Why the Superfriends?

That's a great question. Actually, it's not. A great question would've been "Why NOT the Superfriends?" A blog dedicated to the single longest running superhero cartoon in superhero cartoon history...a staple of Saturday mornings for an entire generation of kids...the first animated appearances of such DC Comics legends as Green Arrow, Plastic Man, Firestorm, Gorilla Grodd, Bizarro, Darkseid, etc. etc. This show had new content created quasi-consistently over the span of 12 years, and remained in syndication for many years after that. To this day there are still references to this show in the greater DC Universe...the Hall of Justice keeps popping up in new shows, cartoon and live action alike...the concept of The Legion of Doom often rears its collective villainous heads in new story arcs...and I know I'm not the only one who reads some Justice League and hears the voices of Danny Dark, Olan Soule, Jack Angel, Michael Rye, Shannon Farnon and Norman Alden in my head.

Not bad for a kids' cartoon show. Hell, tons of shows would kill for even a fraction of this kind of success and permanence in the cultural zeitgeist. But you know what bugs me? If you were to do a search online for Superfriends, you would find that there is a lot of nerd-hate and anger towards this show. That this is the reason Aquaman "sucked" for years... that The Wonder Twins and Gleek are the worst (more on them later)... that the plots were poor, the villains 1-dimensional, the heroes cardboard cutouts, and that the ethnic characters were just blatant stereotypes (also more on them later). While perhaps there is some truth to portions of this rhetoric, when it is being spewed forth by the same people that think every Batman should speak with a voice of a rusty chainsaw and think Big Bang Theory is a show that represents geek culture, I cant roll my eyes fast enough.

Thus, we have gotten to the point of the Superfriends Universe. It is my intention to make this blog a deep dive into this series...more than just Episode reviews, but a celebration of the mythos that was accidentally built by Hanna-Barbera over the span of 208 episodes. I'm looking at this series thru a life-long comics reader's lens. I'll be highlighting continuity (or lack thereof)... attempting to explain those guffaws and hiccups in the timeline (like, is there more than 1 Atlantis?)... as well as making a case for the inclusion of other cartoon shows into this Universe, such as Ruby-Spears Plastic Man and Hanna-Barbera's Blue Falcon and Dynomutt...

Voice Actor spotlights! Untold Stories! The Bat-Vehicles in-depth! Character profiles! Super Friends the Comic Book! A look at Superfriends merchandise! Superfriends in live-action! Every single useless thing Zan turned himself into! (just kidding, buddy! kind of...) So please, join me on this trip thru the Superfriends Universe! I hope to make casual fans into even bigger fans, and maybe I can turn some of the haters into fans too...