For All Mankind #25

Rob and Super Friend Tim Price review "Puppets of the Overlord" by E. Nelson Bridwell, Ramona Fradon, and Bob Smith, from SUPER FRIENDS #25! Plus Listener Feedback!

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Opening and closing themes by Hanna Barbera.

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15 responses to “For All Mankind #25

  1. Somewhere out there is an alternate universe where young Rob Kelly used a Seraph action figure to destroy many robot boxes (Transformers). Spinx Jana figure sold seperately.

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  2. Oh, yeah. This is the one with the future Global Guardians that’s etched into my memory, especially the confrontations between them and the various Super Friends and in that regard, the big throwdown between Wonder Woman and Nubia is particularly memorable. Also, looking at the gallery page, there’s one other thing about that page that I remember after all these years: the odd hatching/shading on Nubia’s face in the second panel that makes it look like she has a beard (or at least a five o’clock shadow).
    And I *loved* the scenes with Aquaman at the end, both him using his hair to block GL’s energy bolt, and then Mera bonking him with the water fist.

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  3. Another great episode and really enjoyed hearing Tim. I have to check out the Outcasters now, so your crossover worked!

    I have to admit a soft spot for Underling/ Overlord since he was in my first ever podcast! I laughed out loud at the Green Flame flying by expelling fire from her nose!

    I also think Seraph is a cool looking character. Would have liked to have seen him more for sure, and would have bought a Remco figure for sure!! And finally the blocking GL’s ring with blonde hair is pretty lame (even when I was a kid) and is another reason it was a good idea to get rid of the yellow weakness.

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  4. Another great episode and I enjoyed hearing Tim – I will definitely be checking out the Outcasters now, so your crossover worked!

    I admit a soft spot for Underling / Overlord since he was in the first podcast I was ever a guest in, but he really does look pretty silly. Funniest part was certainly Green Flame flying by snorting fire out of her nose! I laughed out loud – I had forgotten that entirely.

    And have to love all the 70s fashions on the civilian IDs!

  5. Thanks to Rob & Tim for a great podcast! Hope everyone had a great holiday season!

    would have to agree with Rob, the “Best Friend” goes to Seraph, perhaps with a nod to Mera as well.

    Seeing Zan & Jayna recover there senses after changing their forms is a trope used in the cartoon as well. There were a few episodes where they were hypnotized, and Gleek would bring their hands together, and their Exxor energy would break the spell.

    As for Jayna becoming a mythical beast, she’s done that at least twice in the cartoon. In “Battle of The Gods” she became a Griffin, and in “Terror From the Phantom Zone” she became a winged horse.

    Ramona Fradon always does great work, but I loved the outfit she gave Nubia, and the 70s fashion was just too funny!

    See you next podcast!

    Chuck

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  6. So let’s discuss the Shooting Fire out of your nostrils thing!

    Fans of Douglas Adams will recognise that “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy” got there around the same time, when the Golgafrincham market researchers decided to focus group the idea of nasally-fitted fire: https://youtu.be/fMoPR2IA2Uk

    Fire must have her nose and mouth lined with asbestos, because – boy! – would fire down the nose smart! But – as Tim pointed out – the direction of the force is really weird. I’m not so worried about Green Fury’s core strength to avoid melting her toes… it’s neck muscle strength she’s going to need! Blasting fire out of your nose is going to kick your head backwards like a kind of reverse-whiplash injury! It might amuse the kids, but for me, flaming snot is a Comic Book Science fail!

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  7. Definitely had this one as a kid.

    For some reason I have always had a soft spot for the ‘globe crown’ the Overlord wears. I want one!

    I always sort of dismissed the Super Friends as a kid’s comic. But seeing Fury fly by shooting flames out her nose definitely made me say ‘This ain’t Action Comics.’

    Thanks for reviewing this and allowing me to revisit in my head!

  8. Great comic = great podcast. Nice job, fellas!

    I always loved this issue. I read it right around the time that I read Secret Origins of DC Super-Heroes (edited by Denny O’Neil) which featured Nubia (but no Aquaman, lord have mercy). With that and this issue, I always thought Nubia was a bigger deal than she evidently was. I would have liked to have seen her more. Nice to know that she is a strong supporting character in the current Wonder Woman mythos.

    LOVED seeing Mera and Aqualad drawn by Ramona Fradon. In fact, I loved that whole bit where Aquaman held his own against his team-mates. So if we think about it, this scene means that Aquaman is stronger than Green Lantern…..? Or maybe just smarter, haha.

    I also liked the Overlord, but I appreciate that he would have been more menacing if his uniform was dark blue or even black. A magenta leotard doesn’t scream “world conqueror.” As for the ending, I expected him to come back with another Puppet Master type plot. I was disappointed that this never happened, and that the “puppet’s voice” scene was never explained. It would have been cool if he had been schizophrenic (sp?) or had heard voices again for some other reason (the Atom?). I would have liked to have seen him get taken down by The Elementals (or whatever that group was called) who had a hand in taking down Overlord One.

    As for distribution and subscriptions, I remember always seeing issues of Super Friends at the bookstores where I bought comics. As in, like they never sold. I had a bad feeling about the book, especially in that last year. I think there were always unsold issues in the spinning racks, unfortunately.

    And I subscribed to JLA and LEGION for *years*. My first issue was JLA #114, back in 1974. They started out folded up, which is why you can sometimes find older issues of books with a crease down the middle; those were subscription copies. Then the issues got “mailed flat” in thicker brown paper wrappers (think old grocery paper bags’ paper) and then eventually they were in plastic sleeves with thin cardboard “boards” with your address labels stuck on them. I eventually stopped my subscriptions when I found my bookstores got the issues reliably, and more quickly than I did in the mail. But I never missed an issue, and none of them were ever terribly damaged.

    When I lived in Japan I subscribed to many titles, because that was the only way I could stay sort-of up to date with books I wanted (Peter David’s Aquaman, JLE, 5YL LSH, etc). They always arrived in pretty good condition, too, although I did get somebody else’s book by mistake once. I sent it on to him, and that was the beginning of a beautiful pen-pal friendship that continues to this day.

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  9. Hello Tim – welcome to the podcast! Your enthusiasm was evident in your voice! Great job!

    At first I was a bit sad because I wasn’t able to listen to this episode as soon as it came out (December 26) but couldn’t get to it until Jan 3, but luckily (ugh, kinda) we got a snowstorm that day so I WAS able to listen to it while shoveling the sidewalk in front of the house – so you helped me tremedously!

    As far as Batman defeating Green Lantern, I think that most of it was down to the surprise attack aspect of it.
    GL certainly wasn’t wary of Batman the way he would have been if Evil Star or Doctor Polaris had materialized in the JLA satellite.

    I often hear you guys talk about newsstand distribution being spotty at this time. I hadn’t realized how lucky I had it.
    I grew up in Spring Grove, PA – a VERY small rural town. Our nearest city was York – about 20 minutes away from Spring Grove. York is about 40 minutes from Harrisburg to give listeners some kind of reference point.
    In Spring Grove I had two options: Rutters (a local 7-11 type store) and Uffleman’s Newsstand. Uffleman’s is where I got a vast majority of comics and it’s the location where I longingly stared at the Super Friends Treasury Edition one Sunday afternoon after they had closed in the afternoon.
    in York, the best place to get comics was at the locally owned Bookland chain of stores. There were 3 in York and they had a fantastic selection of comics.

    At that time I was really into Super Friends, the two digest titles – Best of DC and DC Special Blue Ribbon Digest, Batman Family (isn’t there a new podcast about THAT title?), Superman Family, Flash, DC Comics Presents, JLA, and then other one offs, specials, and individual issues that caught my eye.
    Of the titles that I bought regularly each month – I never remember missing an issue, although perhaps that was because I had at least 5 different locations to browse from.

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  10. Poor Green Lantern. That silly yellow weakness has always set him up for some really embarassing defeats. My favorite was in New Teen Titans #4, when Robin wrapped his yellow cape around his fist and knocked Hal the you-know-what-out. Let’s not mention Robin painting himself yellow in the god-awful All-Star Batman & Robin, though.

    I missed this issue as a kid, so when Green Fury/Flame showed up in a later issue, I wondered where I had missed her in that initial Global Guardians debut, which started in issue #7. Seraph was one of the GGs with the most potential for sure. The Warlord line would have been great for him, but as I think I mentioned before, I could see someone using those Mego-like Bible figures to kitbash a pretty accurate figure to go with the Mego Super Heroes. Might make for a great future custom project!

    I didn’t realize Mera appeared in this isssue, so I assumed Ramona’s first stab at her was issue #27, the big Aquaman issue. I recently gifted Cindy an original sketch of Mera by Ramona, and she in turn got me a sketch of Batman by her! Cindy rounded it out by buying herself a Wonder Woman sketch, so we have a Fradon gallery now!

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  11. Thanks for another terrific show, boys. The likening of Overlord #2 to Liberace was brilliant. Like Anj, though, I like his look, the way he incorporates the globe into his crown is like ancient Egypt’s crown of the three kingdoms… yeah, it’s exactly like that.

  12. Great episode, and Tim’s always welcome, of course. Like everyone else, I loved the international heroes that became the Global Guardians. It always made sense to me that there’d be superheroes in places outside America, too. I wish we’d gotten more of them, so we could have had more who weren’t connected to patriotic themes or national stereotypes, but I was happy to get the ones we had.

    Seraph was my favorite, too. He was like a walking Sunday School lesson, and confirmation that the Old Testament was a valid historical source on Earth-1, or at least that’s how I took him.

    Finally, Overlord is awesome and undeserving of your disdain, especially when you consider that his Earth-616 counterpart is Baron Zemo. Fur, magenta, megalomania — all the clues are there!

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