Author: Robert Greenberger

From 1973-1985, two generations of Saturday morning television were raised on the exploits of DC Comics’ stellar array of heroes on ABC’s Super Friends. While the exact title changed through the years, the Hanna-Barbera series continued to display heroes and heroines as models of truth, justice, and the American Way. There are many who, having grown up on the show, revere it. Others, those of us outgrowing that weekend ritual, found it a pale comparison to the four0-cloro source material.

I admit, I had a disdain for the series, what with its limited animation and prohibition against the good guys subduing the bad guys with their fists. As a result, you must be a fan of a certain age to find the arrival of the Super Friends complete series DVD box set a welcome treat.

There were 93 actual episodes over the dozen years, and it was a launch pad for The New Scooby-Doo Movies. Over the years, the core superheroes supported one another as they tackled terrestrial and inter-dimensional threats in the form of invading aliens and unearthed creatures.

Initially, Wendy and Marvin (and Wonder Dog) supported them for audience identification purposes, but they were quickly replaced by the teen aliens Zan and Jayna, and their pet monkey, Gleek, who had powers. They gave us the cry, “Wonder Twin powers, activate!” which caught on decades after the show ended.

Picking up where the Filmation DC cartoons left off, Ted Knight provided the initial bombastic narration, replaced by Bill Woodson. Much of the Filmation voice talent moved to the Hall of Justice. They were accomplished by the stellar array of voice artists from the day, from Frank Welker to Casey Kasem. We even got Adam West back as Batman for a season.

Most Saturday morning animated action was hamstrung by parent groups and overly worried networks, inhibiting the among of imitative action that could be depicted. You can watch the strictures loosen as we get to the end of the 1970s. By the 1980s, the series fully embraced the source material as the Legion of Doom as supplanted by the arrival of Darkseid and his Apokoliptian emissaries. (Of course, that supported the Kenner Super Powers action figures, but don’t tell ABC)

In the 1978–1979 season, we had your typical adventure coupled with Challenge of the Superfriends, introducing the Legion of Doom (Bizarro, Black Manta, Brainiac, Captain Cold, Cheetah, Giganta, Gorilla Grodd, Solomon Grundy, Lex Luthor, The Riddler, The Scarecrow, Sinestro,  and Toyman). We were also introduced to multicultural heroic additions: Black Vulcan, Apache Chief, and Samurai.

Building on the newspaper comic strip of a similar name, the series morphed into The World’s Greatest SuperFriends. Another original character, El Dorado, was introduced in 1980. These newer heroes could also be found in the E. Nelson Bridwell and Ramona Fradon Super Friends comic. After a year off, the series was back as SuperFriends: The Legendary Super Powers Show with a limited number of familiar heroes and villains.

The Super Powers Team: Galactic Guardians incarnation arrived in 1985, with Cyborg and Firestorm now in the mix. On the opposing side, we were introduced to The Joker, The Penguin, the Royal Flush Gang, and Felix Faust. This season produced its finest episode, the first televised origin for Batman.

Watching these all these years later, you can occasionally wince but also feel the same thrill kids must have felt seeing their favorite heroes band together. The episodes look fine on a DVD (a Blu-ray edition also exists).

The episodes stand alone, without any Special Features.

The Mythmakers
By John Hendrix
Abrams Fanfare/224 pages/$24.99

In 1976, SUNY-Binghamton offered a comparative literature course focusing on C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien. Unfortunately, I was a freshman, and it was a senior seminar, so I ignored it (my clever wife ignored that prerequisite and took it as a freshman anyway). Thanks to this graphic novel, I finally feel like I took the course.

Tolkien’s influence these days looms largest over Western literature with his reinvention of High Fantasy and worldbuilding that has been imitated but never surpassed ever since. Lewis’s work is deemed more Young Adult these days, and his religious works, other than The Screwtape Letters, have dropped out of the mainstream. The film adaptations of his Narnia novels have paled in comparison to the Peter Jackson-directed Lord of the Rings trilogy. (Although Greta Gerwig’s Netflix take on Narnia may be cause for hope.)

Hancock mixes prose and graphic storytelling to trace the backgrounds and lives of Lewis and Tolkien until they met at Oxford. Both had their share of personal travails and challenges growing into adulthood and both used literature as a balm. It’s no surprise, then, that they would meet and bond over their passion for Norse Mythology.

With a Lion and a Wizard acting as avatars, we are walked through their lives, loves, and letters, watching the famed Inklings form then fracture during the 1940s. By then, Lewis had written his best-selling space trilogy and become a nationally recognized voice on the radio. Tolkien had the surprise smash success of The Hobbit to sustain him while he stalled in writing a sequel.

Hendrix shows how they admired and supported one another, even after their careers and lives diverged and the friendship waned. Even late in life, Lewis loved and supported Tolkien from afar, being the one to nominate him for the Novel Prize in Literature.

Hendrix provides tons of context for what the state of imaginative literature was like at the time, but he wisely takes the deeper dives and places them as appendixes, letting readers choose to flip to the back for more or carry on. Reading it either way is fine, but it works best by reading it all. His artwork is pleasing and well-suited to the subject matter.

The review copy provided was in black and white, but one glance at the color sample suggests this will be a well-received volume. Anyone who appreciates one or both authors will do well to add this to their library. And for teachers like me, this is an excellent distillation of the power of myth and its influence through the centuries.

When DC Comics unleashed the Crisis on Infinite Earths in 1985, it had two missions: celebrating 50 years of the publisher and cleaning the continuity, making the comic books more accessible to entice new readers. Throughout 2024, a year shy of the maxiseries’ 40^th anniversary, the three-part direct-to-disc project was cleaning up or clearing out the revised continuity of Warner Animation’s DC Comics universe.

Part three arrived in late July and is welcome after the deeply disjointed and disappointing Part Two. Screenwriter Jim Krieg couldn’t seem to figure out how to pace this middle section but recovered for a stronger, but still flawed, finale. What should have been a fast-paced story that slows down to give key characters their moment continues to focus too much on one set of characters, too much talking, and not enough fun scenes chock full of heroes we’re not likely to see otherwise.

We left off with the Anti-Monitor (Ato Essandoh) revealed while his counterpart endlessly chatted with the Spectre, the Wrath of God, who just stood around. As a result, as each parallel universe collapsed, there was no real sense of impending doom. And once again, we split up our heroes to go off and do things that are disjointed, and why are the Bat-Family and John Constantine the ones to explore the origins of the Universe when it should have been the Green Lanterns or Hawkman?

This time around, we get some nice visual touches, starting with a glimpse of the Super Friends and a welcome last bit of business between Batman (Kevin Conroy) and the Joker (Mark Hamill).

As promised by the original comics and the cover to the DVD, out now from Warner Home Entertainment. Supergirl (Meg Donnelly) dies, but it lacks the emotional oomph, given her weak introduction and use in the previous installment.

There are a lot of questions left unanswered, and ultimately, given a few hundred minutes total to play with, this should have been wonderful, and certainly should have been better. It’s a whimper of an end and a squandered opportunity.

The movie is available digitally and in various packages, from Steelbook to combo packs. Or you could wait for the inevitable three-film package. The 2160p Ultra High Definition version looks pretty spiffy, with strong special effects and color, although it also highlights the limited animation. The accompanying DTS-HD 5.1 Master Audio is up to the task.

There are just two Special Features starting with A Multiverse of Inspiration (9:23) where Executive producer Butch Lukic, director Jeff Wamester, producer/writer Jim Krieg, DC Group editor Katie Kubert, and DC archivist Benjamin LeClear chat away. John and John: Stewart and Constantine (8:21) feature much the same crew talking about two characters who get outsized roles in the animated fare.

Apple+ debuted in November 2019 but needed a hit show to become synonymous with the streaming service, and they had to wait until August 14, 2020, when Ted Lasso arrived. The series features a fresh take on a character created by Jason Sudeikis for NBC Sports’ 2013 coverage of the Premier League. His then-girlfriend Olivia Wilde suggested two years later that he do more with the character, but it took until 2019 before a series was green-lit.

Long before I subscribed, everyone was buzzing about the show—about how original it was, how charming and funny it was, and how brilliant the cast was. When we finally added it to our programming mix, it was the first show my wife and I watched. We binged our way through the three seasons in a matter of weeks and were delighted. For a change, everyone was uniform in their beliefs and all correct.

Warner Home Entertainment released Ted Lasso: The Richmond Way, a Blu-ray set of the complete 34-episode series, last week, so you don’t need to subscribe to enjoy it.

The fish out of water concept carried the first season as Ted and his partner Coach Beard (Brendan Hunt) were hired by Rebecca Welton (Hannah Waddingham) to come run AFC Richmond, which she won in a divorce settlement from her husband Rupert Mannion (Anthony Stewart Head). She wanted to ruin the team to spite her ex, but within weeks, she changed her mind as Lasso’s methods turned the team into competitors.

Lasso’s approach was a gosh, darn it approach, rarely raising his voice and never really cursing, but offering bromides and homilies to one and all. He listened to everyone from team president Leslie Higgins (Jeremy Swift) to kit man Nathan “Nate” Shelley (Nick Mohammed), hiring the latter as a coach.

His rag-tag football team (soccer to you, Yanks) was filled with the arrogant, the wanna-be’s, the egotists, and those who just wanted to play. All felt betrayed by Lasso’s hiring so it took time, but one by one, he won them over and the joy of the show is watching how they all fall under his spell, becoming better people for the effort.

What’s impressive in watching the series straight through, as opposed to being doled out from 2020 to 2023 is to see how rich the entire cast is, with brilliant casting all the way through. We cheer as aging veteran Roy Kent (Brett Goldstein) accepts his body can’t keep up and moves to become a coach and wonderful uncle to Phoebe (Elodie Blomfield) while his girlfriend Keely Jones (Juno Temple) blossoms as a marketing guru, running her own firm. Across the seasons, everyone gets a moment to shine and a story arc to pursue. Still, some of the best moments are when the cast come together, such as season two’s “Carol of the Bells” (written to fill in when the season was expanded from 10 to 12 episodes).

One of the joys of streaming, more so than cable, is that run times are whatever is needed. Episodes can go from 29 to 78 minutes, usually in the 30-40 minute range. Stories can breathe, and characters can be fleshed out, giving the performers a chance to shine. It is filled with wonderful actors given strong material to work with, so it can range from the silly howling of the Diamond Dogs to Lasso’s struggles with panic attacks.

While the series focuses on football, it addresses far more universal themes about love and loss, what it means to be a competitor, and the sacrifices one makes for family.

The 1080p transfer is excellent, and the Blu-ray set comes complete with a “Believe” mini-poster. The set lacks any Special Features, which is a shame.

Young Hag and the Witches Quest
By Isabel Greenberg
272 pages/Amulet Books/$24.99

The Arthurian legends wax and wane through the years and 2024 is shaping up to be a year of revival. Specifically, on Tuesday, Lev Grossman’s new novel The Bright Sword, will tell of the days after Camelot fell. It follows the May release of this charming and witty graphic novel, also set in the years after Arthur.

The legend has morphed and changed and been retconned since the first stories were set in print. Some know the tales first from Disney’s 1963 Sword in the Stone and Theodore White’s Once and Future King. Others know it from the BBC young adult series Merlin or, more likely, Monty Python and the Holy Grail or its Broadway adaptation Spamalot. As a result, conflicting details have emerged giving contemporary writers license to be freewheeling with the various sources of material.

Here, Greenberg, a British creator who has been telling fanciful stories for years, tackles a generation after Arthur. Young Hag arrives to complete the required Mother, Maiden, and Crone triumvirate, and we discover that the Ancient Crone is an aged Morgan le Fay. As they journey across England, stories are told, cleverly filling readers in on what came before. Or at least the broad strokes. It’s interesting to see what was kept, what was ignored, and what was modified.

It’s a time when the magic, like Arthur, has gone, but the wicked remain. Babies have been stolen, and changelings have been left in their place. Young Hag is determined to help a few who have been victimized. This leads them to the Goblin Market, and from there, we are off and running.

I personally find Greenberg’s art very off-putting, spoiling my enjoyment of the clever writing and sharp dialogue. She does an excellent job with her characters and leavens the drama and action with wry humor.

The storytelling is wonderful, coupled with a fine limited color palette.

Greenberg nicely takes her time telling the story, letting it breathe and providing the scope an epic quest deserves. This will be a welcome book for young adults who know nothing about the Knights of the Round Table or are curious about what happens next.

The surprise success of Ghostbusters: Afterlife breathed new life into a moribund franchise, giving us a new generation of supernatural sleuths to cheer for. It was very touching to see the original quartet (Dan Aykroyd, Bill Murray, Ernie Hudson, and the late Harold Ramis) suit up one more time and kick ghostly ass. But, it was clear the torch was being passed to Egon Spengler’s daughter, Callie) Carrie Coon, and her children Trevor (Finn Wolfhard) and Phoebe (Mckenna Grace), along with their science teacher Gary Gooberson (Paul Rudd). With her inheritance of the original Ghostbusters HQ, the stage was set.

Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire is the result, and the film, out now on streaming and disc, is a hodge-podge of characters, concepts, and conundrums that are so filled with characters the emotional undercurrents are given the shortest of shrift.

Phoebe is clearly the genius, the true heir to Egon, but her youthfulness gets her sidelined by Mayor Walter Peck (William Atherton), who has harbored a grudge against the team, regardless of lineup, since the 1980s. She is also struggling and uncertain of Gary’s role in their family since he and Callie appear romantically involved, but little is said.

Her thread has the most interesting possibilities, especially as she begins playing chess with Melody (Emily Alyn Lind), a ghost. Unfortunately, it is ignored for large stretches as the film tries to service everyone else, including the original team.

Instead, Stantz acquires an ancient artifact from Nadeem Razmaadi (Kumail Nanjiani), who has ignored his family’s history in favor of being a slacker. This artifact contains the trapped spirit of Garraka, an ancient being who wanted to destroy life on Earth. Conveniently, he has started to assert his control just as the containment unit has reached capacity and a new home for the trapped ghostly spirits is located.

Here’s where the story starts to fall apart. We have no idea how Garraka began to assert his control over people or how he knew to target Melody, using her as a pawn. Some new pseudo-science is introduced at  Dr. Winston Zeddemore’s upgraded facility in New Jersey, which also brought back Lucky Domingo (Celeste O’Connor) and introduced us to Dr. Lars Pinfield (James Acaster). See? It’s pretty packed. And that’s before we mention the return of Janine Melitz (Annie Potts) and Podcast (Logan Kim) or the unnecessary addition of Dr. Hubert Wartzki (Patton Oswalt).

The film looks great and is stuffed with callbacks to the first two films in the franchise, along with the reappearance of Slimer and Ghostly Librarian. But no one really gets a satisfying story arc; everything is done with shorthand, and believe it or not, some expected moments never come to pass.

It’s entertaining enough, but it lacks the charm and originality that set these films apart. Some of that can be blamed on Jason Reitman, whose father created the series. He and incoming director Gil Kenna share the script credit, so the blame falls to them for a lack of storytelling discipline, which is in favor of more and more spectacle. The $201.7 million worldwide box office may be the scariest part of the film, likely dooming the franchise from moving forward for some time.

Thankfully, the 4K Ultra HD transfer looks spectacular. Every icicle, proton beam, and ghostly reflection looks amazing on the home screen. The 2160p is sharp and amazing with an equally impressive 1080p Blu-ray, part of the Combo Pack, along with the Digital HD code.

The Dolby Atmos audio is up to the task of matching the superb visuals.

The Blu-ray offers all the Special Features and, while plentiful, feels more perfunctory than celebratory. We have  Audio Commentary – With director/co-writer Gil Kenan (also on the 4K); Return to the Firehouse (21:00)  Busting: Capturing the Ghosts of Frozen Empire (11:00) ; Easter Eggs Unleashed (7 minutes); Manifesting Garraka (3:00); New York, New Gear (7:00); Welcome to the Paranormal Discovery Center (4:00); Knowing the Score (7:00); and Deleted & Extended Scenes (9:00).

I must admit that I missed Dexter’s Laboratory when it originally aired on the Cartoon Network from 1996-2003. Friends raved about its charm and humor and the brilliance of animator Genndy Tartakovsky. So, the arrival of Dexter’s Laboratory: The Complete Series is welcome. On sale today from Warner Home Entertainment, the set includes all 78 episodes plus the special Dexter’s Laboratory: Ego Trip.

According to the press release, the show is about half-Einstein, half-third grader Dexter.  This boy genius creates the most amazing inventions in the top-secret and highly advanced laboratory attached to his room.  But his genius can’t stop his space-brained sister Dee Dee from messing up and his work and pushing his buttons.  Or his annoying rival Mandark Astronomonov from constantly trying to one-up him.  Can Dexter use his intelligence to solve his problems?  Time to fight fire with…SCIENCE!

Well, who doesn’t love science?

What’s nice here is that Dexter and his rival are both very smart third graders, and the series celebrates smart people. Mom and Dad are somehow entirely clueless to the secrets hidden in Dexter’s bedroom, an annoying trope. However, Dee Dee finds the gadgets and gizmos and is clever enough to use them.

In addition to Dexter’s exploits, the first two seasons included segments featuring Monkey, Dexter’s pet lab-monkey, and the Justice Friends, a trio of superheroes sharing an apartment.

The show wasn’t afraid to experiment, such as the second season’s finale, the 25-minute “Last But Not Beast”. And after working on The PowerPuff Girls, Tartakovsky came back for Ego Trip, intending it to be the last word on Dexter.

Tartakovsky’s quirky sense of humor is clear in these seasons, especially when compared with the work of Chris Savino, who stepped in to run the series after the show seemingly ended and Tartakovsky moved on to Samurai Jack. The look and feel were okay but lacked the spark that made Dexter so funny.

The strong voice cast of Christine Cavanaugh, Allison Moore, Kath Soucie, Jeff Bennett, Kat Cressida, Eddie Deezen, and Candi Milo helped convey that sense of whimsy. After Cavanaugh died recently, Tartakovsky said he couldn’t imagine rebooting the show without her.

Interestingly, “Dial M for Monkey: Barbequor” and “Rude Removal” were banned from broadcast and are absent from the collection, making it a little less complete.

The 1080p transfer is just fine, retaining the sharp colors and images from the series; the Dolby Digital Audiotrack is equally good, so these are fine to rewatch at home.

No Special features were included.

Spider-Man: Cosmic Chaos!
By Mike Maihack
Amulet/96 pagers/#1299 (hardcover), $9.99 (digital)

I like Mike Maihack’s artwork, which I find accessible and lots of fun. I feel bad for taking him to task for his popular Cleopatra in Space, but that was years ago, and lately, he’s been producing material far more to my liking.

Here, we have the third of his Spider-Man team-up books aimed at 6-9-year-olds. His storytelling sensibilities are sharp and approachable. Maihack told School Library Journal, “For a more established character like Spidey, it was about tapping into his friendly and neighborly disposition toward everything. Those are both things I could completely connect with. After that, I find it pretty intuitive to know how each character is going to react when you confront them with other characters or toss them into a giant mess of a situation. No matter where they come from, I discover ways of making them my own.”

So, we have a Spider-Man missing the angst who is adventuring in stories scaled to the readership, which includes simplified versions of the Marvel Universe’s denizens. In this story, he finds himself in space, trying to return the Silver Surfer’s surfboard to him. Along the way, he finds himself coming into possession of a vurbfzax, a cosmic talisman. Just seven were manufactured as rare premiums in Celestrio’s cereal and Rocket warns, “Combining all seven can have universe-shattering consequences!” (I suppose this is for readers too young to know about the Infinity Stones.)

Of course, all seven will be brought together, and cosmic wackiness ensures, bringing in Ego the Living Planet, Galactus, the Watcher, and the Collector. Things are looking pretty bad until the resolution presents itself in a surprising way.

There are some fine running gags about waffles and dolphins, and the core essence of the Marvel characters is nicely distilled for easy accessibility.

The packed story actually unfolds in a well-paced way, never crowding the artwork and making sure the characters each get a chance to shine.

This one makes for solid reading if you have someone looking for summer adventures.