The Super Friends #24

I have vague recollections of seeing the Super Friends cartoon on a Saturday morning, but couldn’t tell you for sure whether it starred the original Wendy and Marvin (plus Wonder Dog), or the later Wonder Twins Jan and Zayna (plus Gleek). Nevertheless, the comic of the same name was a firm favourite in the 70s, mostly for the fabulous Ramona Fradon artwork. That, and the wide array of unusual guest stars, and E Nelson Bridwell’s sly adherence to some pretty obscure DC continuity.

This issue was not written by ENB however; it was penned by Sergius O’ Shaugnessy. Who he, you might wonder? Well, that’s one of Dennis O’Neil’s pseudonyms. Not sure why he was using his pen name for this issue, but perhaps he wanted to escape the justified wrath of enraged Aquaman fans.

There is a moral to be had from this tale, and that is that no one ever has to be a fish out of water. Step forward one Arthur Curry, King of the Seven Seas, who spends most of the issue wallowing in self-pity because he is in a desert, and really is pretty useless. The Super Friends, at one point, even forget about him when making an escape. Poor Aquaman.

Still, Aquaman does save the day by mentally commanding some alien electric eel type creatures. He then goes for a nice soothing ‘rest’ in their water tank. Poor Aquaman.

There are some other oddities in the plot; at one point the baddies knock out the Super Friends with a sleeping gas that just so happens to come from a planet with a red sun. As the editorial note reminds us, Superman is powerless under a red sun, but as far as I can tell, he isn’t under a red sun!

This was a charming, if lightweight read, drawn by the best Wonder Woman artist that never was, Ramona Fradon.

Bee-Boy awarded this comic 3 stings out of 5