"Totally Awesome: The Greatest Cartoons of The Eighties" by Andrew Farago

Let's get to that list, shall we?

In the order by which they appear in the book:

1. The Smurfs

Each respective series on the list has a chapter devoted to a condensed history of its production, with quotes offering insights on the development of the show. Interestingly, the spotlight shines on one person in particular, who is strongly suggested to be the reason for the series success...and in some cases, it's someone I didn't know much about before. Regarding Smurfs, it's Gerald Baldwin, who shepherded the first four seasons of the show. This was Hanna-Barbera's first major hit in over a decade; much of the 70's was wasted capitalising/cannibalizing the initial success of Scooby-Doo, Where Are You? (even Superfriends had it's genesis as a Scooby-Doo knockoff) or dull, gimmick-riddled new cartoons featuring faithful standbys Fred Flintstone or Yogi Bear. I liked learning that The Snorks was a dumping ground for rejected Smurfs story ideas, and that Baldwin thought The Smurfs and The Magic Flute was "crappy". To be fair, I thought the animation in Magic Flute was about as good as the TV series animation ever was, but the pacing of the story and the voices were poor.

2. Spider-Man and His Amazing Friends

..in which Don Glut bemoans his lot, forever associated with the late Dennis Marks' apocryphal, yet charming take on Spider-Man that was inspired by the Bob Hope-Bing Crosby-Dorothy Lamour "Road to..." movies, in which Spidey had adventures and told/traded jokes while hanging out with Iceman & Firestar. Glut HATED Ms. Lion, Aunt May's pet dog, created by Marks as a mascot/pet for the series, and would insist on inserting scenes with her in scripts that Glut intentionally wrote her out of. Meanwhile, the rest of us fans of the series in the U.S.  wonder if Disney will ever wake up and release the series on Region 1 DVD.

3. He-Man and The Masters of The Universe/She-Ra: Princess of Power

Lou Scheimer hit the jackpot, here. It just so happens a generation of incredibly talented artists and writers cut their teeth working for Filmation during this time - even taking advantage of a brief strike at the Disney studio, which resulted in some top talent in need of work. Both of these shows were better than they were likely conceived to be, with the push to be toyetic.

4. Inspector Gadget

Less than a handful of Bruno Bianchi's concept/development sketches of Inspector Gadget are reprinted in the book...Bianchi's style reminds me of Sergio Aragones - that got me imagining a great Inspector Gadget comic book that seems obvious, but we have yet to see, drawn by Sergio Aragones. That would be cool.

I recall the idea of Gadget's extendable arms and legs was based on Dynomutt, because Andy Heyward had worked on both shows.

5. The Transformers

As with He-Man, She-Ra and perhaps G.I. Joe, The Transformers  has been the subject of coffee table books of its own, so the ground covered here has been well-tread, but inserted for posterity. The weakness of the book becomes more obvious in these sections, but I have a nice anecdote of my own to share: years ago, on the Comic Book Resources forums, series writer Buzz Dixon had responded to my question about the trailer that Optimus Prime is always shown towing when he's in the form of a truck..Where does that trailer come from? It's clearly a separate component/accessory, not part of Optimus Prime in his robot form. And yet, whenever/wherever he transformed into a truck, the trailer slides into place! Dixon confessed that none of the people could figure out an explanation for what that trailer's deal was(!)...and just let it go as something they weren't going to put much emphasis on.

6. G.I. Joe: A Real American Hero

You do get a sense that the people who enjoyed working on these shows the most wanted the audience to believe that they believed in the series' concept. I'm tempted to look up the earliest, "improvised" episodes of G.I. Joe, then stare-and-compare with later "researched" episodes, since the animation for all the Sunbow-produced shows was rarely particularly good..and at the end of the day, this show was always about a bunch of guys dressed as The Village People vs. a bunch of guys dressed like the bad guys from Spaceballs.

7. Jem and The Holograms

This is a concept that probably would've been more popular than it was if the animation and stories matched the energy and pace of the title sequence. I don't know...the theme song/sequence was catchy enough to draw you in (though I wouldn't say that out loud) but the "Afterschool Special"/soap opera-feel to the stories was too earnest, imo. It should've been more like Josie and The Pussycats in story-style...that's probably the way it would go if there was ever a reboot.

Btw, Rich Morris did a truly truly outrageous unauthorized Jem/Doctor Who crossover webcomic years ago that's archived on his Shipsinker website, which established that Stormer and Eric Raymond were errant Time Lords from Gallifrey...believe that, true believer..believe that.

8. Thundercats

I think YouTube still has this audacious fan-made trailer for a live-action Thundercats film, culling footage from Troy, The Chronicles of Riddick, Stargate, and I don't recall offhand what else, then digitally coloring Brad Pitt and Vin Diesel to resemble Lion-O and Panthro. Vin Diesel is a movie producer, YouTuber; dare Vin Diesel to make a live-action Thundercats movie and he'll do it!

9. Muppet Babies

This is one of those shows where you'll have to trust me was actually good; it has Jim Henson's fingerprints on it - the Henson heirs are trying to "Walt Disney's"-brand name recognition on new stuff that didn't even exist as incoherent scribbles in any of Jim's notebooks, but Muppet Babies has his stamp proper...this, Fraggle Rock and the first live-action film with the Ninja Turtles were the last truly commercially successful projects completed during his lifetime.

..and I wish they revived Kermit the Frog P.I. - I have vague memories of seeing that cartoon and that was the only part of Little Muppet Monsters that worked for me. They should try it again...I think the Dog City TV series came from that, somewhat...but no...let's do this again with Kermit and Fozzie proper this time.

10. The Real Ghostbusters

The irony for artists and writers working on animated cartoons airing in "Seasons" is that production on these series made the work itself seasonal; they hopscotched from one animation studio to another. Any show made during this decade will likely have the same five or ten guys on average with their names on the credits. To read Tom Sito gently slam Filmation's Ghostbusters while praising DIC's The Real Ghostbusters is pretty funny, since he appears in interviews and commentary on the DVD box set of the Filmation show. The franchise is such a fallow state since the Paul Feig reboot blew that I've half-jokingly suggested adapting the 1980's animated incarnation with Jake, Eddie and Tracy the Ape into live-action. The stories may just be recycling He-Man tropes with a lighter tone, but the animation and character designs and more attractive than the Real version, which is pretty creaky-looking.

11. The Disney Afternoon (this is a cheat, as the author is actually talking about Disney's Adventures of The Gummi Bears, Ducktales and Chip 'n' Dale Rescue Rangers )

..and "The Disney Afternoon" didn't officially premiere until September of 1990, unless people want to count it as part of the 80's, but 1990 felt like a new start at the time to me...aside from fashion designers attaching neon colors on clothing...

The Disney shows from this decade get short-changed, imo, as there's "Before Disney Television Animation" and "After Disney Television Animation". This was a game-changer that deserves a book of it's own. The chapter was an interesting introduction to Tom Ruzicka, whom I hadn't read much about before, or his and Fred Wolf's critical contribution to the early days, when Gummi Bears was actually going to tie-in with a line of candy (how come Haribo makes "Gummy Smurfs" but no "Gummy Gummi Bears"?) and that The Wuzzles and Fluppy Dogs were specifically designed to sell toys, whereas Ducktales was actually created to capitalize on the success of Gummi Bears moving away from its toyetic origins and becoming more story-based (the Gummis themselves were going to be named after candy flavors...is that why Gruffi Gummi is sometimes depicted in red on licensing instead of brown? What would've been his name: "Redd Gummi"?).

12. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles

The 1980's cartoon incarnation is still the best. All the credit really goes to three people: Fred Wolf (for selling the show), Dave Wise (for giving us an entertaining show) and Chuck Lorre (for giving us that iconic theme song - I liked learning that it was actually Chuck's voice that's shouting "We're really hip!"/"Hey! Get a Grip!"/"He's a radical rat!"/"Gimmee a break!" - I remember thinking that was Rob Paulsen, the voice of Raphael, because that's who it sounded like).

13. Garfield and Friends

On his website, Mark Evanier opts for writing about celebrities/writers/artists he knows and politicians he dislikes rather than stuff he's actually worked on. Oh, and dispensing career advice for would-be freelance writers, I guess, though it comes off more interesting than useful. And obits for people he knew...and people who he never knew (to which he writes, "I don't have any stories about Austin Tasseltyne because I never met him or worked with him, but people liked him and his movies/TV shows/apple pies were quite popular, so he had that goimg for him."). Rarely does he divuge actual stories about his work...or at least without filing the names off beforehand. So it was nice to get him to talk of his time writing Garfield and Friends episodes, because he doesn't talk shop much on his blog about his work, which is unfortunate, because I think it's better-produced than the more-acclaimed TV specials that preceded it. Garfield reached the zenith of his popularity around this point. Ironically, the comic strip is more popular without him, assuming you haven't checked out Garfield Minus Garfield.

14. Mighty Mouse (actually, this was billed as Mighty Mouse: The New Adventures, but that was the author's choice on how to identify it in the chapter heading).

With anything from Ralph Bakshi and John Kricfalusi...the superb character design and background stylings will always be marred by the inability to realize that neither can write anything worth a damn. I was most disappointed in this section, because it was fuzzy on details as to how Doug Moench contributed to the writing of the show...I have to hazard a guess that it was his job to transcribe a presentable script from the final layouts that would be passed along to other production/post-production staff - voiceover/music/editing/sound/overseas animators. Most of the people who worked on that show have had long careers since then, but Bakshi and Kricfalusi are infamous for downplaying the craft of writing as an art form that has it's own technique and discipline. As a result, everything they've done has always come off amateurish and slapdash, storywise, because they focus everything on the drawings.

So...I enjoyed this book, it's good, but not great. Something's missing. The presentation is attractive - I like how there's samples of production notes and artwork from several series reproduced and attached ontop of pages, like they've been paper-clipped, giving the book a feel like you're reading a dossier with supplementary information thst could literally spill out. However, with a book like this, you'd think the author would present a stronger defense/commentary in his text for why these shows deserve to be the greatest cartoons of that decade. The title doesn't even specify that it's necessarily just cartoons on television, but could imply animated feature films, of which I could think of six that could bulk up that list to 20:

15) The Secret of Nimh
16) The Castle of Cagliostro
17) The Great Mouse Detective
18) Transformers: The Movie (although this could be lumped in with the TV series, ad it is discussed in the chapter devoted to that show, but it's strong enough to be a separate contender)
19) Who Framed Roger Rabbit?
20) The Little Mermaid

Yeah! And I didn't even get to include animated short films, of which I would suggest Night of The Living Duck and A Grand Day Out as worthy of inclusion. That would make 22.

And then there's a curious happening with (13) and (14) on the book's list: he switches the order by which the series debuted. Up until then, the list follows a timeline; Mighty Mouse: The New Adventures was old news when Garfield and Friends debuted the following year. Maybe that's a reflection on how the cartoons debutingthe following take their aesthetic cues from Mighty, particularly the Nickelodeon cartoons. That's left for us to infer. In fact, the author leaves it to the people who worked on each show to offer their conclusion as to why the respective series is considered great; it's like, "Hey! Here's my list. That's it. 'Nuff said." At a price of 50 bucks, I wouldn't mind more insight on what made these 14 cartoon shows better than other programs offered. There's no sidebars devoted to "Memorable Episodes" or "Honorable Mentions: Good Cartoons That Didn't Make The List". Those would've been cool things to add. There's unanswered questions..why isn't Fraggle Rock in there? Voltron? A Pup Named Scooby-Doo (the template for every new Scooby-Doo cartoon made since the 1990's). How about the 80's revival of The Jetsons? Or Heathcliff and The Catillac Cats? Or Thundarr (I don't care much for that one; the talent behind that series was more interesting than what they produced, but it has a loyal following). I might've been incorrect about the last two, but if I had seriously disagreed with any of the choices in that book - and I didn't, for the record; I agree with all the choices in there - then I would've thought this was just cobbled together by someone who had taken a light survey on social media and his content is grounded on the results of that. The text is just perfunctory and the only fun in reading it is the quotes from the people who worked on each show.

Curious thing I found while preparing this post: I found an alternate cover photo of the book - most likely a mockup for early solicitation purposes; there's a disclaimer on it saying it's not the final image...this cover has images of Voltron and the guys from muh-muh-muh M.A.S.K. on it. Perhaps they were just thrown in there to create suspense and surprise when the final cover was revealed, but I can't help feel we might have some alternate chapters that didn't make final cut...or it was just a ruse to prevent spoilers from leaking.

I'm trying to imagine how a follow-up book devoted to the 1990's would look..

Darkwing Duck
Ren and Stimpy
Beavis and Butthead
Gargoyles
Batman: The Animated Series
Animaniacs
Pinky and The Brain
Freakazoid!
Rocko's Modern Life
Rugrats
Daria
Dexter's Laboratory
The Powerpuff Girls
Johnny Bravo
The Simpsons

See that? That's pretty close..some of those choices I don't even care for, but I don't doubt the authenticity of their being on that list. He should totally do it...and hopefully add some flavor to his rhetoric along with it this time.

Wind-Up Wolf in "Sonic Forces"...maybe.

I remember owning a Sega Genesis because I wanted to play Quackshot. That's the first and only time I remember choosing a videogame console because I wanted to play a game that was exclusive to it. Now, when a videogame is available on multiple platforms...and you're not pre-disposed to either (though having a Blu-Ray player included is a sweet extra), but still don't have the bucks to make that purchase...you let it go.

And yet...

Let me explain. I would LOVE to play Sonic Forces - that's the most-recent Sonic the Hedgehog videogame. It's received the same mixed reviews that most Sonic videogames have earned over the last two decades: interesting concepts, attractive designs, poor control & camera issues, threadbare storyline, etc...however, the reviews are unanimously positive in regard to the create-a-character/custom build feature, in which you get to design a new sidekick to accompany Sonic, Tails, Knuckles and the other critters in the latest bruhaha with Dr. Eggman.

This new character - referred to among the cast as "Rookie" and by Sega's promotional material as "The Avatar" can be created as one of seven distinct species of animals - Cat, Bear, Bird, Hedgehog, Wolf, Rabbit and Dog. From there, you have a multitude of combinations of colors, shapes and clothing/accessories to chose from. By default, Sega's Sonic Team needed to create a default avatar to appear in their promotional material, so they designed an orange male wolf wearing heavy eyeglasses and sporting a number of gadgets..fans on the internet refer to him as Gadget the Wolf/Gadget the Rookie. I think it's a great design and I hope he makes it in the Sonic comic books..

Dig deeper and fan videos on YouTube demonstrate/hint that you could use the custom feature to design other famous animal characters. I saw one gamer create Usagi Yojimbo (or Miyamoto Usagi if you want to get technical), and I think there is a potential to create reasonable facsimiles of Felix the Cat, Mr. Jinx, Jose Carioca, Oswald the lucky rabbit, Loopy D'Loop, Mildew Wolf...and Wind-Up Wolf.

Who?

Well, gosh, I'm assuming you know who the preceding characters were so that I can cut to the chase, aren't I? Wind-Up Wolf was a one-shot cartoon character who appeared in Cartoon Network's What A Cartoon! The title? Wind-Up Wolf. It was written and directed by William Hanna. The plot involved The Big Bad Wolf building a robot doppelganger to go after the 3 Little Pigs. Wind-Up does not succeed, but because he's a robot, he can endure the kind of rough-handling/cartoon violence that Network Censors would normally frown upon, so it was okay for little kids to watch a robot get rocked & socked without finding the gags particularly cruel. William Hanna co-created Tom and Jerry, so he had considerable experience.

Nowadays, you can find this cartoon available to watch on YouTube like nothing, but back in the 90's, I remember being obsessed with trying to catch it and record it, because I knew ahead of time some of the backstory behind it's creation. In the early-90s, Dark Horse Comics had the license to make comic books based on MGM cartoons directed by Tex Avery, so they produced mini-series starring Droopy, Wolf & Red, Screwy Squirrel..the inaugural issue of Droopy featured an essay by artist/animator Scott Shaw that was a reminiscence of his brief time working with Tex Avery at Hanna-Barbera Studios in 1980 - "Generation Tex". Tex had suggested an idea of a "Wind-Up Wolf" built by the Big Bad Wolf to put up with all the bruises and beatings he could no longer endure. He didn't live long to develop this concept, but Shaw worked on storyboards with William Hanna at some point, because Wind-Up wound up as a Cartoon Network short film. Perhaps as a nod to Tex, the design of the character (and the Big Bad Wolf) is a nod to Wilford Wolf, the antagonist of The Kwicky Koala Show, the last cartoon Avery worked on before he died. Wind-Up Wolf was a nice, good-looking cartoon...I imagine if it had been picked up to become a TV series, they would've broadened the horizons a bit and included other characters, like Red Riding Hood, and fleshed out the personalities of the 3 pigs and Big Bad Wolf a little, with Wind-Up as the wild card in the middle of that relationship; Hanna would've probably included new episodes of Hard Luck Duck, another cartoon he had directed at the time - a reimagined Yakky Doodle. There definitely would've been cameos from older Hanna-Barbara characters, because the brief Jetsons cameo (albeit shown only in shadow, but with a familiar music cue to help anyone who was clueless) was well-received.

So...while I mull over whether or not to buy the videogame (I haven't even thought about which console I would pick up, if I do), I found a way to calm this impulse by finding fan art of Gadget the Wolf  ( remember him? That was about 2 or 3 paragraphs ago ), printing it out and using it as a coloring page to visualize my idea in lieu of actualization.

I've seen demos of the schematics on YouTube that show I could get closer to the mark than my coloring page would have you believe - bowties are available, not sure about vests - but I tried sticking with the color scheme of the cartoon character so that Gadget's apparel was color-consistent. I would definitely try incorporating both if possible to alternate.

Pretty cute...one short obscure cartoon, about 21/22 years old, causing me to write this post.

This Is Fine..

DC Comics has 3 different Scooby-Doo comic books going. There's the traditional Scooby-Doo, Where Are You?, a bi-monthly Scooby-Doo Team-Up, which has the Scooby Gang members paired with DC Comics superheroes and other Hanna-Barbera/Cartoon Network cartoon stars...and Scooby-Apocalypse, which is set in an alternate reality where the gang are survivors wandering a post-apocalyptic Earth, encountering zombie mutations and sharpening their survival skills more than their sleuthing skills.

That last book is a cornerstone of Hanna-Barbera Beyond, a line of comics published by DC which showcase radical alterations of old Hanna-Barbera characters in neo-noir stories. It's been functioning more as an oddity than something solid...I'm convinced it was created to capitalize on Archie Comics' success with Afterlife With Archie, in which most of the cast either turns into flesh-eating zombies or has to fend off the flesh-eating zombies. Ironically, this paved the way toward the revamp of the whole Archie line, eschewing the house style set by the late Dan DeCarlo in favor of a more realistic, if somewhat unremarkably generic style. The old look didn't pave the way to Riverdale, but I never thought there was anything wrong/old-fashioned about it...except maybe the story style. I remember following the Jughead comic book in the late-90's and early 2000s back when Craig Boldman & Rex Lindsay were working on it..and it rivaled any humor comic out there at the time and today.

Back to Beyond...funny enough, that brand name isn't promoted well - I only know of it because it's still around on Wikipedia...are the books any good?...meh. Scooby-Apocalypse is last man standing, anchoring rotating mini-series and one-shots introducing takes on different characters. And Apocalypse of late has been sharing space with back-up stories featuring a bizzaro take on Secret Squirrel, which looks like a spoof of Alvin and The Chipmunks movies..or any "talking cgi animal" films, because Secret is depicted as a realistically-drawn "real" rodent squirrel in a trenchcoat, working as a secret agent. Last time I checked, it looked like his tail had gotten blown-off and was bandaged..at $3.99, that's a long way for a monthly 6-pages.

Here's the thing...these books are solid proof it's possible to work on a project featuring a subject that you're not a fan of and deliver what's being asked. You really don't need to be familiar with the past incarnations of these characters to understand what's happening...because it's pretty likely that none of the creators involved watched any of those cartoons...like, literally sat down in front of a television and watched. If they had, then  they could've had more fun with creating a convincing texture that doesn't just feel like an exercise in tinkering with accuired intellectual property...the Flintstones book had some interesting moments, but it seemed to ask us to take seriously what was always meant to be a gentle parody of sitcom tropes at heart, not a socio-economic, socio-political allegory. Ambitious, yes. Fun?...

...suppose I give the benefit of the doubt. Let's say Jimmy Palmiotti loves The Jetsons...but they don't live in Brooklyn. He had Harley Quinn move to Brooklyn. He had Deadpool go to Brooklyn. He had Superboy move to a Metropolis counterpart to Brooklyn. Orbit City is a series of elevated platforms on poles that are grouped into a "city"; it has no boroughs. It's suggested that the Beyond version of The Jetsons Orbit City exists hovering over a submerged New York City...so they live over Brooklyn. Try as he night, Jimmy doesn't really have his frame-of-reference accessible to him, so the only story he can tell is to have Brooklyn emerge from the depths of the ocean and threaten to destroy Orbit City...that's revenge for spoiling his muse.
The only book that felt like it appreciated what was there before..or seemed to, was Future Quest, but I thought it was just okay. It's plot felt stretched thin and it sotta lacked empathy. It wants to be Crisis On The Funtastic World of Hanna-Barbera using their action-adventure guys, but it needed more wrinkles in the plot, more interesting character mashups and less cliched crossover tropes.

So here's the other thing: it's possible to be a fan and not really have stories to tell within the context of premise you've been given...or you can be the experiened journeyman who creates suspense by making you wonder if he's familiar with these characters or just having a laugh. The Dastardly and Muttley comic looks like Garth Ennis couldn't be bothered to recreate theplot of the TV series and is really revisiting his Adventures of The Rifle Brigade concept that burlesqued army comedies...and hinting that he hates cartoons? I can't tell. The plot is that the Earth has become exposed to a poison gas that is radically transforming all people, places and things into people, places and things, creating multiple gory casualties as real-life physics collides with cartoon physics in transition. Any resemblance to Dick Dastardly and Muttley is coincidental. Any resemblance to the plot of Cool World is also coincidental.

At present, there's The Ruff and Reddy Show and The Snagglepuss Chronicles. Both remind me of that issue of Astro City about Loony Leo, the cartoon lion who came to life during a superhero skirmish and enjoyed the ups and downs of celebrity life. It was done in one issue and didn't wear out it's welcome. These other two series are set as six-issue mini-series. I don't think they'll accomplish the same beats as eloquently as Kurt Busiek did in that single issue, but my point is both mini-series don't have a lot to say..of course, if you imagined/fancied Huckleberry Hound and Snagglepuss as more than just thinly-veiled caricatures of the Cowardly Lion and Droopy Dog, then you get to see that...

I can't help wondering what they'll try next...how about Penelope Pitstop remodeled to look like Baby Doll from Sucker Punch? Or Inch-High Private Eye's mysteries within the context of The Incredible Shrinking Man? Or Super Snooper & Blabber Mouse fashioned after Benedict Cumberbatch & Martin Freeman in Sherlock? Peter Potamas as Doctor Who? Wally Gator as The Maze Runner?...

All of these things could happen...because it's all apocryphal..so this is fine.

"The Alternate Duckiverse" (alt. title: "Is St. Canard In Callisota?")

Darkwing Duck is 25 years old. No news yet about an animated revival of the Disney TV series, but there is an ongoing comic book series published by Joe Books that's available at your (hopefully) better-than-average comic shop currently on it's 4th issue.

Series creator Tad Stones was interviewed by The Hollywood Reporter about the milestone and dropped what's been reffered to on social media as a "bombshell": he never really saw Darkwing Duck as a direct spin-off of Ducktales and believed both shows took place in separate universes.

It always seemed like a natural assumption that Ducktales and Darkwing Duck were linked together, first because the latter program featured Launchpad McQuack and Fenton Crackshell/Gizmoduck, two major Ducktales supporting characters who were introduced in said series. A later episode of Darkwing Duck ("In Like Blunt") featured the major Ducktales villains - Flintheart Glomgold, Magica de Spell and the Beagle Boys - in non-speaking cameos. And while Scrooge McDuck and Huey, Dewey & Louie Duck remained offscreen, there was an infamous "Welcome To Duckburg" billboard with Scrooge's face appearing in the episode, "Tiff of The Titans". More-obvious examples of Disney TV shows that likely took place in separate universes, yet featured anthropomorphic talking ducks in the main cast were Bonkers, Quack Pack, The Mighty Ducks and House of Mouse. Those three series depict their lead characters inhabiting worlds that include cartoon humans, yet neither would mix well, unless you add a conceit that one or the other is a fictional series of cartoons being "filmed" within the world of another series, and the protagonists are ret-conned as actors, which is what House of Mouse does.

What supports Stones' logic is that both shows featured stylistic differences that set eachother apart..and I don't mean drawing style. Darkwing was a sendup of genre cliches featuring spies and superheroes. It also featured a lot of broad slapstick and cartoon violence in the vein of Tom & Jerry and the Looney Tunes shorts. Characters were often acutely self-aware and would break the fourth wall, knowing they were in a cartoon. Ducktales was a more conventional adventure-comedy series. Whenever there was any broad slapstick, it stayed firmly in relation to how things would happen in the real world, not cartoon physics. There were exceptions, but Darkwing would often survive a barrage of explosives and heavy metal objects and would shake it off; Scrooge suffered head trauma/amnesia after getting hit on the head with a skateboard in one episode. For Darkwing Duck to get amnesia, it would probably happen with twelve pianos falling on his head. You see what I mean?

The only way to reconcile this revelation with what's already established and all in the past is that a different version Scrooge McDuck and the Ducktales cast of characters exists within Darkwing Duck's..cartoonier universe. That's all. Not knock-offs, just apropos of Darkwing. By the same token, we can assume a different version of Darkwing Duck and his cast of characters exists apropos of the Ducktales universe as well.

And what if they crossover? Which universe does the episode take place in? Well, if it's a self-contained one-shot story, it's set within the context of the respective series. If Darkwing appears in the new Ducktales episodes premiering on DisneyXD in 2017, it'll be within the context established by that series. Same deal if Disney ever thought of a "The Jetsons Meet The Flintstones"-esque TV movie featuring these characters.

And if they really want to run wild...there's the cake gate. It was established in Darkwing Duck that portals/wormholes to parallel universes exist disguised as giant decorative cakes. There could be a cake to the Ducktales universe, a cake for the Super Goof universe, a cake to the Double-O-Duck universe*, a cake to the Carl Barks comic book Durkburg, a cake to the DC Comics universe, a cake to a mashup universe, a cake to the real world and the Disney Parks..and even a cake where Darkwing and Scrooge accompany Sorra instead of Donald and Goofy in Kingdom Hearts..it's a piece of cake.

Happy Anniversary, Darkwing Duck. :)

*Double-O-Duck was the original incarnation/concept for Darkwing Duck in it's early stages of development..I'm actually surprised that the team got as far as creating a press-kit for the character before revamping it into the character/series that we're familiar with today.

"Grape Ape?"

DC Comics has a line of comic books reinventing old Hanna-Barbera characters    out in shops right now: Scooby Apocalypse, Wacky Raceland, The Flintstones and Future Quest. The last book is a crossover series featuring the casts of Johnny Quest, The Herculoids, Birdman & The Galaxy Trio, Space Ghost, Frankenstein Jr. & The Impossibles..and is Mightor in there? If he's not, I'm sure he'll turn up. It's not entirely clear if all of these books are ongoing series. Future Quest alone feels like a maxi-series along the lines of Crisis On Infinite Earths.

What all these books have in common is that they ask us to take these cartoon characters a lot more seriously than we ever did before - although Scooby Apocalypse isn't far away from incarnations of Scooby-Doo cartoons where the "ghosts" were portrayed as real and not crooked realtors cosplaying as monsters. The likely inspiration for these makeovers was Archie Comics success with Life With Archie, Afterlife With Archie and the ultimate revamp of the line - with the exception of the digests - with the stock company characters redesigned for a more "realistic" look. None of these books are really for kids, although they'll likely be exposed to it ( the same way I saw parents take their kids to see Deadpool - "Rated 'R'? What's that?").

If this run is a hit, who's next? DC teased The Jetsons would be the next candidate...assuming someone at DC Comics is reading this, can I suggest you do something with The Great Grape Ape?

Why Grape Ape?..I used to believe that the cartoon characters who had become most-indicative of "Hanna-Barbera" - the ones that immediately come to mind among people under the age of 30 - were Scooby-Doo, Tom & Jerry, The Flintstones, Yogi Bear and The Jetsons...and then the subject came up at work and my co-workers replied with "Grape Ape" and "Huckleberry Hound", so I bid that theory adieu.

"Grape Ape? Wow..they don't even show reruns of his cartoon on Boomerang."

"I know, I know...nobody believes it, but I love that character."

"Fair enough, fair enough. I like "Precious Pup" - people aren't even sure who THAT is! But they DO know Grape Ape."

I'm convinced the director of Scooby-Doo and The Monster of Mexico attempted a subliminal revival of Grape Ape by recasting him as a Chupacabra. There could be no other possible explanation for re-imagining a creature often described as vampiric, reptilian preying on goats in Puerto Rico as a burrowing simian preying on tourists in Mexico*. This Chupa was Grape Ape in all but name only.

I'm not saying a Grape Ape comic book should recast him as a Chupacabra..maybe he could be a genetically modified grape rescued by a lab animal (Beagly Beagle) and they go explore the world, on the lam, like The Zeta Project...or Kermit and Fozzie evading Doc Hopper in The Muppet Movie...but what could the villain want from Grape Ape?..maybe his bodily fluids make an excellent beverage? A key ingredient in Kopi Luwak is the excrement of a species of jungle cat; perhaps there's some delectable drink that can be mixed from Grape Ape's purple stuff?

Movin' right a-long, Grape Ape-Grape Ape, dugga-dunk, dugga-dunk...Movin' right a-long..

*still a mystery why THAT Scooby-Doo film relocated the Chupacabra "legend", to Mexico..Season 3 of "Scooby-Doo, Where Are You?" had an episode set in Puerto Rico ("Don't Go Near The Fortress of Fear!")...

What We Talk About When We Talk About "The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance" (aka, "Birdman")

I've seen Birdman twice now. It stars Michael Keaton as an actor best known for starring in a trilogy of superhero movies attempting a risky comeback by producing, directing and starring in a stage play adaptation of the short story  What We Talk About When We Talk About Love by Raymond Carver. The source material is a story for intellectual stuffed shirts - the summary of that tale on Wikipedia isn't particularly clear, and you don't get a grasp of what it's about from watching Birdman, either. It is definitely a movie that can be viewed in an Anthropology class, since I'm convinced it's a superhero movie that doesn't want to be a superhero movie, but follows the beats of a superhero movie...and is more satisfying to view as a superhero movie. I  think it's a shame that Fox Studios didn't think of having a tie-in "novelization" of Birdman published...and it turns out to be reprint of Raymond Carver's short stories (including  What We Talk About When We Talk About Love) behind the cover.

So how do I recommend you view Birdman? Well, it's clearly the story of an actor who's developing reality warping superpowers while under duress. He can fly, he can move objects, and he can change reality so that you can debate whether or not you saw him fly around midtown Manhattan during the morning rush hour...or was riding in a taxicab. Within this context, I think the film is like the Bruce Willis movie Unbreakable, where we didn't realize we were watching a superhero movie until the final act...and then realized a lot of opportunities were wasted that have made that film age terribly. At least Birdman has room for fun. As Ebert often wrote, "I'll leave that for you to discover." (So that I can keep this essay from going off the rails).

Which brings us to the concept of Birdman himself - he's like a mashup of three Hanna-Barbara cartoon superheroes: The Blue Falcon from Dynomutt, Harvey Birdman of Birdman and The Galaxy Trio and Harvey Birdman, Attorney At Law, and he appears to have Space Ghost's laser "power bands", which he uses to attack a monstrous robot vulture that resembles one of the Skeksis from The Dark Crystal...of course I want to see this spun-off into its own movie. Or maybe a Hawkman movie.

Anyway, go see Birdman. It's one of those films that I'm convinced works best when it's viewed on the big screen, so do give it a try. It's not as ingenious as some critics are making it out to be, but Michael Keaton is excellent in this film; it's doing what Lost In Translation did for Bill Murray - that's another film that works better when viewed on a big screen as well.

And without further ado, enjoy the gallery! :)

Jonathan Winters, RIP

 I don't often write obituaries, but when comedian Jonathan Winters passed away last week at age 87, I knew I had to write something about him.

 These days, he's best known for four things: as Mork's Benjamin Button-ish, backward-aging son Mearth who punched his way out of a giant polystyrene/cardboard egg ("That's not a boy, that's an old man!") in the final season of Mork and Mindy, as the hapless, everyman truck driver racing to find gangster Jimmy Durante's hidden  suitcase of money "...buried under a BIG 'W'!", in It's A Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World, appearances on various talk shows and variety shows from the 50s through the 70s and sporadically thereafter, and voiceover work (as himself  and Ma Frickert - a character he created and played often in drag - in an episode of The New Scooby-Doo Movies, Grandpa Smurf in The Smurfs TV cartoons produced by Hanna Barbera and Papa Smurf in the live-action/CGI-animated Smurfs films.

 His comedy style/persona was hard to describe (actually, it's very easy to describe, if you've checked out his profile on Wikipedia, but it seems less interesting when it's explained as frankly). It was a form of low-key, light satire: he could play average guys, stereotypical gay men, windbag authority figures, showbiz phonies, doddering old codgers, fishing & hunting-obsessed outdoorsman types, myopic children, martians, a cat stalking a mouse and Ma Frickert  - Whistler's Mother brought to life. If he was British, he would've been one of the Goon Gang (Peter Sellers, Spike Milligan, Harry Secombe), The Pythons, or even the Top Gear clowns (Jeremy Clarkson and James May are exactly the kind of characters Jonathan Winters had in his repertoire). Neil Simon once described Spike Milligan as "a demented Jonathan Winters". If you just so happen to own a copy of The Muppet Show Season 3 on DVD, or have seen anything with Milligan (who often came across as a deranged tramp who wandered past security and onto a sound stage) after reading this, you'll wonder, "Is that what the inside of Jonathan Winters mind is like?"

 Those who knew him or were fans of his wondered why he never became as popular or successful as his contemporaries or spiritual comedic descendants. Robin Williams, Jim Carrey, Bill Murray, Will Ferrell, Zach Galifinakis, Steven Wright, Andy Kaufman - any comedian who attempted to always appear "on", not as themselves, can be linked to Winters, but he was only able to find steady work in commercials, voiceovers and in sporadic appearances in film and television (he played the police chief uncle of Alec Baldwin's Lamont Cranston in The Shadow and won an Emmy co-starring as Randy Quaid's Dad in the short-lived 90s sitcom Davis Rules).  I'm inclined to believe the reason for this is because he actually succeeded in becoming his default character as he got older - Elwood Suggins, a farmer who "..can think eggs 24 hours a day" - not particularly edgy, but polite and you knew he was winking at the peanut gallery. I tend to think Inspector Clouseau was Peter Sellers' default character, but his Dr. Strangeglove is too imposing to make people believe that. Winters, like the Goons and the Pythons and the Gear heads, was a trickster.

 Another thing: I've never seen a comic book with Jonathan Winters on it. Jerry Lewis, Bob Hope, even Don Rickles (as Goody Rickles in DC's Jimmy Olsen comics), Elvira and others, but no Winters. I think a comic with him might have had some potential to be entertaining. Or at least have its place in the longbox graveyard with the others. Who knows?

 A website devoted to a film and DVD about Jonathan, Certifiably Jonathan, has its own website and can be previewed here .

 "I think my place is inside the box, underneath the guy receiving the gold medal. They're playing the national anthem and I'm fondling a platinum medallion." - Jonathan Winters

Dr. Desire's Valentine's Day Prescription

TV Specials/Episodes:

Be My Valentine Charlie Brown/A Charlie Brown Valentine

Ducktales : "Back To The Klondike", "'til Nephews Do Us Part", "Metal Attraction", "Ducky Mountain High", "A Ducktales Valentine"

Darkwing Duck :  "My Valentine Ghoul"

X-Men : "Weapon X, Lies and Videotape"

The Flintstones: "Dino and Juliet"

Disney's DTV Romancin'

Doctor Who: "Army of Ghosts/Doomsday", "Destiny of The Daleks", PRIME Computer ads

Bugs Bunny Cupid Capers

Power Rangers Ninja Storm : "I Love Lothor"

Batman: "Mad Love", "Love Is A Croc", "Harley and Ivy", "Chemistry", "Catwoman Goes To College"/"Batman Displays His Knowledge".

Avonlea : "Ah..Sweet Mystery Of Life"

Justice League Unlimited : "Double Date", "This Little Piggy"


Films:

As Good As It Gets

LA Story
Valentine's Day

Valentine (was it Jessica Capshaw or David Boreanez - they were both nuts!)

I Hate Valentine's Day

The St. Valentine's Day Massacre

Candy :

Valentine lollipops

Cherry Cordials

Elmer's Assorted Chocolates


Now go, go, go!

The Christmas Playlist

Christmas Specials for 2011:

1. How The Grinch Stole Christmas

2. A Charlie Brown Christmas

3. Mickey's Christmas Carol

4. The Simpsons Christmas Special

5. A Flintstone Family Christmas

6. Doctor Who: The Next Doctor

7. The Proud Family (this Kwanzaa special is the best episode of the series - never mind that the holiday has been debunked - the meaning comes through very clear, here)

8. Winnie The Pooh and Christmas Too

9. Bugs Bunny's Christmas Tales

10. Yogi's All-Star Comedy Christmas Caper - just for all of you to stare and compare with the movie Elf and see what I mean. Wally Gator cameo!

Christmas themed episodes:

1. Married with Children

2. Darkwing Duck "It's A Wonderful Leaf"

3. Merry Christmas, Doctor Who (this is actually an outtake that has Tom Baker, Mary Tamm and K9 getting frisky with liquor bottles waved around) "What do you desire most for Christmas, Doctor?", asks K9. And Tom immediately glances at Mary Tamm. :) It's an extra on The Armageddon Factor-special edition DVD and on YouTube

4. Family Guy "A Very Special freakin' Christmas"

5. American Dad

6. Batman - "Holiday Knights" and "Christmas With The Joker"

Christmas Movies

1. National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation

2. A Christmas Story

3. Santa Claus: The Movie

4. Love, Actually (actually, this is just one for the ladies - so that's where Garry Marshall gets his ideas!)

5. Home Alone

Merry ChrismaHanuKwanRam3Kings Eve Everyone!

No $#!+ Sherlock - Part. 3 of 5 - Comic Book Rehab

I finally got to see "Sherlock: The Great Game", or as I call it, "Doctor Who: The Two Doctors". Let me explain:

Cartoons produced by Hanna-Barbera are famous for capitalizing on the same idea over and over - Yogi Bear and Huckleberry Hound were their first big stars, so the following decade (this would be the 1960's) saw a large assortment of bow tie and porkpie hat-wearing anthropomorphic funny animals with similar vocal patterns. The Flintstones was their first successful half-hour length show, so they tried others, like The Jetsons and Roman Holidays. And every cartoon in the 70's was Scooby Doo in disguise - even The Superfriends! I actually thought Wally Gator was funnier than Yogi, and some people love Quick Draw McGraw over Huckleberry Hound, and some people prefer Superfriends over Scooby, and some (like Chuck Dixon) only enjoyed The Jetsons, but this goes against the grain - it's not asking whether the chicken or egg came first: we're just comparing eggs. It's like that picky shopper in the film "Clerks" who was picking a dozen eggs out of different cartons - is this madness? If we can tell the product is the same, why not move on or just stay with the one product? Why don't I find Yogi as funny as Wally?

I can answer that question easy - I don't like Ranger Smith, and the food-related storylines made the cartoon seem limiting - why would Yogi want to compete in a space race or solve mysteries in Jellystone Mall? He's just a bear who wants to snack on human food. Wally, on the other hand, was bored , and was eager to go anywhere, do anything , to break out - that speaks to anybody! Sure, the cartoons would end with Wally running back home, but after 7 minutes of "Next stop, anywhere," home is where everyone thinks of going back to.

Now... if you don't watch the BBC or BBC America, are not a fan of sci-fi and fantasy, and only surf the internet to swap recipes for rhubarb pie or see upskirt photos, than you're not reading this blog and I'm talking about Doctor Who and Sherlock Holmes, anyway. Doctor Who has had a very successful revival in the last few years - it used to known as "That British show with the worst special effects ever with the tall guy that looks like Harpo Marx with a long scarf and written by the guy that wrote The Hitchhikers Guide To The Galaxy", and there are worse ways of becoming a pop culture phenomenon. Sherlock Holmes has had a big revival on film and television, beginning in disguise (CSI, House) then in an official capacity, with Robert Downey jr. on film, and Benedict Cumberbatch on television.

I've been paying more attention to the TV version in this blog, largely because I can kill two birds with one stone - Cumberbatch's performance has fans online saying that he would make a great Doctor Who, even better/equal to current Doctor, Matt Smith. But why are they so surprised? This new show, Sherlock, was conceived and written by Stephen Moffat and Mark Gatiss - two veterans of Doctor Who. I've already mentioned in Part 1 of No $#!+ Sherlock how much the character of Holmes and the actor's performance are very in sync with modern Doctor Who productions.

And now...the finale. I got to see the third episode, which sees the introduction of a modern Professor Moriarty. Moriarty is a wild card - he only appears in flashback in one story by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle - "The Final Problem", and is referred to in "The Adventure of Empty House" and "The Valley of Fear". Like Ernst Stavro Blofeld, much of what we think we know of the character is the stuff of pop culture osmosis. Was he a 19th century mob boss? Was he a mad scientist? Did he have two brothers? Was he just a simple math teacher that slept with Sherlock's mom and inspired a series of drug-induced hallucinations thereafter? Was he Sherlock Holmes in disguise? Everyone has fun guessing, but Conan Doyle was happy to see the back of him - he only existed as an not-so-fully-realized means to an end that didn't quite work out.

Andrew Scott plays the new Moriarty, presented here as a "Consulting Killer" - you hire him for advice on how to commit a perfect murder. Not everyone knows what they wanna' be when they grow up... Sherlock has obviously been cutting into his bottom line, and he decides to send his version of a friendly warning: tips on several murders that he helped fix and the one that got him started, leading to a showdown at a an indoor pool that's a rip-off of a showdown between David Tennant and Anthony Stewart Head in the Doctor Who episode, "School Reunion". Aside from a brilliant inside joke that only British fans are likely to get  (the reality show "Jim'll Fix It"), we get a "Lady or the Tiger?" cliffhanger ending - or not. I guess they wanted to end with Holmes and Moriarty taking turns at smoulder acting.

This stand-off/smoulder was the kind of thing they perfected with David Tennant on his Doctor Who and continue with Matt Smith- but here, it's with Andrew Scott and Benedict Cumberbatch. Watch a marathon of Tennant-Who episodes, then go back and watch this episode - Moriarty is clearly written as a kind of psycho Tennant. Now, watch a marathon of Matt Smith-Who episodes and repeat the same viewing steps I described. Cumberbatch's Sherlock is very Smith-ish, isn't he? Yes, you won't see the Doctor unload his revolver into the roundels of the Tardis, but the Doctor has always been viewed as a Holmesian character from the start.

Is ignorance bliss? I can still enjoy both programs (actually, I enjoyed Who because of Tennant's performance, not necessarily because I thought the show was perfect - plus, Smith's Doctor is a bit of a poser) knowing that one is taking ques from the other, but there is a sense that neither is as original as it wants to appear. And then there's the cartoons I mentioned earlier - do I need to like Yogi Bear to enjoy Wally Gator? Can I watch Wally and not acknowledge the fact that he wouldn't really exist without Yogi? I find that I can watch Yogi and wonder why he can't be as funny as Wally Gator.

You know, if it weren't for Hong Kong Phooey, The Hair Bear Bunch and the Smurfs, every Hanna Barbera cartoon in the 70's and 80's would be Scooby Doo in disguise. And I like Scrappy Doo, but that's a subject for another time...and the fact that every cartoon tried to be the Smurfs in disguise when that took off...

Which came first? The Egg? Or the other Egg?

Imaginary "Special Globe Trekker Extra" Comic Book Rehab Ashcan

Ahh...The Holiday Inn at midtown Manhattan - or as some out-of-towners call it, New York, New York.

I'm here to cover Super Collector's Mega Show Spectacular - a small convention devoted to comic books that also features toys and guests. Walk with me...

It's just up here on the second floor...

Ah, here we are - admission is ten dollars - not bad, these days, although I remember another convention held at this same hotel with admission at six dollars. It's a good idea to compare admission prices on shows - depending on your destination. Try to find out  what the shows feature in advance and check on the web for any videos or photo galleries offering a view of what the convention looks like. I wish I had.

Awfully small here. Too small. It's the size of my aunt's apartment in Brooklyn - one long corridor with windows.

Hmm...a bunch of old comics with pretty high prices - when you've seen comics you don't want in quarter and half-dollar bins in the past, then see them in the present in higher-priced bins in bad shape, it's very disconcerting.

The only guests here are a couple of models from some independant horror films that I'm not familiar with.

The only toys being sold are a bunch of old figures that you might have seen at the toy shop long ago and paid no mind to - and they look kind of grimey...

Ah...bootleg DVDs - most are of shows not expected to turn a profit on official release, but have some fanbase wanting it - remember the Savage Dragon cartoon from the mid-90's? Or Hanna-Barbera's weird take on the Thing? Thing ring/do your thing... twenty dollars and up to relive your memories. All aboard the memory lane train...

Ah, the exit! Well, that's it then.

Cue end titles and "Gong" noise...

:)