Tooned In: The All-New Super Friends Hour (1977)

BATMAN DOES NOT FLY!!!

This article is especially for Scott. After what he is going through this week, and knowing he too is a fan, makes it no brainer to return to the Superfriends Universe for this one.

We’re going back to the past, and with the first evolutionary step of the series. Since MeTV has cycled back to the these episodes, figured I would take a sample one to review.

To summarize up to this point…Super Friends (the space in the title stuck until the Legion of Doom season) began in 1973 for one season, with the Scooby-Doo gang-inspired trio of Wendy, Marvin, and Wonder Dog. Along with the Justice League members, they…mostly taught misunderstood aliens and scientists the errors of their ways. Closest we got to a super villain was Raven, an evil alien warlord with a grudge against Superman. Which is a shame, because an emo grunge enthusiast who had a beef with Clark Kent over stealing his girlfriend at summer camp, and formed a flock of misfits to get back at Kal-El would have been much more interesting…

Ahem. So, fast forward four years later, when Hanna-Barbera revamped the show as The All-New Super Friends Hour. Again, overhauls were plenty. We get a new, more bombastic theme song and intro, and a new narrator in Bill Woodson. Already, the show feels more like an animated comic book, as instead of the heroes being seen in hijinks with Wendy and Marvin, we see them stopping asteroids, patrolling the city, and flying through space. Gone is the singular hour-long story, replaced by four segments:

• Two team-up shorts, one with two members of the core team*, and another with a core member and a “special guest hero”
• Another short with two new characters who we’ll talk about in a bit
• One half-hour adventure with the entire Super Friends team

* though, technically, if Batman is involved with either short, that makes three heroes, because Robin.

The shorts were more in line with the 1973 season: mostly the heroes stopping natural disasters or small crimes, normally involving misguided crooks. The main feature’s stakes were on a grander scale, often with intergalactic threats and/or locales, and even a comic villain or two (literally two, actually: we get Gentleman Ghost and [Black] Manta this season). In between, the Super Friends also feature in PSAs, and segments with craft ideas and word games.

So, the five Justice Leaguers from the original are back: Superman, Aquaman, Wonder Woman, Batman, and Robin (who now gets mentioned in the intro, and get used to that, because you will hardly if at all see Batman, or have Batman mentioned without Robin). But Wendy, Marvin, and the dog were sent back to Coolsville or Crystal Cove, whatever the case may be, and in their place as super hero trainees are: the Wonder Twins, Zan and Jayna, a pair of teenage alien humanoids from the planet Exxor with purple jumpsuits and thinly veiled Osmonds tendencies. But unlike the kids from the original season, the Wonder Twins have actual super powers. By touching hands and reciting their infamous catchphrase — “Wonder Twin powers, activate!” — Jayna can shape shift into any animal, and Zan, any form of water (liquid, ice, or otherwise). They do have the same basic characteristics of their predecessors: Zan is the know-it-all, and Jayna is more level-headed. Oh, and they too have a mascot pet: Gleek the space monkey. Usually there to be hostages or to somehow mess things up with their inexperience, you either thought they were a big improvement over Wendy and Marvin or that they were just as corny, with lame powers anyway. Maybe a little of both.

We also mentioned Special Guest Heroes. Well, Flash returns from the first season…unfortunately, on the other hand, we never see Green Arrow nor Plastic Man in the H-B DC Universe again (Plas, however, would move over to Ruby-Spears to start his own show 2 years later). But to the reserve Super Friends list we add the likes of Green Lantern, Atom, Hawkman and Hawkgirl — also treated as one unit like Batman and Robin — and the deep cut character Rima the Jungle Girl. And we get three original heroes, meant to add diversity to the crew: Samurai, Apache Chief, and Black Vulcan, the Black Lightning expy created to screw over the original character’s creators (…in their pants…)

So let’s look at today’s set of all-new Super Friends adventures….

AQUAMAN TOO DOES NOT FLY!

Note: Because I like to keep track of this sort of thing, MeTV airings of ANSFH episodes usually do keep the preview segments between each story.

THE INVISIBLE MENACE

Superman and Aquaman are the team-up for this initial adventure. The evil Captain Nemus wants the ultrasonic mining device invented by Professor Fairweather, apparently they had some punny scientists left over from the Wendy and Marvin season. And you can tell Nemus is bad from his Dick Dastardly hat and goggles. When the Super Friends are contacted, Aquaman says “With my aquatic senses, it shouldn’t take long.” Translation: Yay, water! I get to be useful! But even the narrator is always putting it “SUPERMAN (pause)…and Aquaman.” And going back to these earlier episodes, it’s amusing to hear Danny Dark REALLY lower his voice to play Superman. He’s also still announcing, “Up, up, and awaaaaaay!” when he flies. Oh, the villains have the ability to turn themselves and their submarine invisible. Luckily, Supes has infrared vision as well, and for the sake of this episode, he can breathe underwater? Why ask for Aquaman when you can have a nigh invincible Kryptonian who can navigate himself undersea too? Arthur does try to earn his keep, though, and he somehow knows an invisible killer whale is just that, even though he’s INVISIBLE. But…even then, when said whale traps Aquaman, Superman has to save him. The King of the Seas, who should be able to handle such a situation. See what I meant? But the writers still try to give Aquaman stuff to do, since this is a marine themed episode. He uses octopus ink to expose Nemus and his invisible crew, and after some G-rated fighting, ties up the villains. Meanwhile, Superman has to stop the mining device, but gets buried in rocks. Not to be outdone, Supes actually gets to punch something…

He fixes the device and stops the undersea earthquake. Once Nemus and his crew are taken into custody, Superman gives a lecture about how hopefully devices like these will be used by responsible people, not greedy ones.

SAFETY TIP

Some kid tells his mother not to rush across the street and instead remember to use the crosswalk. Wonder Woman only shows up to congratulate his astuteness.

INITIATION

This is our Wonder Twins adventure, and all of them end up being pretty much another PSA. The “Bear Club” takes its new member Jeff into a cave where he’ll be initiated into the group if he takes a picture of “Ol’ Slowpoke,” the bear. Fortunately he is sleeping, so taking the picture should be a snap, right? Nope, Jeff trips and wakes him up. When he doesn’t return, his friends make the insightful deduction that “He might be in trouble, we’d better go for help!” Cue the Wonder Twins camping out, where Zan somehow gets trapped inside a folded chair that’s like one-third of his height. Their Teen Trouble Alert goes off, and the boys make it sound like Jeff did all this himself. Regardless, the heroes depart in their most common form of transportation: Jayna as an eagle, and Zan as a bucket of water, with Gleek just so happening to have said bucket. They arrive at the cave and find Jeff and the bear and activate their powers again, and…wait….Jayne takes the shape of a gopher….? Is this what I think it is? And yes, Zan turns to water and after Jayna burrows around the bear, forms a moat.

THIS IS WHERE THEY GOT THAT CARTOON NETWORK PARODY FROM!

But unlike the more realistic ending to that, everything works out here. Never mind there was also a mountain lion in the cave all along. Everybody learned their lesson, Gleek gets scared by a frog’s shadow, everyone laughs, the end.

DECODER

After a patrol in the Batmobile, Robin is tired. Now, you’d think Batman would tell him, “JUSTICE NEVER SLEEPS,” but this Batman just says they need to give the first clue to the secret word: the place they parked in front of (the “Hillside Inn”).

COMING OF THE ANTHROPODS

Bad bug, bad bug, whatcha gonna do…

A high council of insects banishes their criminals to Earth, and wait a minute…this race of insects look familiar. Maybe I should look to the night sky and I’ll end up thinking of who they remind me of. The rogues’ leader, Insecta, is obviously Casey Kasem in another role. They end up in the desert, where they take over a missile transport and hypnotize the driver, no doubt to convince him to get some “fly honeys”.

The New Space Ghost Movies: Today, Not Zorak and his friends meet Pete Davidson!

The Hall of Justice is contacted and Batman and Robin decide to investigate. The World’s Greatest Detectives recognize giant insect tracks as…giant insect tracks. Following them to Insecta and his army, we get our first “Quick, Robin” command when the Dynamic Duo uses their Bat Gas Masks. Superfriends turned up the Adam Westisms to eleven regarding Bat Devices, and Robin making “Holy” exclamations like every other sentence. The bugs fire the missile towards Gotham, and since this isn’t The Dark Knight trilogy Bats, this is instead a job for Superman. When the driver doesn’t remember anything out of his trance, Aquaman says “I hope Washington has more information!” Not very bloody likely. The Super Friends’ contact indeed says he knows the insects are not from this planet. They talk, they do mind control, they can commandeer vehicles and weaponry. You think? Their target is an energizer device that can give water to deserts, turn rocks into fruit trees, or something. And of course the Wonder Twins take matters into their own hands, and we can’t be bothered to see their transformation this time; the narrator explains to us that they are now water and a camel. Gleek gets so desperate out in the desert he tries to take a drink of Zan, which we learn is not possible. And we take a break for…

DECODER (II)

Robin still wants to sleep, and Batman offers the second clue: the word “Sector”…only the first four letters. Allen Ludden: “Have you got it at home?”

Back to the story, and the Super Friends fight off hypnotized guards. When they snap them out of it, they learn that the insects and Wonder Twins are on a plane heading towards the Amazon jungle. Oh, by the way, Jayna has transformed herself into a space insect and is acting undercover as Zan and Gleek stow away. On patrol, the Bat Boat is hit by a boulder, leaving Aquaman, Batman, and Robin against a group of alligators. Being in the water boosts Arthur’s machismo, of course, so he tells his teammates that “I’ll get the big one, you get the others.” We get Quick, Robin #2 when they stop the gators with the Inflatable Bat Buoys, pretty much giant beach balls.

So, Insecta’s plan is use the Mazon Energizer to fire a beam at his home planet. Jayna makes a gambit by blowing the Wonder Twins’ cover, but they manage to wake the Professor and escape as an ice ski slope and polar bear. After reuniting with the other Super Friends, the team makes another attempt at stopping the space insects. When Superman and Wonder Woman try, the beam petrifies them. Aquaman and the Caped Crusaders are left, and though Aquaman says to enter undetected, Batman uses his Bat Rocket Boots. Aquaman meanwhile swims under the pyramid and distracts the bugs for Quick, Robin #3, when the Bat Vacuum traps some of the insects. Then they use Bat Fans to subdue Insecta with his own mist, but he fires the ray anway, but misses. The heroes use it to restore Supes and Diana (a certain cultish group of fans cry, “But why not the Snyderverse?!?”). Superman then takes the rogue insects back, and the lesson of the day is that you should not pass the buck when you have problems. Back at the Hall of Justice, we get our “Looks like Gleek …” joke as he does pratfalls with a butterfly net. Everyone laughs, the end. You know what would really be funny? If in an alternate universe’s Williams Street, Superman decided to have his own talk show and instead of taking Insecta back to his home planet, trapped him in a prison pod and forced him to be his band leader.

DECODER (Solution)

It was a struggle, but the answer is “Insect.”

MAGIC

Aquaman promises to show us how to make a coin disappear. Was Superman ever the host of these segments? Because he’s weak against magic. Actually, it’s a shame Zatanna wasn’t a Super Friend…it writes itself here.

THE RIVER OF DOOM

(No relation.)

Damn that Apache Chief gender swap!

We are already back to the Amazon Jungle, where a band of geologists find a headhunter burial necklace incurring the wrath of said hunters, the Jivaros, who surround them and promise to feed them to the titular River. Wonder Woman and Rima are on the case. Rima uses her Not Tarzan yell to get the jungle animals to tell her where the geologists are. Break for…

MAGIC (solution)

By putting wax on your middle finger, you pick up the coin and make it look like it disappeared. Downside is if you get really mad, you’ll blow your cover if you gesture at someone.

Back to the action, where the ladies ambush the natives. Rima subdues them with a dust cloud, as Wonder Woman gets in a canoe chase. Rima gets (to quote the narrator) “two cool crocodiles” to help keep the Jivaros’ canoes at bay, and Wondie saves the prisoners. The Jivaros learn that the geologists didn’t mean to uncover the necklace, and they agree to help in their expedition. They even understand the Everybody Laughs joke at the end! Which isn’t really a surprise since they do obviously idolize Moe Howard:

And we end things with:

HEALTH TIP

Superman notices a kid walking alone on a deserted road, because his friends abandoned him for not wanting to do drugs with them. Just say no!

So that was a pretty typical ANSFH episode. Liked the novelty of the Super Friends fighting a bunch of Zorak clones, and the origin of a Cartoon Network meme. And Aquaman gets to shine, sort of, a few times today!