The show begins with the same swamp shot that opens the majority of the sixteen Challenge of the Superfriends episodes. Per tradition, we pan past our old friends Winking Alligator and Shuffling Alligator and continue on to catch the Darth Vader’s Helmet-inspired Hall of Doom as it rises from the water. Since their headquarters are self-contained and spends most of its time underwater, I’m still not sure why they feel they have to surface each time they hold a meeting.

Cutting inside, the scene is immediately set for comedy. In a rather hilarious attempt at machismo, we find Black Manta lecturing a particularly petulant-looking Lex Luthor. Note to Luthor: Would-be world emperors should probably not be seen sulking as they take lip from a fellow whose chief distinction is that he’s the archenemy of Aquaman. Seriously, that’s just embarrassing. Next week: A sullen Brainiac takes smack talk from Bugs Meany, the nemesis of Encyclopedia Brown, and then flips Bugs the bird after the latter turns away.

"I don’t care what your newest scheme is," Black Manta declares. "I’m going to take care of the Superfriends my own way!" The mind boggles. Let’s see, Black Manta has a boat, and…well, that’s about it. He has a boat. It’s snazzy, and goes underwater, but I’m still not entirely convinced he’ll be bringing about the destruction of Superman or Green Lantern with it.

Luthor lamely responds by asserting that his current plan is "ingenious." (Yes, the Justice League’s fate is sealed already.) In fact, Luthor promises, soon "there won’t be any Superfriends to take care of." Uhm, won’t that be because you’ve…already taken care of them? And as we shall see, the plan, even if it works, does leave some Superfriend around to be ‘taken care of.’ So he doesn’t even have that right.

Black Manta understandably remains unconvinced, retorting, "I’ve heard that story before." And the thing is, he’s right. Lex Luthor, the archenemy of friggin’ Superman, is being sassed by a guy whose primary supervillain responsibility is to make sure the Legion’s of Doom water fountain works, and he’s just got to sit there and take it. Man, if the Superfriends had a tape of this, they’d laugh themselves into oblivion.

If Luthor is strangely content to be Black Manta’s bitch, however, the latter quickly complies when told to shut up by Solomon Grundy. And so, having been saved from ridicule in the same manner as a high school science nerd under the protection of the toughest guy on the varsity football team, Luthor lays out this week’s scheme.

"Tell me, what would become of the Superfriends if three of their most powerful members were to vanish off the face of the Earth?" Well, on the one hand, that would be pretty dire. I mean, the Superfriends really only have about three powerful members. I mean, get rid of Superman and Green Lantern and…. OK, the Superfriends really only have about two powerful members. Oh, wait, the Flash. Yeah, he’s pretty monty. Yep, that would be bad.

Of course, the Legion has in the previous six adventures already achieved this scenario a number of times. Wonder Woman, Black Vulcan and Hawkman were stuck in a black hole in an earlier episode. Batman, Robin, Wonder Woman and Green Lantern were once captured and actually teleported into the Hall of Doom. Superman, Black Vulcan and Hawkman [Note to Justice League: Don’t field away teams two thirds of which consist of Black Vulcan and Hawkman] were trapped in the middle of the Earth on another occasion. Oh, and don’t forget when Batman & Robin, Green Lantern, Samurai, Apache Chief and Aquaman—OK, the Aquaman thing might have been a net plus for the good guys—were tossed back in time….

Very well, then. If you want me to "tell you what would become of the Superfriends if three of their most powerful members were to vanish off the face of the Earth," I’d have to say, "You’ll end up screwing the pooch; the remaining Superfriends will save their compatriots; and then they’ll kick your asses—in a totally pacifistic way—although you’ll end up escaping because they are as fundamentally inept as you guys are."

That’s just my educated guess, though.

Here Lex asks how the Justice League would fare sans Superman, Green Lantern and Wonder Woman. Well, as noted, losing Supes and Green Lantern would definitely be trouble. However, in this universe Wonder Woman isn’t really super-powered, and Amazonian fighting skills can’t really be a factor in a world in which one can never throw a punch. Here she’s basically an analogue to Batman, and not the most impressive version of Batman, by any means. Still, as the team’s sole distaff member, she’s probably the only one who knows where anything is kept. So yes, having, say, the Dynamic Duo delayed while they root around their dresser drawers looking for their utility belts probably would have an adverse effect.

Yet Luthor’s scheme goes beyond disposing of these three. Instead, he intends to keep them from ever having existed. And here we get one of the looniest bits in the history of the Superfriends show. And that, my friends, is saying something.

"I’ve recently discovered the secret origins of Wonder Woman, Green Lantern and Superman," Lex reveals. Unless he read some of their comic books, I’m not sure how this would be the case. Of course, that particular elephant is glossed over, as is the footage of said origins that now appears on the Hall of Doom video monitor. By the way, I hereby correct myself. We actually now see Wonder Woman as a young girl tearing a tree out of a ground. Normally I’d say that definitively establishes the Princess of Peace as possessing superpowers. On the other hand, this is a program where they sometimes forget that the Flash can't fly, so it’s still kind of debatable.

Of course, there’s little internal logic in terms of what images are displayed here. At one point the viewscreen shows Kryptonians Jor-El and Lara holding young Kal-El (the birthname of Superman, if you are one of those people who actually has a ‘life’), standing before the rocket in which they will soon secrete their infant son. How, exactly, did Luthor get footage of events taking place on a planet that was vaporized more than three decades earlier? Moreover, Wonder Woman grew up on the hidden Paradise Island, the location of which--not to mention the existence of--is supposedly unknown to the world at large. Therefore these should be the two hardest ‘origins’ for Lex to have learned.

And if he could ascertain all this, why hasn’t he learned the much more mundane origins of Batman or the Flash? And if he does know these origin stories, then presumably he must also know the selected heroes’ secret identities. In any case, he would definitely know Hal Jordan’s, a.k.a. The Green Lantern, since Jordan gained his superpowers in adulthood. So why not just release this information to the press? The three would be so busy dodging paparazzi and autograph hounds that they’d be effectively neutralized in any case.

On the other hand, while all this is perhaps the single most problematic idea in the program’s run, we now get something equally amazing: An actual bit of continuity with an earlier episode. Historically, every week the Legion of Doom whips up some new, amazingly advanced piece of technology—or several of them—and employs it/them against the Superfriends. When that current plan fails, however, the week’s gadgets are traditionally never seen or even referred to again. Imagine a world in which you tried to kill somebody with a pistol, and having failed, were precluded were ever using a handgun again.

Of one example among dozens, in the episode "The Trial of the Superfriends" Brainiac stole Green Lantern’s power ring with some sort of suction horn that literally pulled the artifact right off his finger. Thus not only was GL neutralized, but the Legion gained control of one the universe’s most powerful weapons. However, GL eventually reclaimed his ring, and the suction device thereafter was never heard of again. Here, however, Luthor intends to actually use a device that had been established and employed in a previous episode. Amazing. This had never happened before, and as far as I know, would never happen again.

Still, he does pick a good one, suggesting that they employ the handheld time travel device the Legion used in "The Time Trap." The idea is to go back in time and stop the trio from ever having assumed their superhero identifies. Personally, I’d go back and assassinate them at some moment when they were vulnerable, but there you go. Even better, how about going into the past and grabbing young Kal-El out of his rocket ship before his adoptive parents the Kents show up? Then you could raise him to be the Earth’s most powerful supervillain instead of its greatest champion.

In any case, Luthor now pulls a lever on his podium (?). The entire Hall of Doom travels into the past, reemerging in the Pacific in the year 1941. You guessed it, their destination is Paradise Island, the (supposedly) secret home of the Amazons. Watching on their all-seeing monitor, and apparently using some sort of temporal fast forward, they see Hippolyta, Queen of the Amazons, fashioning a statue of a young girl out of clay. Wishing for a daughter, the Queen then prays for Aphrodite to bring the figure to life. (Hey, how did you think Amazons had children? Wink, wink.)

Aphrodite duly appears and grants Hippolyta’s wish, commanding that the child be named Diana, after the moon goddess. More traditionally Diana is the Goddess of the Hunt, but that was probably a bit too violent for this show. However, we do get to see Diana’s naked toddler butt, which surprised me a bit. By the way, given that Aphrodite is a goddess and all, maybe she could have warned the Amazons about the time traveling villains lurking nearby.

In any case, we again see Diana pulling a tree from the ground—perhaps her superhero identity should have been Captain Deforestation—as we're informed by the show’s Omniscient Narrator that she "grew to be as strong as Hercules, and swifter than Mercury." Uh, OK. So she’s actually faster than the Messenger of the Gods? Really? I mean, we see her outrace a deer and all, but I don’t know, that’s a looong way from being "swifter than Mercury." And if she possesses all of these incredible superpowers, how come she never bothers to use any of them on the show? Oh, she’s also the most beautiful Amazon—which sounds pretty impressive, all things considered—but then she was quickened by Aphrodite, so I guess that makes sense.

The show's writers, however, apparently decided to forgo the entire Steve Trevor aspect of the story. In the comics, Trevor was an American fighter pilot who crashed on Paradise Island after being wounded in combat. Diana nurses him to recovery, and in the process falls in love with him. When he returned to the outside world, Diana was motivated to follow him. Thus Trevor was responsible for drawing the Maiden of Might to the U.S., where she naturally ended up fighting against the Axis powers. However, as this episode involves three separate origin stories to explicate and then contravene, one can see how a bit of streamlining would be necessary.

Here, to save time, Aphrodite just pops up and orders Hippolyta to send the "strongest" Amazon to the U.S. to "fight the war and crush evil." In response, and as in the comics, Hippolyta holds a tournament to find this doughty warrior. After the queen refuses to let her daughter compete in this contest (the Amazon who leaves the island will forfeit her immortality, a detail I don’t really remember, but then I was never a big DC fan), a rebellious Diana does so in disguise, and naturally wins.

By the way, you can see why Hippolyta’s patron goddess is Aphrodite rather than Athena, the Goddess of Wisdom. I mean, she doesn’t recognize her own daughter because Diana is wearing a small domino mask? Wouldn’t she have suspected something after seeing this mystery contestant perform feats of Diana-like superstrength? I guess not. And then there’s the issue of ignoring Aphrodite. The gods of Mt. Olympus tended to get a little annoyed when their whims weren’t catered to, and Aphrodite didn’t command Hippolyta to send ‘the strongest Amazon, save your daughter.’ In fact, I’d say if there was an Amazon with the strength of Hercules, she would pretty much by default fit the bill.

Still, let’s say I go along with all that. Even so, if the narration is to be believed, then Aphrodite brought Diana to life as a child in 1941. (That being when we are told the Legion of Doom arrived to witness these events.) So how was she able to go to America and join the fight against the Nazis and the Japanese? There seems to be something a bit off with that timeline. I guess maybe the Legionnaires are merely watching the past events on their amazing temporally unrestricted viewscreen, and 1941 is when they actually interfere with the past as they know it (and that timeline would be, in fact, be roughly correct...if it were very late in 1941). Still, they really could have written all this a bit more clearly.

Back to the Hall of Doom. "In history as we know it," Luthor explains, "Diana won the tournament, and her mother was forced to allow her to leave Paradise Island and become Wonder Woman. But [you’d think a super-genius would now better than to start a sentence with a ‘but’] now it’s time for us to alter history!" Naturally, Cheetah is called into action. (Personally, I’d have liked to see them send Solomon Grundy in a dress and wig, but I guess Cheetah’s a more rational choice.) "Without my Cheetah disguise," she explains, answering the question of whether she’s—in the version, at least—an actual cat woman or not, "I can sneak onto Paradise Island and compete in the games." So saying, she removes her costume (is it really a 'disguise'?), revealing more blond locks than you'd have thought could fit under her tight cowl.

Of course, they’ll have to cheat if she’s to beat even the very young Diana, and so the Hall’s "electronic devices" will be called into play. Sure enough, Diana unsurprisingly kicks butt in the tournament, including the "lasso contest." This involves, no doubt to the satisfaction of a certain segment of Wonder Woman's traditional fan base, some light bondage. In effect, the object is to lasso the other contestants while everyone rides around on horses which leap about on two legs like a kangaroo. (!!) Diana, naturally, prevails. Meanwhile, the Narrator asserts, "Cheetah, with her catlike skills, easily defeats dozens of others." In the end, naturally, the final two contestants are Diana and Cheetah.

The final contest will be the "magic bracelets against the stun ray!" Stun ray? Good grief, use real bullets, you’re Amazons for Pete’s sake. And again, stun ray?! This is a society that doesn’t have indoor plumbing. Where’d they get a stun ray? Admittedly, such things were easier to whip up in this universe, but still, it’s only 1941 to boot.

Diana, naturally, blocks Cheetah’s stun ray beams with ease. Then it’s her turn to fire upon her opponent. "These radar controlled [?] bracelets will give Diana quite a shock," Cheetah thinks for our benefit. Sure enough, Cheetah’s bracelets not only block the beams, but reflect them back at Diana, immobilizing her. This achieved, Cheetah is presented with the uniform and magic implements of Wonder Woman. Boy, is Aphrodite going to be pissed about this. In fact, that would make a pretty good storyline, but not on this show, of course.

Although the concept of the Legion learning the ‘secret origins’ of members of the Superfriends is probably the most logically problematic of any presented in the show’s run, you can see why this remains a favorite episode of the program’s fans. Back in 1976, tampering with established comic book continuity was a lot more daring than it would be today. Even if the nature of the show didn't allow them to exploit the concept very well, it’s still intriguing stuff.

I mean, Cheetah is now Wonder Woman, and has her magic lasso and bracelets to boot! That would change the entire history of the DC universe. It’s bracing stuff, despite the juvenile manner in which it’s employed. One can easily imagine how tots who grew up to be today’s generation of comic book writers might have had their youthful imaginations fired by the myriad of possibilities implied, if not remotely examined, by this episode. Indeed, it’s too bad that of the miserly two audio commentaries provided on the Superfriend DVD set, conducted in highly amusing style by writers Geoff Jones and Mark Waid, one did not tackle this chapter.

Cheetah leaves the island in her new getup and presents herself to her teammates. "Excellent," Luthor boasts. "Cheetah makes a fine Wonder Woman! Mwahahahaha!" I have to admit, this is a good moment for the Legion. However, and this is the kind of thing I was just alluding to, they then completely ignore the plethora of opportunities this situation presents. "Now that I’ve won," Cheetah purrs, redonning her old furry suit, "There won’t be any Wonder Woman in the future!" In other words, they apparently are content to stick Wonder Woman’s costume and invaluable magic bracelets, tiara and lasso in a box and store them up in the HoD attic. I mean, yes, no Wonder Woman at all is a net plus. But damn, the possibilities!

By the way, why isn’t history changed more profoundly by Diana’s absence from the outside world? Most obviously, she numerously single-handedly stymied the Axis powers during WWII. Surely even the Legion doesn’t want to return to a future timeline in which the Germans and Japanese had won the war. (On the other hand, they did once attempt to facilitate an alien takeover of the Earth.) Think of the story possibilities if Cheetah were now forced to take over Wonder Woman’s job, helping to make sure that the Allies still prevailed. With the Legion’s advanced technology, this would have been easy to achieve, and Luthor could have positioned himself… Sigh. What might have been.

Back in the present, we see Batman, Robin and Wonder Woman using their respective planes to ferry water to douse a forest fire. In the middle of this, Wonder Woman simply blinks out of existence. Watching on their Omni-Scope, Luthor chortles. "Wonder Woman vanished into non-existence right before Batman and Robin’s eyes," he gloats. "Not even their memories of Wonder Woman exist any longer." No, you’d think not.

With Wonder Woman retroactively disenfranchised, it’s now time to turn their sinister attention to Green Lantern. Needless to say, GL’s archenemy Sinestro views the prospect with glee. "It will be a pleasure to put his green flame out," he sneers. Whatever that means. That said, the Hall timewarps to the "desolate area of the western United States" when and where test pilot Hal Jordan met his destiny.

Again the viewscreen is called into play, as the villains see (the second generation) Green Lantern’s secret origin unfold before their sinister eyes. Following the silver age story, an alien in the familiar Green Lantern uniform is involved in a spaceship crash in the desert. Again, I’m not a follower of DC comics, but I imagine much arguing has occurred over the years as to why, first, a Green Lantern had need of a spaceship; second, why he would allow the craft to crash; and third, why he’d allow himself to be injured were this to happen.

In any case, the idea probably seemed much less problematic at the time it was originally written. And so the rocketship crashes, and the alien pilot lies inside the wreckage, badly injured. "The ship is destroyed," he helpfully explains, in English yet, "and I’m too weak to carry on my work as intergalactic space patrolman." His end being near, he makes to seek out a "deserving earthling to pass on my battery of power." And his power ring, presumably. (The battery, which is indeed shaped like a lantern, is the ring's power source, from which the ring must be recharged each day.)

So saying, he lets the ring pick his replacement, which is a pretty nifty idea, and sends out an energy beam to locate the correct person. Although his beam "crisscrosses the Earth," it turns out that the best candidate, test pilot Hal Jordan, is fairly nearby. Jordan is working inside a flight simulator when it becomes enveloped with green energy. Needless to say, he is surprised by this, and more so presumably by the sudden appearance of Lex Luthor, who teleports in at this pivotal moment. "Quick, Hal Jordan," Luthor shouts, "get out while you can!" Prompted by this cry, Jordan does indeed leap from the trainer, following which Luthor jumps in and takes his place.

"A confused Hal Jordan" then watches as the simulator and Lex are whisked away by the energy beam. The dying alien, Abin Sur, welcomes the earthman he presumes to be the ring’s selection. (So the ring is smart enough to judge all of humanity in selecting the single best person to become the new Green Lantern, but not smart enough to make sure it brings the correct candidate to Sur? Sounds like there are still a few kinks in its programming.) Sur passes the artifacts on to Luthor, who dons the ring. With this his trademark purple and green supervillain suit is transformed into the familiar Green Lantern uniform. This, I must admit, is a pretty kickass image.

Luthor returns to the Hall of Doom, where his glowing form causes Scarecrow to scream, "Oh, no, it’s the Green Lantern!" Maybe his name should rather be Scardycat rather than Scarecrow. Sure, GL is pretty powerful. Still, the appearance of any single member of the Justice League, even Superman, shouldn’t send the entire assembled Legion of Doom into a tizzy. Sneering at his teammate’s cowardice, Lex identifies himself to be instead "the Green Luthor."

Again, though, Luthor fails to take anywhere near full advantage of the situation, content with the thought that now "there won’t ever be a Green Lantern." Actually, there’s a whole galactic corps of Green Lanterns, and in the absence of one from this assigned space sector, presumably the Corps would send somebody to investigate and yet appoint one. However, I’m not sure how much the Green Lantern Corps idea was known at the time of this cartoon, so we’ll let that slide.

We cut to the present day, where in outer space Green Lantern, Hawkman and Black Vulcan are working on the Justice League Satellite. Per usual, none of them are a) wearing anything that would protect them from the cold of space; b) evincing any visible oxygen supply; nor c) having any trouble speaking to or hearing one another.

Of course, Green Lantern could be providing a portable environment for them. If so, however, they should be surrounded by a green energy field, which they aren't. Moreover, the show has often portrayed an outer space in which all this is possible, at least for superheroes. In any case, Green Lantern now fades out of existence just as Wonder Woman did before him, leaving his still extant teammates none the wiser.

This accomplished, it time to go after the big Kahuna. "Now we shall get rid of the most powerful Superfriend of all," Luthor announces. Goodbye, Aquaman. Oh. I guess he meant Superman. OK.

Pulling the exact same lever he has previously, the Hall of Doom not only again reorients itself in time, but appears in orbit above Krypton. I have to say, that’s pretty impressive. I mean, damn, maybe these guys really should be ruling the Earth. Lest we are rusty on our comic book lure, the show’s Omniscient Narrator identifies the planet as the "birthplace of the young Kal-El." (As opposed to the birthplace of the "old" Kal-El?) He doesn’t mean Nicolas Cage’s kid, by the way, he means Superman.

"Me watch with pleasure, see Superman for last time," Bizarro crows. I wouldn’t be so smug if I were you, Bizarro. You were created as a Superman clone. If he ceases to exist, wouldn’t you? I guess being inside the Hall’s temporal field might protect him from the effects of their historical tampering—after all, the Legionnaires still remember Wonder Woman and Green Lantern, unlike the rest of the world—but a line of dialogue confirming that would have been appreciated.

We cut down to the futuristic society of Krypton. We see an earthquake occurring—albeit one that doesn’t do any apparent damage—and learn that they are happening all over the planet. Then we witness the famous meeting of the Science Council, at which Jor-El proclaims that Krypton is doomed. Per history, Jor-El’s warnings are literally laughed off.

Seeing that nothing will be done to save their homeworld, Jor-El instead devotes his efforts to building the escape rocket that will take his and Lara’s infant son, Kal-El, to safety. This is finished just as the final, massive quakes strike, and these indeed seem to cause havoc on an order which would kill at the very least thousands of people. Kal-El is launched in the rocket to Earth at the very last moment, just before Krypton suffers its apocalypse. (Funny, you can’t throw a punch on this show, but you can portray an entire inhabited planet exploding.)

The Legion viewscreen follows the rocket as it flies through space. "If young Kal-El reaches Earth," Luthor expositories, "the energy from its yellow sun will make him Superman." To prevent this, Luthor uses an energy beam to destroy the rocket and its infant occupant. Well, no, of course, he doesn’t. After all, although we just saw the home of billions being destroyed, that would be too harsh. Instead, he redirects the capsule to another planet, one lacking a yellow sun to endow Kal-El with superpowers.

In a way, I kind of like that idea better than the more obvious, ruthless one. I think Luthor would find this a more satisfying victory over his arch foe; not destroying him, but instead robbing him of his greatness and forcing him to live (as Luthor would no doubt consider it) the life of an ordinary, powerless drudge.

This raises another great story idea. Presumably, there was a possibility that Krypton could have been saved. Otherwise, why does Superman’s origin story so focus on Jor-El’s efforts to warn the Science Council?

What if in the present day Luthor arranged to meet with Superman, and offered to have the entire Legion of Doom return to the past and devote its considerable scientific genius to finding a way to stabilize Krypton. Kal-El’s homeworld would be saved. However, he would then never have become Earth’s greatest champion, and presumably the Legion might well, eventually, manage to take over our world.

Wouldn’t that be worth it? The survival of an entire civilized planet, his birthplace, versus the possible subjugation of his adopted homeworld? After all, in his absence might not some other equally powerful champion arise? (Another scenario ignored in this episode.) And even if Superman decided to allow history to run its anointed course, can you imagine the crushing guilt that would result from that decision? Frankly, if only to torment Superman, you’d think Luthor would enjoy that scheme immensely.

That idea is a little too advanced, of course (not to mention cruel), for this show anyway. Still, it’s an idea a good writer could do something with.

Back on Regular Earth, a waving Superman is the subject of a Superman Day Parade, riding around on a float with Hawkman (?!). In the midst of this, the Last Son of Krypton winks out of existence, and the parade becomes one to instead celebrate the Winged Avenger. Of all of this, that might be the episode's goofiest moment. You'd have to live in a pretty boring society before you’d bother going to the trouble of feting Hawkman.

This is the classic Legion Gloating Moment, the juncture at which one of their schemes is firing on all cylinders, and generally just before they allow victory to be snatched away from them. And sure enough, the villains are smugly taking full advantage of it. Maybe if they kept their eye on the prize until their entire goal was achieved they’d get somewhere. On the other hand, historically these occasions are really all they ever get as reward for their efforts, so I guess they might was well enjoy them.

Having now significantly reduced the strength of the Justice League, while protecting themselves from the logical ramifications of this—Bizarro not being created, Luthor dying as an adolescent (since Superboy would not be around to save him in the incident that cost him his hair and prompted him to become a supervillain), etc.—the Legion is well positioned to manifest themselves in their newly created reality and take over. Indeed, I’m not even sure why Luthor believes there would still be a Hall of Justice in this reality, but there is. It’s just one in which Aquaman is frighteningly closer in mean terms to being one of the group’s more useful members.

We cut inside the Hall of Justice, and see that no additional heroes have manifested themselves in the absence of the missing members. Instead, the usual roster—minus the de-existenced trio—is in place: Batman, Robin, Flash (easily now the group’s most powerful member), Hawkman, Aquaman, Apache Chief, Black Vulcan and Samurai. Why isn’t El Dorado in evidence? Well, the plot later will involve the Legion splitting the Superfriends into groups of four, so obviously it would be inconvenient were there nine superheroes in attendance.

One interesting note: In the absence of their more powerful members, the group still hasn’t provided itself with enough chairs to sit in. Instead, they continue to stand around in little groups in front of the Hall’s Viewing Monitor.

The Hall of Doom appears directly above the Hall of Justice, activating—as you would think—a Justice League Trouble Alert. The heroes still recognize the Legion’s headquarters, by the way. Nor do they seem surprised by Luthor or Bizarro’s existence, which is one of those paradoxes which are difficult to avoid when you write stories dickering around with time and reality. This is especially true when your writers really aren’t that interested in making sense to begin with. And if the Legion has been around all this time, counterintuitively with all their familiar members (I’m still trying to figure out how Bizarro would have come about), then why hasn’t the Legion succeeded in taking over the world already?

In fact, here’s another scenario: The Legion returns to the new ‘present’ they’ve created, and find a world already subjugated by an alternate-reality version of themselves. They then would have to battle their doppelgangers for control of the planet, allowing the previously disbanded members of the Justice League to reunite and try to exploit the intra-villain struggle to free humanity from its overlords. Admittedly, that would require a two-part episode, but it would be neat.

Instead, all these issues are just ignored. Big Surprise. Instead, Luthor fires an energy beam which somehow collects the remaining League members and deposits them inside the Hall of Doom. Since earlier Scarecrow shrieked like a little girl upon seeing what he believed to be Green Lantern in their midst, presumably he passed out in terror when this occurred.

Having the Justice League at his mercy, Luthor reveals one of his goofiest plans yet. Producing a ray pistol, he explains "My hypnotic anger ray will cause you to destroy one another, while the Legion of Doom watches the entertainment!" If Luthor were really smart, he’d telecast this on pay-per-view.

By the way, the Superfriends don’t appear to be contained in any sort of energy field or the like. This means that they are voluntarily just standing there without taking any action. Perhaps simple politeness dictates that they allow their host to finish ranting before attempting to do anything. It does make you wonder what the Emily Post Guide to Superhero Etiquette is like. And does Martha Stewart have segments on her TV show demonstrating how to make darling Doomsday Device cozies and the like? Man, they never really get into ideas like that.

To save them "for a second purr-formance," Cheetah activates a remote control, whereby a trapdoor opens and swallows up Batman, Robin, the Flash and Black Vulcan. Now, Black Vulcan can turn into energy and fly, so I don’t know why this would work with him. And you’d think the Flash would merely move off the trapdoor in the micro-seconds that it was opening, probably while hauling the Dynamic Duo to safety. But…this doesn’t happen.

By the way, if this were their plan, why would it be more likely to succeed now that Wonder Woman, Green Lantern and Superman are gone? It’s not like they’ve proven immune to the Legion’s previous mind-control devices.

In any case, a now-enraged Hawkman turns on Aquaman, resulting in an epic battle of the anti-titans. Hawkman flies his foe up to the top of the Hall’s domed ceiling and then just drops him to his death. Oh, wait, no he doesn’t. That would have been easy to do, though. Instead, he flies him up and deposits his already unconscious foe—that’s our Aquaman—atop a highly placed support beam. Uh…Ok.

Meanwhile, Apache Chief and Samurai square off. Too bad Samurai’s not a real samurai, because then he could just cut off Apache Chief’s head. Hell, even if Apache Chief used his growing powers, Samurai could still have just hacked through his giant hamstring and crippled him. Of course, in this universe there's no way Samurai could actually live up to his superhero name, at least in terms of carrying and using swords or anything of the like.

In the sort of moment that makes people like me absolutely love this show, Samurai indeed uses a superpower. However, he doesn’t use one of his own superpowers; he employs one of El Dorado’s by teleporting out of Apache Chief’s field of vision. Uh, I don’t want to lecture the show’s writers, but Samurai doesn’t teleport. He’s basically a Japanese version of an obscure DC character named Red Tornado*, who could, as his name suggests, transform into a literal human tornado. (Well, actually I think he was a robot, so it wouldn't technically be a 'human' tornado, but close enough.) In any case, it’s El Dorado who can teleport, not Samurai. Here, they even use the El Dorado teleportation sound effect. Morons.

[*At some point the producers of The Challenge of the Superfriends decided they wanted to put a bunch of minority members on the team. Given a dearth of candidates in the then extant DC Comics universe, they just whipped up Samurai, El Dorado, Apache Chief and Black Vulcan. I know Black Vulcan was ported back into the comics, I believe after being reconfigured and redubbed Black Lightning.  I don’t know if any of the other ethnic Superfriends were afforded similar treatment.]

Appearing behind Apache Chief, Samurai tries to put a sleeper hold on him. This seems a weird strategy to use on a guy who can grow into a giant, and indeed, that’s what Apache Chief proceeds to do. Good thing the Hall of Doom has such a high ceiling. Apache Chief then just plucks the comparatively diminutive Samurai off his back, and then somehow ends up clutching Hawkman as well in his other hand. (Why doesn’t Samurai teleport to freedom? Maybe he just remembered he can’t actually do that.) With the two helpless in his behemoth grasp, you’d think Apache Chief would just crush them to death, since it was the Legion’s intention that they "destroy" one another.

Instead, we cut to the chamber containing the rest of the team. "We’re trapped in the Hall of Doom’s dungeon," Robin hyperventilates, "and there’s no way out!" Way to keep a stiff upper lip there, Caped Crusader. "Maybe there is, Robin," the Flash replies, perhaps because he’s not such a pansy. As fans of the series know, the Flash has two techniques for achieving…anything he wants to, really. One is to run around in circles really fast, the other is to "vibrate his molecules." This latter option generally allows him, among other things, to pass through walls and such.

Now, of course the Legion would know this. Therefore, you’d have to think that when designing a containment chamber to hold Justice League members, they’d have allowed for this. The Flash can’t vibrate through an energy field, for instance (or at least hasn’t in previous episodes), so that’s just one option. In any case, per the necessities of the script, the room hasn’t been Flash-proofed in any fashion. Instead, he nonchalantly walks out through the wall and, once out in the hallway, pushes a readily apparently button that opens the cell door and frees his comrades.

For a group that can travel through time and teleport entire buildings to distant solar systems with exact precision, the Legion sure has a problem with the little stuff. Not only do they stick their foes in a room from which they can easily escape, but they don’t even require a key code to open the door, or even set up an alarm system. Hell, how about rigging up a closed-circuit camera system to monitor their captives? They have stuff like that in your average 7-11 store.

Ambling around the Hall of Doom to their heart’s content, the quartet soon stumbles upon the Hall of Doom’s Communication Center. "We can learn a great deal about the Legion of Doom from their computer files," Batman opines, "but there’s no time." Well, at least that makes a little sense. Shouldn’t they be rushing to save their comrades, anyway? Apparently not, since the Flash instead examines the room’s control panel. "One of these buttons must open the outer door of the Hall of Doom." Really? One of the buttons in the Hall’s Communication Center? Why the hell would that be?

Randomly hitting one button—one that doesn’t activate an alarm, fortunately—the Flash just happens to call up the video files on how the Legion erased Superman, Wonder Woman and Green Lantern from existence. Well, that was a bit of a break, I dare say. Better to be lucky than good, I guess. "We’d better take this computer tape [the organization that creates time machines and matter transporters stores data on tape?!] back to the Hall of Justice and check it out." That’s fine, except that your teammates are killing each other, and that you still don’t know how to get out of the Hall of Doo…

"I’ve found the controls to the Hall of Doom’s energy transporter," the Flash suddenly announces. Again, I think he means the matter transporter, and again, why would these controls be in the Communications Center?! Anyway, they only have about six or seven minutes until the show is over, so I guess they don’t have enough time to come up with anything better. In any case, the foursome is quickly zapped back to their own headquarters, and still without alerting the villains in any way. Materializing directly in front of their master computer, the Superfriends immediately run the tape through the "computer analyzer." Again, a little encryption on the data might have saved the Legion a lot of grief.

Back in the Hall of Doom, Hawkman, Samurai and Aquaman have teamed up to tie down Apache Chief with ropes. (Where did those come from?) It's not much, but the allusion to Gulliver is about as droll as this show gets. Anyway, good to know that the "hypnotic anger ray" was powerful enough to set them fighting one another, but not to preclude cooperative action. Despite the fact that the point was to watch the Superfriends "destroy" one another, the Legionnaires appear content with seeing three of their captives merely immobilize a fourth, and thus call an end to the match.

"Bring in the other Superfriends," Luthor commands. "Other Superfriends gone!" Bizarro notes rather calmly. "Use transporter to escape." Captain Cold vows to use the Hall of Doom's scanners to "search every square inch of the Earth for them!" Hilariously, they don’t start by searching the Hall of Justice. After all, the plot demands that the newly escaped Justice Leaguers have enough time to figure out the whole ‘wiped from existence’ plot and then do something about it. (If they were wittier, they would have Captain Cold aver, "We’ll start the search at the frozen North Pole!" because he’s their ‘cold’ guy and that’s the sort of retarded logic often featured on this show.)

Anyway, the Justice League Computer finishes its analysis of the tape and gives the four a rundown on their ex-teammates. "Gaps in the Justice League computer memory confirm the existence of three other Superfriends," the Computer finishes. Uhm, OK. If you say so. There’s a number of problems with that, but why bother going into them all? In response, Batman suggests they "split up and return into the past, to the exact times and place indicated on the memory tape." In other words, they intend to tamper with the Legion’s tampering, and…my head hurts.

"Using their various modes [!!!!] of time travel," the Narrator narrates, "the Superfriends vanish into the past." For the Flash, this involves—three guesses—spinning in a circle really fast. To be fair, that’s completely different from running in a circle really fast, which is how he usually does stuff. For his part, Black Vulcan whips up a, er, Time Travel Lightning Bolt that circles around him and sends him off. Meanwhile, in the episode's most ludicrous bit yet, the Dynamic Duo simply uses their Batplane to fly fast enough to "break the time barrier" [!!!!!!!!!!!] and fling themselves to the exact same moment and general location that the Legion did above Krypton earlier in the episode. Man. You know, just being able to travel through time is impressive, but it’s their amazing precision at it that really gets me.

The Flash arrives on Paradise Island, circa the previous events. "I’ve got to get to the tournament before it’s too late!" he notes. First, well, you’re the Flash. That shouldn’t be any big deal for a guy who can literally run around the globe in a microsecond. Second, if it is a problem, why didn’t you travel back another minute or so and give yourself more time? Moron.

Having been briefed on Cheetah’s perfidy by the memory tape, Flash is ready to intervene. "My superspeed should handle this!" he boasts. Well, that’s good, since that’s, you know, your superpower and all. Sure enough, when Cheetah uses her mysterious "radio-controlled bracelets" to deflect the stun beams back towards Diana, the Flash whips over at unseeable superspeed and deflects them back again. With Cheetah incapacitated (I guess), Diana is declared the winner, and history is righted. This does allow for another great moment when Diana removes her teeny mask, to the shock of her mother.* "You tricked me!" Hippolyta gasps, allowing that she must allow Diana to follow her destiny.  (You'd think after suffering through that whole business with Hercules and her belt, that Hippolyta would have made more of an effort to stop being such a patsy. I guess not.)

[*To be fair, this is a universe where Superman doesn’t even bother with a mask, and yet his closest companions don’t even notice that he’s Clark Kent.]

Seeing that their scheme has failed, an angry Luthor merely tosses up his hands and declares they will do better with the Green Lantern. Yeesh, these guys give up easily. How many death traps has Wonder Woman escaped by the skin of her teeth? You guys still have a time machine, you know.  Just wait for one of those occasions and nudge things along a bit. Instead, they simply fold their hand and go on to the next guy.

Black Vulcan arrives at the airplane plant just before the energy beam finds Hal Jordan. This soon occurs, and when Luthor appears to trick Jordan into getting out of the simulator, BV uses a lightning bolt to seal Hal inside until the power ring whisks him away. Man, BV can do anything with those things. Hal is brought to Abin Sur, and all is as it should be.  Back at the hangar, Luthor waits around to warn Black Vulcan that the Legion will still succeed at their goal to "cripple the Superfriends." Black Vulcan quite obviously should attempt to capture Luthor while he stands there ranting, although naturally he doesn’t bother to.

And so we go on to the aftermath of Krypton’s destruction. The Batplane, which is apparently space worthy (but then, so is the generally half-naked Hawkman, so I guess that’s not so weird), pops up at the pivotal juncture. Batman protects Kal-El’s rocket by interposing the Batplane between it and the Legions's energy blast. "We did it, Batman!" Robin crows. "The escape rocket is on course to Earth!" Again, this holds basically because the Legion for whatever reason is never allowed to take more than one crack at something. Kabuki Theater is less ritualized than the rules under which the Legion operates.

Lest anyone else notice this, we see the rocket land in Kansas about two seconds later [!!!]. Who knew that Krypton was so close by? Of course, even though superpowered, Kal-El is still an infant at this point. Why not grab him up before the Kents do? Needless to say, that doesn’t happen. In any case, Jonathon and Martha Kent make their appointed appearance, no doubt to the delight of all the youthful comic books nerds who watched this back in the day.

All this accomplished, the three Superfriends pop back into existence at the Hall of Justice. Of course, by now the Legion will have cut its loses and executed the four still captive Justice Leaguers…oh, wait. No, they haven’t. That’s odd. I mean, I can see not bumping off Hawkman and Aquaman, because why bother? Apache Chief and Samurai are a bit more dangerous, though, so you think they’d take advantage of the situation. Not that they ever do.

Meanwhile, the Hall of Doom is rocketing over a desert (!!), searching for the escaped Superfriends. Again, the heroes’ brilliant masterstroke of throwing the villains off their scent by returning to Justice League headquarters has worked perfectly. "There’s no sign of the escaped Superfriends anywhere," a frustrated Grod slurps.

At this point the entire Hall begins shaking. "What’s happening?!" Lex demands to know, whereupon we cut outside and see that Green Lantern is literally anchoring the Hall in place with his energy ring. This achieved, Superman lands on the now stationary edifice, to the horror of (who else?) Scarecrow. "That’s impossible!" he blurts. "He doesn’t exist!" Uh, are you guys so stupid that you didn’t notice Batman blocking your energy beam and…oh. Question withdrawn. Of course they are.

"Quick!" Luthor commands. "Into the fighter crafts! We’ll counterattack!" That’s weird. Does Bizarro or Solomon Grundy, for example, really need a "fighter craft"? I mean, sure, a fighter craft would make Scarecrow or the Riddler more formidable. But then, so would a soda straw and some spitballs.

So a bunch—well, six—fighter jets launch and confront…not Superman, but Batman and Wonder Woman, who are approaching the scene in their own jets. (Uh, Wonder Woman’s plane is invisible. The writers knew that, right?) Noting that "the Legion of Doom is tied up in that jet dogfight," Superman can now rescue his teammates without fear of interruption. So you mean the entire Legion is up in those planes? Boy, are they a bunch of mooks. In any case, the Man of Steel burns his way inside the Hall of Doom with his heat vision, and quickly frees his compatriots. (In another of the show’s legendary continuity miscues, the four prisoners seen in the cell are Hawkman, Samurai, Apache Chief and…Green Lantern! Huh?! Aquaman was the other prisoner, you dopes.)

We cut outside, where three of the Legion fighter jets are confronting Wonder Woman’s plane…which is invisible to all forms of surveillance. Anyway. "My magic lasso rocket will take care of all three of them!" the Maiden of Might boasts. The what now?! Damn, aren’t these characters powerful enough without giving them new powers and such on the fly? The rocket, by the way, is just a big lasso that projects from the Invisible Plane and wraps around the three fighter planes. I guess 'rocket' doesn’t mean what I thought it did.

Soon the assembled Superfriends are standing before the three grounded jets. (There were six of them just a minute ago. Cripes, who was this show’s continuity director? I’d say a monkey, but I think one of those would have done a better job.) As occurs every week, Superman declares the Legion captured, whereupon Luthor activates a device—in this case their time travel doohickey—which allows them to escape, a turn of events the Superfriends nonchalantly shrug off, announcing that they’ll just get them next time.

And so the dance continues.

(Proof)Readers Respond:

Aside from flying in to save innocent readers from my vast army of typos—and thanks, masked men—Superproofreaders Bill Leary and Carl Fink their own trenchant commentary (in italics).


Bill raises a further issue regarding the scene where Green Lantern phases out of existence during the work on that satellite:

“To add to the list of time travel issues, how about this goodie? You can assume this was job that REQUIRED three people, else why HAVE three people?  If one blinks out, you'd think the other two would be left grousing about who's brilliant idea it was to bring only two people to do a three person job.”

Ken:  I actually noticed the same thing when Wonder Woman disappeared, too.  (It’s true; amazingly, I don’t actually write every comment that comes into my head during these pieces.)  She and Batman are using their planes to drop water to put out a forest fire.  She, and obviously her plane, disappear; yet the fire seems to go out at just the same moment in both realities, despite the fact that the water carrying capacity has just been halved.

This presumably arises from the show’s writers assuming the audience was too young (i.e., stupid) to ‘get’ that one person’s disappearance would probably require another to take their place.  The funniest result, actually, is the truly superfluous inclusion of Hawkman on Superman’s parade float, for no other reason than so it can magically become a Hawkman parade (!) after Superman’s ceases to exist.

*****

Carl, meanwhile, offers this erudite point:

Review: "... By the way, given that Aphrodite is a goddess and all, maybe she could have warned the Amazons about the time traveling villains lurking nearby."

I know you aren't making a serious comment about mythology, but Homer presents Aphrodite as unobservant and cowardly.  It isn't at all surprising she'd miss lurking supervillains.

***

Mr. Fink also knows his comic book lore, as he reveals with the following pertinent clarifications:

FWIW, the original Wonder Woman stories by Marston do have the Amazons riding "Kangas".

Ken:  I did not know that—obviously—and really must take my hat off to the writers for including such an obscurity in their script.  That’s nice work, and for all the beatings I’ve afforded them in the past, due credit should be given.)

***

The [DC Comics] Amazons also had very high technology in the original stories (before George Perez redid Wonder Woman).  For instance, their healing ray could basically cure any injury or disease if you could get the patient to them before death.  Apparently being immortal and having no children, some of the ladies spent their time on research.  Also their patron goddess was Athena.

***

Review: “Having now significantly reduced the strength of the Justice League, while protecting themselves from the logical ramifications of this--Bizarro not being created, Luthor dying as an adolescent (since Superboy would not be around to save him in the incident that cost him his hair and prompted him to become a supervillain) ..."

That incident involved Luthor trying to find a cure for Kryptonite, because Superboy was his friend.  It wouldn't arise in a non-Superboy universe.

(Ken:  Here I have to give Carl more credit than the writers, as I doubt they had thought that particular point through.)

***

Regarding Black Vulcan going to the comics as Black Lightning:

That’s backwards.  Black Vulcan was apparently used because otherwise DC would have had to pay royalties to the creator of the
already-existing Black Lightning, Tony Isabella.

See Tony's comments here.

***
            
Review: "We can learn a great deal about the Legion of Doom from their computer files," Batman opines, "but there's no time." 

Um, Bruce, you have THE FLASH with you!  He's standing right there!

 

Carl has a new blog, and hopefully he will be bringing his powers of super-nitpickery to bear on the world of comic books.

***

Thanks as always to both Carl and Bill!

Thanks also to the half dozen readers who noted that I meant 'deforestation' rather than 'defenestration' when referring to Wonder Woman's habit of tearing trees out of the ground.  (Personally, I still think its funny that there's a word for the act of throwing someone out a window.)  Correspondent Mary Bergman was the first to note the error, however, and thus wins the coveted "The Flash Spinning Around in Circles Really Fast" Award.  Good job, Mary!

                                     -Review by Ken Begg