Something JL did that Superfriends did not...

[DR.MID-NITE]

No, I am not talking about having good stories(although, thats true.). If you watch the pilot. You find out the Astronaut/Senator never made it back from Mars. So you assume he was killed. Someone dying is not something you see much in many of these shows. I am glad they are writing stories geared towards adults than to 8 year olds.

[Kal-el]

Same here. With all the dumbed down and sugar-coated animation out there (save good Japanese anime), JL giving us good storylines with a more *realistic* take on battles, personalities, etc. is so very welcomed.
SF really was terrible. JL is doing things right. Any dumbing down of JL would be a tragedy.

[The Guard]

Justice League is much darker, more real than any animated show out there now. That's not counting the Japanimation. I don't know about those. Look at the gas chamber...

[Kal-el]

If SF would have shown a gas chamber of any kind, it would have been filled with laughing gas or something that made the SFs act weird or something. Then, Zan would have turned into water and Jan would have turned into a gorilla and gotten them out somehow, defeated the Legion of Doom, and had a good laugh as well.

[Terminatah]

Not just the Astronaut/Senator, but all the Earth victims of the alien invasion, not to mention the ENTIRE MARTIAN RACE.

One thing that always bothered me about Power Rangers when I was little is the robots would always destroy a bunch of buildings in the final battle, then after they won, the Power Rangers would go hang out and play friggin video games or something. What the hell is that? Go downtown and help collect the bodies, you damn kids!

-Terminatah

[Kal-el]

...and the death count during "Legacy" and "World's Finest." SF would never have shown anything more than a kid with a band-aide on his knee.

[Buddy Lee]

well, in all fairness, Superfriends had a different set of rules to work from than "Justice League". With a Saturday morning timeslot, the creators of the Superfriends had to play it safe.

If you notice, a Superfriend never even punched a villain in the show. Solomon Grundy would throw a boulder, Lex Luthor would turn the sun red 34 times, but no one ever threw a punch.

I luv the new "Justice League" show, but the Superfriends was the show I grew up with and will always have a special place in my childhood memories. It's why I am a comic book artist today.

[Lodoss War Fan]

And that's the difference that makes JL much better then superfriends!
JL is a whole new ballpark compare to SF
Sf was more a kiddie show to me, while JL to me is more developed and leans towards a wider audience.

[Squall]

Justice League = Super Friends - Politics

The reason Super Friends (well, one of many, anyway) was so bad is becasue, in the 1970's, politicians were on a rampage about eliminating anything violent or offensive from anything that might possibly be viewed by kids. (The politicians had another run of censorship like this in the mid-1990's concerning video games.) Since Super Friends was in full production at that time, it was one of the many TV shows (many non-cartoons also suffered from this censorship run in the 1970's) whose quality suffered as a result.

I think that there are some retired animators and story writers in their 60's who are watching Justice League on TV right now and saying to themselves, "Damn, we could have done THAT, but there were all those Congressional hearings..."

[Ed Liu]

Howdy all,


Originally posted by squall
The reason Super Friends (well, one of many, anyway) was so bad is becasue, in the 1970's, politicians were on a rampage about eliminating anything violent or offensive from anything that might possibly be viewed by kids

Yeah, that was around the time when ABC, which had the license to show Bugs Bunny at the time, "edited" Looney Tunes cartoons to remove incidents of violence. Road Runner cartoons were surprisingly unmodified (relatively speaking), but weren't in the rotation very much. The worst one was the "Wabbit Season" cartoon ("Wabbit season" "Duck season! Fire!" >BLAM<), where they edited out every instance of Daffy getting shot. Made a brilliantly funny cartoon into an incoherent mess.

Thankfully, ABC lost the license and Cartoon Network got it, meaning we can watch these classics the way they were meant to be seen.

It's not entirely gone yet, though. Notice how nobody human (other than our heroes) gets beaten up in the JL series, and how Samurai Jack only slices-and-dices robots? I suspect that there are also plenty of Congress-schmucks perfectly willing to scapegoat the entertainment industry in the name of political currency and some free air time in the name of "Protecting America's Youth." I'd go on a rant about politicians now, but this isn't the place for it.

-- Ed/Ace

[Buddy Lee]

I remember that Ace...I was really p*ssed when ABC re-edited the Looney Tunes cartoons.

And, the ones with both Bugs Bunny and Daffy Duck were the funniest!! Do you remember the one with Elmer Fudd as the Giant with Bugs as Jack and Daffy was with him? Freakin' hilarious!!