As a 1980s kid into drawing, writing, and imagining stories with creative characters, I was greatly influenced by network TV series and corporate toy merchandising. Saturday morning cartoons were best in the early 1980s; but after-school weekday programming was solid until the 1990s.

Saturday morning cartoons: Smurfs, Gummi-Bears, Super-Man shows (live actors and Super-Friends), Spider-Man, Incredible Hulk, …

Weekday after-noon shows: Scooby-Doo (1970s reruns), GI-Joe, He-Man, Thunder-Cats, and lastly Silver-Hawks. Nancy Reagan came to Harpers Ferry and held a huge ‘Just Say No’ campaign downtown that all schools attended. Nancy Reagan was assisted by super heroes from a new show called ‘Defenders of Earth’, which had lesser known or older fiction characters like Flash Gordon and the Phantom. I loved them all, and spent many hours pretending to be various heroes from various shows, and playing with paper-dolls the size of army figures (3″) that I drew and cut-out. I also was lucky that my Mom bought me consumer product toys too, so between those 3 tool types I kept busy in dream-land.

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Marvel Comics Animated Cartoon Series

Fantastic Four (1978) – I had a Thing t-shirt hand-me-down.

Spider-Woman (1979) – I had comic-books of all the famous characters including her.

Spider-Man (1981-82) – 26 episodes. 2nd Spider-Man cartoon after the 1967 series

Spider-Man And His Amazing Friends (1982-83) – 24 episodes. included Fire-Star and Ice-Man

Incredible Hulk (1982) – my favorite anti-hero. The Hulk series ran for 13 episodes on NBC, part of a combined hour with Spider-Man and His Amazing Friends (as The Incredible Hulk and the Amazing Spider-Man). The live-action show starring Bill Bixby was sentimental melancholy because of David Banner’s sorrow and the theme music at the end, so it was instantly nostalgic.

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DC Comics Animated Cartoon Series

The Justice League super hero group from comic books, was called Super-Friends on TV.

Super-Friends (1973-1986) – starring Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman and many others.

Over the years, the Super-Friends 10 season show existed under several titles:

Super Friends (1973–1974)
The All-New Super Friends Hour (1977–1978)
Challenge of the Superfriends (1978–1979) – divided into 2 seasons for dvd *
The World’s Greatest SuperFriends (1979–1980)
SuperFriends (1980–1983)
Super Friends: The Legendary Super Powers Show (1984–1985)
The Super Powers Team: Galactic Guardians (1985–1986)

* Challenge of the Superfriends was divided into 2 seasons for dvd because each episode had two parts. Only one half had the Legion of Doom, but it introduced the villains in their own group for the first time.

The DC 1980s shows were mainly Super-Friends (Justice League), but had Superman movies in theaters and shows for Super Boy and Lois & Clark. Also I was able to see Wonder Woman and Batman show reruns on occasion. There was a Superman (1988) Ruby-Spears cartoon in 1988, but it aired on CBS which was did not come in as clear as NBC and PBS on my TV reception, so I didnt see many episodes; we also got cable tv around that time which got me watching Cinemax and Comedy Channel and Paramount Fox for Star Trek Next Generation, and I dont remember having a good Saturday morning cartoon channel as a teen.

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[more later]

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