"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.

The Nifty 9 of 2012

It's time for a list of the Nifty 9 - reading material you can find in a better-than-o.k. comic shop that premiered this year:

(In no particular order...)

1.  Jim Henson's Tale of Sand:   I found out about this book after it won the Will Eisner Award for Best Original Graphic Novel. This GN, an adaptation of an unproduced screenplay written by Henson and Jerry Juhl, is a psychedelic romp through Monument Valley in which an average everyman tries to match wits with his better-prepared, urbane doppelganger while on a quest to "follow the map", have a cigarette, win the woman of his dreams, dodge the mad sheik's army, stay out of the director's shot, be the town hero and cross the dessert while heeding the warning:  "don't trust the map."

2. Transformers: More Than Meets The Eye #1: the quick-changing robots get the Justice League International treatment, beginning with this issue. Those of you only familiar with these characters (yes, characters) via the Michael Bay films will experience shell shock.

3. Case Closed - Volume #42: this manga series about a teen detective who turns into a kid detective and has to slowly solve the mystery of the clandestine organization behind his transformation, has been going strong for over 15 years, even if any hope for futher episodes of the anime spin-off being brought over to the USA seems unlikely. Anyway, this is the one - the volume I would recommend to someone who would be curious to try it. It's got some strong arcs and characterization, along with appearances and revelations from the semi-recurring characters that tend to pop in and out.

4. Doctor Who - Shada: this was the best read of the summer. Gareth Roberts had to rise to the challenge of cobbling together every draft, fragment and scribble of Douglas Adams aborted Doctor Who epic and reshape it into a proper full-length novel. Well, he did it. He really, really did it. My only question is: What will you do for an encore, Gareth? ... it just so happens that Tom Baker had written a script for a DW film that would have featured Vincent Price as the villain - titled Doctor Who Meets Scratchman, the film was almost put into production before the financing fell apart. When I had asked him on Twitter about it, Roberts reply was, "Good Idea." ...

5. The Secret History of D.B. Cooper: Oni published this series that offered a fanciful look into the life of that mysterious skyjacker whose fate has never been solved. The artwork is very Mike Mignola/Darwyn Cooke-ish, right down to the red gummi bear sidekick.

6. Idolized #0: From Michael Turner's Aspen MLT. The special premiere #0 issue of this comic starts off well. It's about the winner of a reality show in which super-powered wannabes compete for a rookie spot in an established team, The Powered Protectors, but there are hints that the protagonist is going to be their bad penny. BTW, this series is also notable for being the only comic book series I can remember that offered variant photo covers (in which they get a model to pose in costume as the lead character) that weren't bikini pin-ups in disguise. Vampirella, Glory, Ally Kat, The 10th Muse - all cheesecake.

7. Transformers: More Than Meets The Eye, #5: this standout issue is the conclusion to a medical mystery (yes, robots solving medical mysteries!) featuring fan-favorite Ratchet, is very entertaining, with an ending that's a laugh riot. There's a good reason the title of this chapter is not revealed until the last page...spoilers. ;)

8. Burt Ward, Boy Wonder:  the problem with small press companies is that you never know if the premiere issue is the only issue, or in this case, a sneak peek offered on Free Comic Book Day. This was supposed to be a spin-off of a popular series of their hit Misadventures of Adam West series, in which Sir Adam West gets involved in different kinds of adventures in different genres (usually nods to gigs-that-might-have-been, like playing James Bond in On Her Majesty's Secret Service or a Western film without the Three Stooges or a serious Caped Crusader and even appearing as Indiana Jones or The Mad Hatter). Here, Ward gets his own turn. First we get an update of his life right now - running a non-profit animal rescue shelter and walking two amiable pooches around the location of the batcave from the 60s Batman TV series. Then we see him chase a mysterious masked man (looking suspiciously like The Red Hood) into said cave,with the dogs tagging along. Just as John Carter wound-up whisked into Mars,  Ward and  the dogs wind up on another planet. It sounded like a fun adventure - we'll have to wait and see if and when it resumes. An ad featuring a spin-off series about Julie Newmar was also solicited, but has not appeared on stands yet.

9. League of Extraordinary Gentlemen - Century, Part 3: 2009: And this is the one to recommend to everyone - be it the folks who are curious try it or the ones who found past installments inaccessible, and not just because they'll get the references to 30 Rock, Burn Notice, Lost, Heroes, 24, Centurions, Emma Peel, Mary Poppins, Harry Potter, Children in Need, The Dark is Rising and Wizards of Waverly Place - this is the best comic book of the year. 'Nuff said. 'Nuff said.

So there you have it - a Nifty 9 bon-bons from 2012. I'll see you in 2013. :)

The Fever is Coming Back...

 Every fan gets it - certainly a true comic book fan. I'm not talking about those two-arm,two-leg, "I'll-just-buy-one-issue-or-two-and-that's-my-collection" phonies or the "Oh,-these-comics-are-not-in-good-condition.-The-price-is-good-and-the-books-are-hard-to-find,-but-I'll-pass" and "This-shop-is-just-too-out-of-my-way-for-me-to-come-in-every-week" or "This-shopkeeper-is-racist!-I'm-never-coming-back!" pretenders. Feh!

  Comic books are like potato chips or gummy bears - you can never have just one. There's a reason why a serving of gummies is 15 bears. On the other hand, you can eat just one bon-bon - especially if it's that bitter, gooey, dark chocolate/caramel hybrid that leaves a bad taste in your mouth. Have you ever seen anyone eat two of those back-to-back? Outrageous!

 Remember the days of "self-contained" stories? If not, you're young (and I didn't know young people bought comics - I just assumed you waited for your Mother to force Dad to get rid of his collection or wait for Gramps to kick the bucket. This is strictly an adult hobby - did you not see all the old people walking around the shop?). A self-contained comic was simply a story that was complete in one issue - you need not fear finding out if Batman succumbs to bumping off the Joker in part 2, because there was no part 2. Of course, nowadays we would buy part 2 to see if he does kill the clown, knowing that if he did, we'd be up to our armpits in ninja gangster stories - this will never happen...oh, wait, they do that anyway. Today, a self-contained issue is a "launching point" or a "key issue" for a new storyline - a point-of-entry for "new" readers who want to know where they can hop abroad the moving train. These issues tend to be a bit threadbare in plot and story - usually a thrown-together mash-up of stock activity (Batman taking down gang members, Captain America riding his motorcycle and throwing his shield, The X-Men having a picnic or playing baseball, Savage Dragon getting a recap of what went on before while he was out, Spider-Man chasing car thieves) and then two-three pages of set-up for a new storyline (never a story-just a storyline) where some sign of dread appears - maybe a character watching from the shadows or some poor fool getting killed. "Not the end...check next month's issue and read this Wednesday's Comics and Stories #508 for another angle and read Death Scooter #267 to see Wendell check out the action alone!"

 But wait a minute - if you're a lowest common denominator, hardcore comic book fan, you're not going to sit and wait for four weeks for the story to continue, you'll want to check out what happened last month and the month before that (in the case of Transformers comics, you'll be checking on the last two publishers that had the character license). That means you're at the mercy of the back issue aisle - a wretched hive of scum and villainy if there never was one. Here, you can expect to be charged a tax on used, dog-eared periodicals, or - even sneakier - a tax on last month's issue, which may not have been bagged or boarded, but left sitting next to the current issue on the stacks. Here, you can thumb through a stack of old books and wish for hand sanitizer after gazing at your fingertips caked with dirt. Here, you can stare at dead bugs trapped in Mylar. Here, you can sweat through your clothes like a pizza slice in a paper bag when you realize the shopkeeper shut off the air conditioner so that you'd run out of there. Ha! As if that will work!

 Wait a minute...those tricks do work. They do make anyone with half a brain turn around and say "Never again..." They do lose new customers and new readers who developed a genuine interest in comics but can only go as far as waiting for the next issue and ignore the recent past. Who can wait for next issue when it takes over a year for a storyline to resolve itself and the price of a new issue keeps going up beyond casual spending. The fever goes away...

 The fever never leaves the die hards, though, especially the ones with Debit and Credit in hand. Yes, yes, even in the days of Cap'n Credit Crunch and Fannie Big Mac/whatever, you'll still see people spend $30/$40 dollars a week on comics. These die-hards won't pause when the total rings up an additional 8.25/god knows what % sales tax that makes no sense (even less sense when the clerk explains that it's because "It's an old comic" - wtf ?).

 That is why a "jumping-on point" comic is not just a beginning - it's an ending. Yes, the first dose might even be "Free" (right, Free Comic Book Day?), but the next dose is always hardest to take. Once you've got the fever, the prescription is a trip out of the store, or a four-color cocktail of last month's, last year's, next month's, or tie-in issues. Down the hatch. Never say "when". Oh, and never think about whether the stuff is any good - generic comics are never a steal. Yes, some places do tax issues from the quarter/half-dollar bins.


Happy Wednesday.

...The Right Of All Sentient Knuckleheads - Bwah-Ha-Ha

IDW's Transformers comics are shaking up this month. What started off as a simple reboot of the franchise and its comic book continuity became swept-up and overshadowed by the success of the live-action movies and arguably went off the rails for a while. So now we're getting a new jumping-on point that is not so much a revamp as just something exciting and new.

This month we have two new ongoing series - Robots In Disguise and More Than Meets The Eye. The new status quo? The ongoing feud between the Autobots and Decepticons is considered over, and in a goodwill gesture to show that Cybertron has moved on, the leadership is divided between Rodimus Prime and Bumblebee, who are not getting along right now. Both agree that that they need to get their home planet in order, but disagree in how to do it. 'Bee thinks it needs to be done from the ground up, Rodimus thinks something old will help - in this case, a quest for the Knights of Cybertron - a Jedi/Templar-sounding order of robots that went into hiding long,long ago.

So they split, and the two books show the change well. In More Than Meets The Eye,  Rodimus fronts a book that's very Justice League International meets Lost in Space/ Star Trek: Voyager with more humor than you'd expect - no, not terrible Shia Labeouf comedy, but the cause-and-effect, dialogue-fueled, "Bwa-ha-ha" that defined the Keith Giffen and J.M. Dematteis years writing the Justice league, and I found this approach very engaging. Robots In Disguise appears to offer a more conventional alternative, but I expect it will be good, since Bumblebee stars in it.

Casting Transformers in comics is very important. In past years, the comics would focus on characters with a cult following, like Jetfire, Grimlock and Ratchet (who didn't do much in the original cartoon, but strangely enough, became the real hero in the original Marvel comic books, even considered by fans to be Megatron's true arch-foe). Here, with Rodimus and Bumblebee, the books are centered on characters that played major roles in Transformers movies, and I'm certain that was a key strategy  to bring in new readers. I saw one guy in the comic shop pick up a copy that prominently displayed Rodimus on the cover, while I opted for Nick Roche's awesome cover tribute to Kevin Maguire's Justice League #1 cover, with Rodimus standing in for Guy Gardner. Variant covers cover all bases - not all the time, but here they did.

I tend to drift in and out of Transformers because the continuity can get ugly and self-indulgent. The old Marvel comics veer away from the TV show at one point, the Marvel U.K. comics used a time travel story set between scenes in the animated movie, Target 2006, which created an alternate continuity. Bumblebee survived in the TV series, but was killed off in any crossover with G.I. Joe. Characters like Shockwave, Ratbat, Nightbeat, Blaster, Ratchet and Grimlock were given the lion's share of attention, yet barely registered on TV.

The timing couldn't be better - The Hub channel started airing episodes from season 3 of the original Transformers series - which featured  Rodimus, Ultra Magnus, Galvatron , Wreck-Garr,  Dalek-wannabes the Quintessons and Ben Grimm-analogue Kup, so anyone watching and visiting a comic shop spotting a comic book showcasing those characters will want to try it. That season is not very popular, but technically, the scripts, dialogue and characterization are stronger than what came before. I like how it played off events from the animated film, which was something of an event to any kid who saw it in 1986. I remember I had to choose between seeing that movie or the final re-release of  Disney's Song of The South. But Song of The South had already started, and the Transformers movie was still playing into the afternoon and evening, simply because somebody ingeniously thought of having Spike Witwicky say, "Oh, Shit, what are we going to do now?!" in the middle of the picture. Well, if the parents weren't taking them out and demanding refunds when the Autobots were getting killed left and right in the 1st ten minutes... It all sounds so tame, now.

What about Bayformers? The popular nickname for the live-action films? Well, maybe it says something about my worldview, but I can't help but find Bay's ugly depiction of the humans to be more convincing than anyone would care to admit. In Bayformers our fates are often in the hands of overzealous, uneducated, interchangeable and hammy people in suits and uniforms who thrive on red tape and puffed-up men and women overcompensating for their lack of logic or personality by clinging on to growling hoary stereotypes. The giant robots have more personality, but Bay (or perhaps, Steven Spielberg) is skittish about giving them more screen time. I guess a Beast Wars movie is unthinkable, here. Ditto an adaptation of the great comic I just reviewed.

I can't help imagine what a Doctor Who/Transformers crossover would be like. Of course it would star David Tennant. Maybe Tom Baker would cameo, offering Galvatron jelly babies. And K9 would blast away Decepticons while UNIT and Torchwood would tell Sector 7 the business and show them how its done right. And the sonic screwdriver would convert an industrial fan into an inter-dimensional Hoover vac that would suck all the baddies into a pocket nowhere place and let the Daleks and Cybermen finish them off.  And Megan Fox could lay down on the hood of an Aston Martin DB9 and pose all sexy-like, just in case this was starting to look like kids stuff... This might already be on YouTube... Babelcolour's The Ten Doctors uses the soundtrack from the films better than Bay did. I'll check again...