The goofy run of Super Friends continued through this unusual detour: when the animated series was canceled in 1983, Hanna-Barbera continued to produce new episodes, which in most cases took years to show up after the series kept returning to TV in various forms. These Lost Episodes are gathered on this two-disc set, which, although it claims to be 24 "episodes," is more like eight half-hour programs (each consisting of three short adventures). The Super Friends are in the house, or more exactly the Hall of Justice: Superman, Wonder Woman, Batman and Robin, and Aquaman forming the key group of comic-book holdovers, with new superheroes Black Vulcan, Apache Chief, Samurai, and El Dorado gaining opening-credits status. In fact, other D.C. Comics heroes and villains thread through the series, The Flash, Green Lantern, and Brainiac among them. Some of the episodes are self-contained little adventures, but a few play around with original mythology; for instance, in one brief story Superman returns to Krypton, and for a moment prevents the destruction of his home planet. Another notable episode, "Bulgor the Behemoth," has a distinctly postmodern kick: a writer for an animated TV show is struck by lightning and morphs into a super-villain, and can't be stopped by Superman because he's a fictional character.

The animation is simple but the designs pop in a pleasing way, with plenty of color and some classic comic-book imagery. The action and cornball messages are skewed toward young viewers of Saturday-morning cartoons, and at times the dialogue is painfully "clever" ("If you don't like this hotel, you're gonna have to deal with the Complaint Department--Superman!"). Biggest stumbling block is the emphasis given to the Wonder Twins, the brother-sister team whose "Shape of..." and "Form of..." shtick gets old fast. Unless you're ten years old. Of course their mischievous monkey Gleek is around too, and in "Two Gleeks Are Deadlier Than One," he's replicated as an "android duplicate of Gleek," which is definitely overkill. Even if you don't like those three, there's a great deal of childhood fun in these lightweight adventures. And in the final episode there's a trip to "Bizarro World," trapping Superman and Wonder Woman in an Atari-style video game. Bizarro indeed. --Robert Horton