Legion World Forums LEGION COMPANION The Anywhere Machine Super Friends

I'm quite surprised I haven't found a thread here about the Super Friends. I think many of us who grew up in the '70s had our first exposure to DC characters through this series. Even though they often took liberties with the DC continuity of the time--and introduced such embarrassing characters as Black Vulcan and Apache Chief--for an eight-year-old it was just so cool!

Boomerang has been showing the 1977 All New Super Friends Hour (the first season with the Wonder Twins) and it's been fun reliving my childhood. The other night they showed the episode "The Mind Maidens" in which a deranged woman named Medulla attempts to take over the world by possessing women with her "Will Booster" ("We are with you, Medulla!") and force the women to dematerialize men who were then stored on computer tapes. Lots of campy fun!

You know... the funny thing is I was just thinking this morning about one might re-imagine El Dorado!

Tee hee. I was just watching Superfriends last night!! It's fun to relive my childhood (yes, they showed it when babies like me were five, too) but it also made my brain melt a little bit.

"Wonder Twin powers, activate!"
"Form of... steam!"
"Form of... mosquito"

Then, they sort of saved Aquaman and got sent to the crushing pressures of the deep ocean with him. But it was okay because giant squids came to save them and... yeah.

The only ones I really remember watching when they were "new" were the last couple of seasons, when they made Darkseid the main villain. I always kind of liked Darkseid as a villain. I wonder why he never tries to force Wonder Woman to marry him in the comics?

Ooh, I saw that one a few weeks ago! Cyborg was there with Firestorm and my friend Susan was like, "Cyborg was never on the Super Friends!" And I was like, "Well, I'm watching him right now, so he must've been." The whole thing was weird but made me giggle so all was well.

Yeah those were bizzare, I remember watching those as they came out. I would have been around 7-9.

Having seen THE NEW ADVENTURES OF SUPERMAN in 1966 and the various other Filmation cartoons of the late 60's, I thought THE SUPER FRIENDS was too "watered-down"-- but then, almost everything on Saturday mornings in the 1970's was. Those pesky "anti-violence" groups had done their best to remove anything exciting from the airwaves...

I finally checked out the show again for it's LAST season, SUPER POWER: GALACTIC GUARDIANS, and even taped them. They included reruns from the previous season, and even there you could see a major improvement from one year to the next. I tend to refer to them as the "Firestorm" season and the "Cyborg" season. The look of the show genuinely improved for the "Cyborg" season. I just wish they'd have made more than just 8 episodes. (Cheap bastards!!!)

For me, one of the coolest thing about those later episodes was having Adam West do the voice of BATMAN. In fact, they did an episode featuring The Scarecrow that was the first time (I believe) they ever did Batman's origin on film! (This was some years before they began regurgitating his origin just about every single month in the comics...)

The WB SUPERMAN cartoons may have been better-written, but the guy who voiced Darkseid on them just wasn't nearly as spooky as the one from SUPER POWERS.

I am not ashamed to admit that when I was a kid, I loved the Wonder Twins. I think Zan was one of my first cartoon crushes.

My sister and I used to play Wonder Twins. We could never get the dog to hold a bucket though.

I thought it was funny that on "Superfriends", Green Lantern was really tan (cuz he's from California I suppose). He lost his color on "Super Power" though.

I agree. And to give credit where it's due, the better Darkseid voice was none other than the great Frank Welker.

Ah, you young whipper-snappers. Let's see, in the fall of 1973, when Super Friends first premiered, I was six years old and starting 1st grade at the school down the street. I was SO excited that Saturday morning -- Super Friends and Star Trek The Animated Series were both premiering. I think I woke up at about 3 in the morning, and stayed awake, until the shows came on.

Yes, the first season of Super Friends was very preachy and not very exciting. At the same time, we often got to see the abilities of the members really showcased, especially Aquaman. Oops, there goes the Troub-Alert!

I still would like to see that first season with Marvin & Wendy again. I loved the guest-hero episodes.

I also like when they did the team-ups later on. They did one with Green Lantern (Teaming with Batman I think) The writers & animators must have been told that Green Lantern can create anything with his ring, so they have him create a Lantern Jet so he can fly.

Yeah I remember being disappointed with their version of GL's powers and what was up with his skin tone? I guess he was the only Super Friend with the power to tan... SUPER-TAN! And then there was that Asin tornado guy. No Red Tornado in sight. I guess it was their effort to be more ethnically diverse but it sucked 'cause I loved Red Tornado.

By the Challenge of the Super Friends season they figured out that GL was able to fly with his ring. I remember seeing the "Lantern Jet" episodes and thinking there was something wrong with that.

As for Samurai, his power was a bit confusing. He apparently could turn into wind, fire or become invisible. Mostly, he did the wind thing where the lower half of his body was a whirlwind, as UL said, not unlike Red Tornado.

Of course, Samurai's compatriots Black Vulcan and Apache Chief found their place much later as fodder for laughs in Harvey Birdman: Attorney at Law.

I thought it was so stupid to call him Samurai. Why? -Just because he was Japanese? He didn't wield a sword or anything. It's like why call Black Vulcan that name? Is it not enough to know he is a black character, but what, we have to put it in his name too? Did the creators ever learn anything from Black Lightning?

Do/did y'all have the toys? I still have mine (somewhere) in my parents' garage. I never did get most of the 'Wave 3' characters (Shazam, Mr. Miracle, Plastic Man, etc.) but I always loved hunting those figures.

They've been showing the Wendy and Marvin episodes for the last week. I hadn't seen these episodes for many years, but decided to try them out again.

I have a few observations:

The producers learned a lot after that first season, particularly about pacing. The hour-long format did get the stories to drag a bit.

It's implied in these episodes that the Super Friends and the Justice League are not quite synonymous, a bit of information lost in later seasons. Wendy and Marvin often refer to Supes, Bats, WW and Aquaman as "our Super Friends" and that their Super Friends are part of the Justice League.

The episode in which Clark Kent appears includes Clark stating that he is from the Galaxy Broadcasting System, which would have been in keeping with the comics of the time. Later seasons refer to Clark as a Daily Planet reporter.

Wonder Dog is quite possibly the most annoying cartoon mascot of all time.

Now they need to show Schoolhouse Rock after the episodes!

As I already mentioned in the Shout Box, I just bought a DVD set of Super Powers, or as Prof calls it, The Firestorm Season.

I'm fangirling like crazy, so as soon as I log out, I'm watching it. What a thrill -- as a kid, I only saw one episode, but I loved it, and Frank Welker's voice acting as Darkseid left an indelible impression on me. When I write my Imperial Guard fanfics, the Supreme Intelligence invariably speaks in That Voice (even though I also have the Supreme Intelligence steal a few phrases from Silverhawks' lead baddie, Monstar.)

I'll post mini-reviews of all the episodes over the next few days.

If either Wonder Twins or Marvin,Wendy and Wonder Dog were in the Cyborg season episodes would their appearances be slightly altered?

Imagine Jayna with the big hair look or a jheri curl look? How would Zan look with a mullet or a Mohawk?

Wendy would dress similar to those Madonna wannabes or the 'Flashdance' look and Marvin...hmmm, what about him? what eighties fashion trend should he embrace or still wear that white sweatshirt and green cape from the 1973 series?

Meanwhile,Gleek is still Gleek and likewise Wonder Dog!

Before getting to the individual episodes, I must address the overall effectiveness of the voice acting. I've already mentioned how much I like Frank Welker as Darkseid, but what is a villain without a sidekick, in this case De Saad, played with just the right degree of campiness by Rene Auberjonois (there's also Darkseid's son Kalibak, but even with Welker doing his voice, he comes up short. Next best are Mark L. Taylor and Olan Soule, both spot on as the two components of Firestorm, college kid Ronnie Raymond and wise old Professor Martin Stein. If Olan Soule's voice sounds familiar, it's because he had voiced Batman during all the previous seasons of Super Friends. In this season, Batman is voiced by Adam West -- personally that doesn't work for me, because West sounds like he's not putting any real effort into his voice acting. Another weak link is Constance Cawlfield, taking over from Shannon Farnon as Wonder Woman; she's too nasal and too colloquial. There is comfort in having some longtime cast member around in familiar roles, among them Danny Dark as Superman, Casey Kasem as Robin, and Stanley Jones as Lex Luthor. And the cherry on top for me is the presence of one of my favorite voice actresses, Mary McDonald Lewis, making cameos as Lois Lane -- the same year as Super Powers, she also debuted in the second G.I. Joe miniseries in what would prove to be her most famous role, Lady Jaye.

It goes without saying that I had to start with the one episode that I saw back in the day and impressed me so much. Looking at the tracklisting, it was easy to figure out that the episode in question was DARKSEID'S GOLDEN TRAP, PARTS 1 AND 2 (when I saw it in the 80s, the title cards had been edited out, and I wasn't aware that the episodes were usually only 10 minutes each.)

A big plus in my book is that, except for a couple scenes at the Hall of Justice, this episode takes place entirely in outer space, so we see lots of weird aliens and alien cities and space vehicles, the kind of stuff I like a lot. In the episode, one team of Super Friends fails to prevent Darkseid from acquiring a hunk of Gold Kryptonite, and instead are captured and imprisoned on an asteroid; despite the danger to him, Superman joins a second team of Super Friends to find the asteroid and rescue their teammates, but without Superman getting exposed to the Gold K, which would permanently remove his powers. Despite giving too much screen time to El Dorado, one of those Annoying Ethnic Stereotype Super Friends, this is still a terrific episode that I enjoyed as much as I did 20 years ago.

Now for the rest of the episodes on the first disc:

The first episode of the season, THE BRIDE OF DARKSEID PARTS ONE AND TWO, thankfully transcends its dreadful title and the bad idea of having Darkseid obsessed with making Wonder Woman his queen (it's a credit to Frank Welker that he rises above the scripts and does better by Darkseid than the writers do.) This episode should have been titled something like THE COMING OF FIRESTORM, because that's really the main thrust, introducing Firestorm and Ronnie and the Professor to viewers, and very effectively too -- I haven't read many comics with Firestorm, but he's so likeable on the show that it's made me interested in investigating his comics appearances. Could anyone please make some recommendations?

There follow three excellent one-part episodes, THE WRATH OF BRAINIAC (with Brainiac in his cool and creepy skull-faced robot design from 1983-85), REFLECTIONS IN CRIME (I'm glad I'm not the only one who thinks Mirror Master is an underrated villain -- oddly enough, the Flash does not appear), and NO HONOR AMONG THIEVES (featuring a Darkseid/Luthor team-up, clever twists and turns, and an armada from Apokolips.)

Three good ones followed by three bad ones: MR. MXYZPTLK AND THE MAGIC LAMP (I hate Mxyzptlk -- even Welker can't make him work), THE CASE OF THE SHRINKING SUPER FRIENDS (featuring that old kids' TV standby, the shrinking ray), and THE MASK OF MYSTERY (where a nerdy high school kid wants to be a superhero.)

Which brings us full circle to DARKSEID'S GOLDEN TRAP PARTS ONE AND TWO, which I'll undoubtedly watch again very soon.

But not before I watch the second disk, so watch this space for more reviews.

I've seen two more episodes:

ISLAND OF DOCTOR MOREAU...oops, I mean...ISLAND OF THE DINOSOIDS -- Just like with the shrinking ray episode, this kind of plot is too well-worn for me.

THE ROYAL RUSE -- Now this one is great! I can never get enough of Darkseid as voiced by Welker. As with DARKSEID'S GOLDEN TRAP, it takes place almost entirely in outer space, and there's a plot twist that actually surprised my jaded self.

I finished the rest of the episodes, sort of:

UNCLE MXYZPTLK: I had to stop watching this one, it was getting on my nerves. Way too much Silver Age DC frivolity for my taste (Superman turns into a little kid.)

THE CASE OF THE DREADFUL DOLLS: In the commentary track, this episode's writer says that in his early drafts, the villain was the Toyman, but later turned into a new villain named the Dollman -- much more interesting than the episode itself.

THE VILLAGE OF LOST SOULS and THE CURATOR: Both of these were okay but not memorable. The former has Brianiac mentally enslaving a small town, and the title villain of the latter is a case of DC ripping off Marvel, in this case the Collector (unless someone who is much more knowledgeable about the DC universe than yours truly is aware of some obscure villain that Marvel ripped off.)

So, in all, half good-to-great and half fair-to-middling -- NO HONOR AMONG THIEVES, THE ROYAL RUSE, THE WRATH OF BRAINIAC, REFLECTIONS IN CRIME, THE BRIDE OF DARKSEID PARTS ONE AND TWO, and of course, DARKSEID'S GOLDEN TRAP PARTS ONE AND TWO are all due for multiple viewings.

And The Cyborg Season is due on DVD in October.

. True that! A blatant rip-off of Scooby Doo if ever I saw one and Marvin was no better than a younger, stupider, less-stoned Shaggy, with a cape. The only episodes I remember with them were the one with the Balloon People and the one having something to do with Cape Canaveral and the totally goofy "Super" villain -with a mentally deficient henchmen, who said " Hungry, thirsty whatta day, whatta day what a hungry thirsty, thirsty day!" Which was hilarious enough to have stuck with me for thirty-some years.

After a couple false starts (my local Barnes & Noble is usually very good with pre-ordered DVDs, but somebody screwed up this time), I finally got a copy of the final Super Friends series, "The Super Powers Team: Galactic Guardians" aka "The Cyborg Season".

I watched it this weekend. Despite an increase in action and much improved animation and production design (the model sheets were by an uncredited Jose Luis Garcia-Lopez) and most of the previous series' voice cast intact (B.J. Ward as Wonder Woman was a slight improvement over Constance Cawfield, but Ward can't hold a candle to Shannon Farnon), it left me cold.

In the "Making Of" documentary, somebody says that the series was a bridge between the older Super Friends cartoons and the DCU cartoons of the past 15 years, and I think that's why it left me cold; it was neither fish nor fowl.

And, like many of the lesser 80s action cartoons, it had a great title sequence that none of the actual episodes could live up to.

Shannon Farnon will always be the definitive voice of Wonder Woman for me.

In the 1977 season, I think she and Liberty Williams (Jayna) voiced just about every female character who appeared. All the women pretty much sound like Wonder Woman or Jayna trying to disguise their voices.

LOL

I remember on the commentary track for one of the Challenge of the Super Friends episodes, Mark Waid and Geoff Johns joke about how one nameless bank robber is obviously Casey Kasem doing double-duty as both Robin and the robber.

Rocky, what are your sources for all the cool behind-the-scenes stuff that you've posted?

Would you believe Internet Movie Database, Wikipedia, an attentive ear and 30-plus years of loving this show?

Just because.

Here's something I've wondered for years: Why was Aquaman the fourth of the big heroes on Super Friends instead of, say, Flash or Green Lantern? DC always has stated that they consider their primary five characters to be Supes, Bats, WW, Flash and GL. So, why Aquaman? He may have been more familiar to Saturday morning viewers because of the Filmation cartoon in the late '60s, but it still seemed like he was out of place.

I guess you might as well ask, why did Filmation do AQUAMAN in 1967? I figure Hanna-Barbera was just following their lead when SUPER-FRIENDS started 6 years later.


1966:
THE NEW ADVENTURES OF SUPERMAN
(w/Superboy)

1967:
THE SUPERMAN-AQUAMAN HOUR OF ADVENTURE
(w/Flash, Green Lantern, Hawkman, Atom, Teen Titans, Justice League of America, and RERUNS of the previous year's Superman-- cheap bastards)

1968:
THE BATMAN-SUPERMAN HOUR
(and still more reruns of the same Superman cartoons-- did they think no one would notice?)


Due to the local Philly station's long-running 90-minute show CARTOON CORNERS, the '68 series was run here about 7 AM, making it difficult to see unless you had insomnia, but I always liked to sleep a little later on weekends.

My best memories as a child was looking forward to Saturday morning cartoons so I could see the next episode of Super Friends!

I was already into reading the JLA comic so this was a real treat for a kid with an overly active imagination.

Rocky, I thought that maybe, with your knowledge of Super Friends behind-the-scenes trivia, you could help answer something that's been confusing me:

I've read the story about how Shannon Farnon lost the role of Wonder Woman after several consecutive seasons of consistently excellent voice acting.

IIRC, voice director Wally Burr (who had been instrumental in getting Farnon cast as Wonder Woman in the first place) had a final falling-out with Joe Barbera and never worked for Hanna-Barbera again. Burr was replaced on Super Friends by Gordon Hunt, who had fallen in love with B.J. Ward and promised her the role of Wonder Woman.

But how does that explain the interim Wonder Woman voice actress, Constance Cawlfield, who played the role on the next-to-last season of Super Friends (and, IMO, was so bad she couldn't help but make Ward look good by comparison?)

I really don't know. I agree that Cawlfield's voice was not appropriate for WW. She sounded too "cute", for want of a better word. Maybe BJ Ward wasn't available? I'll see if I can find out anything.

Fanfie, there's a nice interview with Shannon Farnon here that mentions the recast, though it was her recollection that BJ Ward took over the role immediately. There is a correction in the interview stating that it may have been a network decision regarding Cawlfield taking the role for the 1984 season. I'll see if I can find anything else.

I grew up loving Super Friends, but looking back, I'm not really a fan of the voice acting. Granted, it's been a while since I saw an episode, but my remembrance is that they were mostly corny and wooden portrayals. To be fair, this is my typical response to voice acting of the '70s and '80s and prior and especially to most Hanna-Barbera cartoons in general. Their human characters were often almost as exaggerated and goofy in their speech as their animal characters. Even as a kid, I always felt HB was more kitzchy and had a lower standard that Warner Brothers.

Of the major SF characters, I'd say the least wooden of them was whomever voiced Aquaman. Aquaman always sounded like a caring dad-type, and I think I subconsciously really dug that.

Wonder Woman, I always thought was more harsh and masculine-sounding than she needed to be. I can see the reasoning for that, her being an Amazon warrior and all. I guess Lynda Carter is more like the standard of how I'd prefer her to sound...not prissy at all but very feminine.

Batman, Superman and Robin were about as generic as you could get. Ironically, Zan and Jayna (especially Jayna) had very nice voices.

As critical as I am of H-B, I still really love Scooby Doo and all of its classic voices. Casey Casem as Shaggy was over-the-top, but he was consistent and enjoyable that way. Frank Welker as Fred is one of the most distinctive voices in cartoon annals. I love Velma's sound a lot, and Daphne's very normal sound just balances everything out. And Scoob, of course, is a masterpiece!

SF definitely is a product of its time. In retrospect, the writing is a cut above most of HB's output at the time(with a few exceptions, Drak Pack being a notable one), but the standard for kid's cartoons in the late '70s and early '80s was low.

Of actors portraying the five characters who appeared in all seasons, only Danny Dark (Superman) and Casey Kasem (Robin) were with he show from start to finish. As noted above, WW was voiced by three different actresses, with Shannon Farnon being the best remembered. Aquaman was voiced by Norman Alden the first two seasons (that's the voice you're probably referring to, Lardy) and Bill Callaway thereafter. Olan Soule voiced Batman for the first ten years, at which point Adam West took over the role.

Rocky, thank you so much.

Lardy, I can appreciate what you're saying, but my taste in voice acting seems to be very different from yours. I like the old-fashioned style of voice acting because I think it made the characters seem larger than life, whereas the modern style of voice acting comes across to me as flat and lacking in verve.

Fickles, I can certainly understand that. One thing I'm not crazy about is the tendency to cast big-name actors in animated features. It kinda takes you out of the movie, and in many cases you just know it would've been better with other voices. Pixar chooses their big names very well, I think, but Dreamworks and the others mostly feel like vanity projects for the actors.

I think there's a lot of quality voice acting across the board in today's television animation. I especially love the voices on Futurama. There's a fun, retro, over-the-top quality to many of the voices on Family Guy and its spin-offs and especially to Spongebob and the newer Nickelodeon and Cartoon Network stuff. I also love the voice work on many of the WB's high profile superhero stuff, like Brave and the Bold and especially the Batman Animated series of the '90s.

Agreed on the big-name actors thing, although even casting cult actors throws me off most of the time. I love Michael Ironside, but I can't watch the 90s and 00s DC cartoons without thinking, "Oh, Darkseid sounds like Ham Tyler from 'V'." Then, too, I'm so biased in favor of Frank Welker's Darkseid voice from the last two seasons of Super Friends that I find it hard to accept anyone else in the role.

>snip<
I ao love you for this...bwahahahahahahahaha

My best friend LOVES the WB cartoons, including SUPERMAN, and will go on at length about them any chance he gets. And this includes Michael Ironside (a fave of mine), who I never realized was Darkseid (but mostly because I've only seen a handful of them, WB pissed me off early with their haphazard chaotic scheduling-- NEVER knew when they'd have new episodes or reruns, so it very quickly became impossible to tape the damned things).


But to me, the guy from SUPER POWERS was Darkseid. I never connected him as the voice of Fred from SCOOBY-DOO!!!

I've been rediscovering this season the last few days, and now I think it's actually better than I originally gave it credit for. Among other things, it's pretty darn cool to hear Frank Welker do double duty as both Darkseid and Colonel Steve Trevor in the episode where Darkseid impersonates Trevor. Still got several episodes to go, will comment here if anything else stands out like that.

I finished watching the rest of the episodes of the final season. They're not all classics, but even the weaker ones have their moments.

The standouts would have to be "The Death of Superman" and "The Fear", the former having great character moments for Firestorm and Batman, and the latter being basically a dry run for the excellent Batman cartoons of the 90s (it can't be a coincidence that the head writer and story editor this season was Alan Burnett, who went on to be a writer/producer on the 90s Batman.)

New interview with Shannon Farnon:

http://www.comicbookresources.com/?page=article&id=57991

What a great interview! And, yes, to me she will always be the voice of Wonder Woman. The other day, when The Boyfriend and I were in Louisiana for a few days, I saw a statue of a heron. In my best Shannon/Wonder Woman I cried "Great heron!"

Rocky, LOL

Seriously, though, I posted that interview especially for you, and I'm glad you enjoyed it.

So apparently Super Friends debuted on September 8, 1973.

Happy 50th Anniversary, Super Friends!

Here's to 50 more years of delighting generations young and old and everywhere in between!

Thanks for the heads up, EDE.

I actually watched all of Super Friends during Covid. It's tough sometimes watching cartoons I loved as a kid, because now I can see what a steaming pile of cheaply made guano it is. Most cartoons I watched as a kid are unwatchable now. Still, I watched every episode of Super Friends.

One episode was quite noteworthy. The third episode of season 1 - Professor Goodfellow's G.E.E.C - made my jaw drop. Professor Goodfellow had invented a computer that did much of people's work for them. There were driverless cars delivering groceries to homes, and the Professor used the phrase "if you subscribe to my service."

I was amazed at how prophetic this episode was! And from a kiddie show in 1973!

Yeah, I remember being surprised by how good the plots overall, and especially in the first season, were the last time I watched it.

I recall come of the Super Friends stories actually being a little dark! One episode that comes to mind is one in which the world ended due to a comet or solar flare or something like that (maybe something the Legion of Doom did?), and history had to be changed to avert it. Can't remember all the details, but I remember it wasn't the only episode that had some darkness to it and some borderline scary imagery--at least to the 'tween or younger me I was at the time!

I dont recall the episode you described, Lardy, but I do remember two episodes that scared me as a kid: one with Superman aging rapidly, and another with a vampire who transformed normal people into vampires with beams he fired from his eyes.