In the season’s first episode, we got the idea that the Justice League and the Legion of Doom were pretty evenly matched. By which I mean, each organization seemed to have a severe follow-through problem. At least once an episode each group would gain the upper hand. The Legion would get the League in some sort of death trap, but their attention would wander and the heroes would escape. Then the Superfriends would capture the Legion, but never quite get them safely incarcerated.

In other words, both teams seemed more or less equally inept. In this second show of the season, however, the Legion out and out make the Superfriends look like a bunch of mooks. Which again raises the question of how the heroes consistently ended up defeating their clearly more powerful and intellectually impressive (comparatively speaking, of course—I mean, if I were in this universe I probably could wipe out both crews in about three days) opposites.

We open, per usual, in the Legion of Doom headquarters. This rigid plot structure allowed for reduced animation expenditures, as they could simply dub over footage animated for the first episode. Over and over and over again. This, presumably, was a useful device, given the show’s apparent three hundred dollar budgets.

By the way, why does the Hall of Doom rise from the swamp whenever their meetings begin? Wouldn’t it make more sense for them to raise it beforehand, do as to allow the Legion members entrance? I mean, once they’re already assembled and the meeting’s begun, there seems little point in coming to the surface.

On the other hand, perhaps they don’t come together for the meetings. Maybe the Hall of Doom is also a dormitory. If so, I hope Luthor or Brainiac whipped up an industrial strength air-freshening system. I mean, you’re living underground with a seven-foot tall gorilla and massively huge zombie guy? That can’t smell very good. And I didn’t even mention the guy made of old straw or the dude who lives in a wetsuit.

Hey, there you go. They rise to the surface for the meetings because they’re all stuck in a room with Grodd and Grundy and they want to open the windows. OK, that makes sense. A swamp must smell comparatively good.

Opening with the Legion was also necessary because the Superfriends, whatever their good points, were not the most proactive bunch. The idea of actually hunting down and capturing supervillains before they create havoc seems never to have occurred to them. Instead, they merely sat around waiting until Lex Luthor popped up on their viewscreen to announce his new army of tidal wave monsters. At that point they’d finally got off their asses and do something. And it’s not like they did anything useful in the meantime, like drink beer and watch baseball games or Trading Spaces on their giant TV monitor. Hey, a special Justice League/Legion of Doom episode of Trading Spaces! That’d be awesome!!

We open with Gorilla Grodd bitching about the Legion’s lack of success. (Imagine how he felt after another ten or fifteen episodes had gone by.) That’s another thing, it’s not like this crew is composed of folks who would work well with others. A crisis is averted, however, when Luthor explains that one of their compatriots has formulated a new super-duper Evil Plan. One of them, you see, has been in contact with a group of Eee-vil extraterrestrials. And so Luthor turns the spotlight over to…Captain Cold.

In my review of the first episode, I discussed the random fashion in which the show used (primarily) its villains. This is pretty much a classic example. You have three Legion of Doom members who come from outer space. You have Luthor and Grodd, super-scientists who you could see casting messages into the void during their spare minutes. And yet it’s the guy with the parka and freeze-ray pistol who achieves contact with an advanced alien species from Venus? I mean, Lee Van Cleef I can buy, but Captain Cold? What the hell is that about?

It doesn’t even make ‘cartoon’ sense as we youngins of the ‘70s knew it. For instance, if the aliens were Ice Beings from the frigid surface of Pluto, well, you could see why they’d be yakking with the Captain. But creatures from the humid, heated mists of Venus? Harrumph.

Still and all, that’s the idea. After a quick intro, one of the aliens, from a race called the Fearians—oh, brother—appears on the Legion’s giant viewscreen. The alien proves to have three heads, an arrangement that doesn’t seem extraordinarily useful, which of course all speak in unison. In sum, the deal is that if the Legion terraforms (venisforms?) the Earth so that the Fearians can colonize it, then the Fearians will use their advanced technology to destroy the Superfriends. Afterward the Legion will be granted dominion over the human population. (To show how lazy Luthor is, this is largely the same arrangement he made with the rogue Kryptonians in Superman II.)

This whole scheme seems rather problematic to me, and for a number of quite evident reasons. One prominent example is that, aside from swamp dweller Solomon Grundy, ruling over a superheated and grossly humid Earth seems less than an optimal situation. Moreover, the Fearians would, for all intents and purposes, remain the Legion’s overlords. Which, given their ultimate plans to conquer the universe, seems like it would be less than appealing to them. Even so, no one less than the mighty Scarecrow dubs this "an excellent plan." And he’s made of straw.

Anyway. Terraforming the planet, for some reason, requires more than one of the palm-sized gadgets Luthor or Brainiac whip up like popcorn. Given some of the other gizmos they effortlessly create, this seems a stretch. On the other hand, maybe they could do so, only they proceed with their current scheme because it’s designed to make the Justice League look like a bunch of superchumps. Which would, after all, be textbook Supervillain psychology. For you see, Captain Cold’s master plan involves tricking the Superfriends into changing the Earth’s climate for them. His backup this time around is Black Manta and Sinestro.

The first part of the plan—these always come in stages—involves using Cold’s flying ship, equipped with a giant freeze ray, to "start the world’s next ice age." Which seems a roundabout way to make the Earth more like Venus, but again, half the fun of supervillainry is doing things in the most impractical fashion possible.

And so CC flies around the country, flash-freezing major, if poorly animated, metropolitan areas. Having a ship that can freeze entire cities in a matter of seconds seems like an oddly powerful device to only trot out for a single plan, but again, I think those are the rules. Also, I have to wonder at a route that takes one from Washington D.C. to San Francisco to New York, but there you go. Moreover, even kiddies might wonder if you could freeze entire cities without loss of life, especially as we see any number of civilians who’ve been frozen solid. And that doesn’t count the property damage. Just think of all the frozen water pipes.

After a rampage lasting, you’d have to think, at least several hours, and following the freezing of at least three major U.S. cities, the Superfriends finally get a "Trouble Alert" on their super-computer. (I’m sure Microsoft will provide a patch for this until the next scheduled software upgrade.) "Looks like the Justice League Trouble Alert has picked up something," Hawkman perceptively notes.

After viewing the ice-encased cities, Flash quickly deduces that his old foe Captain Cold is to blame. (Gee, what tipped you off?) He runs off at superspeed to thwart the villain. Flash, as noted, is second only to Supes and Green Lantern in the raw power department. This is especially true since he could achieve pretty much anything by either running in a circle really, really fast or vibrating his atoms—which provided him a range of abilities, from passing through walls to traveling through time—or doing both at once.

Of course, the writers knew kids wouldn’t have the advanced knowledge of physics and thermodynamics required to understand how this would work. Therefore the Flash always helpfully explains what he was doing. For instance, Flash disables CC’s hovering ship by placing himself beneath it and—that’s right—running around in a circle really, really fast. "My super speed," he notes, "will create a vacuum beneath his freeze ray and suck it to the ground." Uh…OK. Actually, I think he means it’ll bring down his ship. That’s what happens, anyway.

CC emerges from the downed craft. He then draws his gun and ray beams the Flash. I repeat, he then draws his gun and ray beams the Flash. You know, the guy that can move at the speed of light. Just the motion CC uses to draw the gun would last about a billion years to the Flash. (Who, when you think of it, must suffer from a truly staggering case of ADD.) Yet the goof stands there and gets tagged. Moron.

Then, after the Scarlet Speedster is encased in ice (yet can still talk), Our Hero notes the ray "is lowering my temperature to absolute zero." Since he already ran in a circle really, really fast, this leaves but one solution. "I’ve got to speed up my molecules," he avers, "and melt the ice." This makes CC look even lamer. Even when he unbelievably manages to actually tag his foe, the Flash can just vibrate his way out of danger.

Anticipating something along these lines, CC has a backup plan. He raps a building with his pistol, and the frozen foundation cracks. This is comic book physics. Making stuff really cold also makes it brittle. However, things like buildings won’t just fall down on their own. No, you have to tap them with something first.

In any case, CC’s plan manages to distract his opponent. "Great wings of Mercury," Our Hero exclaims. "I’ve got to stop that falling building before it shatters into a million pieces!" He does this by…how do I describe this? I guess I’ll leave that to the narrator. "Within the span of a heartbeat, Flash speeds over the Brooklyn Bridge, unraveling its cable supports and tying them to the top of the falling skyscraper." Good thing in cartoons that buildings always fall in one piece. Even when brittle and after their descent is arrested by having a line thrown around them.

There’s so many things wrong with this (for instance, is it a good idea to remove some of the cable supports from the equally frozen and brittle bridge…and isn’t the cable itself brittle…etc.) that I could blather on at even greater length than usual. Instead, I’ll just focus on a couple of points regarding the Flash. First, he’s clearly shown to be flying here, despite the fact that this isn’t one of his powers. Also, removing and manipulating a multi-ton steel cable would require superstrength. Which the Flash also doesn’t have. So again, there’s no way he could do this. Superman could, of course, and Green Lantern could do the same with his ring, but not the Flash.

Anyway, with the cables anchoring the building to the (also brittle) bridge, the Flash explains what will happen next. "These cables should act as a shock absorber and pull the building back up." Well, duh. And so, of course, they do. A little plaster and maybe some caulk, I guess, and the edifice will be as good as new.

Now the Flash turns his attention to catching Cap’n Cold. However, he’s thwarted because CC has produced perhaps a half dozen ice replicas of himself. "By the time you find the real me," he sneers, "I’ll be home free." Then the ice duplicates and he fly off on jetpacks. Uh, OK. By the way, couldn’t he have just left in the time it took him to create all these duplicates? We won’t even go into how he did so, especially since they were all painted to match his appearance. Plus, given that they just showed the Flash flying, I’m not sure why CC jetting off would defeat him, but anyway.

With Cold having made his improbable escape, the Flash employs "his hyper-speed to create tremendous friction" and safely defrost the frozen cities and their occupants. This, however, was all part of the Captain’s ludicrously contrived plan, since the Flash’s endeavors also result in "great quantities of steam that are filling the atmosphere." As always with this series, the attempts to attach ‘realistic’ ramifications to the characters’ actions serves mainly to make the rest of the portrayed events even sillier.

Having make patsies of the "Super Fools"—a phrase they use twice here—the Legion pauses for a little celebratory gloat session. That’s why the villains always fail, you know. Can’t keep their eyes on the prize. Then it’s time for the fearsome Black Manta to kick off stage two of their diabolical scheme.

As noted at the Internet’s most knowledgeable Superfriends site, Seanbaby.com, Black Manta’s superpower is that he owns a boat. Actually, that’s a little unfair, because it ignores the fact that he also has a scuba suit. And that still makes him more powerful than Aquaman—admittedly, no great task—as the latter doesn’t travel the seas on a boat at all, but rather on a jet ski with a big dorky orange "A’" on it. (His other mode of transport is a giant seahorse—really—so don’t laugh.) Even so, the boat is what makes Black Manta essential to Captain Cold’s plan.

Superman, watching Flash defrost the cities on the Hall of Justice viewscreen, opines that the rest of the day should be quiet. Apparently they haven’t noticed that the Legion’s plans always come in segments. Luckily, though, Robin is there to notice the blazing inferno that quickly appears on the giant monitor. "Look!" he shouts. (Thanks, Boy Wonder.) "It’s the Pacific Ocean," Wonder Woman exclaims, "and it’s on fire!" What, all of it? Right at that moment Black Manta appears on the screen and claims responsibility. You have to admit, whatever other flaws they have, the supervillains possess impeccable timing.

"Black Manta!" Aquaman cries. "I should have known you’d be responsible for such a fiendish act!" Yeah, I guess you should have. Who else would be setting oceans on fire? Cheetah? The Riddler? Still, you can’t help understanding why Aquaman’s all excited and stuff. He only really gets to do something when it involves the water. Which can’t be often.

In fact, you can understand why he never quite manages to catch Black Manta. Without BM, there’d never be anything for him to do. Hell, the other Superfriends probably makes sure he escapes, too. His antics are the only thing that ever gets Aquaman out of the Hall of Justice. And let’s admit it, Aquaman probably smells like fish.

And so, having jet skied out to the Pacific Ocean, Aquaman confronts a wall of fire. "I’ve got to figure out a way to put these flames out!" he muses. Wow, can’t get anything over on you, Aquaman. It is a stumper, though. If only there was something around here that could be used to extinguish a fire….hmm…

Meanwhile, Black Manta is still tooling around, using the exhaust from his boat’s rocket engine to set more of the ocean ablaze. "It’s the Manta Ship!" Aquaman observes as the craft approaches him. (Boy, and they call Batman the World’s Greatest Detective.) "That’s it!" Black Manta exclaims from his bridge. "I’ve got Aquaman right where I want him!" Yeah, I guess a rocket boat would trump a jet ski in a ramming contest. The disparity is so great that even Aquaman figures it out, and he attempts to flee.

Luckily, Aquaman remembers at the last moment what his superpower is: He can breathe underwater. So he leaps off his jet ski and dives beneath the waters. Handily, there just happens to be a "rusted old anchor and chain" sitting on the ocean floors below. Spinning this giant artifact around—like the Flash, this version of Aquaman doesn’t have superstrength, making this all more than a little unlikely—he tosses the device up and snarls the Manta Ship’s propellers. I must admit, that was a pretty good shot.

[Correspondent Bill Leary wonders why Black Manta's rocket boat has propellers.  Uh, good question.  From what we see here, the rocket propels him while the craft is on the surface, the propellers when it's underwater.]

"Something stopped my engines," Manta observes, proving himself fully the cunning equal of his watery foe. "That’s right, Black Manta!" comes a voice directly behind him. The camera angle changes and we see that the speaker is Aquaman. (!!!) Standing on the Manta Ship’s bridge, literally two seconds after casting the anchor and chain. Whatever.

Anyway, Black Manta pretty much concedes his capture, presumably because of the Superfriends cartoon rule against, you know, actually fighting and stuff. Because otherwise, jeez, dude, you just gave up to Aquaman. How lame is that? (To be fair, perhaps he’s unnerved by his opponent’s having magically teleported into his boat.)

BM has an ace up his sleeve, however. He points to an island in the path of the spreading flames. Aquaman can bring Black Manta in or save the island. Since I don’t think any member of the Justice League at any time ever managed to incarcerate any member of the Legion, his decision is obvious. You’d think after a while the Superfriends would start carrying around some rope—actually, I guess, Wonder Woman and Batman already do—given the frequency with which they end up in these situations.

With the Hero of Halibut distracted by this quandary, Black Manta uses his rocket chair (?) to escape. Of course, this leaves Aquaman in possession of BM’s nifty rocket boat/submarine. Which Our Hero abandons without bothering to secure it. So it’s no surprise that when next we see the craft it’s back in Black Manta’s hands.

By the way, considering that none of their schemes ever work, where does the Legion get its limitless construction and equipment budgets? And how does stuff like this work? Since BM loses his boat—albeit temporarily—during a mission, is the Legion required to buy or build him another? Just wondering.

Aside from being able to breathe underwater, and, er, swim, Aquaman has another superpower. Which is "aquatic telepathy," or the ability to command sea life to do his bidding. In other words, his most validly ‘super’ power is to freeload off the efforts of fish. All praise be to you, Aquaman. Here he orders "hundreds of large [not to mention badly drawn] sea creatures to form a giant wave." Uh…OK. Somehow this is achieved and the resultant tsunami "drenches the flaming ocean." According to my dictionary, to ‘drench’ is to "make wet all over; soak or saturate in liquid." You know you’re in the presence of an awesome hero when he manages to make the ocean wet.

However, it turns out Aquaman hasn’t entirely thought out his plan. "Great Neptune," he says, which is the kind of thing you say when you’re, you know, Aquaman. "That giant wave is heading towards the coast!" Of what, you might ask. Got me, although it does look like Hawaii that ends up inundated. In fact, according to The Narrator, the wave ends up "drenching dozens of coastlines [whatever that means] and flooding inland areas." Good work again, oh Champion of Chubs.

Back to the Hall of Doom. The viewscreen shows a tableau of skyscrapers jutting up from under what must be hundreds of feet of water. Oddly, one of the buildings appears to be the Chrysler Building. This seems odd, given that the Chrysler Building is in New York and that Aquaman’s confrontation with Black Manta took place in the Pacific Ocean. Those "hundreds of large fish" must have whipped up a bigger wave than I’d thought.

By the way, how does the Justice League manage to keep from getting sued for stuff like this? I mean, Aquaman put out a fire in the middle of the ocean, and in so doing flooded presumably hundreds if not thousands of cities. I’m pretty sure that would be a tort of some kind. (Not to mention that millions of people should have been killed. However, in this universe it’s apparently impossible to bring about somebody’s death.)

Seeing the results of their handiwork, the Legion indulges in further back slapping. Then the Fearian guy—remember?—checks in. I’m not sure why, except that this scene led into a commercial. Maybe they just wanted to remind the viewer of the plot.

Then it’s on to the Hall of Justice. Not too surprisingly, Aquaman decides to report via the televiewer rather than in person. He notes that his wave "drenched all the coastlines of the Western Hemisphere." Hmm, that sounds pretty bad. I must be wrong, however, as Batman nonchalantly advises the Leader of Limpets not to sweat it.

Just then the Trouble Alert sounds again, showing footage of "six radioactive comets" heading on a collision course with Earth. (By the way, how many cameras do the Superfriends have circling the planet? Because we see the comets from at least a couple of different angles.) "Three potential disasters in one day," Samurai notes. "There is obviously a plan behind them." Yep, a real collective of Quiz Kids, our Justice League.

Green Lantern guesses that Sinestro is behind the comet attack, which at least is a better guess than the ones about Captain Cold and Black Manta. In a burst of particularly bad animation, GL flies into space to confront his foe. However, once he reaches the comets Sinestro is nowhere to be seen. Until, that is, the cad steps out of nothingness. "I was hiding in the anti-matter universe of Qward," he chortles. Boy, I can’t believe Green Lantern fell for that old trick. Having the drop on Our Hero, Sinestro zaps a sphere around him. Since it’s yellow, GL is at its mercy. "My gyroscopic transporter will spin you right out of the universe!" Sinestro promises. Uh…OK.

However, the villain’s device has a design flaw. In transporting GL "out of the physical universe," it travels so fast that it changes "the wavelength of the yellow light to blue." Which, of course, allows GL to control it with his power ring. By throwing it into reverse, the sphere returns him to our universe. Which, if I’m following this correctly, would turn it yellow again. Or…my head hurts. Anyway, maybe Sinestro should have just impaled him with a big yellow spear or something.

GL returns to our reality and finds that "I’ve only got seconds to stop those comets before they smash into the Earth." At this juncture you might have expected Superman to show up to provide a little backup, especially since the comets themselves are yellow and thus immune to GL’s power ring. I guess you don’t want to show up your fellow superheroes, though, because the Last Son of Krypton is nowhere to be seen. With GL thus left to his own devices, and given that he can’t directly manipulate the comets, this naturally leaves only one possible solution: Use the ring to shift the entire Earth out of the comets’ path. (And I thought Aquaman caused a lot of flooding!)

GL heads back to headquarters and the praise of his fellows. However, he too did exactly what the Legion wanted. Looking at some computer results, Wonder Woman draws the situation to their attention. "Our efforts to stop the Legion of Doom have greatly affected the environment," she cautions. (Yeah, you’d think.) The Flash concurs, noting that the steam released when he melted Captain Cold’s ice attacks is "raising the Earth’s humidity to a dangerous level!"

Batman, meanwhile, calls up images of cities choked with foliage. "And because of Aquaman’s tidal wave," he notes, "the land surfaces are damper, causing an increase in vegetation." Black Lightning then observes, "Green Lantern moved the Earth a few degrees off its normal orbit, making the temperatures rise still higher." 

Here we cut to a temperature gauge* showing that it’s 190 degrees in Russia. (!!) I don’t care if that’s Celsius or Fahrenheit; that’s not good. "It’s as if we’re responsible for what’s happening," Aquaman exclaims. Yes, oh Commander of Cod. This is probably because you’re responsible for what’s happening.

[*Actually, there’s a bank of temperature gauges. These, as you’d expect, track the temperature in the U.S., Russia, Taiwan and "Jersey." (Yes, I know, not in the still I captured, but at another point they do.)  That’s a fairly lame gag, but remains the only indication I remember that the show’s writers had a sense of humor about all this stuff.]

Realizing that they’ve been had, they ask the Justice Computer what the Legion’s goal could be. After a few seconds, the computer explains that the Earth is becoming increasingly like Venus. In any case, the Superfriends rush off to deal with the disasters the environmental havoc is causing.

For instance, Apache Chief stops a town from being flooded—seems a little late to be worrying about that sort of thing—by growing so big he can divert the torrent with his hands. By my calculations, this would require him to be about a couple of thousand feet tall. That’s a lot of mass, so I was surprised he didn’t cause even greater damage just standing there. Hawkman, meanwhile, flies down upon a bridge and removes some choking vines that are halting traffic. Somehow I don’t think Hawkman will be getting the Justice League Hero of the Month plaque.

Meanwhile, the Fearian dude is congratulating his Terran flunkies. (Also, he keeps addressing them as "Earthlings." Doesn’t this stick in the alien members’ craw?) He notes that the climate of the Earth is now sufficiently similar to Venus’ that their invasion can commence. Making this easier, I’m guessing, is the presumed death of practically everybody on the planet. After all, there’s a reason not a lot of us humans are running around on Venus.

During a JL conference on how to cover their asses, Our Heroes are startled by the sudden appearance of the Fearian. Who, by the way, calls them "Super Earthlings," which I can’t imagine would go over well with the aliens’ erstwhile allies. He helpfully goes over the Evil Scheme for their benefit—fascinatingly enough, alien villains apparently operate under the same union rules as their Earthly counterparts—then traps Our Heroes in a force bubble. "Holy impenetrability!" Robin helpfully exclaims.

In Washington, we see that the Legion of Doom has taken over the U.S. Capitol Building and is occupying the House chamber. (Wow, that’s a big change. I wonder if the Assembly of Exaggerated Self Importance and Dictator Coddling has taken over the UN Building.) Still, the Legion can’t desist from going about things in a ludicrously roundabout fashion. Therefore, they’re planning to replace all the world’s government leaders with androids. I’m not sure why they’d bother, as presumably the Fearians would have neutralized all the nations’ militaries before colonizing the planet.

Back at the Hall of Justice, the Superfriends remain trapped. "The Fearian was right!" Batman moans. "It’s impossible to escape!" Good job, Caped Crusader. That’s some real grace under pressure there. Then the Trouble Alert sounds, and the League Computer explains that if the climatic changes aren’t reversed in the next fifteen minutes (!), the effects will be permanent. Uh…OK.

As their amazing powers are of no use (what, even Aquaman’s?!), Green Lantern decides to use his noodle instead. He uses his power ring to turn all of them invisible. Actually, I don’t know if he could actually do that. Turn ‘em green, sure, but invisible? I’d think using his ring to whip up a dimensional portal would be more efficient, but whatever.

Out in space, the Fearian Scout receives a "tricky little message," as GL calls it, from the Justice League computer. (And here the alien was just about to radio his fellows to come down to Earth. How’s that for timing?) The message indicates that the Superfriends have escaped, whereupon the Fearian heads down for a look. Needless to say, upon seeing nothing in the force bubble, he opens it up. I’m not exactly sure why he’d do this, but he does. At this the Superfriends return to visibility.

Now, during this entire time the Fearian’s mobile platform has been encased in its own force bubble. Which means that he should be immune to the Superfriends’ attacks. Also, once he sees that he’s been tricked, he could just trap them again. But he doesn’t. (Stupid alien.) Instead, he draws a "neutron eraser" gun. He fires it, but Black Vulcan shoots out some lightning bolts to deflect the beam. This bounces back and disintegrates both the alien’s defensive bubble and his transport platform. Good job, there, Fearian, using the only weapon that can apparently breach your own force bubble.

Green Lantern manifests a green rocket to fly the Fearian back to Venus. From which, er, he can never return. Or something. Then Aquaman reminds them that they have mere minutes left to change the Earth’s environment back to normal. We see Superman flying over a flooded city, drying it up with his heat vision. Hmm, when the Flash melted off the ice that encrusted a city, vast clouds of climate-altering steam were released. Yet when Superman burns off zillions of tons of water, it…doesn’t. Huh. That’s weird. (And man, are these folks in for some rain, or what?)

Also, the Flash gets rid of all the choking foliage by, er, running past it, at which point the animators stop drawing it on the stills. That’s as close to a rational explanation for what he doing as I can come up with, anyway. Out in space, Green Lantern moves the Earth back into its proper position—man, I hope I have earthquake insurance in that universe—and Samurai is somewhere using his tornado-spinning powers to suck away some humid mists. Or something.

Anyway, they manage to change back the planet’s environment in the designated ten minutes, and all is well and completely back to normal. Much to the chagrin of the Legion of Doom, who are looking out of a big bay window in the House Chamber—that’s funny, I never noticed that there before—and out onto the surrounding bay. (??)

Brainiac isn’t concerned though. They still have their androids ready to go. However, they hear a voice and turn around, and find the Superfriends standing over their now disabled robots. "But we just saw you on the viewscreen changing the weather!" a baffled Giganta gasps. (I guess the window mentioned above was a televiewer—with this level of animation it’s hard to tell.) "We transmitted a video taped replay of ourselves," Aquaman replies. Uh…OK. That doesn’t really explain how they managed to destroy hundreds of robots without drawing the attention of the Legion members, who were, after all, standing around in the same room.

Or, really, quite a few other things. For then Wonder Woman notes, "For the last hour we’ve been putting an end to your robot doubles!" There were so many things wrong with that idea that I stopped worrying about it and just started drinking heavily.

The Legion’s not going down without an almost fight, though. And so Solomon Grundy unleashes his most fearsome attack: He grabs Superman in his hands and holds the Son of Krypton over his head. Superman grabs an overhead balcony, though, and pushes Grundy into Grodd. Then Black Vulcan shoots some cartoon rays at the pair. "That should hold you for a while!" he asserts. If you say so.

Then it’s Sinestro’s turn. "You won’t stop this so easily, Superfreaks!" he cries, whipping up a big yellow energy dinosaur. This unleashes its most fearsome attack: It picks up Wonder Woman and Green Lantern in its upper claws and roars at them. "He’s yellow, Wonder Woman!" Green Lantern notes, referring to the gigantic yellow dinosaur currently holding the two aloft. "My power ring has no effect on it!" Really, at this stage of things does he really have to explain that? I mean, Green Lantern, yellow; Superman, kryptonite, etc. It’s not like they have much of this stuff to keep straight.

"It’s not immune to my magic lasso!" she replies. (Although, given that it’s gripping her about the waist and abdomen, I’m not sure how she was able to get the lasso free.) "Now to toss the other end onto Sinestro!" she continues. Good thing he doesn’t bother to deflect it with his power ring. Now, I can’t really figure out what this is supposed to accomplish, but suddenly the two are dropped to the floor and then we see that the dinosaur’s standing on Sinestro and holding him trapped. Uh…OK. I mean…doesn’t he control the dinosaur? I’m not sure what’s happening here.

Anyway, the entire Legion is soon defeated, per usual. Also per usual, they manage to escape. Luthor pulls what looks like a pocket radio out of his tunic and the floor of the House Chamber—well, OK, just the part the Legion was heaped on (luckily enough)—rises toward the roof, following which we cut outside to see the Capitol Dome rocket off into the distance. Boy, how many times are the Superfriends going to fall for that old trick?

Anyway, Superman makes a little speech at the now departed Legion, sort of a "you’ll never defeat the forces of Justice" deal. Gee, too bad he didn’t remember he can fly (along with most of his teammates) and just go after them and capture the fleeing villains.

Morons.

Jabootu tips his hoary horns to correspondent Bill Leary for his helpful proofreading.