Justice League Unlimited 2004-2006!

Justice League Unlimited is the continuation of the Cartoon Network production, but the folks making this show were savvy enough to know that changing the format would make the fans happy and the way they did it made this fanboy very happy.

They did it by taking the Justice League and dialing it up to eleven by adding in just about as many DC characters as they could get their mitts on. I was content to live out my life never seeing the likes of Captain Atom, the Shining Knight, Vigilante (Golden Age version), Red Tornado, Metamorpho, and even B'wana Beast on a cartoon, but now I have done and I am a better person for it. A young Supergirl is featured in the series and her maturation is one of the plots that moves through several stories. Green Arrow is a featured player and that means some Black Canary. Wildcat shows up and more and more and more. It's a festival.

There's Zatanna, Hawk and Dove, alongside Dr.Fate and much of the Justice Society. Even Power Girl shows...sort of. They did themselves proud and took the series out in bang!

NOTE: This is classic post which first appeared at Rip Jagger's Other Dojo.  

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Justice League 2001-2004!

Cartoon Network's Justice League might possibly be the finest representation of the Justice League of America ever done for either the small or large screen. The makers of the cartoon series had honed their understanding of the DCU with groundbreaking series with Batman and Superman and this was just the next natural progression. What we get in these two seasons are detailed well-crafted stories with real adult appeal and members of the League who were specific distinctive personalities.

While it was of course the Big Three (Superman, Batman and Wonder Woman) who sold this show, the producers were keen to put the focus on other League members like Martian Manhunter, Flash, and especially Green Lantern and Hawkgirl who spark up a bit of a romance in these tales. In the first season all of the stories were two-parters, a pain when they first ran, but watching them again on DVD merely a nifty structure which assured a cliffhanger of sorts most all the time.

I was enthralled with these when they first ran, a time when the Avengers and the Justice League of America were the two top comics on my reading list, a time when both comics were the best things their respective companies were producing. Even the lighter-toned comic which developed from this cartoon was a grand read.

NOTE: This is classic post which first appeared at Rip Jagger's Other Dojo.  

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The Super Powers Team Galactic Guardians 1985-1986!

This series broke the mold, almost literally as all of the character designs done by Alex Toth so many years before were ejected in favor of new ones with a nod to DC artist Jose Luis Garcia-Lopez, who at the time was giving all of the DCU a facelift with sleek modern looking idealistic presentations. Also gone were the Wonder Twins, replaced to some extent by the buddy team of Firestorm and new addition Cyborg. Much is made of Cyborg's reluctance to join the League, but within a few episodes he's on board and in most all the stories.

Those stories focused even more on Apokolips and the schemes of Darkseid and his minions. Parademons and fire pits create a dark threatening world and it takes a somewhat more determined and gritty batch of "Super Powers" (no longer called "Friends") to dispatch these threats. These shows are meant to do two things, entertain as cartoons and to promote the toy line from Kenner and to that end we get attacks on the team from such as Scarecrow and the Penguin. There's a nifty variation of the ever-changing Royal Flush Gang led by the Joker and Lex Luthor is around in his armored super-suit.

Good stuff, a cartoon fit for its time but also the end of the line for the "Super Friends". The Justice League of America would not find a way onto the small scree for many years until Cartoon Network decided they wanted to see what might be done with them.

NOTE: This is classic post which first appeared at Rip Jagger's Other Dojo.  

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Super Friends - The Legendary Super Powers Show 1984-1985!

Super Friends Challenge of the Super Powers marks a major shift in the focus and tone of the series as a new Kenner toyline is now part and parcel of the storytelling decisions. It does serve to give the stories a bit more dramatic heft, most of that delivered by the appearance of new villainy.

Darkseid and his minions Kalibak and Desaad are welcome additions to the rogues gallery of the Super Friends. Darkseid here is not quite the debased dictator of his comic book appearances, but the gravity of his presence does give his threats a grimness heretofore unseen in the series. He wants Wonder Woman as his bride and queen and that is running story through the season. He's not the only villain the team faces as a new deadlier Brainiac is also on hand.

But the big shift is the addition of Firestorm, a young hero who utterly changes the way the team functions. The Wonder Twins are still around but while Firestorm is a bit goofy at times, he's not just comedy relief as had been Gleek. With the ethnic heroes Apache Chief, El Dorado, Black Vulcan and Samurai sill very much in evidence the show becomes a really nifty version of the Justice League.

NOTE: This is classic post which first appeared at Rip Jagger's Other Dojo.  

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Super Friends Saturday Morning Comics - Volume Two!

The Super Friends comic book by E. Nelson Bridwell and artist Ramona Fradon settled into a sturdy pattern and apparently was a decent seller lasting just under fifty issues. Certainly, there was a synthesis with the cartoon show, the two feeding off and feeding into one another. Reading these stories today, there's a sense of a lighter tone, a tone more akin to what one finds in early Silver Age Justice League stories by Gardner Fox and Mike Sekowsky. The late 70's a time when I found DC's offerings across the board more appealing than Marvel's. DC seemed to have a more reliable production system which seemed rarely if ever to be hit by the "Dreaded Deadline Doom" which afflicted Marvel somewhat frequently. 

 

The Wonder Twins did get some development in the comic beyond the exceedingly limited treatment they had on the cartoon. The range of transformations seemed more vigorous and imaginative, and the duo were even given secret identities and a hint of a homelife. 

Bridwell did a good job of working in recognizable figures from the cartoon as well as the DCU into the stories. Villains such as the Scarecrow and Gorilla Grodd were part of the cartoon but also were up and running villains in the pages of the comics. A standout issue co-starring Black Orchid  reallly pops off the stands, as she's a character rarely given any attention beyond her short-lived early 70's series. She seems an odd fit for the Super Friends given the dark tone of her previous stories. 

But mostly the comic book could be counted on for a light-hearted yarn or two which had heroes functioning as heroes and were not overcome by the complexities of a life fighting crime. Seeing heroes like Wonder Woman, Superman and especially Batman and Robin smiling was a welcome change considering the sober events often occuring in their own books. 

DC won first place in my admiration of comic companies when in the late 70's they actually seemed to be doing something about the rising prices of comic books. Whereas at Marvel you'd get a bleat or two bemoaning the inevitability of prices increases and little else, DC was trying out different formats at different price points. When they jumped to fifty cents, they added pages and gave readers more features with a raft of interesting back-ups in all their comics. In Super Friends we got The Seraph and Jack O' Lantern, two of the international heroes created by Bridwell. Romeo Tanghal and Bob Oksner drew these interesting features. 

Plastic Man would up as well, and that made sense since Plas would soon be given his own cartoon show from Ruby-Spears. Marty Pasko and Joe Staton created a hectic fun version of Plas, and he was a welcome addition to the comic. Green Fury was an oddity, as the lovely Brazilian heroine became a common sight in the pages of the regular Super Friends stories, almost as if she was being considered for inclusion into the team. 

While Bridwell's international heroes showed up from time to time in the comic, the worldly ethnic heroes from the cartoon never appeared. We never see Black Vulcan, El Dorado, Apache Chief, nor Samurai in the pages of The Super Friends. But we do get the likes of Godiva, Bushmaster, Olympian, Little Mermaid and Wild Huntsman. 

The series seems to have ended somewhat abruptly in 1981. Bridwell had suggested that his villainous future villains Futurio and Futurio XX had another incarnation, but we never see it. Instead, the series ends on a yarn featuring and explaining the origin of Green Fury. It must be noted that artist Romeo Tanghal had taken over the penciling chores on the main feature with issue forty-two and to my eye the series lost a step. Tanghal was a fine artist but his take on the team was somewhat pedestrian compared to Fradon's dynamic pages. 

The Super Friends ended in part to make way for new interpretations of DC's animated stars. The familiar Super Friends would go away only to be replaced eventually by a very different approach to which cleaved even more tightly to current DC continuity. And the whimsical world created by Bridwell would be replaced with a vigorous approach developed by the great Jack Kirby himself. More on that next time. 

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Super Friends - The Lost Episodes 1983-1984!

Apparently these episodes never aired during the original run of the Super Friends shows, but were kept back and showed up later when the Super Friends show became a staple of syndication and such. Not much change really here, more of the utterly fantastic, more of the focus on outer space and wild sci-fi themes. The Legion of Doom returns in small ways with several stories featuring them, some in very creative ways. The influence of the Superman movies is felt in the look of the Fortress of Solitude as well as the appearance of some Phantom Zone baddies. Actually one gets a feeling sometimes that the series has taken a bit of a  "World's Finest" quality with Batman and Superman often the focus of the stories. Aquaman continues his fade appearing only rarely.

One character who is a solid performer season after season though is the Fifth Dimensional imp Mr. Mxyzptlk whose penchant for zany and somewhat less lethal threats is rather ideal for the tone of a this more light-hearted version of the League.

NOTE: This is classic post which first appeared at Rip Jagger's Other Dojo.  

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Super Friends 1980-1983!

These seasons of Super Friends are all about bombastic adventure. Both years saw some new adventures added, still in the classic vein established upon the arrival of the Super Twins. But increasingly the adventures seem to deal with outer space threats, which is a natural setting for Superman and even Wonder Woman, but hardly so for Batman and Robin. The Dynamic Duo seem to spend most of their time in these adventures patrolling the solar system on the alert for all sorts of threats. Also getting less and less attention is Aquaman. The show had done a really good job of getting him screen time early on but the focus definitely shifts to the "Trinity" in these cartoons. That is when they don't feature the characters created just for the the Hanna-Barbera shows such as Samurai, Black Vulcan, Apache Chief and a new addition, the Hispanic El Dorado.

Perhaps emblematic of the wild and crazy nature of the storytelling is the episode in which Superman discovers a Black Hole (lots of nods to movies of the era too) and ends up with the Earth inside it. But the Man of Steel in a flabbergasting moment is able to push the entire planet out of the grim vastness. This kind of impossible power is hokey and fun, but makes Superman utterly invincible. Adherence to science is not something I expect in a classic superhero story but there have to be imaginative limits or it becomes whimsy and loses its dramatic edge. These cartoons verge on that narrative weakness.

Still and all they fun, because seeing comic books get off the page and come to life, even animated life, is always fun.

NOTE: This is classic post which first appeared at Rip Jagger's Other Dojo.  

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The World's Greatest Super Friends 1979-1980!

The World's Greatest Super Friends is the title of season four and to my eye it's the season in which the show begins to jump the shark just a bit, though it does it with some style and aplomb. We have longer episodes again and each one seems to have a specific inspiration. Lex Luthor returns, this time with a partner named "Orville" who is clearly inspired by Ned Beatty's "Otis" from the Superman movie, and Luthor's lair seems to owe a nod to that film as well.

(The Super Enemies)

The shows feature one with a distinct Arabian Nights feel, another borrowing from Tolkien, another in which they visit Oz, and yet another set in a variation of Camelot. The team meets up with Frankenstein's monster as well. My favorite episode provides a multi-dimensional encounter with an evil version of the Justice League dubbed the "Super Enemies". I'm a huge fan of the Crime Syndicate of America, and it was nifty to see this Hanna-Barbara variation on that classic theme.

We are getting fewer episodes each season to freshen what already exists and as I said these tales are longer. I'll take a look at the fifth and sixth seasons together next weekend as well glimpse what are dubbed "The Lost Episodes". One thing about the Super Friends I've noticed is that the show only ever gets wilder and wilder.

NOTE: This is classic post which first appeared at Rip Jagger's Other Dojo.  

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Super Friends Saturday Morning Comics - Volume One!

The Super Friends had been on Saturday morning television for three years before DC got around to giving the comic reader a slice of the action. Perhaps they just thought that the Justice League of America comic book was enough, but the truth is that the Super Friends was never quite the JLA, though affiliated with it of course. 

 

It's no coincidence that The Super Friends comic book debuted around the same time that Shazam was revived and revised to reflect the Saturday morning television show from Filmation which was in a second a season. DC had even launched a new Isis comic book for that spin-off show. So getting their homegrown heroes presented in "A DC TV Comic" made perfect sense at the time. 

When DC finally decided to pull the trigger on a more accurate adaptation, they called upon E. Nelson Bridwell to write it, the original fanboy-gone-professional and he used his extensive knowledge of DC lore on the book to great effect. The first two issues were penciled by Ric Estrada who had a kinetic broad style well suited to the material. The Super Friends battled arch-villains from DC's vast array. It was good, very good but it was not great...yet. 

Greatness came to this comic when with the third issue Ramona Fradon assumed the penciling chores on the book. Fradon was a DC veteran who made her name on the Aquaman comic, but here in addition to the Sea King she did a masterful job of rendering all of the heroes as well as the singularly excellent villain "World Beater".  Fradon says she is often asked to recreate this cover for fans. Also of note is inker Bob Smith who came along with Fradon and added just that right smooth touch to the work. 

With Bridwell on the scripts and Fradon and Smith on the artwork the comic was in great shape as the Super Friends battled both known and new villains issue after issue such as Skyrocket, Greenback and Menagerie Man. From the very beginning the panels had a somewhat rounded shape to imitate a television screen and that set the book apart from all of its counterparts on the spinner racks. 

And then there came a three-part tale that changed the game. Wendy, Marvin and Wonder Dog had been the cadets the Super Friends were training, but after this three-issue battle with Grax they left the fold for greater things. They were replaced (as they had been on television) by Zan and Jayna the Wonder Twins. This trilogy also presented for the first time an array of heroes spread across the world who worked with the Super Friends (for the first time including other JLA members) to end the deadly threat of Grax. These heroes would go on to be known as the "Global Guardians" and would become part of the greater DCU. 

Bridwell's detailed knowledge of the DCU comes in handy in stories such as the one which brought back Golden Age characters TNT and Dan the Dyna-Mite. 

Bridwell is not done creating new heroes either as he does when he creates a foursome with the powers of the elements Fire, Air, Water and Earth. 

Kurt Shaffenberger helps out on the art chores on the book from time to time. His slick artwork is a good match for Fradon's, though a bit less kinetic. 

The Super Friends battle mostly villains and threats specific to their title, but the appearance of recognizable threats such as Chronos and Mirror Master do a good job of reminding the reader this is the Justice League after all. 

The Overlord is a persistent threat who keeps showing up in the title, though often behind the scenes manipulating others to take the battle to the team. 

Also included in this first collection is the Limited Collectors' Edition which features an into to the team by Bridwell and Alex Toth, the artist who designed the characters first for Hanna-Barbera. Toth is at his best in this short vignette and even better in a detailed illustrated essay on how animated cartoons were made back in the day. 

The book concludes with a real oddity, a tiny comic book developed as a premium for a swimming goggles manufacturer. The little story features a frame story by artist Dick Giordano around a vintage tale from Aquaman's long-running back-up feature by artist Ramona Fradon. It's a real treat and material I'd never seen before in any form. This is a dandy package, though a touch pricey. It's good value as its companion which I'll be taking a glance at next time. 

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