The fist bump has become an ingrained part of popular culture: the heir apparent to the classic “high five” that’s proven a durable form of greeting and celebration. It has the benefit of being easier to perform than the high five – with far less chance of an awkward whiff – and it's far less formal than a handshake. The Obamas famously bumped fists in 2008 after securing the Presidential nomination, and today it’s one of the few gestures almost anyone can perform and look cool doing it.
And yet, this permanently stylish gesture may have had its origins in the decidedly dorkier world of '70s Saturday morning cartoons. Zan and Jayna, the Wonder Twins of Super Friends fame, based their powers around a move that closely resembles the fist bump. And while they may need to share credit with an NBA player for creating it, they appear to have developed organically at about the same time. Multiple news sources have noted the connection, making two of the Justice League’s silliest characters the originators of the 20th century’s coolest hand gesture.
The Wonder Twins made their debut in 1977’s The All-New Super Friends Hour, the first “reboot” of the durable superhero show after a less-than-promising initial season in 1973. They replaced Wendy and Marvin, the teen sidekicks to the DC stalwarts who appeared to have wandered in from another cartoon. Zan and Jayna were an effort to course-correct. Unlike Wendy and Marvin, the twins possessed viable powers owing to a vague background as aliens, as well as costumes that looked like proper superhero outfits instead of cast-offs hastily scrounged from the laundry.
Despite that, they never quite lost an inherent wonkiness. Their powers were viable – Jayna could turn into any animal while Zan could transform into water and ice-based constructs – but lacked explanation or thematic coherence. Their antics also include Gleek, a "space monkey" who followed Hanna-Barbera’s proclivity for putting irritating cartoon animals into many of their cartoons. It led to a lot of strange – and strangely memorable – moments, such as their standard mode of transportation, which entailed Jayna as an eagle carrying Gleek in her claws, who himself carried a puddle of Zan-water in a bucket.
Despite their odd status, they had a few hooks that helped them catch hold of young fans. That included the fist bump, which they used to trigger their transformations, along with their mutually shouted catchphrase, “Wonder Twin powers… activate!” It was arguably even goofier than the powers themselves, but it was certainly memorable. More importantly, it was repeated regularly throughout the show’s run time. The All-New Super Friends Hour was divided into four segments – one dedicated solely to the Wonder Twins every week and another featuring the Twins alongside the entire ensemble – which meant that they made the bump and delivered the line at least two or three times per episode.
That made them as prominent, if not more so than any of the show’s more established heroes, who might only appear in the ensemble segment depending on the week. The show served as an introduction to DC Comics characters for an entire generation of children who remember the fist bump as an integral part of the onscreen action. It eventually led to the characters’ appearance in other mediums, including a formal introduction to the comics in 1996. In the interim, their iconic fist bump went mainstream, merging with other uses to become the gesture as recognized today.
The other entity who can lay claim to the concept is Fred “Mad Dog” Carter, an NBA guard who played for several teams throughout the 1970s and used the gesture with teammates after scoring. There’s no correlation between him and the animated characters, and articles in Time magazine and the New York Times both suggest the move may have arisen spontaneously from rank-and-file U.S. culture at the time. In that case, both Carter and Super Friends merely reflected a trend. But considering the unusual way the characters have lingered in pop culture, it’s fair to at least credit them with the assist. They might have been odd, but they were uniquely odd. Thus, it's fitting that they found such a weird way to become cool.