How Classic '70s Kids Show Challenge Of The Superfriends 'Borrowed' Darth Vader's Helmet Design

The most iconic villains have iconic lairs to match. The Death Star from "Star Wars" is one famous bad guy headquarters, as is the Hall of Doom from the classic '70s kids show "Challenge of the Superfriends." There's actually a connection between those two lairs, as it turns out. The Legion of Doom's home base was not-so-secretly modeled after Darth Vader's helmet. George Lucas's space opera adventure changed the pop culture landscape when it hit theaters in 1977, while "Challenge of the Superfriends" debuted the following year. 

In a 2011 interview with Noblemania, Darrell McNeil — an animator who worked on one of the best superhero cartoons – recalled how almost the entire studio, including Hanna-Barbera co-founder Bill Hanna, took the day off to see "Star Wars" the day it came out. (Joe Barbera was the only person who stayed at work.) "The next day, we got a 'blast memo' from Hanna, basically hinting that, if we in creative were to 'borrow' anything from 'Star Wars' and incorporate it into our shows, neither he nor the network would have a problem with it," McNeil said.

It was because of this memo that background characters in later episodes were redesigned to look more like "Star Wars" aliens, and animator Alex Toth evidently took this directive to heart when he drew up the Legion of Doom's headquarters. The only issue with the Vader-shaped building? McNeil noted that it changed size from scene to scene, depending on if whether needed to be a house for 13 supervillains or fly around.

Darth Vader's helmet might've snuck its way into the DC animated series, but an official crossover between Luke Skywalker and Superman's franchises are unlikely. The Walt Disney Company currently owns both Marvel Comics and "Star Wars," having acquired the former in 2009 and Lucasfilm in 2012. Marvel and DC Comics (which is owned by Warner Bros. Discovery) are competitors. Considering that Marvel is currently publishing its own "Star Wars" comics, it would take a serious disturbance in the Force for Disney to license "Star Wars" out to DC for a crossover.

There was talk of a DC and "Star Wars" crossover before the Disney acquisition, back when another comic publisher, Dark Horse, had the rights to the galaxy far, far away. In 2017, writer Kurt Busiek revealed in a now-private tweet that he and legendary artist Alex Ross developed a pitch for a crossover. At the 2024 Tampa Bay Comic Convention, former DC publisher Dan DiDio said he axed the project because there was fighting over which characters would get better "hero moments," but Busiek said the reality was more mundane. "DC wanted half the money, which was standard in a crossover deal. Lucasfilm wanted half the money, which was standard for their licensing deal. Dark Horse wanted some of the money, and so did Alex and I," Busiek wrote on Bluesky in 2024. "So you can see where the math didn't add up."