Something Streaming This Way Comes: "Legends of the Superheroes"
As you probably know if you follow me on social media, nothing makes me happier than the discovery of some old and/or obscure television series popping up on a streaming service, so the sight of the two Legends of the Superheroes specials landing on Tubi yesterday was thrilling…and also kind of horrifying.
I mean, seriously, both adjectives 100% apply, and I’m going to go out on a limb and say that I don’t think anyone who’s seen these specials would disagree with that assessment…and if they do, then I’ve got four words to remind them that they’re wrong: “Charlie Callas as Sinestro.”
I actually remember when these specials aired in 1979, and I thought they were amazing. Why? Mostly because I was nine years old, but when I look at this photo, I will admit that I do appreciate why I loved them so much at the time. You’re talking about an era when I was watching Super Friends religiously every Saturday morning, had grown up with the Shazam! live-action series, and was watching the original Batman TV series in syndication on a daily basis. On top of all of this, I was also a voracious reader of comic books, so to discover that NBC was delivering unto me live-action versions of so many of these characters that I knew and loved… It was, like, “Who’s been reading my dream journal?!”
And not only were they offering up Green Lantern, the Flash, Black Canary, and even the Huntress, but Adam West and Burt Ward were reprising their roles as Batman and Robin, and Frank Gorshin was playing the Riddler again!
In a 2010 piece on his website News From Me, writer Mark Evanier discussed these specials and offered up an explanation as to how this strange piece of programming came to be.
Shelly Moldoff, who drew comics for DC for years, suggested the idea of a super-hero roast. This concept was passed on to Joe Barbera and it was among about fifty he had on his mind one day when he went to NBC to pitch ideas for prime-time specials. With him was the studio's agent, Sy Fischer, a very nice and smart man who played a large role into building Hanna-Barbera into the huge company it became. Joe and Sy were a terrific team: Joe knew how to interest networks in ideas. Sy knew how to close a deal. If you can do those two things, you can be very successful.
There’s more to the story than that, and I highly recommend that you pop over to Mark’s site to read the whole thing, but for the purposes of this piece, the only other thing that you really need to know is the meeting resulted in them selling NBC two hour-long specials. Unfortunately, even with the help of host Ed McMahon (yes, really), they had to seriously stretch things out to even make the roast last for the duration of a full hour-long special, which meant that they needed to figure out a premise for the second hour, hence Legend of the Superheroes: The Challenge.
Look, I cannot and will not defend either of these specials as being truly wonderful, but they are absolutely artifacts of late ‘70s TV which help to define just how insane the small screen was at the time. While I have nothing but praise for the makeup work done on characters like Legion of Super Heroes villain Mordru and Justice Society of America villain Solomon Grundy, the fact that Mordru does a lyrically-tweaked version of “That’s Entertainment” (I know you don’t want to believe me, but I swear on my child’s life that this musical number actually takes place), I mean, it pretty much does away with any comic book credibility offered up by the costuming.
Oh, and did I mention that there’s a character named Ghetto Man who gets his super powers by saying the magic word “Kareem”?
Yeah, I gotta be honest with you: that bit hasn’t held up so well.
On the other hand, there’s also a scene where a celebrity gossip reporter - a parody of the then-ubiquitous Rona Barrett - interviews the hot new superhero power couple of Giganta and the Atom, and that holds up…not very well either, actually. In fact, it’s downright painful.
And yet here I am, having just re-watched both of these specials and still telling you that you really need to see them. Yeah, it’s definitely a case of needing to see them to believe them, but it doesn’t change the fact that you do need to see them.
Here’s the link to watch them on Tubi, an ad-based streaming service that’s free of charge, so no refunds!
Oh, and here’s one more clip for the road…
ncG1vNJzZmivmaG5qa3Rq6CsZqOqr7TAwJyiZ5ufonyxe9KopJ6smJ67qHnSramemZ2eu6h506GgrGWnlsZur86mnKxlYJez