Review: ‘Super Friends! Season One Volume Two’
At least one generation of super-hero fans grew up knowing the DC Comics heroes through their appearances on ABC’s [[[Super Friends]]]. Loosely based on the [[[Justice League of America]]],[[[Superman]]], [[[Batman]]], [[[Robin]]], [[[Wonder Woman]]], and [[[Aquaman]]] teamed up in the Hall of Justice and fought all manner of menace. Accompanying them for no rational explanation were Wendy Harris and Marvin White, along with Wonderdog.
The first iteration debuted in fall 1973 and was an hour-long adventure with 16 episodes comprising thefirst season. The series survived in various incarnations well into the 1980s when it finally faded away, ringing down one era of animated heroics. The biggest problem confronting these early missions was the network demand that there be no violence. Threats yes; actually hitting the bad guy, no.
Additionally, the stories were designed to deliver messages such as ecological awareness so the youngsters watching at home could learn something.
What they also learned was that story logic was not required on weekend mornings. The first half-season was collected earlier this year and now Warner Home Video releases Super Friends! Season One Volume Two on Tuesday. Maybe it’s telling that the packaging uses Jose Luis Garcia-Lopez & Dick Giordano style guide artwork than imagery from the series. Despite the fabulous Alex Toth doing design work for the series, the limited, budget conscious animation is pretty atrocious.
The wonderful Ted Knight narrates each episode as if he were reading from a Mort Weisinger script. We’re told what we’re seeing, we see it, and then the characters repeat much of the same thing. His voice, though, is pitch perfect to provide each adventure with a serious tone regardless of how ludicrous the stories are.
And they’re pretty terrible. Scientists with idiot henchmen are repeated a lot. Aliens arrive on Earth, telling us it looks pretty clean for settlement then it becomes a story of how humans are polluting the land, air, and sea. Well, which is it?
The heroes apparently hang out in the Hall of Justice, not having a life beyond the heroic personas, and wait for the TroubAlert to selectively tell them of a problem. One episode shows the computer summoning the heroes only after the third identical crime has been committed. Interestingly, Clark Kent is described not as a reporter for a great metropolitan newspaper, but is instead a new commentator on television station WGBS, a nod to the then-status quo.
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Brandon Vietti is just two weeks away from his solo directorial film debut with Warner Home Video’s looming release of Batman: Under the Red Hood, a dark, emotionally wrenching journey as Batman’s past and present collide.
As has been unofficially discussed on the net, Warner Premiere continues to exploit DCE’s major heroes. The details on the next release were officially unveiled today in the following press release.
Judd Winick has returned to Gotham City with a vengeance. The award-winning cartoonist has transitioned one of his benchmark storylines from comic book pages to animated film with the upcoming release of Batman: Under the Red Hood, the latest entry in the popular series of DC Universe Animated Original Movies.
He is currently developing live action television and animation, writing the new bi-weekly comic title for DC Comics Justice League: Generation Lost, as well as the monthly Power Girl.
It is with profound personal regret that I report comics legend Dick Giordano died this morning.
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Get ready for a special
Artist Cliff Chiang (Green Arrow/Black Canary, Doctor Thirteen: Architecture and Morality) has an amazing comics-themed tribute to the late John Hughes up at his blog. 
This is the worst part about covering SDCC while not actually being there: you can get a pretty good sense of what a panel was like from a liveblog, but there’s just no replacement for seeing a singing, dancing Dark Knight, especially when Neil Patrick Harris is involved.
