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Saturday, October 03, 2009

Super Friends #17 - Feb. 1979

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Comics Weekend "Trapped in Two Times!" by E. Nelson Bridwell, Ramona Fradon, and Bob Smith.

Time for another fun, rollicking adventure with the Super Friends. Now--take a look at the cover. A water creature, and Aquaman asking Superman for help?!? What's going on here?

Well, let's find out inside:
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The professor's time ray gadget blew up (as they are wont to do in comics), somehow sending The Wonder Twins into another time. And if that wasn't bad enough, the professor insists it was...sabotage!

The professor thinks its the work of The Time Trapper, a would-be universe conqueror who has previously fought both Superman and Wonder Woman (who knows him as The Time Master--I guess when he got into being a bad guy, he claimed all the "Time _______" names).

Wonder Woman says she can use the Magic Sphere on Paradise Island to help find where The Wonder Twins went (really? Wow!). Queen Hippolyte finds Jayna on the planet Krypton--on the very day it exploded!

Zan, meanwhile, is on the water planet of Neryla, just as its about to be engulfed by its sun--23 years in the future!
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I like Aquaman being proactive like that.

Batman, Robin, and Wonder Woman go to Krypton, where they try to track down Jayna. Turns out she was found by a woman named Lyla Ler-Rol, whom Superman had a romance with once when he went back in time (so wrong, for so many reasons).

Wonder Woman finds Jayna, and tries not to reveal where she's from, but Lyla is ahead of her--like Jor-El, she's aware of Krypton's future--in that there isn't any--and Wonder Woman offers to take her with them back to the future!

But just as they're leaving, Kryptonian police get involved, wanting to know who these strangers are. They chase after our heroes, and then a major tremor hits, knocking everyone to the ground.

One of the police attempts to get a shot off at the Super Friends' time traveling ship, but Lyla selflessly blocks the shot, allowing our heroes to get away, dooming herself to a certain death. She's remarkably sanguine about it.

Batman, Robin, Wonder Woman, and Jayna make it off Krypton, and out the window they can see baby Kal-El's rocket heading towards Earth.

Meanwhile, on Neryla, Superman and Aquaman find Zan. Of course, it isn't as easy as all that:

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The Super Friends return to their ship, only to find that its been damaged by the water creature slamming into it.

Superman gets the idea of having the ship hurl itself into the future, long after the planet has been vaporized and the sun has collapsed into a white dwarf star.

Under that white sun, Superman gets his powers back, and giving Aquaman, Jan, and Gleek Superman-like powers. Wait, what?

No time for that--our heroes only have a few minutes left to get back home:
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Hey, this is a continued story--I didn't even know that until I got to the last page! Now I go have to hunt down Super Friends #18! Be here next week where we'll check out Part 2!

4 comments:

Russell said...

This was an awesome Silver Age story....packed with continuity and odd items about humans getting super powers under white suns....fun!!! And you gotta love Ramona Fradon's crisp, clean style. She and Bob Smith did a bang-up job on this series.

Randy said...

I actually own the 2nd part of this! Until now, I have never read the first part. Thanks!

Wings1295 said...

Looks cool. I should look up some of these old Superfriends comics.

Luis said...

I love how the panels have rounde corners, like if you were watching the Super Friends cartoon on TV. The art is very good and not overly "cartoony".