The Legion Of Doom was the Suicide Squad of the late 1970s

Hanna-Barbera’s DC Comics-based Super Friends franchise went through a number of incarnations in the 1970s and the 1980s, with various cast and format changes each time, but perhaps none is better remembered than 1978’s Challenge Of The Super Friends. The defining characteristic of this one-season wonder was that it gave Superman, Batman, and all their Justice League cronies some worthwhile opponents for a change: The Legion Of Doom, a team of colorful villains headed by Lex Luthor and featuring such DC baddies as Black Manta and Gorilla Grodd. Challenge only last 16 episodes, with two stories apiece, but that was enough to make a strong impression on generations of comic nerds. Now, some footage from that long-gone series has been edited into a mock trailer by Darth Blender called Suicide Legion. The audio, as one might guess, comes directly from the trailer for Suicide Squad, right down to the somber remake of The Bee Gees’ “I Started A Joke” by ConfidentialMX and Becky Hanson. The editing here draws heavily on a November 1978 episode called “Swamp Of The Living Dead” in which Luthor outsources some of his duties to a swamp hag.