Friday Flashback Episode 6

This week I have two of my favorite cartoons of all time. It should be no surprise that they are based on comic books. There have been some really great super hero cartoons in more recent years like the X-men and Bat-man shows from the 90's or the current Justice League cartoon but these were the originals for me. I grew up with these shows and they had a huge influence in my becoming a comic collector.

Spider-Man and his amazing friends took a ridiculous amount of liberties with the source material, but who cares if it's fun. Right? Spider-Man, Firestar, and Ice-man all go to college together and live at Aunt May's house with her prissy dog Ms. Lion. At some point they had a giant computer network installed into Aunt May's house that appears when they move the trophy on the mantle. I guess that they hope Aunt May has some kind of phobia of trophies and will not go near it. Aside from his interactions with his Amazing Friends, Spider-man's(Peter Parker) story is pretty true to the comics. Nerdy student lives with Aunt, fights crime in his spare time. Sounds right. Ice-man(Bobby Drake) was one of the original members of the X-men but I guess he decided that he wasn't getting a good enough education at Xavier's School for Gifted Children and decided to enroll at Empire State. Firestar(Angelica Jones) was created specifically for the cartoon but later found her way into the comics. Her heat power involves the use of microwaves. The last unaired season documented Peter and Bobby's battle with radiation poisoning due to their years of interaction with Angelica. ABC Family still shows re-runs of Amazing Friends so check it out when you have some time.

A bunch of super good guys vs. a bunch of super bad guys. It doesn't get any better than that. Challenge of the Super-Friends is not the first Super Friends show but I think that it was the best. The original Super-Friends consisted of Super-Man, Wonder-Woman, Bat-Man, and Aqua-Man. They were joined by two cornball kids and their dog. Average at best. The new huge group of Super-Friends is joined by two super powered twins and their space monkey. Still unnecessary but better. The true stars of the show were the Legion-of-Doom. Thirteen major villains from the DC universe who decided that if the Heroes can join forces, they should too. One of the cool parts of the show was seeing villains pair off against someone who wasn't their arch-enemy. Watching Sinestro square off with Bat-Man or Bizarro take on Wonder-Woman was always really cool for me as a huge comic book fan. I've recently watched a bunch of these episodes on DVD and they hold up pretty well.