock Aquaman and they’ll all like “What the f*ck were you doing while we doing the work, huh? Now go help Wonder Woman clean the bathroom!” Back at the Hall of Justice, the captured Doomers are bitter and stuff and plot against their former team, so naturally they escape to the anti-matter universe of Qward (I mean, DUH, right?) and proceed to steal a government weapon that turns thought into matter. It’s for “world peace”, because the government developed it, and that’s the only thing they’d have in mind, right? I mean, I know I’d feel safer knowing George Bush had an ultimate super-weapon in his possession. The SuperFriends B-Team rushes in to attack, but amazingly Flash spraying Black Manta with a uh fire extinguisher doesn’t work. Go fig. When Superman sees the anti-matter robots left by the villains, he comments that they’ve been fooled by the oldest trick in the book. Yeah, escaping to a parallel universe and leaving robots behind, what a CLASSIC. The renegade Doomers create their own Hall of Doom and attack the real one, so Luthor calls the SuperFriends. And presumably serves up his scrotum on a silver platter, since he won’t need it anymore. They scour the globe for the Halls (aren’t there any REAL emergencies?) while Black Manta tortures the remaining LOD in pretty cool ways. However, the villains re-team to go after the SuperFriends (awwww! Teamwork!), but forget about a trapped Flash, and they lose. Again.
– SuperFriends: Rest in Peace. We start with Batman’s funeral. Quite the opening. So it seems that under the Hall of Justice is buried an element called “Noxium”, which call kill any SuperFriend. First victim: Batman, who is shot dead by Riddler with the Noxium. The SuperFriends go into the witness protection program for superheroes, but Wonder Woman gets cut down defending Paradise Island. Superman is done in by Luthor. This is rather morbid stuff. The others flee the planet like COWARDS. The LOD runs roughshod on the Earth, and Sinestro even uses EVIL BAGPIPES! How DARE he? Anyway, all the SuperFriends are dead, so Luthor just throws away the crystal. Geez, he’s an evil genius and a litterbug. Turns out that the SuperFriends were never dead, just robots who were mimicking them, in order to trick Luthor into throwing the Noxium away. Pretty good until the Dusty Finish.
– History of Doom. The series wraps up, and the Earth is FUCKED, as everything is falling apart, and aliens find the dead Earth, with one last message from Superman. So we get the origins of Luthor, Giganta (who is now an Apache Chief villain) and the LOD as a whole. Funny bit, as Captain Cold wants to headquarter in the North Pole and Black Manta wants the ocean, so they “compromise” and choose the swamp. And then it’s the clip show bits, as they view the LOD’s past evil. Next, we see the LOD creating a giant solar flare, which cooks the entire planet when the SuperFriends try to deflect it. Whoops. So the aliens turn back time and we get an eclipse to stop the flare instead, thus saving the planet and ripping off Superman the Movie. And Superman still calls the LOD and gloats, even though he didn’t DO anything. Pretty cool finish to the series, at any rate.
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
Little more this time around, at last, for bonus features. You get
– Commentary on “Wanted: The SuperFriends” and “History of Doom” with Mark Waid and Geoff Johns, two current DC writers, who sound like they’re having a blast re-watching the old episodes and making fun of the inconsistencies and silliness inherent to the show. Mark Waid firing off comic names and dates to match events is kinda cool, but kinda sad and scary at the same time. Still, a great commentary track overall.
– A 15-minute featurette that has interviews with current comic writers and artists, as they geek out over the show and we get some famous animation gaffes from the show to boot. Fun stuff, especially Geoff Johns in an ultra-unhip old-school Aquaman shirt, from the days before Peter David made him cool.
– Repeats of the hero and villain roll-call features from the original releases. What, they can import these but not even the quickie interview with Jeffrey Scott, the original writer of the show?
