The SmarK DVD Rant for SuperFriends: Volume 2
– OK, this is kind of messed up on Warner’s part, because the “original” volume was called “Challenge of the SuperFriends – The Complete First Season”. This is an entirely DIFFERENT series, with a different cast of characters, that ran concurrently to COTS in 1977, and thus isn’t the second volume of anything. What is the difference, you’re probably asking? Well, whereas the Challenge series featured a much larger cast of characters, as well as a full compliment of licensed DC villains to boot, SuperFriends featured only 5 (count ’em, five) heroes, plus uber-useless Zan and Jayna, plus only one DC villain.
Now, the really dorky (sorry, did I say dorky, I meant nostalgic) amongst you are already wondering what happened to the ORIGINAL original SuperFriends series, featuring Wendy and Marvin. And Warner would rather ignore those episodes, I’m thinking, because I’d be shocked if they’re ever released. Plus then their numbering system would go right out of the window.
This is actually not the best-remembered (and reviewed) SuperFriends series, to say the least, as the far superior “World’s Greatest SuperFriends” series followed this one a few years later, and featured the more “classic” lineup seen in “Challenge of the SuperFriends” previously.
OK, enough of that, on with the review.
The Film
Gathered from the cosmic reaches of the universe…
As mentioned, the lineup for this series is a lot more stripped-down than the Challenge lineup, and in fact two of the members are pretty much superfluous. This time around we’ve got…
– Superman. A must for any DC super-team, he could probably handle all emergencies alone, but sometimes circumstances dictate someone with a bit more savoir faire…
– Batman. Although in his lame 60s incarnation in these cartoons, by the 70s in the comics he was well on is way to being all dark and grumpy again, and thus is the coolest member by far.
– Wonder Woman. She has a jet, so she’s good for transportation if the guys go out and get drunk, plus she can color-coordinate the Hall of Justice.
– Aquaman. He’s the Greg Louganis of the superhero world, except that he’s not gay. Talks to fish, perhaps because he’s so dull that no other team members will talk to him. No other powers demonstrated in the show, although he can fly in the intro. These days he’s a lot grumpier and cooler, and is lacking a hand. In fact, to this day I don’t get why Aquaman was even included as a “major” hero, when he never was in the comics. He’s the only one of the bunch with no Golden Age predecessor, unless you count how blatantly they ripped off Sub-Mariner when they created him.
– Robin. Serves no purpose in the show except to make the occasional “witty” one-liner. Seriously, he’s written to be totally useless and does nothing to advance the narrative in any of the episodes. The show would be 150% better if they ditched Aquaman and Robin and brought in the Big Two of the superhero midcard: Flash and Green Lantern.
– The Wonder Twins. OK, so the thinking here was that the kiddies needed someone to “identify” with while watching the show, which is patently ridiculous because everyone with half a brain knows that kids watch these shows to pretend that they’re Superman, not Zan the Cocksmoker. Created only for the show and then thankfully forgotten about soon after, the idea is that they’re a pair of fraternal twins from the planet Exxor who can transform themselves into any combination of animal and liquid when they touch hands. This leads one to wonder if it works with any body part, because they’re obviously well past puberty and still sleep in the same bedroom in matching pajamas, so one can easily envision hearing “WONDER TWIN POWERS ACTIVATE!” in a breathless scream late at night. And don’t even get me started on the f*cking monkey.
Disc One
– Rokan: Enemy from Space. The series kicks off with an invading space pterodactyl (and yet they didn’t want to bring in Luthor for this show), and Wonder Woman leaves the Twins in charge of the Hall of Justice. Turns out that the big bird is, in fact, a survivor of Krypton, like 15% of the population of DC’s comics during the 70s. In fact, the bird isn’t even the ONLY survivor of Krypton to show up in this series! Thus, the bird has the powers of Superman. So the League retreats like cowards and ask for the Justice League computer’s help. Uh, gee, survivor of Krypton, I wonder how we can defeat him? Duuuuuuuuuuh. If you haven’t already made the mental leap and figured out the obvious weakness of the bird, then you’re not only the wrong audience for this disc, but you’re exactly the IQ demographic that they were aiming for in the first place. And shockingly, the computer can’t figure it out either, because otherwise the episode would only be 5 minutes long. Meanwhile, in the “mountains of Canada”, eggs start hatching, leading me to wonder who knocked up the bird? Superman? Galactus? The useless Aquaman finds a huge underwater nest and calls the Wonder Twins for help, and that’s the blind leading the blind if there ever was a case of it, and instead of forwarding his call onto someone useful, they even manage to screw that up and go to help by themselves. The first forms of the series: A seagull and an “ice gondola”. A SEAGULL?! So of course they get kidnapped (#1) for the first time in the series, and everyone should take a drink every time that happens. Take another drink, by the way, every time someone says “I’ve only got one chance…” and then concocts some ridiculous split-second plan to save themselves from certain doom. Anyway, Superman bails the Twins out, and the SuperFriends FINALLY figure out, without help from the computer, that indeed Kryptonite can kill the beast. This is like 18 minutes into the show, by the way, about 17.5 minutes after the entire audience has likely reached the same conclusion. The computer does however earn its pay by pointing out that the 3 million tons of the stuff needed to get rid of the birds will probably kill Superman. But the needs of the many, etc etc. This leads to the saddest part of the show, as Wonder Woman flies into space to find Kryptonite, and Aquaman tags along with her, perhaps because the invisible 8-track player was broken and she needed someone to talk to. So the giant chunks of Green K chase the Rokan family away, Superman is okay, and Zan is still gay.
– The Demons of Exxor. The very evil Lord Darkon invades the planet of Exxor, home of Zan and Jayna and oil. Oh, no, that’s Exxon. Indeed, a whole planet of purple-suited wankers is a prime target for genocide, so I can’t blame him for trying what we’re all thinking. With all the SuperFriends off doing moderately important stuff, like playing World of Warcraft or rescuing cats from trees, Exxor is thus left with no choice but to scrape the bottom of the superhero barrel and let the Twins help them. So it’s a serpent and an ice giant to the rescue. They fight a one-eyed monster and Zen is helpless against it, but you knew that. Lord Darkon, sounding like Dr. Evil, kidnaps them (#2) because that’s their only purpose on the show. The SuperFriends, having probably stopped at the bar for a drink first, swoop in to save them. Darkon and clone troopers are a VERY thinly veiled copy of a certain other helmeted evil lord and his army of troopers, featured in a movie that came out around the same time. Except that Darkon probably didn’t scream “NOOOOOOOOOOO!” like a little girl at any point. Darkon threatens to blow up Exxor unless the SuperFriends take off (sound familiar?), so they do. Meanwhile, he marches more Exxorians to the death camps. Very subtle imagery here. Batman tries a commando attack on Darkon’s ship (he’s wearing a bubble on his head, so you know he’s well protected against the vacuum of space), but fails, while the others clean the inept troopers off Exxor. Batman uses a corny trick to break himself and the Twins free (these guys conquered a GALAXY and they’re falling for “Help, he’s sick!”?) and our heroes finish mopping up the oh-so-fearsome invaders without breaking a sweat.
– Battle at the Earth’s Core. The WonderTwins get into trouble again, those scamps, getting sucked into a giant whirlpool while at sea. So they need to be rescued again (#3). So the whirlpool takes them, and the SuperFriends, into the Earth’s core. I loooooove when the writers move the action to the Earth’s core, as they often do, because they can’t even get their own continuity straight and it’s a new adventure each time. It seems that this time around, tar creatures live down there, and dinosaurs. I love dinosaurs. What would a SuperFriends episode be without someone fighting a dinosaur? The Twins choose “ice sled and polar bear” to escape from the tar creatures, but don’t get far, because, you know, they’re f*cking idiots. I pity any child so stupid that he watches this show and relates to the Wonder Twins. Stick with Batman, kids. Superman & Wonder Woman find the lost city of Atlantis, and keep in mind what I was saying about the writers being morons who don’t even keep track of their own continuity within the series, because I’ll bring it up again later. Meanwhile, Batman fights a giant jellyfish, and boy if it stings him he’ll need a LOT of pee to counteract that. In the end, Superman breaks stuff and everyone gets out safely, and I have no clue what the point of the episode was even supposed to be. But it’s an ending, and that’s enough sometimes.
– Sinbad and the Space Pirates. Again I say, they didn’t want Lex Luthor, but SPACE PIRATES are supposed to give them a challenge? We begin with the “space captain” Sinbad ordering his crew to “drop space anchor” in a ship which is obviously not shielded against the vacuum of space. And I have no idea how a weightless anchor is supposed to slow you down in space, but it’s a SPACE anchor, so I’m sure the writers planned it out carefully. It seems that previous “space pirates” have left various amounts of treasure buried on Earth and Sinbad wants it! Funny moment, as the ships lift Mexico City into the air to find the (shallowly buried) treasure, so a pair of Mexcian cops stop and declare in dramatic fahsion that they have to do something! So they get out of the car and one goes “You there, stop” half-heartedly while shining his flashlight at the giant ship, and that’s the extent of their efforts. No wonder everyone has to call the SuperFriends. Superman and Wonder Woman charge in and get outsmarted, so they decide to split up. Oh, add another drink every time the SuperFriends split up and use it as a game plan. Two drinks if a previously-split subgroup further splits up. So they pursue the pirates to Easter Island, The Bermuda Triangle, and Stonehenge. Technical note: The pirates find thousands of tons of silver in the Triangle, because it’s “highly magnetized”. Silver, however, cannot be magnetized, and thus it’s not attracted to magnets, and neither is gold. Try it yourself, kids! Anyway, I’ll let them slide on that one, because it allows me to stop thinking about how stupid “hypnotic cannons” are. Another deep moment sees Sinbad launching the stones of Stonehenge at London, and Superman catches them in a dramatic moment. However, given the speed they were shown to be falling at, and the deserted street that Superman caught them in, I don’t see how they were supposed to cause damage. Wonder Woman mixes things up and gets kidnapped this time, and gets made into Wonder Wench, so the Wonder Twins get to rescue her for once…as a pelican and water. But they get kidnapped, of course (#4). Another funny moment sees Zan declaring that no one can possibly penetrate their disguise…while they’re carrying a purple SPACE MONKEY with them. So speaking of impenetrable disguises, Superman changes to Clark Kent and gets “hypnotized”, snaps Wonder Woman out of it, and they clean house again. This was actually surprisingly entertaining if you can overlook how embarrassingly stupid it was.
– The Pied Piper from Space. Yes, it’s Children of the Corn meets Close Encounters. The narrator describes UFOs descending from space for an “evil, yet unknown purpose”. Talk about judgmental. So the flying saucers use their crazy devil music to hypnotize the youth of the world, kind of like Constantine Maroulis, without the pouting. Boy, is THAT reference gonna be dated for people reading this later than 2007. So of course the Wonder Twins fall prey to it, because that’s what they do. We’ll call that #5 in the kidnapping count. It does, however, bring up the question of why teenaged Robin would be immune when clearly adult Wonder Twins fell victim. Chalk it up to Exxor physiology, I guess. So Superman and Wonder Woman are all “Screw this” and go after the UFOs themselves, but get trapped in one that’s lined with “Krypton steel”, whatever that’s supposed to mean. And you know it’s “Krypton steel” because Superman says it about 100 times in a really grating voice. The physics of what and who became “super” when leaving Krypton always struck me as weird, because you wouldn’t think that a piece of metal would somehow gain super-powers under the yellow sun, but there you have it. Anyway, the hypnotized Twins set the Hall of Justice on self-destruct, while Superman hurtles to his doom. However, despite only having a “fraction of a second” to act, he not only has time to act, but to tell us that he only has a fraction of a second to do so. See, this is where a narrator can be USEFUL, instead of just saying stupid shit like “Meanwhile, at the Hall of Justice”. So everyone snaps out of it, as the kids of the world are taken to a slave mine planet. Zan and Jayna turn into a gorilla and an ice crowbar, but get kidnapped….again. (#6) And the SuperFriends chase after them and split up. This of course leads to the writers devising a deadly trap which can only be foiled by Aquaman talking to fish. So the SuperFriends invade the cosmic Reebok factory and discover that it was just a kid the whole time. Oh, the irony.
– Attack of the Vampire. Again, no Luthor, but Dracula is apparently fair game. It seems that he’s turning people into vampires, resulting in a jet landing with “no passengers and no crew”. That’s quite the miraculous landing. And because this is a kid’s show, people are vampirized by eye-beams and magic dust, rather than the more traditional method. Batman and Robin head to Castle Dracula to investigate, and get kidnapped. Dracula continues a surprisingly effective plan of conquest, turning most of Europe into vampires, although sometimes it’s hard to tell, and even gets Superman! That results in a cool black-and-white variant on the costume. The Wonder Dorks decide to save him, and that goes about as well as you’d expect, despite being a woolly mammoth and water. So of course they too become vampires, and we’ll call it kidnapping #7. Things look REALLY bad for the remaining heroes, as they head to Switzerland to find a cure, which turns out to be a gas found in caves in South America. It’s “just a theory”, but of course it works perfectly the instant Batman sprays it. Now immune, Superman kicks some Drac ass and banishes him to a dark room somewhere in the Hall of Justice. This was a pretty cool episode, actually, and even spawned a sequel in later years: The SuperFriends meet Frankenstein.
– The Beasts are Coming. God, the Challenge titles were even better than this series. Anyway, it’s the old “radioactive bugs” chestnut, as seemingly someone watched the movie “Them” and wrote this episode as an homage. So yeah, a satellite crashes in the desert and releases deadly radioactive radioactivity of some sort, which instead of killing everything around it slowly, instead mutates it into giant creatures bent on havoc. So of course the solution is to split up. Superman gets giant earthworms, Aquaman gets a giant lobster (and can you guess what his plan of action is?) and Batman faces the terror of a giant snail. But luckily he has the … uh … Bat-Moisture-Absorber. I can’t believe I used to watch this show. Wonder Woman find the satellite, but it turns her into a giant killing machine. Well, that joke is just too easy. She does, however, look like Chyna after a bad bender. The Wonder Twits go after her, as a falcon and an ice swing, then try to attack as an “ice blizzard” and a pterodactyl, but as usual prove worthless and get mutated themselves (#8). Man, even Wendy and Marvin had better luck then these two. So the SuperFriends decide to split up yet again. Superman keeps battling his new nemesis, the earthworms, while Batman gets the mutant monsters. I think they should have rethought that job assignment. So Superman bombards the satellite with x-ray vision, thus reversing the effects of the mutating radiation (I mean, duh, who wasn’t saying that from the beginning?) and everyone turns back to normal. This one made my brain hurt.
– Terror from the Phantom Zone. It’s the SuperFriends version of Superman II, as 3 Krypton baddies escape from the Phantom Zone and decide to exact some revenge on Superman. So they lure Big Blue to Italy by erupting a volcano, and then hit him with Red Kryptonite! The unpredictable effects this time prove to be super-aging, as he becomes older than Ric Flair. The super-crooks banish Aquaman and Wonder Woman into the Zone, as they wreak havoc on the world. Batman and Robin go next, as the bad guys continue whipping super-ass, and a laying a super-guilt trip on Superman, basically browbeating him and telling him that it’s all his fault. Man, this guys are Super-Assholes. The WonderTwins spring into action as a winged horse and an ice saddle, trap the baddies for about 2 seconds, and then screw up and head off to the Zone (#9). “No, not them!” Superman protests. “Yes, ESPECIALLY them!” retorts the villain. EVIL! Superman vows to fight them to the death, which is approaching quickly for him, but then runs away to the Hall of Justice. The computer figures out that Blue K can reverse Red K, and Superman is all “Nigga, please”, but decides to give it a try anyway. Well, the theory IS sound — it’s Bizarro Kryptonite, so it should work the opposite. Sadly, it’s behind a giant asteroid field of deadly Green K, so Superman busts out the SUPERMOBILE. This is so awesome, showing the kind of attention to the comics that the series was lacking. Restored and all badass, Superman breaks the others out of the Zone, then uses the Red K on the villains, coldly watches them change into bizarre forms, and banishes them back to the Zone again. That’s the Superman we know and love. Best of the season, because it introduced a villain who was actually a CHALLENGE for Superman, put him into a truly impossible situation, and then played by the rules of its own continuity to allow him to believably escape.
Disc Two
– The Anti-Matter Monster. Bad things are afoot at a research plant, as a mysterious figure creates a monster out of a new energy source, and it naturally draws the SuperFriends into things. As they investigate the plant, the Twins find an important-looking computer tape on the floor, so rather than, say, TELL SOMEONE, they decide to steal it and try to figure it out themselves. Boy, that sends a great message to the kiddies out there. At the Alaskan pipeline, the energy creature channels oil into his crotch to steal the power. Uh….OK. Naturally, Aquaman shows up and talks to the fish to resolve the situation. Superman has to bail him out, of course. The Twins, meanwhile, escape near-death at the hands of the creature by turning into a kangaroo and ice cubes, which causes mental giant Jayna to suspect that maybe the creature wasn’t accidentally created after all. Brilliant. So Supes and Wonder Woman infiltrate the plant in their impenetrable disguises as Clark Kent and Diana Prince, hoping to draw out the traitor, but WW gets lured to a spooky pier and ambushed by the creature. So they head to a power plant for a showdown with the creature, and we SHOCKINGLY learn that the suspicious-looking scientist with the evil moustache and bad attitude was behind it all. No actual motivation is provided, of course, because that would make sense and make people have to think. In fact, they didn’t even have anyone stop and ask exactly what an anti-matter monster was supposed to accomplish. Really, really bad Scooby-Doo reject episode.
– The World Beneath the Ice. Turns out there’s an advanced civilization living under the arctic ice. How advanced? They’re already playing Grand Theft Auto 17! Anyway, they’re really pissed off at oil drillers, and they’re led by Marvin the Martian’s older brother, Toranno. So they decide to create a new ice age and terrorize surface-dwellers. Soon it’s Titanic all over again, but without all the nudity. So of course, the SuperFriends find out about it and decide to split up. And search the oceans for missing ships. Sure, four people searching 75% of the surface of the earth, piece of cake. Superman & Aquaman find the first and get frozen into giant ice cubes as a result. Man, finally a situation where Zan is in his element. Pretty soon everyone is frozen and they have to depend on the WonderTwins to save the day. Poor bastards. They try a clever disguise involving a penguin and an…ahem…ice computer, but the GIANT FACE on the front of the computer gives them away and they’re kidnapped again (#10). At this point the writers go a little bit nuts and have the villains freeze the entire world. Luckily, Aquaman talks to fish and escapes from his ice prison, returning to Atlantis to regroup. But wait, you’re probably saying, wasn’t Atlantis previously established to be lost and abandoned in the center of the earth a few episodes ago? Why, yes it was. And yet here it is, complete with hot mermaids running it. Stuff like that bugs me. Anyway, Aquaman and his fish friends get together and release the others, and that’s what saves the world. Yes, Aquman, the guy who talks to fish, gets to save the world. That’s it, I’m outta here for this episode.
– Invasion of the Brain Creatures. The dreaded…
OK, no wait, back to the last episode for a minute. Even after the dumb conceit of having Aquaman being the only one to save the others from the ice, the bad guys freeze the moon, which Superman describes as being exactly according to plan. This brings up the question of how one “freezes” an airless chunk of rock that’s already floating around in the freezing vacuum of space. And somehow a giant “ice mirror” broken off the moon thaws out the world. And what the FUCK was with Zan turning into ice cubes to cool Gleek’s iced tea? That’s an awfully intimate gesture between a boy and his monkey, isn’t it? Is Gleek gonna crap him out later or something? What kind of sick stuff is this show teaching kids? OK, I’m done with that one.
– Invasion of the Brain Creatures. The dreaded charged magnetic particles from Mars hit Earth, causing pain and suffering all over. So the SuperFriends split up, with Batman casually mentioning that he and Robin will head to Mars and investigate, as though it was just a trip to the corner store or something. And once there, they further split up (again, amply protected by the bubble on their heads) and find themselves the victims of KILLER BRAIN CREATURES. Yes, actual brains who fly around and talk telepathically. Was someone coming down from a bad acid trip or something? So, now possessed by brain creatures, Batman lures Superman and the rest to Mars, where the brain slugs take their minds hostage. That leaves the Twins to save the Earth. They try to save it as a hawk and an ice jet, and actually manage to hold off Superman & Batman’s attack on Earth, while Wonder Woman steers the brain creatures towards a “magnetic cloud” in space, whatever THAT is supposed to be, trapping them. I think I have that embroidered on a sampler, actually: “If you’re ever possessed by brain creatures, a magnetic cloud will dislodge and trap them”. Seriously, that’s like one of those bad Tim Schaeffer rip-off adventure games from the 90s, where the puzzle solutions would be so completely obscure that no one in their right mind would be able to reason that “Use bird on street light”, for instance, would be the proper choice. Sadly, the Twins get kidnapped yet again (#11) despite showing glimmers of usefulness this time, and it’s Superman doing the kidnapping. However, another trip through the deus ex magnetic cloud frees their minds (and the rest follows, just like the song said) just as creatures launch a full-scale attack. The solution is obvious — focus all of the world’s energy at the poles and thus create a giant magnetic field to trap the creatures. I can’t even begin to start listing all the things wrong with that plan, so I’ll just say “my brain hurts” and move on.
– The Incredible Space Circus. Wonder Woman goes to a jungle planet to stop space poachers, but gets turned into a rhino and made into a circus attraction. The Twins figure it out quickly and investigate as a space turtle in an ice cage, and get kidnapped (#12). As does Aquaman, who is then also turned into a circus attraction. The twins escape and get the mutation gun away from the poachers, but Zan is so stupid that he fires the gun backwards and turns himself into a tree. Meanwhile, the remaining SuperFriends use a scientist who reads the “psychic energy” off a map to narrow the villains’ location down to two different galaxies. You know, I just have to stop and appreciate these shows, because I just don’t normally get a chance to ever write sentences like that one. Anyway, Superman thinks that “only” searching two galaxies should be a snap, so I think someone isn’t quite aware of how big a galaxy is. Meanwhile, it’s a REALLY lame circus, “featuring” a battle between Aquaman and Wonder Woman, but Superman saves the day. Evil carnies are not my idea of an interesting episode.
– Batman: Dead or Alive. Planet Texicana is a weird mix of robots and the old west, and when the evil Capricorn Kid runs roughshod with his robot gang, Batman is called in. It’s like Adam Westworld. This again leads me to ponder why all these people have access to the Justice League’s phone number. Can’t anyone in the universe handle their own emergencies? Batman wraps that one up pretty easily, and it’s looking like a short episode until the Kid vows revenge and breaks out of jail. The Kid and his gang of robots invade the Hall of Justice, kicking the Twins’ ass and kidnapping them (#13), which draws the rest to Texicana. And they split up. And of course, get into trouble, leaving Batman to handle the whole gig by himself and save everyone from overly-complex deathtraps. This leads me to wonder: If the Twins are tied together and facing certain death, shouldn’t they be able to just activate their powers and escape? Anyway, since shooting the heroes would have been too easy, poor Wonder Woman gets to be saved by ROBIN. I think the shooting would have been more merciful. I mean, geez, you might as well be saved by Gleek. So we get the big showdown between Batman and the Kid, and you know how that goes. Neat idea, but it should have been all tongue-in-cheek and ironic instead of the deadly serious tone they were trying for. If, say, the writers of Justice League Unlimited had done this idea, it would be a goof about someone like Bat Lash or Jonah Hex finally being in his element and having to save embarrassed B-level Leaguers.
– Battle of the Gods. Wonder Woman goes to a planet with Aphrodite’s temple on it (?!?) and saves it from disaster, but Hera gets all jealous and bitchy, and sics a centaur on the SuperFriends. What a bitch. So Zeus decides to settle the petty argument by having the SuperFriends do impossible tasks. So Aquaman has to find the Golden Fleece, Wonder Woman has to find Medusa, Batman & Robin get to figure out the Riddle of the Sphinx, and Superman has to fight the Minotaur. The Wonder Twins cheat and help Wonder Woman, although how they got there so fast is another question entirely, but they’re stupid enough to look at Medusa and get turned to stone (#14). Although in all fairness, Clash of the Titans wasn’t gonna be out for another decade, so it’s not like they could have known. Meanwhile, Batman has to figure out what tears down mountains and builds up castles, makes some men blind and helps other to see. (Answer at the end of the review) Aquaman gets the Fleece without breaking a sweat, while Batman (veteran of many stupid riddles from the Riddler) guesses the correct answer and wins. Wonder Woman reflects Medusa’s face in her bracelets, turning her to stone. Superman KO’s the Minotaur to wrap things up, the gods are pleased, etc. Not a bad episode at all.
– Journey Through Inner Space. A plane carrying the world’s deadliest radioactive isotope crashes into the ocean, and Aquaman gets a good dose of it while attempting a rescue, thus de-evolving him into a giant shark creature. Alrighty then. Meanwhile, Superman is helping to test a shrink ray and goes to grab the prehistoric Aquaman, so you just know that they’ll have to use that shrink ray. In this case, use it to journey to the center of Aquaman’s brain (that’s a short trip) in the Supermobile, and then dose him with more radiation. How does THAT work? Anyway, Aquaman escapes to keep things from being totally static (while the others stand around and talk about it) and Batman gets into a time-filling adventure in the real world, while Superman and Wonder Woman battle killer viruses and save Aquaman. Total filler, and the Wonder Twins didn’t even get kidnapped.
– The Rise and Fall of the SuperFriends. The series wraps up here, as scientists build a giant robot, and Mr. Mxyzptlk (the only “real” DC villain used in the series) steals it using his “robot gangsters”. However, it seems that Mxyzptlk wants to be a director now, and is just setting up the SuperFriends as his actors. So he lures Superman into an abandoned department store (is someone breaking into an abandoned department store REALLY something that needs to be on the Trouble Alert?), and it’s time for the KILLER MANNEQUINS. Just as they’re about to finish him, Mxyzptlk stops the action and sucks Superman away to god knows where. Next victims are Batman and Robin, who answer a payphone that appears out of nowhere in the Hall, and get transported to the library. Where books come to life…for EVIL! And off they go. Next up, Aquaman and Wonder Woman get sent to the junkyard, and it too is a trap. Soon they’re all in a haunted mansion and facing more traps. It all leads to one final battle scene with them against each other, but Superman tricks Mxyzptlk into saying “kltpzyxm” and back to the fifth dimension he goes. A fun and whacked out episode, where they established very early that there was no real danger and he was just there to honk Superman off and make him look stupid.
Overall, most people like “Batman: Dead or Alive” the best, although I thought the “Terror from the Phantom Zone” episode kicked the most ass, but “Attack of the Vampire” was pretty good too. The rest, however, was exactly the kind of slipshod animation and writing that shows like Harvey Birdman mock, and for good reason. With a very small cast and a total lack of quality opposition, this was by far the weakest of the SuperFriends series, which is probably why not many have seen them. On the other hand, because they’re not as common as some of the later ones, they might be worth seeing for fans.
The Video
This is actually a little better than the quality of the video on the Challenge of the SuperFriends set, as they’re punched up the color a little bit, but the rest is still as dirty and noisy as the original broadcasts.
The Audio
Presented in the original mono 1.0 sound, it does the job just fine.
The Extras
On the first disc you get “The Ballad of Zan and Jayna”, which is a goofy music video about the Wonder Twins that seems like something you’d find on the internet. On the second disc you get a 15 minute retrospective with a few comedians and comic book gurus that’s pretty interesting, but nothing exciting. Paul Dini defending Aquaman (“Superman can’t talk to fish”) is funny stuff, though. There’s also a gaggle of trailers for other DC properties out on DVD.
The Ratings
The Film: **
The Video: **
The Audio: **
The Extras: *
