#super-friends

BHOC: SUPER FRIENDS #12

I’ve spoken in the past about how as a kid I was a bit disdainful towards DC’s SUPER FRIENDS comic book series, an adaptation and outgrowth of the ongoing Saturday morning cartoon series. Now, mind you, I watched SUPER FRIENDS dutifully every weekend, but I was also aware even then that the story material was diluted from the true greatness that was the legitimate comic book stories these…

Nine minutes. Not as good as Kai had been aiming for, but still better than the usual time. Grinning, he hopped off of his motorbike and pulled his helmet off as he jogged. He had a key that got him through the front door, and he ran up the stairs as quickly as he could, while still maintaining some silence.

And some stamina. Stairs sucked, particularly in jeans, a leather jacket, and motorcycle boots.

More like thirteen minutes, by the end of it, then - maybe fourteen. Kai hadn’t actually checked his watch. Some things weren’t a good idea to time exactly. Regardless, it hadn’t been very long, certainly, when Kai rapped at Mia’s door with a grin on his face, heart pounding for two reasons - the run up the stairs, and anticipation for what lay on the other side of the door. His jacket was unzipped now, showing a dark, charcoal-gray, button-up shirt beneath, slightly patterned, which worked well enough with his jeans.

Not that he was necessarily expecting to be wearing either for long...

“Hey Mia,” he called, slightly breathless, “you save any cake for me? Did the nuke blow up yet?”

A mother and son leaving their apartment looked at him in something between concern, and judgement, and Kai just waved with a chuckle. “Just a, heh, joke, uh...”

BHOC: ACTION COMICS #482

Bought this issue of ACTION COMICS at my regular 7-11 outlet. ACTION had become a routine purchase for me, and as this was the third part of what would turn out to be a four-part storyline featuring Amazo, I was definitely going to be there for it. This is a pretty nice cover, with the singular exception of the logo color. It’s not represented anywhere else on the cover, nor does it make the logo…

BHOC: SUPER FRIENDS #9

On Saturday mornings, SUPER FRIENDS had started producing new episodes for the first time in several years. The original 1973 run had produced 16 hour-long episodes, and were an outgrowth of a pilot program developed, in all places, in episodes of the BRADY KIDS animated series. After new more stringent legislation had been passed ostensibly to clean up the overly violent children’s programming…

I’m not 100% certain whether it was me or my brother Ken who bought this issue of SUPER-FRIENDS, but I ultimately ended up with it. And I really liked it--so much so that i ripped off its central villain for one of the amateur comics that I was creating at around this time. It’s a very fun story by author E. Nelson Bridwell that makes full use of the DC Universe,.

The story was wonderfully illustrated by Ramona Fradon. Fradon is one of the more overlooked geniuses in the history of comics, partly because much of the work she did over the years was uncredited, and partly because her style was more overtly cartoony than most of her contemporaries--a quality that made her a perfect fit for the cartoon-based SUPER-FRIENDS. Her characters all had bounce and life to them.

The story opens with Aquaman and Wonder Woman in mid-battle with Spectrum, an intergalactic slaver with a super-powered aura. Aquaman makes use of the fact that Spectrum comes from a desert world and is unaware of the properties of water to distract him so that Wonder Woman can ensnare the villain with her magic lasso. But he instantly disappears from its grasp. Simultaneously, Superman, Batman and Robin are tackling Ant-Man, who has been sent by the Superman Revenge Squad. But Anti-Man is vulnerable to X-Rays, so Superman peers him into submission--at which point he too vanishes before the confused super heroes.

The two villains find themselves reconstituted in prison cells--but they’re not in custody. Rather, they’ve been captured by the evil Dr Indrom, a master villain who is tired of being foiled by the many super heroes of the universe. Indrom has taken it upon himself to round up dozens of dangerous super-criminals so that he can dis-corporate them all and infuse those powers into a mighty composite being; the World-Beater. Indrom intends to dispatch the World-Beater to wipe out all of the super heroes in the universe with his aggregated super-powers.

It must be said that the World-beater’s design, with its strange head-rings and antennae, is simultaneously ludicrous and pretty great. And he gets right down to business as Indrom sends him to the most super hero-populated planet of all: Earth. In short order, he invades the Justice League satellite, telling the assembled heroes that he’s already taken out the Blackhawks, the Teen Titans, the Freedom Fighters and Plastic Man. And then he proceeds to dismantle the League one by one in short order. 

The Atom gets off an emergency call to the Hall of Justice, alerting the Super-Friends to the peril. But then, the World-Beater is there, among them, having teleported in. Superman tells WB that his creator Dr Ingrom has already been arrested by the authorities and that the Super-Friends are aware that he’s a composite being made up of the molecules of dozens of super heroes. But none of this seems to matter, as the World-Beater mops the floor with the Super-Fiends. From the shadows, Wendy, Marvin and Wonder Dog watch--Wonder Woman has previously told them that her mother Hippolyta’s Magic Sphere has prophesied that they will hold the key to victory today. But how can they stop a foe who’s trashed the entire Justice League?

This was another Treasury Edition that I loved. I can recall intending to duplicate Dick Giordano’s cover as an art entry in a Block party art contest that summer--it would also be used as the basis for a key frame in the opening credits to CHALLENGE OF THE SUPER-FRIENDS. More interesting to me, the back cover matched the composition, but with the heroes of the earlier Justice Society. A purchase from my regular 7-11 haunt.

The size of these Treasury Editions had shrunk a little bit, allowing room for only two full-length stories plus some additional filler. But that meant that I still got two vintage Gardner Fox/Mike Sekowsky JLA stories for my buck. Sekowsky’s artwork, as has been reported many times previously, was idiosyncratic and weird, stylized in a manner all his own. But I had read enough early JLA tales so that I was used to it--in fact, its how I expected such stories to look.

In the opening story, recurring JLA and Adam Strange foe Kanjar Ro escapes from incarceration on Rann, and using a newfound ability to separate a person’s aura from his physical self, uses the JLA’s own aura to lure them into hazardous situations, believing themselves to be coming to the aid of their fellow members. 

The members suss out the ruse, though, but not before Kanjar Ro has stolen the entire Earth, leaving its own aura-duplicate behind. (And yes, I don’t know how the Earth has an aura to duplicate either.) But when Adam Strange’s Zeta-Beam charge wears off, his own aura is pulled back to the duplicated Earth and he is able to marshal the JLA against Kanjar Ro. I’ll admit that this panel flummoxed me as a kid, as I had no inkling that the Martian Manhunter could stretch his arms like the Elongated Man.

Next came a filler feature utilizing Alex Toth’s model sheets from the Super-Friends cartoon series. The Flash showing up on that show was something of a seminal moment for me as a child, helping to cement him as my favorite character. So it was neat to see that Toth had done an initial design of Jay Garrick, the Flash he was more familiar with from his time working at All-American Comics in the late 1940s.

Then came the second story, which I didn’t love as much. Partly, I think, this had to do with the roll call, which leaned heavily on the core triumvirate of Superman, Batman and Wonder Woman. I had nothing against these guys, but JLA was a place where I would get to see other more obscure heroes in action--and I often liked those guys better. It also didn’t help that this story was really set up as not so much a team adventure but three separate missions--one featuring Batman and Hawkman, one with the Atom and Wonder Woman, and one with Superman solo. Perfectly fine, but not really what I read JLA for.

The story is a wonderful bit of nonsense in which the League’s old enemy Doctor Destiny dreams himself a Dream-Materioptikon while in his prison cell, then uses it to give the JLA members strange nightmares in which they get odd handicaps such as telescopic vision that doesn’t turn off or the power of flight by flapping one’s arms. Destiny then makes these dreams become reality in some way, but the Leaguers overcome every challenge, figure out he’s the guy behind their problems, and punch him in the snoot.