Challenge of the Superfriends
Super Friends was a long-running Hanna-Barbera-produced cartoon based on DC Comics’ Justice League of America comic book. For the first couple seasons, the show generally stayed away from comic book super-villains, having the Super Friends (the core group was Superman, Wonder Woman, Batman, Robin, and Aquaman) fight made-for-TV villains. But the third season, also known as Challenge of the Superfriends — they seemed to go back and forth on whether it was Super Friends (two words) or Superfriends (one word) — delivered a bunch of comic book villains. Thirteen in total, including heavy hitters like Lex Luthor and the Riddler and more obscure rogues like Giganta and Toyman. As if thirteen comic book baddies working together to take down the Super Friends wasn’t cool enough, the group went by the name the Legion of Doom, which is pretty awesome by any standard. By Saturday morning broadcast TV standards circa 1978, it was incredibly awesome.
One of my major gripes with modern streaming services is nobody is streaming Super Friends. I mean, HBO streams a bunch of other DC Comics-based movies and shows, I don’t know why they don’t stream Super Friends. Thankfully Super Friends is available on DVD. You can get the Challenge of the Superfriends DVD for nine bucks from Best Buy. Also check the your local library’s DVD section — I’m always pleasantly surprised how many old animated shows I can find at the library.