This week, The Hundreds is teaming up with our friends at DC Comics for another epic collaboration, following last year’s Frank Miller-focused Batman collection. This time around, we’ve zoomed out and shifted our focus to another legendary era of comic history, before big-budget blockbusters ruled the land and the comic book was the star of the show.

In the 1970s, many of DC’s characters, including Batman and Robin, were in a period of transition, shedding some of the more campy characteristics of the ‘50s and ‘60s and diving deeper into each character’s origin and storylines. Around this time, the heavy hitters on DC Comics were all part of a comic book series called Justice League of America, which was developed into a wildly popular accompanying Saturday morning cartoon called DC Super Friends!.

Everyone from the big names like Batman, Wonder Woman, and Superman, to the lesser-known heroes like Martian Manhunter and Green Lantern, joined forces as Justice League to defeat evildoers from this planet and others throughout the universe. Many comic book historians trace the origins of the superhero crew to Justice League of America #9, released in February of 1962, which depicted the first time Aquaman, Batman, Flash, Wonder Woman, Martian Manhunter, Superman, and Green Lantern had to pool their powers in order to extinguish the threat facing Earth and its inhabitants. However, other comics like Justice League of America #144 in 1977 and Secret Origins #32 in 1988 rewrite history a little bit.

When the Justice League comic adventures were adapted for TV, the DC Super Friends! show took some creative licenses with the stories and created additional characters. With the show being produced by Hanna-Barbera, it was no surprise they wanted to tap into the massive success of their other hit show, Scooby-Doo, by adding some teen detectives and a talking dog to Super Friends!. Enter Wendy, Marvin, and Wonder Dog, who would also make their way to the comics after the TV show became a hit.

But the show wasn’t successful right away, getting canceled by ABC after its initial 16-episode run. It wasn’t until ABC saw primetime success with their live-action Wonder Woman series that they decided to revive the animated Super Friends show. Once they brought the show back from the dead, DC also started releasing a series of Super Friends comic books that featured the Justice League, as well as Wendy, Marvin, and Wonder Dog. Later, when the show was rebooted as The All-New Super Friends Hour, the two teens and the dog were ditched for the Wonder Twins, Zan and Jayna, and their talking pet monkey, Gleek.

Those weren’t the only differences between the Justice League comics and the Super Friends cartoon, either. And the reason for this has everything to do with things happening in real life, not in the comics.

I spoke with comic book expert Ed Saravo to gain some insight into the climate of comics during this time and how the cartoons differed from the comic books.

“At first, Batman was a dark and mysterious vigilante who carried a gun and shot and killed criminals,” Saravo told me. “But there was actually a whole movement in the 1950s against violence, drug use, and sexuality in comics. A book called Seduction of the Innocent, published in 1954, claimed that comics were turning the youth of America into juvenile delinquents. This lead to the comics industry establishing the Comics Code Authority to censor comics. Batman’s tactics were eventually toned down and he stopped killing criminals, instead bringing them to justice.”

This across-the-board crackdown of the themes in comic books caused the storylines of our favorite characters to lean more comedy than combat, resulting in more lighthearted versions of our heroes’ adventures, like the Adam West version of Batman, for example.

“Comics became more clean-cut,” Saravo said. “Heroes captured villains and sent them to prison to pay for their crimes. Villains like the Joker became less sinister and more silly. By the 1960s, Batman was a campy TV show with over the top villains that never actually hurt anyone.

Then came the 1970s and DC Comics paired up artist Neal Adams and Dennis O’Neil. They made the Joker an evil homicidal maniac again and brought realism and current affairs to comics with the groundbreaking Green Lantern storyline where the hero finds out his sidekick is a heroin addict. Of course, DC didn’t want those stories on TV. So, the Super Friends cartoons were created in the early ‘70s to be more kid-friendly than their comic book counterparts.”

For our The Hundreds X DC collaboration, we wanted to tap into both worlds, the comic book and the Saturday morning cartoon, as each played pivotal roles in the superhero landscape we have today. If you look at the graphic in the collection that features all of the Justice League superheroes together, you’ll notice that the font we used for “The Hundreds” is a tribute to the Super Friends cartoon, while the depictions of the Justice League heroes, drawn by legendary artist Alex Toth, are ripped straight from the comic books.

And if you’re a longtime The Hundreds fan, you’ll remember that this collection is far from the first time we’ve referenced this era of comics and cartoons. In 2005, after an intense falling out with a former friend of Ben and Bobby’s, The Hundreds released a bootleg rip of Super Friends called the Bitter Enemies T-shirt, with the members of the Justice League beating each other up instead of joining forces for good. Bitter Enemies is just the latest in a long line of bootleg designs from our past that have evolved into actual collaborations with the property we ripped, from Garfield to Disney’s Lost Boys. Some people speak things into existence, while The Hundreds manifests destiny through design.