JLU vs. Superfriends

Here's a link to a great article online comparing Superfriends and Justice League Unlimited:

http://toddalcott.livejournal.com/65562.html

Here's an excerpt for whet your appetite:

"In Superfriends, Batman has a computer and a cave full of gadgets, Wonder Woman has a magic rope and an invisible plane, Green Lantern has a magic ring, Flash is fast, Superman has his multitudinous powers, Aquaman talks to fish. Those are all fine attributes, but they do not, in and of themselves, constitute character. If all that mattered was the number of powers, Martian Manhunter would be a more popular superhero than Superman.

"What the producers of Superfriends chose to do is give all their heroes the exact same personality, whether they are the Last Son of Krypton, the Dark Knight, the Amazon Princess or The Guy Who Talks to Fish. The heroes of Superfriends are uniformly game, brave, chipper, chatty, easily startled and, paradoxically, unflappable. No sooner do they exclaim "Great Krypton/Hera/Gotham/Neptune!" than they pull some improbable solution out of the air and calmly implement it (as Seanbaby mentions, this solution often involves "spinning around" the bad guy/explosion/missile/lava/monster/lava-monster until the spinning affects it somehow).

"This conceptual blunder, not the dumb plots or the cheap animation, is why Superfriends is so reviled. Television can soar on dumb plots and cheap animation, it cannot survive without characters. This is why episodes of Superfriends feel so shallow, repetitive and lame; there are seven main characters and they all think and act exactly the same way. Think about it: Hanna-Barbera actually gave the members of the Justice League less personality than they gave to the members of the Mystery Gang."

Honestly, I don't get why some folks are so hung up on Superfriends. It's the same thing with shows like He-Man and Ninja Turtles. I get affection for old cartoons you watched as a kid, but really, a lot of those shows are pretty bad. Not just the animation, but the writing and voice acting too. And hey, there are things I liked as a kid that I've rewatched as an adult and found nostalgic enjoyment in, but they're far from the be-all, end-all.