Fish Lovers

Superheroes were everything when I was little…

But… Aquaman… well Aquaman was just… how can I put this lightly? Worthless.

And so was his archnemesis Black Manta. Seriously, do you even know who he is? Does anyone even care who Aquaman is? And so we have one a superhero and one a super villain. But, are either of them truly super? Are they heroes? Villains?

I never read comic books as a child, but I knew a ton about superheroes for some reason or another. It was probably all those TV shows and maybe just word of mouth with my other friends, but we sure knew about them. We knew them like the back of our hands, like we knew the trench run of the Death Star, like we knew baseball and apple pie and Suburbia.

Except, Aquaman was never really in that equation. Sure, we knew of him, but he was never in the forefront of our minds or our imaginations. Superman was there, Batman, Wolverine, Spider-man, The Incredible Hulk, even Nightcrawler, Gambit and Godzilla. No, Aquaman was a non-entity, someone not even worth mentioning… he was just sort of weird and quaint and with powers that were pretty damn crappy. Even when we were playing in the pool he didn’t come up… the one place where he might have been a bit of use. And that’s the saddest part of it all. He’s not really bad… just…

Mediocre, I guess.

And isn’t that bad enough in the world of superheroes? These people… these beings are supposed to be gods among men, the fastest, the strongest, the smartest, the greatest… yet, they gave us a fish-man, who doesn’t even look like a damn fish. He could at least look cool… like some sort of Kraken… or turn clear like water? I don’t know, something.

And so we were Supermen and Batmen in the backyard, on the playground and in the pool, while Aquaman wasted away to be ridiculed, because really… as one man once said, to get an idea of how useless Aquaman really is just take a motor boat everywhere you need to go for an entire week.

Aquaman has become a joke, and Black Manta has along with him. Despite how dark the nature of their relationship really is. My only knowledge of their history is gleaned through half a Wikipedia article and about a dozen Super Friends episodes, but I believe that’s enough.

Black Manta was an autistic black kid from Baltimore who liked building sandcastles. One day some fuckers kidnapped him by pulling him onto a boat or something and raped the happiness out of him. He blamed Aquaman because Aquaman is the King of the Sea or something and shouldn’t let shit like that happen… or something along those lines. It’s kind of like how people ask if God exists why does he allow bad things to happen. I suppose it’s because sometimes God’s busy doinking mermaids and playing Marco Polo with dolphins (or maybe it’s the other way around), or at least that’s what I imagine he does in his spare time.

Settle down there, Aquaman

I can’t say I blame the kid for going crazy, he was autistic and what happened to him is just awful, so I’m just going to give him the benefit of the doubt. At least he gave Aquaman some credit, that’s more than the rest of us give the schmuck.

So Black Manta grows up, buys a submarine and assembles a crew of two idiots in blue suits to go kill Aquaman. I’m not sure if he’s actually a villain, or just some psycho who wants revenge, but I guess it doesn’t really matter all that much. He gets foiled a bunch of times, even though Aquaman is a pansy… but then again, Black Manta is retarded.

How can someone who looks so badass be so lame?

Eventually, though Black Manta captures Aquaboy and kills him while Aquaman watches helplessly. Seriously, that’s bad ass as hell. You have to respect the guy for having the balls to do that, especially considering he’s the only person on the planet weaker than Aquaman.

And so that about raps things up, rape, revenge, idiocy, sex with fish. The Aquaman-Black Manta saga has it all. It’s really a shame no one ever gives them any credit. I’m sure they’d just like to be left alone to their cat and mouse game…

“I'd like to be under the sea
In an octopus' garden in the shade.
He'd let us in, knows where we've been,
In his octopus' garden in the shade.

I'd ask my friends to come and see
An octopus' garden with me.
I'd like to be under the sea
In an octopus' garden in the shade.

We would be warm below the storm
In our little hideaway beneath the waves.
Resting our head on the sea bed
In an octopus' garden near a cave.

We would sing and dance around
Because we know we can't be found.
I'd like to be under the sea
In an octopus' garden in the shade.

We would shout and swim about
The coral that lies beneath the waves.
Oh what joy for every girl and boy
Knowing they're happy and they're safe.

We would be so happy you and me
No one there to tell us what to do.
I'd like to be under the sea
In an octopus' garden with you.” –The Beatles

Happy Black History Month

...from all your pals here at BSD.

CML, Black Manta Historian

Super Friends

I found this and started missing all of my super friends. This is for you guys.

Matt, I hope your trip went well. John, I'm sorry I missed you last time, but next time we'll rocket. Paul, thanks for posting again. KB, thanks for the Gatorade.

CML

Vader's Head

"Banded together from remote galaxies are thirteen of the most sinister villains of all time: The Legion of Doom. Dedicated to a single objective, the conquest of the universe. Only one group dares to challenge this intergalactic threat: The Super Friends!"

I never read comics much when I was a kid. Sure, I flipped through some of my Uncle’s old ones from the sixties, but I was never really into them. I have no clue why, but I always preferred reading books to comic books. So, it was through a different medium that I learned about super heroes and their villainous counterparts; it was through television, the way every child of the nineties learned about anything.

I loved watching X-Men, Spider-man and The Super Friends on Saturday mornings, but it wasn’t until I decided to watch The Super Friends again about a year ago that I realized something…

The Legion of Doom lives in a giant Darth Vader head.



The archenemies of The Super Friends live in a giant Vader mask! I guess Black Manta must’ve been cruising around the swamps of Dagobah one day in that crazy ass submarine of his, found the Vader head that Luke cut off and decided it would make a good base. If it wasn’t all ridiculous enough, the show came out a year after the original Star Wars released, so they must’ve known what they were doing. But, why? So they decide to hide their base in a fucking swamp with alligators all around them, because I guess they thought the Super Friends wouldn’t want to get their capes dirty. I now know why we’re destroying the Everglades so quickly… it’s to catch Lex Luthor.

The first thing that strikes me about the show now is just how colorful everything is. The colors are badly washed out, but man, are there a lot of them. The second thing is that everyone on the show is a fucking moron. The Super Friends are just retarded, and even Superman and Batman who are a huge step up in intelligence from the rest of their numbskull compatriots, couldn’t find their way out of a paper bag. Luckily for the world, the Legion of Doom is even dumber. I guess you can’t expect much from a group who lives in a swamp, but still… I’m pretty sure my five year old self could have thought up a better plan for taking over the world than they do every episode.

These plans usually consist of one of the members of the Legion complaining that the last plan was awful and that they had a way better one. They would then begin to explain their needlessly complicated and downright stupid plan to send the Super Friends into the sun on a rocket or to cause the Earth’s temperature to rise slightly higher so “Fearians” from Venus would want to colonize it. They were always interrupted by some other member who continued to explain the plan, who was again interrupted. I’m not sure if they had planned it together, or they just all figured the more complicated the plan, the better. I’d guess the latter. Needless to say, the plans always failed. And what villains go around talking about how evil and bad they are all the time? Even Emperor Palpatine thought he was doing the right thing. Lex Luthor even states their enemies are “the forces of good”. Evil people don’t go around say, “Oh, I love being evil, badness is so cool, I’m going to go kill some babies now.” It’s insane!

I really don’t know how a group with two supposed geniuses and a robot could be so dumb, but they were beyond brainless. To make it worse, they didn’t even pretend to be smart. They were like a bunch of monkeys flinging feces at each other and destroying shit because it was fun. They creators expect me to believe that a group of super villains is just going to demolish their base because they feel like it? I guess it’s because half of the damn Legion consists of Superman’s retarded cousin, a giant cave woman, a Cajun zombie, an autistic guy in a wetsuit, and a fucking gorilla. A gorilla! Obviously hanging around these idiots has affected Lex and Brainiac’s intelligence something fierce.

I could go on and on about how the show doesn’t make any damn sense, but you can just watch it yourself. You won’t be disappointed, it’s hilarious.

Ringwraiths

Superman is sent to the anti-matter universe of Qward and he finds...



A robotic... Witch King... with a lance... that shoots laser beams... riding a unicorn...

Yeah...