Wednesday, October 24, 2012

Animated World of DC Comics: The Super Friends battle "Terror From The Phantom Zone' (1978)

What people forget about Challenge of the Super Friends is that it was originally a 1 hour show. The first half continued the team adventures from the previous year, and the second half was the Justice League vs. the Legion of Doom, with the Wonder Twins conveinently in absentia (though they'd encounter some of the Legion members, including Lex Luthor, in later seasons).

Just in time for Halloween, we offer up "Terror From The Phantom Zone". Three Kryptonian outlaws, long banished to the Phantom Zone, somehow find their way to Earth, bringing with them some Red Kryptonite, which is the first time that variation on the Kryptonite was used in the franchise, and would be used again a couple more times in succeeding seasons.

Edit, 6/20/22: We have located the episode title card:


In some ways, this would be a precursor to Superman battling three different Kryptonian foes in "Superman 2", three years later, and that was actually a better story.....!

Rating: A-.

2 comments:

magicdog said...

I remember this one - unfortunately it's as full of plot holes as any other SF toon!

How did Supes keep screwing up when he was trying to redirect the lava in Naples? That was never explained.

Zan & Jana know how their powers work, so why would they make such a rookie mistake as to touch once the bad guys were on ice?

Zan turns to liquid nitrogen while Gleek is sitting on him... if Gleek thought his butt was cold BEFORE.....

You'd think Supes would have kept some blue K after that adventure. Everyone and his brother seemed to have green or red K to throw at him!

hobbyfan said...

In re.: Wonder Twins: Sophomore jinx, anyone?

This to me was the first case where the Donny & Marie vibe came into play with them.

The writers didn't do enough research and there was no need for continuity back then.