X-MEN!! SUPER-FRIENDS!! INVADERS!! MANTIS!! ALIAS!! ANDY RICHTER CONTROLS!! CHEERS!! HercVault!!

I am – Hercules!!

Hanna Barbara’s first, 1973-74 season of “Super Friends,” featuring the Scoobish Wonder Dog, Daphneish Wendy and Shaggyish Marv, proved so unpopular ABC yanked it after a single season. The success of primetime’s “Wonder Woman” and “The Six Million Dollar Man” inspired ABC to revive the franchise in 1977 as “The All-New Superfriends Hour,” which dropped Marv and Wonder-Dog in favor of a whole new made-for-TV supporting cast including shapeshifting twins Jayna and Zan, Apache Chief, Black Vulcan and Samurai. The 1977 hours were divided into four segments, and perhaps the coolest thing about the revamp was the final segment always featured a guest star, often a comic-derived Justice League icon like The Atom, The Flash, Green Lantern or Hawkman. The “Volume One” DVD issued a year ago this month contained the first seven hours of the 15-episode season. “Volume Two” contains the final eight, including Superman-Flash, Superman-Green Lantern and Atom-Wonder Woman team-ups. In “River of Doom” Wonder Woman collaborates with Rima The Jungle Girl, who started life in a Tarzan-y 1904 novel titled “Green Mansions,” which was adapted into a 1959 MGM adventure starring Audrey Hepburn as Rima. DC Comics gave Rima her own short-lived funnybook series in 1974, though it was cancelled before her first “Super Friends” appearance aired. Diana and Rima would team again in a 1980 episode. The new set comes with “The Wonder Twins Phenomenon,” described as “over 20 minutes of bonus content with segments exploring Zan and Jayna's impact on pop culture.”

“Cheers,” which I continue to deem one of the five funniest sitcoms of all time, was that rare enterprise funnier in its final season than it was in its first. The series’ eleventh and final season saw Rebecca burn down the bar and buddies up to Woody’s Christmas dinner, Norm landed his dream job of beer taster and agreed to sleep with an IRS agent to avoid an audit, Henri challenged Sam to a seduction contest, Sam joins a support group for sex addiction, Cliff came to believe he’s a father and that Hitler moved into his building, the bar hired a bouncer named Tiny, Lilith left Frasier to live in The Biosphere with her new lover, Frasier hooked up with Rebecca, Nick Tortelli returned to give away Carla’s daughter, the gang headed out to a doomed drive-in, Woody gets elected to public office, Rebecca gets married and Diane Chambers reunited with Sam Malone in the series finale. Not on the set, apparently, is the “Cheers: Final Call” special that preceded the finale or the “Cheers”-centric special episode of “The Tonight Show” which also aired the night of the finale.

Sam Raimi’s post-“Darkman,” pre-“Spider-Man” superhero series MANTIS was one of the many sci-fi shows that died a speedy death in the Fox Network’s infamous Friday Death Slot. It was about a wealthy, hovercraft-riding paraplegic scientist named Miles Hawkins (a pre-“Alias” Carl Lumbly) who used an exoskeleton (the Mechanically Automated NeuroTransmitter Interactive System) which gave him superpowers. His archnemesis was evil industrialist Solomon Box, played by Andrew J. Robinson (who played the Zodiac serial-killer surrogate in “Dirty Harry” and exiled Cardassian tailor/spy Elim Garak on “Star Trek: Deep Space Nine”). Hawkins died in the 1995 series finale fighting off an invisible dinosaur.

After he produced “The Untouchables” and “The Fugitive,” but before he became the TV detective king with “Dan August,” “Cannon,” “Banyon,” “Barnaby Jones,” “Manhunter,” “The FBI” and “The Streets of San Francisco,” producer Quinn Martin took his shot at sci-fi with a season and a half of ABC’s “The Invaders,” essentially the first TV version of “Invasion of the Body Snatchers.” (“Invaders” is not to confused with “Invasion,” ABC’s 2005 more watery quasi-remake.) The fellow who actually created “The Invaders” was none other than the great Larry Cohen, who 15 years later would mastermind the big-screen winged-serpent epic “Q.” Cohen also went on to script such diverse works as “It’s Alive” (1974), “The Stuff” (1985), “Original Gangstas” (1996) and “Phone Booth” (2003). “Invaders” was about an architect named David Vincent (Roy Thinnes) who accidentally discovered that extraterrestrials from a dying planet were impersonating humans and plotting a takeover of Earth. Vincent enjoyed little success in convincing his fellow humans of the plot, in part because the visitors had managed to take over key positions in government and law enforcement. But in the second and final season (the first full-length one, since the series began life as a mid-season replacement), Vincent began winning some key allies. Second-season guest stars included Gene Hackman, Michael Rennie, Suzanne Pleshette, Wayne Rogers and Ed Asner. The aliens, identifiable by their lack of a pulse, utilized flying saucers, were Vulcan-like in their lack of emotion and required enormous amounts of energy to maintain their human forms. They killed with death-discs that caused cerebral hemorrhages when applied to human necks. The series, which ran 43 episodes over its season and a half, never got around to revealing what they really looked like. The price of the new set is $24.99, dang cheap considering it contains 26 hourlong installments. If the cruddy three-hour 1995 miniseries sequel starring Thinnes and Scott Bakula is included in the new set, I’m not aware of it.

If I remember correctly, the Pink Panther Classic Cartoon Collection contains the six volumes released separately as well as three volumes that haven’t yet been released separately.

Is “The Girls Next Door” a mammoth scam? It turns out after four seasons of onscreen frolic that two of Hef’s “girlfriends” are suddenly the girlfriends of a 26-year-old NFL wide receiver and a 41-year-old basic-cable magician – and the third now identifies herself as “single.” Now there’s some question in my mind as to whether 82-year-old Hugh Hefner even met any of these girls. Notice that Hef barely moves and seems not particularly cognizant of where he is when he’s on screen. Could he have been integrated into footage of this “reality” show via editing and green-screen techniques? If E! creates a new series around the 19-year-old identical twins Hef’s said to be dating now, we’ll see if producers start utilizing motion capture.

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