A Saturday morning television staple for Gen X-ers growing up during the ‘70s and ‘80s was ABC’s Super Friends, Hanna Barbera’s take on DC Comics’ Justice League of America. When they had enough shows for a syndication package, Hanna Barbera shopped it around, bringing the heroes to weekday afternoons; however, ABC decided they didn’t want the competition, so they dropped the series from the 1983-84 lineup.
Super Friends aficionados are aware Hanna Barbera went right on creating new adventures, eight episodes or 24 cartoons depending on how you count them. They have been dubbed “The Lost Episodes,” but “rare” is a better term because the trio of “Mxyzptlk’s Revenge”/ “Roller Coaster”/“Once Upon A Poltergeist” was shown the following year when Super Friends returned to ABC, and the remainder aired a decade later on USA Network’s The Superman/Batman Adventures in 1995.
The “lost” adventures feature a wide roster of heroes teaming up in various combinations. Naturally, there are the Super Friends regulars, Aquaman, Batman, Robin, Superman (who also appears as Superboy) and Wonder Woman, as well as Wonder Twins Zan and Jayna and their monkey Gleek. Many JLA members also make return appearances to the series: Atom, Green Lantern, Flash, Hawkgirl, and Hawkman. In an attempt to provide ethnic diversity, characters created for the show augmented the Super Friends ranks. They are Native American Apache Chief, African American Black Vulcan, Japanese Samurai, and Hispanic El Dorado.
The cartoons present familiar villains and storylines. The bad guys the Super Friends tangle with in the set include Mr. Mxyzptlk, Grodd and Giganta, Brainiac, Bizarro and The Legion of Doom altogether in the best one of the bunch, “The Revenge of Doom,” a throwback to Challenge of the Super Friends, an earlier and fan-favorite version of the series. Sci-fi fans should recognize “Playground of Doom,” where giant alien children mess around on the planet, and “The Recruiter,” which finds Superman and Wonder Woman kidnapped and forced to play in some form of intergalactic football where the losing team dies.
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