Super Friends: The Legendary Super Powers Show

Super Friends: The Legendary Super Powers Show
Also known as	Super Friends VII
Genre	Adventure / Animation / Fantasy / Sci-Fi
Created by	E. Nelson Bridwell Carmine Infantino Julius Schwartz (consultants)
Written by	Alan Burnett Gerry Conway Rich Fogel Cynthia Friedlob Glenn Leopold William M. Marston Al Milgrom John Semper Joe Shuster Jerry Siegel Jeff Segal Marc Scott Zicree
Directed by	Ray Patterson (Supervising) Oscar Dufau
Creative director(s)	Iwao Takamoto
Presented by	Hanna-Barbera (Warner Bros. Television) DC Comics
Voices of	Jack Angel René Auberjonois Michael Bell William Callaway Constance Cawlfield Danny Dark Fernando Escandon Buster Jones Stan Jones Casey Kasem Stanley Ralph Ross Olan Soule Mark L. Taylor B.J. Ward Frank Welker Adam West
Narrated by	William Woodson
Composer(s)	Hoyt Curtin and Paul DeKorte
Country of origin	United States
Original language(s)	English
No. of seasons	1
No. of episodes	8 (list of episodes)
Production
Executive producer(s)	Joseph Barbera (Un-Credited) William Hanna(Un-Credited) Margaret Loesch (Supervising)
Producer(s)	Kay Wright
Editor(s)	Michael Bradley David Cowan Mary Gleason Jon Johnson Carol Lewis Catherine MacKenzie Kerry Williams Jerry Winicki Cecil Broughton Daniels Mclean Terry Moore Joe Sandusky Giv Iverson
Running time	30 minutes (including commercials)
Broadcast
Original channel	ABC
Original run	September 8, 1984 – August 31, 1985
Chronology
Preceded by	Super Friends
Followed by	The Super Powers Team: Galactic Guardians
External links
Website

Super Friends: The Legendary Super Powers Show is an American animated television series about a team of superheroes which ran from 1984^[1] to 1985^[2] on ABC. It was produced by Hanna-Barbera and is based on the Justice League and associated comic book characters published by DC Comics.

Format

Super Friends: The Legendary Super Powers Show was the first Super Friends series in a new format since 1979's The World's Greatest Super Friends. Continuing the previous three years' policy of producing short stories, this series' format was two stories per half hour, so all the separate stories were ten minutes long each. Furthermore, the Wonder Twins were largely supplanted as audience identification figures by Firestorm, a well established teenage superhero in the DC Comics Universe.

Toyline tie-in

Unlike previous series, Super Friends: The Legenary Super Powers Show was produced to tie-in with the toyline of the same name produced by Kenner. The general story, as detailed in the mini-comics that accompanied the figures, was that the major heroes of Earth had teamed up to fight Darkseid and his villains.

Characters

Super Friends/Justice League of America

Thirteen heroes made up the Super Friends. They were:

• Superman
• Batman
• Robin
• Wonder Woman
• Green Lantern
• Firestorm
• Black Vulcan
• Gleek
• Apache Chief
• Samurai
• El Dorado
• Wonder Twins (Zan and Jayna)

According to DC writer/historian Mark Waid, Aquaman's sole appearance in The Legendary Super Powers Show comes via his appearance within the opening credits. The same is true for The Flash and Hawkman.

This was the first time Wonder Woman was animated with the =w= symbol on her costume instead of the eagle design, this carried over into the final series Galactic Guardians, which led to Justice League in 2001, where she wears a modified version of the =w= symbol. She was voiced by Susan Eisenberg in this series. Lynda Carter was unable to reprise this role for animation because she was busy with her singing career, commercials for Maybelline cosmetics, and television films.

The series was also noteworthy for using Adam West as the voice of Batman, two decades after the end of his live action television series of Batman. West replaced Olan Soule and would continue through the subsequent Galactic Guardians series.

Villains

• Darkseid – Outside of the comic books, boom tubes have been seen on a number of occasions. They are first seen in the last two seasons of the Super Friends animated series, Super Friends: The Legendary Super Powers Show and The Super Powers Team: Galactic Guardians on a number of occasions. Here, they are referred to as "Star Gates," and they are used by the natives of Apokolips, though without the sonic boom caused by boom tubes. New Genesis was never shown or mentioned.
• Kalibak – His appearance was not as brutish a later TV incarnations, more like the original Jack Kirby design for the character. He was almost always depicted as boastful, dull-witted and ineffectual against the heroes.
• Desaad
• Brainiac – The mechanical version of Brainiac appeared in the episodes "The Wrath of Brainiac" and "The Village of Lost Souls". In "The Wrath of Brainiac," Brainiac reveals that he shed his earlier appearance when he worked alongside Darkseid.
• Mirror Master – Mirror Master appeared in an episode entitled "Reflections in Crime". Interestingly enough the Flash doesn't appear in this episode. In the episode, Mirror Master sets about trapping the Super Friends in this particular episode inside mirrors called the sixth dimension. The Super Friends managed to escape and trap Mirror Master in a House of Mirrors.
• Lex Luthor – He appeared in the opening and the episodes "No Honor Among Super Thieves" (in which acquires his power suit from the comics of then), "Case of the Shrinking Super Friends" and "The Mask of Mystery".
• Mister Mxyzptlk – In this series, Mxyzptlk's name is pronounced as Miks-ill-plik (backwards, Kilp-ill-skim) and he takes to tormenting all the members of the team, even when Superman is absent.
• The Robber Baron and Sleeves
• Dollmaker

For this series, Lex Luthor and Brainiac were completely revamped to resemble their comic book counterparts.

List of episodes

Cast

• Jack Angel – Samurai
• René Auberjonois – Desaad
• James Avery – Mirror Master (in "Reflections in Crime")
• Michael Bell – Zan, Gleek, Captain Mystery/Sidney Wanamaker (in "Mask of Mystery")
• Gregg Berger – Benny the Bungler (in "Mr. Mxyzptlk and the Magic Lamp")
• Arthur Burghardt – General (in "Mr. Mxyzptlk and the Magic Lamp")
• Howard Caine – Dr. Dan Corwin (in "Island of the Dinosoids")
• Connie Cawlfield – Wonder Woman
• Danny Dark – Superman
• Fernando Escandon – El Dorado
• Patrick Fraley – Dr. Corwin's assistant (in "Island of the Dinosoids")
• Liz Georges – Little Superman (in "Uncle Mxyzptlk")
• Buster Jones – Black Vulcan
• Stanley Jones – Lex Luthor, Sleeves (in "Mask of Mystery")
• Casey Kasem – Robin
• Mary McDonald-Lewis – Lois Lane (in "Mister Mxyzptlk and the Magic Lamp")
• Mickey McGowan – Princess Tara (in "The Royal Ruse")
• Stanley Ralph Ross – Brainiac
• Michael Rye – Apache Chief, Green Lantern
• Olan Soule – Professor Martin Stein (Beginning with this version, Adam West replaced Soule as the voice of Batman)
• Mark Taylor – Ronald Raymond/Firestorm
• Frank Welker – Darkseid, Kalibak, Mister Mxyzptlk, Dollmaker (in "The Case of the Dreadful Dolls")
• Adam West – Batman
• Bill Woodson - Narrator

Note: Betty Jean Ward also provided voices for the show, but she's not credited. The intro and title card announcer for this show was Dick Tufeld.

Crew

• Gordon Hunt - Recording Director

DVD release

• Warner Home Video released The Complete Series of Super Friends: The Legendary Super Powers Show on DVD^[3] on August 7, 2007.

See also

• Super Powers Collection

References

External links

• Super Friends: The Legendary Super Powers Show at Big Cartoon DataBase
• Super Friends: The Legendary Super Powers Show at the Internet Movie Database
• Super Friends: The Legendary Super Powers Show at TV.com