In the second to last season of Super Friends, they added the subtitle The Legendary Super Powers Show, and in the last they changed the name completely to Super Powers Team: Galactic Guardians. The reason is that Kenner and DC put out a toyline around this time called “Super Powers Collection“. Take a look:
There was also a Super Powers comic book if I recall correctly but I never had an issue. Being based on a comic collection it seems a given that they would have mini-comics. Well, back then. Today you’re lucky if you get some reprint of a regular comic. So how good were the Super Powers Collection comics? In this addition of Free Comic Inside we take a look at the Superman comic for a first impression.
“What’s Iron Man got that I don’t?” “Hair.” “Oh, you’re going to pay for that!”
That’s a shame, really as the artwork is quite good.
It’s another day at the Metropolis Nuclear Power Station when Luthor suddenly drops in. He wants to use the nuclear energy to power his super suit so he can finally crush Superman. Because pre or post-Crisis that’s Luthor’s favorite pass time. Too bad he sucks at it.
In a rare moment Lois is actually nice to Clark. That lasts until the next page.
At the Daily Planet Lois has just made another page one article and wants to celebrate. Sure she does this every other day pre-52 but still she invites Clark and Jimmy. That’s when Clark hears the trouble at the power plant, an argument down the street, a dance party in England, and two flies getting together in Guam. Luckily he’s only interested in the first one and uses his X-Ray vision to see all the way to the power plant. No, he wrote “X-Ray”, not “telescopic”. With a quick “I feel ill” excuse, Clark becomes Superman and flies to the power plant, running face first into Luthor’s Kryptonite Ray™ which doesn’t actually power the suit. I’m not sure if he generates artificial K-radiation or what but it does the job. At least until Superman called for his Supermobile (seen in the video above), strips Luthor of his suit…somehow…and carries him to jail.
One of the reasons I do this series is to show that this promo mini-comics tell as good a story as the regular ones. In this case…not so much. It’s serviceable; kids who bought either figure gets to see it in action and Superman save the day. The Supermobile pre-dates this toyline, first appearing in Action Comics and popping up a few times in the Super Friends cartoon. I also have the Corgi Matchbox/Hot Wheels-sized version and the design for the Super Powers Collection is rather different. Still, it does a good job showing off the three toys being sold.
I should note that the toys had cool action figures but like most 80’s figures had the barest of articulation. You couldn’t pull this pose off.
The problem comes from the fact that the story is rather short, only a little over 10 pages. The Masters of the Universe mini-comics are also kind of short but somehow manages to feel like it’s telling a full story. the Super Powers Collection comics are slightly smaller as I recall (I’m using a torrent because I’ve only seen my cousin’s back in the day and one at ComicCONN with a Flash figure), maybe about the size of Kenner’s MASK mini-comics. This smaller size leaves less room to put a lot in if you want to be able to read it, so like the other MASK comic I own (the one I have yet to review) there’s a little set-up and then mostly action for its small life.
We’ll look into other Super Powers Collection comics in the future but this one I wasn’t impressed with, even if it would make fairly decent Friday Night Fight material in the future.
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