Since all we've been talking about the past week is the ending of Aquaman: Sword of Atlantis, I feel like the Shrine's been a bit downbeat. So I thought I'd lighten it up for this week's Comic Friday, and what's more light and cheery than the Super Friends?Although now that I look at it, this is a pretty grim cover...well, let's take a look and see what happens inside and I bet everything will turn out okay!
The story is "Past, Present, and Danger!" by Sergius O'Shaugnessy(they still needed psuedonyms as late as '79?), the always-awesome Ramona Fradon, and Bob Smith.
Zan and Janya's faces mysteriously appear on a recently discovered pyramid in Egypt, so of course Superman smashes his way in, explaining "As usual, I'll repair the damage later!" Metropolis Mutual has a whole team of Claim Reps, assigned just to follow Superman around.
Inside they find a group of robots and spaceship--none of it moving, as if this wasn't odd enough--that look like they are from the Wonder Twins home planet of Exor. Gleek blows their cover and charges toward the robots, who have now started to move.
They actually put up a good fight against the Super Friends, shooting them with lasers or throwing them around the room. They head inside the ship to regroup, momentairily leaving Aquaman stuck outside! Luckily Wonder Woman uses her magic lasso and helps get him inside, too. Once there they see another set of twins who are spitting images of Zan and Janya, this time called Zond and Zhanra!
While these two are explaining that they've been frozen in time on Earth for over twelve-thousand years, Wonder Woman notices something is wrong with Aquaman:
While everybody's out cold(via footnote, editor Julius Schwartz explains how this is possible with Superman; thanks Mr.S!), Zond and Zhanra switch clothes with the Wonder Twins, and they reveal that they are Exorian criminals, and those robots where police officers about to hunt them down, when the Super Friends stumbled in! The robots capture Zan and Janya, thinking they're the crooks, strap them to a rocket headed for airless space, condemning them to an immediate death sentence! Exor is run by a bunch of hard-asses, apparently.
Anyway, the bad twins leave all the Super Friends in a chamber that is slowly replacing all the oxygen with Kryptonite gas, therefore killing five Super Friends with one stone, as it were.
While the Wonder Twins use their powers to escape, it seems pretty hopeless for our heroes...until Aquaman realizes that those eels are marine life of some sort, so he uses his mental powers to tell them to overload the ship's electrical system, which stops the Kryptonite gas from filling the room! I've said it before, I'll say it again--yay Aquaman!
The Super Friends capture the Zon and Zhanra, freeze them in time inside the pyramid, and then Superman throws the entire structure all the way across the universe to Exor, probably killing a couple of Green Lanterns, Space Cabbie, and maybe even Adam Strange along the way.
Batman asks the Wonder Twins if they've learned anything--nope. But Aquaman has:
Why doesn't this Aquaman have his own book?
2 comments:
One of my all-time favorite stories! And I find it terrifically ironic that it was written by Denny O'Neil, who up until this point I had hated because he had ignored Aquaman completely when he was writing the mainstream JLA book. Good pick, Rob!
Sounds like a lot of fun. I miss the Super Friends show!
Not really related, but you might want to check out this week's issue of JLA Classified -- Arthur makes an extended appearance battling with Martian Manhunter to save the life of Aquababy. Needless to say history is a little out of whack, but it's a cool appearance.
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