Superfriends is 50 years old

[TMC]

https://13thdimension.com/a-50th-ann...20kiddie%20set.

Their mission: To fight injustice, to right that which is wrong, and to serve all mankind! Super Friends premiered Sept. 8, 1973, on ABC, to much ballyhoo among the kiddie set.

[TMC]

We all love seeing our favorite DC heroes and villains in action, and Super Friends offers all of that and more in this fun and entertaining animated series from the 80s. In this video, we will look back at the entire story and lore surrounding this series.

[Dude111]

Superfriends was GOOD when it started!

[TMC]

Superfriends used to be in TV Tropes' "Condemned by History" page:

Superfriends was the superhero cartoon during The '70s and The '80s. For many years, it was what the majority of people imagined superheroes were like, was fairly well regarded among general audiences, and was one of Hanna-Barbera's most popular cartoons. However, as time went on, and especially as the superhero genre evolved over the years, the flaws of the show have become more apparent. The show relied quite a bit on camp with repetitive and razor-thin plots, had nonexistent characterization, poor animation (even by Hanna-Barbera standards), relied on Captain Ethnic heroes that exhibited some negative stereotypes, had a pair of Kid Sidekicks in Wendy and Marvin (who viewers hated for their stupidity and lack of any real reason to hang out with the Superfriends), had Wonder Woman frequently sidelined and often only depicted flying her invisible plane rather than doing any real action, and Aquaman was consistently depicted as an Adaptational Wimp to the point it took decades for his reputation to improve. This series, together with Batman (1966), was largely responsible for the impression of mainstream audiences that the whole genre of superheroes was unworthy of being enjoyed non-ironically, with even the occasional well-respected adaptation like Superman: The Movie being seen only as exceptions to the rule. This ironclad view of Superfriends and Adam West as the ultimate symbols of superheroes only began to be chipped away when the DC Animated Universe's Batman: The Animated Series began, which took a Darker and Edgier and more faithful look at superheroes compared to most previous cartoons in a way that caused that show to become a huge hit. With superhero adaptations going mainstream in the 21st century thanks to various adaptations and reimaginings from DC and competitor Marvel Comics, Superfriends came to be seen as a relic of the past, which caused opinions on the show to sour across the board. Today, the cartoon is regarded as So Bad, It's Good at best, and is otherwise seen (especially by DC fans) as a stain on the reputation of the superhero and comic book adaptation genres.

[biffbronson]

Aside from the writer quoted above, I don't know of anyone who "hated" Wendy and Marvin. What a bunch of bull. The only "stain on the reputation of the superhero and comic book adaptation genres" is in the writer's mind. SuperFriends was a popular, innocuous series, and the comic book adaptation was highly successful as well. I was a pre-teen back then and I loved all incarnations of the animated series.

What a hatchet job. The writer fails to mention that in the initial conception of the series, SuperFriends always based its episodes on environmental concerns and moral issues. The "Darker and Edgier" stuff the writer favors may have worked for its time, but now comic book sales are hitting all-time lows, and the realistic approach is proving not to endure with any kind of real longevity.

[TMC]

Originally Posted by biffbronson

Aside from the writer quoted above, I don't know of anyone who "hated" Wendy and Marvin. What a bunch of bull. The only "stain on the reputation of the superhero and comic book adaptation genres" is in the writer's mind. SuperFriends was a popular, innocuous series, and the comic book adaptation was highly successful as well. I was a pre-teen back then and I loved all incarnations of the animated series.

What a hatchet job. The writer fails to mention that in the initial conception of the series, SuperFriends always based its episodes on environmental concerns and moral issues. The "Darker and Edgier" stuff the writer favors may have worked for its time, but now comic book sales are hitting all-time lows, and the realistic approach is proving not to endure with any kind of real longevity.

I look at Superfriends as basically, a simple beginner's "gateway" into the world of DC Comics. Like if you want a quick run through of who's who in DC Comics and its mythos (in particular, the silver age, pre-Crisis era) without having to do a ton of research ahead of time, I would probably show them Superfriends. Like, I personally, first heard and learned about characters like Firestorm and Darkseid through Superfriends.

I'll be the first to attest that Superfriends as a show, has not aged very well. It's a very, very campy depiction of superheroes looking back, but not campy in a tongue-in-cheek, "this is really supposed to be a parody" (a la the live-action Batman TV series from the 1960s) kind of way. If you prefer your superhero shows to be more "sophisticated" like the later stuff from the DCAU (i.e. Batman: The Animated Series and so forth), then this show really isn't for you.

I've been watching the show lately on MeToons, and I noticed right away that the dialogue doesn't seem natural. Like the characters always have to make a lot of expositional dialogue that makes it sound like the viewers couldn't figure out for themselves otherwise. For example, if Superman is going to use his freeze-breath then he literally has to say out loud that he's about to use his freeze-breath as if we wouldn't know or understand otherwise.

[Charles Knox]

The show is a safe way to introduce kids to superheroes. There is even an episode of Superfriends during the last season, where they retold the origin of Batman (voiced by Adam West).


https://superfriends.fandom.com/wiki/The_Fear

The writer, Alan Burnett would later on work on Batman The Animated Series.

[TMC]

Originally Posted by Charles Knox

The show is a safe way to introduce kids to superheroes. There is even an episode of Superfriends during the last season, where they retold the origin of Batman (voiced by Adam West).


https://superfriends.fandom.com/wiki/The_Fear

The writer, Alan Burnett would later on work on Batman The Animated Series.

I think that the final season of Superfriends, The Super Powers Team: Galactic Guardians was the best season of the series (at least since the Challenge of the Superfriends season, with the Legion of Doom). You can tell that the storytelling was getting more mature and emotionally complex. Adam West probably gives his most powerful and poignant performance as Batman in the "Fear" episode.





That was actually the first time that Batman's origin story was ever depicted on film or television. Keep in mind, that this was still less than four years away from the live-action movie with Michael Keaton. And on the live-action TV series from the 1960s with Adam West, we're only told in passing in the pilot episode that Bruce Wayne's parents were murdered.

They obviously, still had to skirt around stuff due to 1980s Saturday morning censorship issues. They couldn't actually show Bruce's parents be shot (instead, lightening represented the gun shots) or specifically say that they were murdered.

Either way, you would have never gotten an episode like "The Fear" in the earlier seasons of Superfriends, in which the heroes were always presented as being infallible.

There was another episode called "The Death of Superman", in which Superman actually dies (this was good eight years before the comics did a storyline on that) and it focuses on Firestorm's own grief and guilt over his role in Superman's apparent death.

[biffbronson]

Originally Posted by TMC

I've been watching the show lately on MeToons, and I noticed right away that the dialogue doesn't seem natural. Like the characters always have to make a lot of expositional dialogue that makes it sound like the viewers couldn't figure out for themselves otherwise. For example, if Superman is going to use his freeze-breath then he literally has to say outload that he's about to use his freeze-breath as if we wouldn't know or understand otherwise.

This is the same argument that fans today like to level at older comic book stories. There was a lot of "expositional dialogue" in Golden Age and Silver Age comics. Writers actually wrote long scripts, but no one ever said comics had to be realistic or have dialogue that is "natural." If you're looking for realism, you will likely find it in modern comics -- but you will ALSO find that most issues are just a 5-minute read. SuperFriends was a lot like the older comics, whose intended audience was 8-year-old children -- not adults like you and me. The older stories had a lot of charm and often were very clever -- I could not care less if the dialogue was not "natural." They wanted clarity for young readers, and that carried over to animation's young viewers.

As far as not aging well, I have no problem with that as a general assessment -- but expecting the characters to sound "natural" is trying to put the modern style on 50-year-old material, and not all of us like the heavy-handed gritty ultra-realistic rotoscoped fumetti crap that passes as comic character interpretation today, where every hero has 6-pack abs.

Frank Miller decided that Superman should not like Batman. Way to diss decades of comic history. The dystopian tone of modern comic character interpretation has made most of the work inappropriate for young fans, and the creators could not care less that their work has failed to maintain the kind of high sales and popularity of earlier decades.

[Charles Knox]

Originally Posted by TMC

I think that the final season of Superfriends, The Super Powers Team: Galactic Guardians was the best season of the series (at least since the Challenge of the Superfriends season, with the Legion of Doom). You can tell that the storytelling was getting more mature and emotionally complex. Adam West probably gives his most powerful and poignant performance as Batman in the "Fear" episode.





That was actually the first time that Batman's origin story was ever depicted on film or television. Keep in mind, that this was still less than four years away from the live-action movie with Michael Keaton. And on the live-action TV series from the 1960s with Adam West, we're only told in passing in the pilot episode that Bruce Wayne's parents were murdered.

They obviously, still had to skirt around stuff due to 1980s Saturday morning censorship issues. They couldn't actually show Bruce's parents be shot (instead, lightening represented the gun shots) or specifically say that they were murdered.

Either way, you would have never gotten an episode like "The Fear" in the earlier seasons of Superfriends, in which the heroes were always presented as being infallible.

There was another episode called "The Death of Superman", in which Superman actually dies (this was good eight years before the comics did a storyline on that) and it focuses on Firestorm's own grief and guilt over his role in Superman's apparent death.

H-B hould have submitted the episode for Daytime Emmy consideration.

[TMC]

Originally Posted by TMC

I look at Superfriends as basically, a simple beginner's "gateway" into the world of DC Comics. Like if you want a quick run through of who's who in DC Comics and its mythos (in particular, the silver age, pre-Crisis era) without having to do a ton of research ahead of time, I would probably show them Superfriends. Like, I personally, first heard and learned about characters like Firestorm and Darkseid through Superfriends.

I'll be the first to attest that Superfriends as a show, has not aged very well. It's a very, very campy depiction of superheroes looking back, but not campy in a tongue-in-cheek, "this is really supposed to be a parody" (a la the live-action Batman TV series from the 1960s) kind of way. If you prefer your superhero shows to be more "sophisticated" like the later stuff from the DCAU (i.e. Batman: The Animated Series and so forth), then this show really isn't for you.

I've been watching the show lately on MeToons, and I noticed right away that the dialogue doesn't seem natural. Like the characters always have to make a lot of expositional dialogue that makes it sound like the viewers couldn't figure out for themselves otherwise. For example, if Superman is going to use his freeze-breath then he literally has to say outload that he's about to use his freeze-breath as if we wouldn't know or understand otherwise.

Superfriends also unfortunately, came out during an era in which you couldn't show a lot violence in animated TV shows for kids. This pretty much explains why on Superfriends, hardly anybody was allowed to throw punches or get into any real physical altercations with one another. In the first season in particular (the Wendy, Marvin, and Wonder Dog season from 1973-74), the Superfriends team had to "reason" with the villains instead of actually using brawn to defeat them.

And even after that, Batman and Robin always seemed to use their gadgets to get out of trouble, Wonder Woman is always using her lasso to subdue a villain, and Superman just grabs villains or throws foreign objects instead of actually punching somebody in the face.

In the late 1960s, activists like Peggy Charren and her group Action for Children's Television were really beginning to breathe down networks' necks about how Saturday morning cartoons weren't "educational" enough. The idea that networks and animation studios had to tone down the violence really reared its ugly head after the assassinations of high profile political figures like Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert F. Kennedy in 1968.

This kind of explains why the 1970s were not a very good decade for action-adventure cartoon shows. Many of the big animated shows on American TV during that time period were dare I say, Scooby-Doo knock offs.

This how superhero animated shows were like the decade before Superfriends hit the air:

[TMC]

In this video take a look back at the 70s and 80s Saturday morning superhero cartoon, the Super Friends and some of their funny goofy moments. Frady Cat looks at the Super Friends biggest goofs where Green Lantern grew an extra arm and appeared at two places at the same time. Aquaman stands in front of the Justice League in the Hall of Justice while everyone looks frantically for him. Superman's cape turns blue and Batman's costume keeps changing. Hawkman and Black Vulcan both have similar issues with their costumes during the series run.

Plot goofs are looked at too, like how the Legion of Doom managed to erase Superman, Wonder Woman, and Green Lantern from history, but their super villains were just fine. Find out which episode Frady Cat thought was the best Super Friends episode ever, and look at the voices behind the Super Friends that sometimes came out of the wrong superhero.

See the faces of Danny Dark, voice of Superman, Michael Bell, voice of Zan and Gleek, Olan Soule the voice of Batman, and the voice of Wonder Woman, Shannon Farnon.

Also, in this video Frady Cat takes a quick look at the origin of Lex Luthor and other fun trivia facts.

• 0:00 Intro
• 0:35 Green Lantern in two places
• 2:30 Time travel mistake and origin of Lex Luthor
• 3:38 Costume bloopers
• 5:19 Voice actors and problems
• 6:51 Super Friends Fun facts

In this video I take a look at real life goofs from the Saturday morning TV series the Super Friends. These are some of the most hilarious Super Friends goofs and mistakes I could find from this classic television program from the 70's and 80's.

These funny mistakes include Batman, Aquaman, and Superman switching voices for no apparent reason, Hawkman, Black Vulcan, Batman, Robin, and the Green Lantern having major costume issues where parts of their costume mutate or disappear altogether.

Also, I ponder the amazingly hilarious scene where the Super Friends are all searching for Aquaman after he was just standing right in the middle of the Hall of Justice.

Plus, I this video has a couple of neat trivia facts about the Super Friends including some quick mention of the voice actors of Batman and Superman, Olan Soule and Danny Dark, and how the Super Friends inspired the Greatest American Hero, Ralph Hinkley to be a superhero.

RetroBlasting goes up, up and away to look at Hanna Barbera's Superfriends transition to Super Powers in 1984!

Welcome to our deep dive into the history of the beloved Super Friends cartoon series! Join us as we journey through the different iterations and versions of this iconic animated show, spanning from its debut in 1973 to its modern adaptations. From classic characters like Superman, Batman, and Wonder Woman to the introduction of new heroes like the Wonder Twins and formidable villains like Darkseid, we'll uncover the evolution of this legendary superhero ensemble.

Explore the evolution of animation styles, storylines, and character designs that shaped the Super Friends universe over the years including it's unfortunate try at a live action version (kinda) and it's arrival in the toy aisle as Kenner's Super Powers action figure line.

Whether you're a longtime fan or new to the world of Super Friends, this comprehensive retrospective is sure to delight and inform. Join us on this nostalgic journey through animated heroism and witness the enduring impact of the Super Friends legacy.

Was the Superfriends the worst superhero cartoon or the best superhero cartoon. Check out their best ten episodes before you decide! As SUPERHERO-POW goes down the list from the iconic show running from 1973 to 1986, total of nine seasons and 140 half hours!

Is there any other Superhero TV show more famous than the Superfriends? But did you know it had a deep dark secret? Back when it premiered in 1973, it was NOT what we all thought it was!!! Find out in this latest episode of Super-Hero Pow!

Are you up to the challenge of learning more about DC's Super Friends?

Nostalgic review of the classic Hanna Barbara cartoon series. From their transition from Super Friends to Super Powers Team.

It's the show that brought us the Wonder Twins AND made Aquaman a punch line, but the Super Friends is, arguably, the show that planted the seeds for almost all superhero media to come. Also, Wonder Dog.

More About Super Friends: Super Friends is an American animated television series about a team of superheroes, which ran from 1973 to 1986 on ABC as part of its Saturday morning cartoon lineup. It was produced by Hanna-Barbera and was based on the Justice League of America and associated comic book characters published by DC Comics.

In this video, look at the fun history, trivia, and even funny goofs from the early Batman cartoon animated series starting with Filmation's 1968 Batman to it's 1977 animated series, and Hanna Barbera's Super Friends Dark Knight that ran from the 70s to the 80s.

Batman's animated history first started in 1968 and for the longest animator's seemed to have a super hard time with his insignia and bat symbol that would often end up inverted, distorted, or even missing from scene to scene. The quick pace and lack of budget for animated Saturday morning shows would cause a lot of fun mistakes to show up on all series back then.

The voice actors for Batman and Robin started with Olan Soule and Casey Kasem in the '68 Saturday morning TV series created by Filmation. They went on to do the Scooby Doo movies team-up episodes and the Super Friends starting in 1973. But the live action caped crusaders from 1966, Adam West and Burt Ward would make a comeback taking over as the new Filmation version of the Dark Knight and the Boy Wonder in 1977. The Super Friends would begin production again in 1977 and the two series would air on two different networks creating two different versions of DC Comics' superhero, Batman.

Also, Ted Knight would do voice work both for Filmation and Hanna Barbera at least in the first season of the Super Friends. The 1977 cartoon series would feature the magical imp named Bat-mite which the Super Friends didn't have. Bat-mite was always getting into trouble and providing comic relief.

After the 1977 animated series was gone, Adam West would once again return to voice Batman taking over for Olan Soule on the Super Friends, while Burt Ward would sit this one out leaving Casey Kasem as the voice of Robin until the Super Friends were canceled for the last time.

[biffbronson]

If all you want is characters throwing punches, then all you needed was the Superman character in SuperFriends. Why not have him punch every villain into unconsciousness? Is that what you were looking for? How much better that would have been than to have a mouse taken out of the GEEC super-computer by Plastic Man, just throw a lot of punches and have plenty of exaggerated violence.

It's obvious SuperFriends is not at all to your liking, yet here you are trying to retroactively mold it into something it was never intended to be. How many "punches" were thrown in the first Superman (1978) film, yet that's a classic -- we don't need a violent mess to have a compelling story. SuperFriends had more creativity than the throwing of punches would've offered.

[TMC]

Originally Posted by biffbronson

Aside from the writer quoted above, I don't know of anyone who "hated" Wendy and Marvin. What a bunch of bull. The only "stain on the reputation of the superhero and comic book adaptation genres" is in the writer's mind. SuperFriends was a popular, innocuous series, and the comic book adaptation was highly successful as well. I was a pre-teen back then and I loved all incarnations of the animated series.

What a hatchet job. The writer fails to mention that in the initial conception of the series, SuperFriends always based its episodes on environmental concerns and moral issues. The "Darker and Edgier" stuff the writer favors may have worked for its time, but now comic book sales are hitting all-time lows, and the realistic approach is proving not to endure with any kind of real longevity.

Plenty of people apparently "hated" Wendy and Marvin:

The animated series originally had three Scrappies in the mascot/sidekick characters of Marvin, Wendy, and 'Wonderdog', two ordinary teenagers and their pet who dressed in superhero drag and whose roles in the series (especially Marvin's) were to do stupid but plot-enabling things. The characters were so annoying to even the pre-teens who were the primary audience of the show that they were replaced by the only marginally more acceptable Wonder Twins, a pair of teenaged alien superheroes and their pet space monkey Gleek, who filled the "get captured by the Monster of the Week" and "cause trouble through abject stupidity" roles until the series finally dumped them too and redid the format into a more traditional superhero show.

• How Marvin and Wendy From the Super Friends Joined the DC Universe
  
• Teen Titans Gave a Brutal End to the Super Friends' Most Infamous Heroes
  
• Flashback Friday: Wendy, Marvin, and Wonder Dog
  
• Superfriends Trouble Alert! (Whatever Happened to Wendy and Marvin?)
  
• Wendy and Marvin CAN be Useful, part 1

[TMC]

Originally Posted by biffbronson

This is the same argument that fans today like to level at older comic book stories. There was a lot of "expositional dialogue" in Golden Age and Silver Age comics. Writers actually wrote long scripts, but no one ever said comics had to be realistic or have dialogue that is "natural." If you're looking for realism, you will likely find it in modern comics -- but you will ALSO find that most issues are just a 5-minute read. SuperFriends was a lot like the older comics, whose intended audience was 8-year-old children -- not adults like you and me. The older stories had a lot of charm and often were very clever -- I could not care less if the dialogue was not "natural." They wanted clarity for young readers, and that carried over to animation's young viewers.

As far as not aging well, I have no problem with that as a general assessment -- but expecting the characters to sound "natural" is trying to put the modern style on 50-year-old material, and not all of us like the heavy-handed gritty ultra-realistic rotoscoped fumetti crap that passes as comic character interpretation today, where every hero has 6-pack abs.

Frank Miller decided that Superman should not like Batman. Way to diss decades of comic history. The dystopian tone of modern comic character interpretation has made most of the work inappropriate for young fans, and the creators could not care less that their work has failed to maintain the kind of high sales and popularity of earlier decades.

The dialogue often not sounding natural in Super Friends is even pointed out in this featurette for The Legendary Super Powers Show. So it isn't just me having this assessment:


It's touched upon beginning at the 6:50 mark. Super Friends, rightly or wrongly, was produced during an era where superhero shows that were aiming for a much younger audience had to overexplain everything. In essence, Super Friends was like illustrated radio, where you could close your eyes and still be able to follow the story very well.

Super Friends when you think about it, was in the same place where comic books were back in the 1950s, which were pretty quaint, simpleminded, and cornball. Comic books by the time that The Legendary Super Powers Show hit the air in 1984, were getting more complex and sophisticated.