Legion World Forums LEGION COMPANION The Anywhere Machine Super Friends

LOL

I remember on the commentary track for one of the Challenge of the Super Friends episodes, Mark Waid and Geoff Johns joke about how one nameless bank robber is obviously Casey Kasem doing double-duty as both Robin and the robber.

Rocky, what are your sources for all the cool behind-the-scenes stuff that you've posted?

Would you believe Internet Movie Database, Wikipedia, an attentive ear and 30-plus years of loving this show?

Just because.

Here's something I've wondered for years: Why was Aquaman the fourth of the big heroes on Super Friends instead of, say, Flash or Green Lantern? DC always has stated that they consider their primary five characters to be Supes, Bats, WW, Flash and GL. So, why Aquaman? He may have been more familiar to Saturday morning viewers because of the Filmation cartoon in the late '60s, but it still seemed like he was out of place.

I guess you might as well ask, why did Filmation do AQUAMAN in 1967? I figure Hanna-Barbera was just following their lead when SUPER-FRIENDS started 6 years later.


1966:
THE NEW ADVENTURES OF SUPERMAN
(w/Superboy)

1967:
THE SUPERMAN-AQUAMAN HOUR OF ADVENTURE
(w/Flash, Green Lantern, Hawkman, Atom, Teen Titans, Justice League of America, and RERUNS of the previous year's Superman-- cheap bastards)

1968:
THE BATMAN-SUPERMAN HOUR
(and still more reruns of the same Superman cartoons-- did they think no one would notice?)


Due to the local Philly station's long-running 90-minute show CARTOON CORNERS, the '68 series was run here about 7 AM, making it difficult to see unless you had insomnia, but I always liked to sleep a little later on weekends.

My best memories as a child was looking forward to Saturday morning cartoons so I could see the next episode of Super Friends!

I was already into reading the JLA comic so this was a real treat for a kid with an overly active imagination.

Rocky, I thought that maybe, with your knowledge of Super Friends behind-the-scenes trivia, you could help answer something that's been confusing me:

I've read the story about how Shannon Farnon lost the role of Wonder Woman after several consecutive seasons of consistently excellent voice acting.

IIRC, voice director Wally Burr (who had been instrumental in getting Farnon cast as Wonder Woman in the first place) had a final falling-out with Joe Barbera and never worked for Hanna-Barbera again. Burr was replaced on Super Friends by Gordon Hunt, who had fallen in love with B.J. Ward and promised her the role of Wonder Woman.

But how does that explain the interim Wonder Woman voice actress, Constance Cawlfield, who played the role on the next-to-last season of Super Friends (and, IMO, was so bad she couldn't help but make Ward look good by comparison?)

I really don't know. I agree that Cawlfield's voice was not appropriate for WW. She sounded too "cute", for want of a better word. Maybe BJ Ward wasn't available? I'll see if I can find out anything.

Fanfie, there's a nice interview with Shannon Farnon here that mentions the recast, though it was her recollection that BJ Ward took over the role immediately. There is a correction in the interview stating that it may have been a network decision regarding Cawlfield taking the role for the 1984 season. I'll see if I can find anything else.

I grew up loving Super Friends, but looking back, I'm not really a fan of the voice acting. Granted, it's been a while since I saw an episode, but my remembrance is that they were mostly corny and wooden portrayals. To be fair, this is my typical response to voice acting of the '70s and '80s and prior and especially to most Hanna-Barbera cartoons in general. Their human characters were often almost as exaggerated and goofy in their speech as their animal characters. Even as a kid, I always felt HB was more kitzchy and had a lower standard that Warner Brothers.

Of the major SF characters, I'd say the least wooden of them was whomever voiced Aquaman. Aquaman always sounded like a caring dad-type, and I think I subconsciously really dug that.

Wonder Woman, I always thought was more harsh and masculine-sounding than she needed to be. I can see the reasoning for that, her being an Amazon warrior and all. I guess Lynda Carter is more like the standard of how I'd prefer her to sound...not prissy at all but very feminine.

Batman, Superman and Robin were about as generic as you could get. Ironically, Zan and Jayna (especially Jayna) had very nice voices.

As critical as I am of H-B, I still really love Scooby Doo and all of its classic voices. Casey Casem as Shaggy was over-the-top, but he was consistent and enjoyable that way. Frank Welker as Fred is one of the most distinctive voices in cartoon annals. I love Velma's sound a lot, and Daphne's very normal sound just balances everything out. And Scoob, of course, is a masterpiece!

SF definitely is a product of its time. In retrospect, the writing is a cut above most of HB's output at the time(with a few exceptions, Drak Pack being a notable one), but the standard for kid's cartoons in the late '70s and early '80s was low.

Of actors portraying the five characters who appeared in all seasons, only Danny Dark (Superman) and Casey Kasem (Robin) were with he show from start to finish. As noted above, WW was voiced by three different actresses, with Shannon Farnon being the best remembered. Aquaman was voiced by Norman Alden the first two seasons (that's the voice you're probably referring to, Lardy) and Bill Callaway thereafter. Olan Soule voiced Batman for the first ten years, at which point Adam West took over the role.

Rocky, thank you so much.

Lardy, I can appreciate what you're saying, but my taste in voice acting seems to be very different from yours. I like the old-fashioned style of voice acting because I think it made the characters seem larger than life, whereas the modern style of voice acting comes across to me as flat and lacking in verve.

Fickles, I can certainly understand that. One thing I'm not crazy about is the tendency to cast big-name actors in animated features. It kinda takes you out of the movie, and in many cases you just know it would've been better with other voices. Pixar chooses their big names very well, I think, but Dreamworks and the others mostly feel like vanity projects for the actors.

I think there's a lot of quality voice acting across the board in today's television animation. I especially love the voices on Futurama. There's a fun, retro, over-the-top quality to many of the voices on Family Guy and its spin-offs and especially to Spongebob and the newer Nickelodeon and Cartoon Network stuff. I also love the voice work on many of the WB's high profile superhero stuff, like Brave and the Bold and especially the Batman Animated series of the '90s.

Agreed on the big-name actors thing, although even casting cult actors throws me off most of the time. I love Michael Ironside, but I can't watch the 90s and 00s DC cartoons without thinking, "Oh, Darkseid sounds like Ham Tyler from 'V'." Then, too, I'm so biased in favor of Frank Welker's Darkseid voice from the last two seasons of Super Friends that I find it hard to accept anyone else in the role.

>snip<
I ao love you for this...bwahahahahahahahaha

My best friend LOVES the WB cartoons, including SUPERMAN, and will go on at length about them any chance he gets. And this includes Michael Ironside (a fave of mine), who I never realized was Darkseid (but mostly because I've only seen a handful of them, WB pissed me off early with their haphazard chaotic scheduling-- NEVER knew when they'd have new episodes or reruns, so it very quickly became impossible to tape the damned things).


But to me, the guy from SUPER POWERS was Darkseid. I never connected him as the voice of Fred from SCOOBY-DOO!!!

I've been rediscovering this season the last few days, and now I think it's actually better than I originally gave it credit for. Among other things, it's pretty darn cool to hear Frank Welker do double duty as both Darkseid and Colonel Steve Trevor in the episode where Darkseid impersonates Trevor. Still got several episodes to go, will comment here if anything else stands out like that.

I finished watching the rest of the episodes of the final season. They're not all classics, but even the weaker ones have their moments.

The standouts would have to be "The Death of Superman" and "The Fear", the former having great character moments for Firestorm and Batman, and the latter being basically a dry run for the excellent Batman cartoons of the 90s (it can't be a coincidence that the head writer and story editor this season was Alan Burnett, who went on to be a writer/producer on the 90s Batman.)

New interview with Shannon Farnon:

http://www.comicbookresources.com/?page=article&id=57991

What a great interview! And, yes, to me she will always be the voice of Wonder Woman. The other day, when The Boyfriend and I were in Louisiana for a few days, I saw a statue of a heron. In my best Shannon/Wonder Woman I cried "Great heron!"

Rocky, LOL

Seriously, though, I posted that interview especially for you, and I'm glad you enjoyed it.

So apparently Super Friends debuted on September 8, 1973.

Happy 50th Anniversary, Super Friends!

Here's to 50 more years of delighting generations young and old and everywhere in between!

Thanks for the heads up, EDE.

I actually watched all of Super Friends during Covid. It's tough sometimes watching cartoons I loved as a kid, because now I can see what a steaming pile of cheaply made guano it is. Most cartoons I watched as a kid are unwatchable now. Still, I watched every episode of Super Friends.

One episode was quite noteworthy. The third episode of season 1 - Professor Goodfellow's G.E.E.C - made my jaw drop. Professor Goodfellow had invented a computer that did much of people's work for them. There were driverless cars delivering groceries to homes, and the Professor used the phrase "if you subscribe to my service."

I was amazed at how prophetic this episode was! And from a kiddie show in 1973!

Yeah, I remember being surprised by how good the plots overall, and especially in the first season, were the last time I watched it.