And we are yet to see the live action spetacle of what would be the greatest superhero movie ever made.

What common grounds are there for a rocket-flying adventurer, a secretive jungle guardian, and an Eastern-trained illusionist to team up and work together?

A long time ago I told you about this epic series in my blog One of the Greatest TV shows of the 80s.

Now it's time to further impress upon you the greatness of this series.

Defenders of the Earth is an American animated television series produced in 1986, featuring characters from three comic strips distributed by King Features Syndicate—Flash Gordon, The Phantom, Mandrake the Magician, and Mandrake's assistant Lothar—opposing Ming the Merciless in the year 2015. Supporting characters include their children Rick Gordon (son of Flash), Jedda Walker (daughter of the Phantom), Kshin (adopted son of Mandrake), and Lothar's son L.J. The show lasted for 65 episodes; there was also a short-lived comic book series published by Star Comics

A lot of why DOTE rocks comes down to hilarity and over the top 80s awesomeness, so here are some examples:

1. The Phantom would activate his super-strength by chanting "By jungle law, the Ghost Who Walks calls forth the power of ten tigers." His transformation sequence would then show tiger heads passing into his body (the number varied but was usually less than ten)

2. In one episode the team works in a volcano. Jedda even states that the heat in some places pleasantly reminds her of Africa. What is this girl made of?

3. One episode had Prince Valiant as a guest hero.

4. Every other teenage male character got a crush on Jedda at one moment or another, including Ming's own son.

5.  In one episode Ming creates four clones of Flash with different aspects of his personality. Flash is captured and has facets of his personality transplanted into four clones. The romantic one flirts with everything that moves, including Flash himself.

6. In one episode, the Defenders were put on trial by an alien race whose members claimed to detest violence. The evidence against the Defenders came in the form of "news reports" which appeared to show members of the team engaging in acts of violence and terrorism. But Rick, LJ, and Jedda managed to escape and discovered that the whole thing was a plot by Ming, who was using android duplicates to frame the Defenders.

7. They have a Magical Computer: Powered by a magical crystal. With a dead woman's soul in it.

8. Ming has ice robots. Think about that for a second. Robots. Made of Ice.

9. In the episode "The Root of Evil", practically everyone is off-model. So imagine this, you are watching an animated series and every one of the characters looks differently than any other episode of the series. And not on purpose. This is masterful.

10. Jedda has a panther named Kisa. In the episode "Dracula's Potion", Jedda is actually transformed into a black panther, as is L.J.

11. Mandrake, being a posh English gentleman, naturally drinks tea and offers it as a remedy to someone who's been in a crash.

12. Ming the Merciless once created robot duplicates of the heroes to frame them. When one of the heroes noticed an arm falling off his robot double, he commented they don't make him like they used to.

13. That. Intro.

And there is more, sooooooooooo much more. But I'll leave you to discover for yourself. If you want to grin like a jackass, laugh till your chest hurts and see the epitome of the word AWESOME then pick this series up on DVD.