The increasing sophistication of superhero sketch comedy

Saturday Night Live, March of 1979:

Note the unremarkable mingling of Marvel and DC characters. Clark Kent’s absence is a source of ironic comedy, but most of the sendups are loosely related to the characters at best. For example, humor is derived from the Hulk stinking up the bathroom.

Saturday Night Live, November of 1992:

Once again, cross-brand mingling ensues, but Batman at least mentions it, announcing some heroes from Marvel have come to pay their respects. Thirteen years later, SNL returns to the “Make fun of the black guy” well, though in fairness to the previous clip, Garrett Morris’ race was incidental to the fact that he was portraying Ant Man. Sinbad’s blackness, or more appropriately, his parody of the 1970s caricature of blackness, was the theme in several of that episode’s skits (see also: “Bram Stoker’s Blacula”). Here, Clark Kent’s absence is almost ironic tragedy — a darkly humorous way of closing out the skit.

By the time The State parodied the Super Friends in the mid 1990s, the line-up was brand-faithful; no Marvel superheroes penetrated the sketch reality or the Hall of Justice. Aquaman plays a similar role as Antman in the 1979 SNL clip. Sadly, the YouTube clip has been taken down by Viacom (which hopefully means the State DVDs are finally coming out), but you can still see a very low-quality version here.

The State clip also displays a clear trend of shortening the sketches, focusing on one punchline in stark contrast to the meandering ten-plus minutes of the ’79 SNL attempt.

Beyond that, I am completely unaware of any sketch comedy TV shows doing mainstream superhero parodies. Anybody have anything to add?

UPDATE: Doom DeLuise reminded me of this SNL skit from March of 2000:While it attempts a deconstruction of the secret identity convention, it also returns to familiar bathroom territory.