DVD : Challenge of the Super Friends - The First Season (DC Comics Classic Collection)

In association with Amazon.com

Rating:

- SUPER FRIENDS UNITE !!
This DVD set is sure to be a hit with Super Friends fans of all ages. Growing up as a young boy in the 1970's I didn't have a worry in the world, because the Super Friends were there to protect me. Each week the Super Friends battled the Legion of Doom and tried to protect the world from evil. This show is pure entertainment for the whole family. The DVD picture and sound are really good but the video does suffer from age related issues and debris but not enough to detract from the overall viewing experience. This show contains some of the greatest Super Heroes and memorable Villains DC Comics has to offer. After all these years the Super Friends message is still evident, good conquers evil and truth, honesty and justice are standards to live by. Some very nice special features are included in this set and I found them interesting to watch. Even though I'm much older now, I still enjoy the opening theme song and characters from this show. They just don't make them like this anymore, five stars all the way!

DVD Features:
* Available Subtitles: English, Spanish, French
* Audio Tracks: English (Dolby Digital 2.0 Mono), Spanish (Dolby Digital 2.0 Mono)
* Commentary by: on 2 episodes by comic book writers Geoff Johns and Mark Waid
* Contains All 16 episodes from the 1978 season
* "Saturday, Sleeping Bags & Super Friends" a retrospective
* Character bios

Episodes Include:
- Wanted: The Super Friends
- Invasion of the Fearians
- The World's Deadliest Game
- The Time Trap
- Trial of the Super Friends
- Monolith of Evil
- The Giants of Doom
- Secret Origins of the Super Friends
- Revenge of Gorilla City
- Swamp of the Living Dead
- Conquerors of the Future
- The Final Challenge
- Fairy Tale of Doom
- Doom's Day
- Super Friends: Rest in Peace
- History of Doom

Rating:

- Ever wanted to be 11 again??
This amazing DVD box set is a time machine. It will instantly place any viewer over the age of about 30 back in front of their TV set on Saturday morning chowing down on the Crunchberries in their pyjamas out in the living room, absolutely rivited to whatever cushion or bean bag they had at their disposal as the fate of the whole world would be battled over week after week. This is hand-drawn animation for TV at it's attention deficit disordered best, with fantastic color that provides instant wish-fulfillment for any other grown up 11 year old who like myself was forced to grow up with the cruelty of black & white TV as some obligatory punishment for an offense that was never quite understood. All the cool kids had color, we had B&W, but you know, I think we maybe enjoyed it a bit more because we had to use our imaginations to color what we were seeing in grayscales.

The original Superfriends were great of course, and as a classmate from grad school pointed out to me once, one of the important things about the show is that these super heroes were FRIENDS before all else. Yes they worked together to fight crime and protect the American consumer culture which spawned them, but they cared about each other just like the rest of us care about our friends & family. It made them more human, and even apprentice super heroes Marvin, Wendy (one of my earliest crushes) along with the annoying Wonder Dog and later Gleek the Super Chimp always came across as actual people. With "Challenge of the Superfriends" the core Justic League outfit was expanded with the addition of several other DC Comics heroes. There were even ethnic super heroes added for cross-cultural appeal, all of them incorruptable, honest, modest and totally devoted to upholding justice.

BUT THE REAL STARS OF THE SHOW WERE THE VILLAINS!! and that's where this particular 16 episode series really outshined all other incarnations of The Superfriends. Without a good villain super heroes can be kind of boring, even silly, and this series' creators were well aware that while we may have been rooting for The Flash & Green Lantern, the real reason we kept tuning in week after week was because of the fantastic array of super villains they populated this series with: Black Manta and Solomon Grundy were always my favorites. They had a Dark Side mentality to them that allowed the kids watching to actually precieve a threat that required Superman or Wonder Woman to intervene on the behalf of mankind lest our whole planet be doomed.

Super villains also require super plots at global domination to make them memorable, and this show had plots to set the world on fire, send it back or forwards into time, enemy invaders from the cosmos who were indifferent to the meek, humble ordinary humans populating the planet. No nation was safe from the chicanery of The Riddler or Captain Cold either -- the Russians, Chinese and Arabian nations were just as likely to be clobbered by some super plot as the USA, linking those of us on the world together in needing to oppose tyranny from wherever it came. The USSR may have been bad news but they weren't as bad as the Legion of Doom.

Gone are the days of hand-drawn animated cartoons of this nature, and this DVD set is a treasure trove of material that continues to look fresh and exciting when placed next to the computer rendered animation of today. Sure some of it was goofy, the repetitive, over-excited music gets kind of routine after a while, and some of the plots border on the ridiculous: Trapping the Superfriends in the classics of literature anyone? It may have been clumsy but ultimately that episode might have encouraged young viewers to read the books in question, so in the end you wound up learning something even if it wasn't as cool as "Swamp of the Living Dead" or "Revenge on Gorilla City".

I simply cannot recommend this box set enough: Any kid will be delighted and any parent will be oddly compelled to go out and find a box of Quisp or Freakies to wolf down. Just remember to get an extra box of cereal for the kids too, since traditions are best handed down from generation to generation intact.

Rating:

- Fantastic fun!
I love Challenge of the Superfriends. I,m a big comic book fan. I remember watching it every day after school. This show premiered in 1978 and is very popular. It's a classic version of the Justice League of America against the deadly Legion of Doom, 13 of the nastiest villains that include, Lex Luthor, Captain Cold, Sinestro, Solomon Grundy, Bizzaro, Black Manta ,Gorilla Grodd, Brainiac, Cheetah, Toyman, Riddler, Giganta, and Scarecrow. The epsisodes are fun and amusing. Kids will love this show. I watch them almost every month.

Rating:

- i love this one as much as my boys do!!!!
with the shape of t.v. today(and cartoons and channels like cartoon network that don't really show kid friendly cartoons anymore) my wife and i try our best to keep an eye out as to what our boys(8 and 6) get to see.we use a lot of dvds of old t.v. shows and cartoons to better keep an eye on what they see. with that in mind this set is great as it has heros that i grew up with and even bad guys i grew up with and this show is still fun without getting to graphic or any of the things that we feel are wrong with todays cartoons. i remember watching these as a kid and i get a real pleasure out of watching these again with my boys and seeing the look of wonder and the way they get into the stories and it is still fun to watch them myself(ok a few times i watch them after the boys are in bed,what can i say,their still very good shows. the extras are great and the transfers are the best,so give them a try and help the super friends defeat the bad guys one more time.

Rating:

- Grudge Match
Get ready to experience again the ultimate battle of good versus evil in the classic animated comic book series "Challenge of the Super Friends - The First Season". From their secretive swamp-based headquarters, the Hall of Doom, thirteen of the most sinister super villains have banded together for a single objective: intergalactic conquest. Now, the fate of the entire universe rests in the hands of the eleven powerful members of the Justice League of America. Based on the popular DC Comics' superheroes, "Challenge of the Super Friends" was one of the early "Super Friends" cartoons produced by the creative team of William Hanna and Joseph Barbera in the mid 1970s. The Saturday morning favorite premiered on ABC in 1978. "Challenge of the Super Friends" featured a colorful roster of heroes and villains and old-fashioned comic book adventure. The 1978 version ranks as one of the most memorable of the "Super Friends" cartoons due to its simple "Heroes versus Villains" storylines and no goofy junior sidekicks. Though the stories, characters and animation are pretty straightforward, the half-hour animated series does offer some decent amusement.

If you grew up watching the TV show as a kid, then "Challenge of the Super Friends - The First Season" will truly impress you. All 16 episodes are presented in their original full screen format. The 2-Disc DVD contains a fine-looking video transfer and a fair Dolby Digital sound. Its special features include two audio commentaries on selected episodes, character biographies, the 14-minute "Saturday, Sleeping Bags & Super Friends: A Retrospective" featurette and promos of other Warner animated titles. Overall, "Challenge of the Super Friends" gets a "B-"

page 3 of 11