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Saturday, January 10, 2009

Super Friends #27 - Dec. 1979

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Comics Weekend The Super Friends versus "The Spacemen Who Stole Atlantis!"

Since we've talked about Aquaman comics drawn by the great Ramona Fradon for the last three Comics Weekend segments, and I can't get enough of her rendition of the Sea King (who can?), I thought we'd keep the Fradon streak going for today, this time with the Super Friends.


As you can tell from the cover, this is a rare Aquaman-centric issue, and it opens with the Aquatic Avenger leading his friends to his home:

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...I think you can count on one hand the number of full-page illustrations that ever appeared in Super Friends, so when they'd use one, like above, it really stands out. I mean, jeez, someone is stealing an entire city, and it isn't even Brainiac, who we expect stuff like that from.

As Posiedonis is carried off into space, Superman follows, and sees its being sucked up into a massive spaceship. He tries to get closer, but a force shield stops him. He then is hit with a blast of red sun energy, temporarily draining his powers, causing the Man of Steel to plummet back to Earth!

Inside the city, Aquaman's wife and junior partner observe what's happening:
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Superman's power return, and the Super Friends form a plan. Supes heads for the Fortress of Solitude, while Wonder Woman has the rest of team board her Invisible Plane to give chase.

Instead of trying to get into the city, Wonder Woman lands her plane on the alien ship. They climb out, and she forces open a hatch. Inside is...water! They all dive inside:
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I love how gleeful Wonder Woman looks in panel four--reminds me of what she might look like if Mad had done a Wonder Woman parody drawn by Wally Wood.

The Super Friends start taking out the alien kidnappers, even after one them warns "Resistance is futile!" (Now we know where the Borg got it from!) Then the head alien activates something called The Prison Ray, which encases each of the Super Friends in their own clear but solid prison cubes.

Meanwhile, Superman is approaching, in his Supermobile, which keeps the ship's red-sun ray from stopping him.

As Superman does his thing, Aquaman forms a plan to free him and his friends:
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This kicks off a great (if short) sequence, where Aquaman takes charge, leads his fellow Super Friends against the aliens, saving the leader for himself, and eventually putting the guy in a nasty-looking headlock:
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...any story that ends with a Ramona Fradon-drawn Aquaman and Mera is a darn good story. The end!


For us AquaFans, this might be the best issue of Super Friends ever, since Arthur got so much to do, and be so tough (as tough as he could be in an issue of Super Friends) in the process. And while I mean no disrespect to the other great artists who toiled on the book, for my 40 cents the Super Friends never looked better than under the team of Ramona Fradon and Bob Smith.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Totally agree with you, Rob. This is definitely one of my favorite issues. Every time I read it I am sad that I wasn't able to use it as a source for my bilingual comics back in the day. It would have been great. (sigh)

Anonymous said...

And I agree with both of you. Great issue. In fact, I'm lucky enough to own the original art from the page you've posted part of up there. It's the one with Mera and Aqualad in the upper left hand panel. That third panel - what a great close-up of Garth by Fradon.