I did get a couple of confused responses to the B.F.F. Powers: Activate joke in Wednesday’s strip. I’ve seen this reference done in a lot of different shows, even Family Guy has done a reference to this more than once. But… if you aren’t familiar with your 1970’s Hanna Barbera animated classics, you may not have recognized the reference to “The Wonder Twins!” They were members of the “Superfriends,” which was like, the WAAAY too kid-friendly version of the Justice League. Imagine the cheese of the Adam West Batman show, but EVERY superhero is like that (Adam actually did the voice of Batman on this show, of course). Superman is super-cheesy, and likes to solve every problem by spinning around really fast. Everyone is dumb as a brick and basically, nothing cool ever happens.
The Wonder Twins were an attempt at bringing in the teenage audience… I think… I mean, I can’t understand how anyone would possibly think that teenagers were relating to this. Maybe they just wanted to make kids feel better about themselves for being lame… ‘cuz these kids were totally lame in comparison to the rest of the league.
Every time they wanted to help out, they shouted “Wondertwin Powers, Activate!” and then they fist-bumped. And then one of them would turn into some kind of bad-ass animal demon construct, and the other would turn into a puddle of water. Really. This was some writers great idea. Someone pitched this idea in front of people wearing suits, and those people went, “yeah, that sounds good, go with that…” Ugh. They also had their own sidekick named Gleek the Space Monkey. Yeah, he was an actual monkey from outer space.
So thats what I was referencing, but you can read the whole sob story at the Wonder Twins Wiki. But, if you’re going to the trouble of looking at Superfriends lore, you’ll just want to play the Superfriends Drinking Game. It includes rules like, “Drink every time the heroes say they’ve ‘GOT TO’ do something.” There’s even a special rule for drinking whenever the Wonder Twins activate it up.
Today’s strip is also a reference to old-school animation, that of Rocky and Bullwinkle, whose episodes always ended on a cliffhanger, where we were always promised a continuation that would have one of two horrific titles, but usually ended up having a third horrifying option we never even considered possible. So, watch out for Monday’s strip which is titled, “Mike drank too much while watching Superfriends, and didn’t draw anything because he was busy puking his shoes out of his mouth.”
Happy Labor Day!
