I just wanted to take a second and point to a really great comics event coming up for anyone who might happen to be in the Dearborn, MI area on June 12-13.  It's called Kids Read Comics…

I think the event is best summed up on it’s about page, so I’m just going to crib their description…

"Generations of kids have grown up reading and loving comics.  And it’s not hard to see why comics have captured the imagination of kids and teens — with their unique blend of words and pictures, even the most everyday comics stories open up worlds of wonder.

And beyond the sheer joy of comics is the fact that they can help turn kids into more active and engaged readers.  They also provide a model for young readers to explore and develop their own creativity.

But comics are no longer the mass medium they once were.  Far fewer kids are exposed to them today, and many of the comics they find are intended for older readers.  That’s where Kids Read Comics comes in!

Our Kids Read Comics Convention is a totally free event that unites kids, teens, parents, teachers and librarians with professional artists and writers from the comics and animation fields.  Our goal is to introduce kids to worlds of imagination while unlocking their creative impulses, and to serve that goal, the convention features:

-hands-on workshops

-panels and presentations for kids, families, and educators

-a chance for kids to meet and chat with comics and animation professionals

-the opportunity for kids to have their own art portfolios reviewed

KRC also works throughout the year to promote comics and creativity for kids and teens.  We're building a recommended reading list; gathering resources for parents, teachers and librarians; and organizing artists and writers who can bring presentations and workshops to libraries around the state of Michigan and beyond."

So again, if there are any readers in the Dearborn area, check out the show.  There are going to be a ton of great creators tabling and giving workshops, and it's also a good opportunity to get an idea of how the Up! Fair will be handled in November.   Check the website out at Kids Read Comics!

This week brings a slight theme, orange-yellow-blue.  Most of the bubblegum card wax wrappers I've seen have limited color palettes, between two and four colors, and a good chunk of them feature yellow and blue.  So these three really jumped out at me…  

Space: 1999 (Donruss, 1976)

Elvis (Donruss, 1978)

Three’s Company (Topps, 1978).  I talked about the stickers here.

I'm about a week late with this as far as the 30th anniversary is concerned, but I ran across this ad in an old 1983 Woman's Day magazine for Pac-Man vitamins that I thought was kind of neat.

I have to admit that I was a Flintstone Kid when it came to my chewable vitamin intake.  I think I was vaguely aware that there were other cool vitamins out there, but I never made it a habit to stroll down the heath food aisles of the grocery store when I was a kid (not when my local Albertson's had a full on toy aisle packed to the gills with G.I. Joe, Transformers and M.A.S.K. figures and vehicles.)   You'd think there would be room for all sorts of vitamin branding, but according to this ad, if there’s one thing in the world that Pac-Man wouldn't eat, it'd be Flintstone vitamins.

I wonder what shapes these came in?   On the one hand it seems pretty obvious to have little Pac-Men, and multi colored ghosts, but on the other I think it would have been so cool if it were just a mix of pellets, power pellets, blue ghosts and the miscellaneous fruit and pretzels that Pac-Man chomps on in the game.   Anyone out there remember what these were shaped like?

For the most part as a kid I was pretty unfamiliar with the whole cult of personality surrounding the James Bond franchise.   For some reason, aside from A View to a Kill and the Timothy Dalton flicks, I never ran across any of the films on Saturday Afternoon TV, so I was almost completely unaware of the Sean Connery flicks or a lot of the character's conventions.  In fact it wasn't until the James Bond Jr. cartoon in the early 90s that I really started paying any attention to the series.  I think a lot of this has to do with the idea that the Bond films have always been aimed a bit more at an adult audience, though I have to say that Roger Moore's Bond feels a whole heck of a lot more like the Adam West Batman series than I ever would have guessed before seeing the flicks.   I did know Moore from his part in one of the Cannonball Run flicks, but I never realized how dead on his self-parody was until I watched Moonraker for the first time last year.

It doesn't surprise me that Moonraker garnered a series of Topps non-sport cards as it was trying to appeal to the Star Wars fans, and for the first time I think also to kids more than adults.  I think it's also one of the first instances of taking a franchise character to space in an attempt to breathe new life into a series (well Robinson Crusoe on Mars not withstanding), which is way crazier than jumping any scurvy shark (so maybe Happy Days really went too far with their intergalactic time traveling show.)  So Moonraker is most likely to blame for Gilligan's Planet and Jason Goes to Space...

Of these stickers my personal favorite is number six, the one with the gondola driver getting whacked as Bond sails along leisurely in Florence.  It has to be the one sticker in the set that kids everywhere either threw away or tried desperately to trade for a Jaws portrait or the space station sticker.  Personally, I think the absurdity of the sticker sums up the zaniness of the film for me.

Even though the Dalton flicks are my favorite in the series (I know, it's heresy I tell you) I'm glad they didn't get the sticker treatment.  I couldn't imagine 22 stickers with Dalton's over-emotional Bond on the verge of silent hate-filled tears, though I would totally love some pock-marked Robert Davi stickers.   Those would be swell…

This week's WPPA brings an anniversary of an unlikely duo, Kiss and Howard the Duck.  33 years ago this month Kiss made their very first comic book appearance in issue number 12 of Howard the Duck (published by Marvel in 1977.)  I believe the Empire Strikes Back was also released on this day 30 years ago, but c'mon, Kiss in comics people! 

Kiss (Donruss, 1978)

Howard the Duck (Topps, 1986).  I talked about the stickers here.

As I mentioned in the first part of the discussion on the Silverhawks cartoon, there isn't a whole heck of a lot going on in the first two-part origin story.  Peter Lawrence delivered a pretty bare-bones story that sets up all the main characters of the series, and some general plot points, but overall there’s noting all that interesting about this maiden voyage of the Silverhawks as they battle MonStar and his mob of intergalactic mercenaries.   I spent a good bit of part one talking about what is great about these first two episodes, which is showcasing the dynamic character designs and concepts of the villains.  Today I'm going to take a look at the heroes of the show, Commander Stargazer and the five core Silverhawks characters.

Before I get into the specific characters, I thought I'd mention some of the other design aesthetics in this series that really struck me.  First, from the get-go the artists and writers chose to work in an odd style that blends futuristic and antiquated elements in the design of the world.  With the villains for instance, you have a handful of characters, Pokerface, Buzz-Saw, and Mo-Lec-U-Lar, that seem right at home in an alien sci-fi environment, while some of the others (Windhammer and Mumbo Jumbo) seem more at home in classic Greek fables with their odd style of clothing, and their more mythical designs.  Then there's a character like Melodia, which seems grounded in the 1980s, the time in which the cartoon was produced, yet not set in.  Also, we can look to the style with which MonStar's mob is handled, flying through the galaxy in convertible speedsters that would seem more at home in a 40s era gangster flick that a sci-fi action adventure cartoon.

This odd mix of style is a bit more recognizable in the heroes of the series, in particular with Commander Stargazer.  Aside from some gold plated cybernetic enhancements to his face, chest and left arm, he's basically a character that's been ripped right out of a Raymond Chandler pulp novel.   The character is decked out in a private dick's suit minus the trench coat and fedora, which are actually there, just hung up in his office.   Speaking of his office, it's been retro-fitted to look and feel like something from the 40s or 50s complete with frosted windows, and wood paneling.  Though it's completely out of place for the environment, it speaks volumes about the disposition and personality of the character.  One look at his design and there's no question as to who runs Hawk Haven.

As for the actual team, we have Quicksilver (the mission leader), Bluegrass (the pilot and resident cowpoke), the Copper Kid (the only alien of the group), and Steelheart & Steelwill (the brother/sister duo.)   Their overall design is surprisingly un-avian, and more in the realm of clean-lined, organic cyborgs.  They share more in common with the character designs of Robocop or Boba Fett, than they do birds.  In fact, aside from the idea that they have (presumably) metal skin, the basic design of the characters could be considered quite simple and almost boring.  What saves the design, I think, is all the little details, in particular in the rendering where the artists have broken their outer armor into form fitting plates.  All these plates are outlined and have small embellishments, giving them a much more detailed and dynamic look to they're less T-1000 (from Terminator 2), and more Robocop.   There are a couple of other design flourishes that I really dig which helps the characters keep a bit of their humanity while also making them a bit more dynamic at the same time.  The first is the single bare arm each character sports, an unrealistic but striking affectation in the armor that breaks up the symmetry of the design.   More important is the removable faceplates that each character has for combat/spaceflight.

If there was one gimmick to the designs that really suckered me visually as a kid, it was the faceplates.  First off, the design of the masks echos that of Boba Fett's helmet, which are both futuristic with their thin visors that melt into very inorganic, alien mouth-pieces, yet they're also antiquated, mimicking the design of medieval battle helmets.  Remove the lens in the visor/mouth-piece and you're left with a helmet that wouldn't look all that out-of-place on a knight.  But the appeal isn't just in the visual design, as it's in the functionality.  To put the mask in place, the Silverhawks just have to wave their hand in front of their face (again, mimicking the action of a knight bringing a hinged faceplate down into place before a battle/jousting) and it appears.  With a slight laser light flourish, it's almost liquid or digital.

Also, there's some other fun aspects about the simplicity of the characters, from the character names that work into the visual design, the lack of handheld weaponry (instead each character has lasers concealed in their shoulders, biceps and feet), and an interesting way of displaying faction iconography.  With the names, for example we have MonStar, which is really just a play on monster.  Thinking about it, his character design, especially the plotting and scheming organic form, hits on a lot of the basic monstrous iconography (wild hair, sharp teeth and claws, dark, etc.)  You get this with the heroes as well in that their names reflect both there color and aspects of their characters.  As far as the faction iconography goes, I didn't remember that there was any when I first revisited the show.  There is a definite symbol for the heroes, an eagle head against a triangular background, but it's mostly worked into the aesthetic of their home base, Hawk Haven.  Every one in a while though we see this symbol flash on the chest plates of the characters, so I'm not sure if it's a weird hidden cybernetic detail or if it's just the animators taking liberty with their artistic license…

Anyway, as far as the core team goes, first we have Quicksilver, who's both covered in silver cybernetics and is arguably the first to head into danger. As the leader of the group there aren’' that many really personalized traits to the character, probably to give kids a basic hero archetype to latch onto.   As a kid, Quicksilver was the only Silverhawks figure I had, and even though it was kind of cool that you could squeeze his legs together to get his arms to pop to the sides revealing his cybernetic wings, I was always bummed that he didn't have his iconic faceplate.  I'd turn his head all the way around to mimic the mask with the chromed plastic silver of his "hair"…

Next up we have Bluegrass, the pilot of the Miraj, and all around jovial cutup of the team.   The character has both blue armor and is also a spirited country and western playing, guitar toting cowboy with a Stetson and a neckerchief.   For some reason the idea of space cowboys was common in 80s era syndicated animation.  Between Bravestarr, Silverhawks, the Galaxy Rangers, and Saber Rider and the Star Sherrifs, there was no shortage of intergalactic cowpokes.  Heck there was even a cowboy on C.O.P.S. (though not intergalactic, it is set in a cybernetic enhanced future.)  Anyway, I always thought it was weird that Bluegrass sported a steel mohawk under that Stetson.

The only alien of the team is the Copper Kid, who's filling in the silent yet fun slot (think Harpo Marx or Teller from Penn and Teller.)  CK is sort of a weird character that's all over the play in terms of design.  On the one hand he's a kid from the planet of the mimes, so he comes off sort of as a novelty, or a mascot for the group.  Tiny, with his clashing blue skin against his copper/orange armor he really sticks out in the Silverhawks line-up.   Yet he also sort of painted as the Snake-Eyes/Panthro of the team with his ninja-like reflexes, and his built in boomerang disc weapons (the spherical discs on each hip); there's never a shortage of action when the Copper Kid hits the screen.  If nothing else, he's certainly the character that kids are supposed to map themselves onto as he's typically the one being taught lessons in the stories, and literally at the end of each episode where he's being trained to be the backup Miraj pilot in a series of PSA like quizzes about the universe.

You can hear one of the lessons here.

Rounding out the team members are the brother/sister combo of Steelheart and Steelwill.   These are the two that I remember the least from watching the show as a kid.  Like Quicksilver they don't have a lot of obvious or physical character traits aside from the fact that Steelwill is athletic based on his silly looking football inspired faceplate.  The most notable aspect about the duo revealed during the two-part series opener is that their hearts didn't take to the cybernetic implementation process and they needed to have artificial hearts surgically implanted.  Though this is played off as sort of a heart-warming joke (pun most certainly intended), I think it was more of a missed opportunity for some character development.  Considering the amount of cybernetic implants these characters have, it would be interesting to have a character with more than the rest who has a challenge in keeping their humanity.  Sort of like the trials and tribulations of the Data character from Star Trek the Next Generation, this idea of grasping onto a humanity that's slipping through one's fingers is a common theme in cyberpunk fiction and I'm surprised that they didn't allude to this.  Maybe it's in some of the later episodes, though I haven't come across it yet.

Last, but not least, is the single coolest looking spacecraft known to mankind (in my opinion at least), the Miraj.  This star-fighter, consisting of four compartments and launch-able cockpit, has a super sleek design that I was always trying to replicate out of Lego blocks as a kid.   The Miraj is more of a launching pad than a true star-fighter though, carrying the team to a destination where they open their individual canopies and then shoot out into space.  Not only does it look cool, but it also has a cloaking device (which is where it get's its name), and the exhaust is a multicolored rainbow of energy.  Sure, maybe that sounds a little too "gay", but as a kid I thought it was the coolest thing ever.

The plot of the second half to this opening mini-movie is again, pretty basic.  After flying up to Hawk Haven and meeting Stargazer, the headquarters is immediately attacked by MonStar and his cronies.  The Silverhawks fly out and basically whip the pants off the villains, showing off most of their capabilities.  There a couple bits that I found pretty interesting including a musical laser battle between Melodia and Bluegrass that ends in a true cacophony of energy, and a showdown between Buzz-Saw and Bluegrass where he uses his guitar gun to blow up the saw-toothed android.  But it's all pretty anticlimactic.   For all his bluster, MonStar packs it in pretty easily and we're back to the status quo pretty quickly.

Again, these episodes are serviceable to showcase the characters, but they really are kind of boring at the end of the day.  I much prefer the intense backstroy of the Thundercats as a great example of a Rankin/Bass series kick-off...

I realized the other day that while I've been making a concerted effort to make my way through piles of magazines, books, and other vintage papers top share on Branded, I haven't really made a dent in my cartoon collection either.  There are a lot of shows that I loved growing up, as well as a ton of others that I remember fondly, that are just sitting on my DVD shelves begging to be written about.  I think I'm going to try and correct that over the coming year.

Today I want to talk about one of the shows that I was so excited about as a kid, I'd speed home on my bike as fast as I could each day afraid I'd miss an episode.  As I careened home at light speed, I'd literally jump off the bike, letting it fall into a crumpled heap, and then I'd sprint into the house past my mom and any potential waiting snack to flip on the TV so that I wouldn't miss the opening credit sequence of the Silverhawks.  No joke, as my mom wandered off to close the front door that I'd left wide open, I'd be almost screaming "Tally Hawk!" at the top of my lungs along with the Silverhawks theme song as it played out on the TV before me.

For some reason I have some very vivid memories of actually singing along to the Silverhawks theme song, much more so than any of the other cartoons I used to watch after school.   I'm not sure exactly what it was about the song, but it combined with the breathtakingly pretty animation must have been pure sugary eye-candy for me as a kid.  Though there were anime overtones to shows like G.I. Joe, Dungeons and Dragons, and Jem (which were all animated by the Japanese studio Toei), it was with the Rankin/Bass cartoons that I feel like I really got my first taste of Japanese influenced animation.  Aside from the well rendered illustration in the cels, these RB productions, Silverhawks and ThunderCats in particular, were also edited with a skilled eye towards action.   At the time I'd never seen characters that were so dynamic and fast.  The animation studio responsible for these Rankin/Bass productions was the Pacific Animation Company, which had alumni like Hayao Miyazaki and some of the animators at Studio Ghibli, so the talent pool was certainly high quality.

Much like its sister show, the ThunderCats, the Silverhawks series opens with a two part origin story titled, oddly enough, Origin Story & Journey to Limbo.  Honestly, there isn't much to these first two Peter Lawrence scripted episodes aside from a lot of story setup where we're introduced to practically every reoccurring character in the cast (good and evil) and their capabilities.  The first episode is framed as a status report filed by Commander Stargazer who keeps watch over the edge of the galaxy in the space station Hawk Haven (odd because the Silverhawks proper haven't been introduced and there's no explanation as to why there is an avian theme.)  His report centers on MonStar, the most unruly and probably the craziest mob boss in the galaxy, who has just broken out of an intergalactic prison and has started putting his gang of ruthless criminals back together.  Stargazer is requesting help in dealing with the menace when we switch perspective to Earth where a group of soldiers and an alien from the planet of the mimes are in the process of being retrofitted with cybernetic enhancements so they can both combat MonStar and survive the trip to Limbo where the series takes place.  Calling upon the tagline of the series, an alien scientist (in his best Bela Lugosi impression) states that to make the trip to Limbo the group must be "…partly metal and partly real..."  This is actually a phrase that's used ad nauseam in these first couple of episodes, to a point where it's almost comical.

As far as design and concepts go, I think these Rankin/Bass cartoons are the culmination of five years worth of industry expansion and benefit from the freedom animation studios were gifted with by first run syndication and the softer intervening hand of government "regulations".  In the explosion of televised cartoon creativity, the Silverhawks and ThunderCats are in my opinion, the resulting mushroom cloud; big, beautiful, and airy.  The one aspect where I think Silverhawks really excels is in the iconic character design of the series, in particular with its villains.  Rankin/Bass used very similar templates with their shows, but the archetypes they chose, in particular those of the villains, were flat out insane and unlike any other cartoons.

MonStar is just crackling with energy and truly frightening aspects, from his mane of wild, flowing black and red hair, to the jagged edges of his twisted mouth and dangerously sharp teeth.   Add to this his black body suit, shiny red chest plating, imposing eye-patch, and his wicked sharp fingernails and you have the makings of a truly scary villain.   But that's just one half of the character's design as the Rankin/Bass villains tend to have two forms, one that plots and schemes and a second outfitted for battle.   Using the fiery rays of the Moonstar of Limbo, MonStar can transform into a formidable evil knight with organic red armor platting and spikes all over his body.   His original appearance is mimicked in the armor design with sharp spikes jutting out of his head like the character's hair and beard, a row of interlocking spikes for teeth, and a black star over his left eye.   This secondary design also mimics the metal bodies of the Silverhawks, which seems to be outfitted for self-contained sojourns into space (even including rocket boosters in his elbows for propulsion.)

This process of transformation is so tangible and visceral.  You can almost feel how disturbingly painful it is as the skin and hair is literally ripped from MonStar’s body while it turns into his armor.   His screams of rage, pain and glee are truly insane, taking the typical megalomania of cartoon villains to another realm entirely.   As a kid, and even now as an adult, I found it completely and intoxicatingly riveting.   No other cartoon villains come even close to matching the ferocity and downright freakiness of MonStar (except Mum-Ra from the TunderCats, which again is also Rankin/Bass), though he's certainly rooted in the same traditions.   Not only his he visually imposing just by himself, but he also has an indentured, intergalactic steed, a giant squid named Sky Runner who goes through a similar transformation process (initiated by MonStar firing a pink "Light Star" from his eye) that also seems to speak to the transformation of Cringer into Battle Cat on the Filmation He-Man cartoon.   Sure, Skeletor had Panthor, and Cobra Commander had Scrap Iron and Major Bludd, but none of these cartoon villains ever had to intimidate and force their henchmen into subservience.

MonStar runs his mob out of a gnarly castle located deep within a planetoid, which looks like a cross between a giant spiraling drill bit and a torture device.   The set design is wonderful and creepy, in particular MonStar's throne, which is surrounded by the picking fingers of some rusty machinery that resembles an overturned spider.  When MonStar initiates his transformation sequence, the arms curl upwards creating a sort of star shaped filter for the Moonstar rays to shine through.  Also, on a side note, in another bit of crazy over the top design, to catch the rays of the Moonstar, MonStar's planetoid needs to be repositioned. His henchman, Yes-Man, operates the controls of some ginormous booster lasers that shift the entire planetoid into the Moonstar's beams which just seems crazily over the top…

Continuing along with the superb character designs are MonStar's eight main henchmen.   First up there's the sickeningly loyal afore-mentioned Yes-Man, a snake-like alien with a dour expression and a penchant for saying "Yes boss…" to every command.  With his curving spine and head drooping down below his shoulder line he comes off as a completely slimy character that will turn on you at a second's notice.   Yes-Man, like most of the characters are one note, but there's a purity to there simplistic design that makes them not come off as interchangeable.

Next we have the generically-named Buzz-Saw, who is a robot with launch-able circular saw blades for hands (he also has them on his shoulders, as well as one adorning his head like a Mohawk.)  Though I'll get into it a little more when I discuss the second episode, Buzz-Saw, though sentient, is a weirdly disposable character who gets blown up more often than simply defeated.  I think it's really odd to have this type of dynamic with a character, even if it is a robot.  On a separate note, we have Mumbo Jumbo, a fire-breathing robotic Minotaur.  Since his character design is much more organic with his animalistic features and body, I'd be willing to bet that he doesn't fit into that same disposable camp as Buzz-Saw.  I wonder if this sort of nonchalance towards robotic destruction stems from the depiction of C3P0 in Star Wars, in particular the scenes in Empire where he's blasted into pieces.   Though it should have come off as disturbing, it was more comedic because he not only survived, but goofily complained for the rest of the film.

There's also Windhammer, a pale blue-skinned warrior with a giant tuning fork that he uses to control cosmic weather (meteors, wind, lightening, etc.)   I think it's interesting that the artists and writers of the show chose an almost god-like theme for his design.  He's decked out very simply in a raggedy tunic, which with his flowing hair and Thor-like tuning fork really evokes a the design of a Roman or Greek god.   Again, sort of like the general design of Mumbo Jumbo, Windhammer comes off very organic in a very inorganic futuristic setting.  On the other hand we have Mo-Lec-U-Lar who has the oddest looking design of the bunch.   He's resembles an atom, with bulbous protons and electrons, and can shape-shift into other forms, but for all intents and purposes he looks like one of the Fruit of the Loom characters.  I'm not a huge fan of his design as it's a bit too bulky and feels out of place with the rest of the series' design elements.

Conceptually the strangest of the mob is Poker Face, a slick looking cyborg with slot machine eyes and a tuxedo.  I think it's strange that his design is so much more comedic than the rest of his counterparts, in particular when compared to MonStar.  Stealing a bit of the character design of Slythe from ThunderCats is Hardware, a squat reptilian alien who is a master engineer and weapons maker.   Last, but not least and probably my favorite, is Melodia, the new-wave musician who can literally create havoc with her futuristic laser keytar.  Also as a quick aside, Maggie Wheeler provided the voice of Melodia.  She's probably best known for portraying Janice, the woman with the single most annoying voice known to mankind on Friends.   Anyway, what really jumps out at me is that the artists and writers truly exhibited the idea that nothing was off the table when designing some of these characters.   For example, Melodia fires lasers from her keytar that resembles a long string of pink electric sheet music, complete with musical notes and a jamming soundtrack to boot.   Typically that's the sort of thing that works well on a comic book page, but would be really difficult to pull of in animation, though I think they do it well.

I think I'll end this here and pick up with the heroes, as well as more of the design and conceptual elements when I get into episode 2 later in the week.

Charles over at Eclectorama and Eric at Toyriffic recently proposed a little blogging crossover event in honor of everyone's favorite maniacal mercenary, that master of disguise, and all around mysterious meanie, Zartan.   As a toy in the 3.75" G.I. Joe Real American Hero line he is probably one of the more memorable for his weird hood (which I always thought was Hasbro's awful attempt at long hair as a kid) and because he had one of the oddest, yet most interesting features in that his exposed flesh turned blue when it came into direct contact with sunshine or heat.  As a character in the Marvel comics he was important for secretly setting off a feud between Storm Shadow and Snake Eyes (at Cobra Commander's behest), as well as being the guy who finally kills off the insufferable Serpentor ("This I command…" indeed.)  In the Sunbow cartoon series Zartan is the go-to guy for Cobra Commander, leading the kind-of-British punk Dreadnoks and taking on all of Cobra's crazy outsourced missions in exchange for piles of gold Krugerrands.  According to the toy's file card, Zartan is a paranoid schizophrenic who becomes so entranced with his disguises that his original personality is virtually buried deep within his chaotic psyche.  One thing I can say for certain is that the man has an infectious laugh (provided by Zack Hoffman and some great post-production work by Sunbow.)

So who's taking part in this epic crossover event?

Eric, who writes Toyriffic…

Charles, who manages Eclectorama…

Dan, who curates the Toy Museum…

Mario, who counts down to A Year of Toys…

Philip, who is testing out his Battlegrip…

Darius, who is narrating his Adventures in Nerdliness…

JBoy, who is getting Revenge From the Cosmic Ark...

Reis, who preaches the Geek Orthodox…

…and, well, me.  So if you enjoy this special All-Zartan edition of my column Cartoon Commentary, make sure to click through to these other fine sites so that you can get your wicked blue sunburn on!

For this Zartan Zaturday event I've decided to take a look at one of the goofiest, yet also one of my favorite episodes of the G.I. Joe cartoon, Cold Slither, which originally aired on December 2nd, 1985.  The episode was written by Michael Charles Hill, an alumni of many animation studios including Sunbow (also worked on Transformers), Ruby Spears, and Mirage (working on the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles cartoon), as well as having editing gigs at Warner Brothers, Disney and DC comics.   First off, and most importantly for this crossover, the episode heavily features Zartan and the Dreadnoks.  In particular we get a closer look at his rickety old hideout in the middle of the Florida Everglades, but we also get a chance to crack open Cobra Commander's head and to see how the relationship between the two villains works.

One of the aspects of the G.I. Joe cartoon that I always felt that the writers really nailed was developing believable and fun connections between the various characters in the series.   Because there's like 2.3 million different guys and gals running around in the Joe mythos, I think an important first step to getting kids interested in the characters, as well as giving some dimension to these personalities was to come up with friends and enemies that really play off of each other.   For laughs we had the constant antics between Bazooka and Alpine, the branch rivalry between Wet Suit and Leatherneck, and the imaginary love triangles between Shipwreck and any of the couples on the show (Duke and Scarlett or Flint and Lady Jaye.)  We also had the diametrically opposed spirituality vs. honor battles between Spirit and Storm Shadow, Lowlight and Lifeline's debate between big guns and non-violence, and the back-biting and in-fighting between Destro and Cobra Commander.   So in this episode we get a chance to see Cobra Commander at his worst with the Crimson Twins foreclosing on all of his loans, the Joes beating Cobra at every turn, and in all of this strife there's one man he can turn to, Zartan.  You can really hear this in the dynamic between CC, the Baroness, Destro and Zartan as they enter his hideout in this episode, and how the Baroness scoffs at Zartan’s digs (where she's really berating CC for his poor leadership choices…)

In a nutshell, this episode revolves around the apparent downfall of Cobra and how this ends up effecting Joe team, both in terms of complacency and morale.  After capturing a secret stockpile of gold, jewels and art, the Joe team decides to make a final strike on Cobra's remote mountain fortress only to find it deserted, covered in dust, and hilariously enough, up for sale by the Crimson Twins.   After a hilarious montage featuring in-uniform Cobra troopers standing on the unemployment line and Cobra Commander making some hollow threats via a television broadcast standing in front of an army of cardboard cutouts, we learn that the terrorist organization had been reduced to it's last dime.   In a feeble attempt to regain its prior wealth, Cobra Commander, Destro and the Baroness hatch a scheme to take over the world through subliminal messages placed in popular music.   Cobra Commander gets a hold of a shaky million dollar loan and uses it to bribe Zartan and the Dreadnoks into posing as a heavy metal band called Cold Slither.  All they have to do is to look tough and pretend to play while Destro's subliminal audio device does the rest (seriously, listen for yourself...)

What I love about this episode, and consequently what I'm sure most fans hate about it, is that it's totally off-the-grid in terms of your basic G.I. Joe story.  Whereas the writers were encouraged to stray a bit from the harsh reality of realistic warfare and to turn to elements of fantasy to make the series a bit more dynamic, from time to time this freedom to explore led to some wacky story concepts.  But these diversions go a long way to defining the tone of the series, and they inadvertently serve to make the show more interesting.  In the Sunbow universe we can spend an entire episode trying to solve the mystery of the deadly looming visit from the Viper, only to have the payoff be a joke riffing on a misunderstood character accent.  These silly episodes help flesh out the playful aspect of the G.I. Joe universe, giving the stories a comedic style that believe it or not has an important effect on developing young minds.  When I think back to where I picked up my sense of humor I can pretty much trace it back to a handful of sources (the first five years of Saturday Night Live, Monty Python, Garbage Pail Kids, Freddy Kruger one-liners, the Kids in the Hall and Sunbow cartoons.)

The humor in this episode is also pretty layered.  One the one hand you have the goofy antics of the Cold Slither band, with Zartan in one of his least convincing disguises in the series.   As a quick aside, there are typically two types of cartoon disguises, the perfect cheat disguise, and the "we're-all-in-on-the-joke" fumbled disguise.   Usually Zartan falls into the camp of the perfect disguise because of his skills as a master special effects wizard (utilizing holographic technology, prosthetics, and an arcane ability to mimic voices and sounds.)  This style of disguise tends to come off as a bit of a cheat because they're just too-perfect, and they often result in poor situational writing traps like having to decide between real and fake characters (which typically ends with the same joke, the lucky punch-out with the inevitable punchline, "What-da-ya-mean-ya-didn't-know-it-was-me?")  So it's kind of neat to see him, for all intents and purposes, in disguise with only a wardrobe and wig change.   Like no one would notice his iconic King Diamond inspired face under that Sideshow Bob wig?

Getting back to the humor, just as we have the in-your-face silliness of Cold Slither (including a Three Stooges musical homage during the Dreaknoks dressing room scene), we also have some more adult allusions to the at-the-time downturn in real world military activity with the visual gag of having the Cobra troopers on the unemployment line.  There's also some other subtle hints of more adult humor in some of the other scenes as well.  In a bit of Hollywood-related social commentary Cobra Commander throttles a union lawyer complaining that it's time to wrap up the production of a music video.   In another scene we get the three main Joe ladies (Cover Girl, Scarlett, and Lady Jaye) undercover dressed as loose groupies waiting for the Dreadnoks backstage.   There's no way an eight year-old would get the connotations behind that gag (and rightly so.)  There's also a subtle play on the absurdity of the aforementioned perfect disguises which Cobra usually employs in a scene where Cobra Commander and Firefly are trying to hide their identities while meeting up with a mob boss.  They're decked out in the most absurd disguises, matching trench coats, fedoras, and aviator sunglasses over their normal outfits (including CC's silver faceplate.)   On the surface the joke is silly, but when you consider how a normal episode plays out, it's almost as if Michael Hill was poking fun at his own show…

Even though this episode strays into the sillier realm of the Sunbow universe, it never goes so far as to betray any of the characters or to deny the audience of fun action and adventure.  At the end of the day, no matter how far a writer strays in terms of the typical story concept, there are still rules and loglines that can't be deviated from.  An episode of G.I. Joe has to feature energetic cliffhangers at the two act/commercial breaks, it has to provide some action, and a writer can't break a character at the expense of the story.  Characters come first, and we see that in how Hill handled Duke.  After a handful of Joes go AWOL (brainwashed by Cold Slither), and the rest seem pretty complacent in the apparent absence of Cobra, Duke sees right through the ploy.  Earlier, when the Dreaknoks are in the middle of shooting a music video, true to character, they get bored with all the work and they feel the need to cause some mayhem (Zartan included) so they all of a sudden step back from their instruments, pull out their weapons and they start destroying the stage.  So we're getting all of the fun craziness we expect from G.I. Joe even in a story that doesn't really call for it.

Wait, did I just make an argument about how Hill doesn't break any of the characters?  Maybe I spoke too soon as the end sequence of this episode bends the Joe characters, in particular Scarlett and Duke, to the snapping point.  If there's one bit that's hard to sit through, it's the introduction of the Average Joe Band featuring Footloose, Rock 'n Roll and Duke on guitar, Shipwreck on drums, and Scarlett, Cover Girl, and Lady Jaye on backup vocals.  They sing an awful rendition of the G.I. Joe theme song that has to be heard to be believed…

All in all, though it's not one of his finer moments, this episode does delve a bit deeper into Zartan's character, and if nothing else we get to see him in through the haze of a glam rock filter.  Could have been worse; it could have been disco...

This week brings my favorite wax pack wrapper, the Incredible Hulk, 1979.  I love the colos, and the melting Hulk blob.  Talked about the sticker cards here...

                          Are you ready for a sizziling blue sunburn?

I sort of wanted to dig a little deeper into the Thundarr cartoon.  While I was doing the write up for the 1st episode, Secret of the Black Pearl, I realized that the majority of the concept artwork that accompanied both vintage articles I posted last month was for this episode so I thought it would be cool to see the transition.

This first piece was done by Jack Kirby.  There are a lot of his trademark flourishes in the art from his thick, square-fingered, grasping hands, to the iconic costuming with the zigzag patterns and bold, wavy shadows…

This piece is illustrating the 2nd attack of the rat-men, after Thundarr, Ookla and Ariel sent the creatures packing in the episode opener.   Chided by their master, Gemini the evil wizard, the rat-men regroup and make a second assault, though this time outfitted with 20th century motorcycles (and in the cartoon, laser gun clubs.)  Kirby's (at the time) 40-odd years worth of comic book work really show in the layout of the piece.  It's just bursting with action and movement, not to mention a ton of personality and story detail.   He manages to bend the perspective so dynamically that you almost feel like you’re leaping precariously at the lead rat creature right alongside Thundarr.

What I find interesting in the transition from page to screen is that the final sequence is both very diluted in terms of some of the fantastical elements of the original design (like the more alien costuming of the rat-men) and the static side-scrolling camera angle, yet also slightly more violent…

Granted, we don't get before and after shots in the concept art, but instead of leaping at the rat-men with a flying tackle, in the cartoon Thundarr plants a swift kick to their heads as the speed by.   Also, though I really dig Kirby's futuristic costuming choices, I think the final design of the rat-men is more in keeping with the barbaric, post-apocalyptic tone and color palette of the cartoon.

This second piece of artwork, again by Kirby, showcases some of the mystical powers of Ariel with her ability to build bridges out of energy and light.  The first thing that jumps out at me is that Ariel's design was a little different initially.  First and foremost is her Valentine's Day color scheme, which started out slightly more feminine with the reds, pinks, and purples and the purer white of her steed.  Also, slightly more subtle, is the apparent source of her powers.   In the concept art she is wielding an orb from which she appears to be drawing the power to build the energy bridge.  I wonder if this was ditched because they didn't want the character hampered by carrying an orb all the time, or if the act of summoning the energy from an outside source was a bit too close to the idea of incantations (which would point more towards the dreaded occult, than say harmless magic?)

In the final sequence, and in the show as a whole, we can see that Ariel's color scheme was shifted to a more primary look with blues and yellows.  I can see this as a way to tone down the garish red-pink-purple combo, while also keeping it more upbeat and separate from the murky dark colors and earth tones of the setting.  You can also see that Ookla's steed is softened in the final design.  It's still alien, but less severe and scary than it appears in the concept illustration.   Also, unrelated, but I really love the idea of the shattered moon hanging in two pieces yet still in orbit.   The decimated landscape of the show is cool, but it's the moon that really sets the mood for me…

This third piece of concept artwork is pretty cool (and revealing.)  Here Kirby illustrates the main villain for this first episode, the two-faced (literally) evil wizard Gemini and his robotic knights.  First off, it's kind of interesting to note that Kirby is really drawing on his previous character design of the DC comics character Darksied.  It's mainly in the concept design, with his choice of headgear, the craggy face and heavy brow, the electrified eyes, and his overall blue armor.  What I find really interesting about this piece though, is the notation at the top left identifying the wizard as Gemini.  This piece comes from the Buzz Dixon article that originally ran in Fangoria, but it was also accompanying the Fantastic article, and in that piece the notation is missing from the art.  The character is named Sabian in the Fantastic article, which if you listen to the internet zeitgeist (or read either of the two articles) is the name of both Ariel's evil father and Thundarr's original captor.

I'm wondering if at one time Gemini and Sabian were interchangeable?  Based on the episode, Gemini is certainly not Ariel's father, so if they were the same that idea was dropped by the time the show was animated.

I'm not sure who illustrated the next piece of concept art.  One of the articles, the one from Fantastic, attributes it to "John Doorman", though I think they meant John Dorman who's listed as the supervisor of story direction in the show credits.  The Fangoria article attributes it to Jack Kirby, though it doesn't seem to be quite as loud as his style typically comes off.  Also, Kirby's Thundarr is a bit more barbaric and not as clean cut, but I could be totally reading into it.  Anyway, the reason I wanted to talk about this piece is that regardless of who drew it, it illustrates a crazy theme of jumping on a horse from a great height.  There's a scene in the cartoon towards the end of the episode where Thundarr grabs Ariel after saving her from Gemini, and the two plummet from the top floor of the evil wizards tower onto his waiting steed below (at least 40 or 50 feet below…)

I'm not positive but I think this would kill the horse instantly, and very likely cripple both Thundarr and Ariel (I don't care that he's a barbarian, gravity is a harsh mistress.)  This actually happens a couple of times in the episode as there’s a scene earlier that has Thundarr jumping off a cliff, catching a vine and then swinging onto his horse from a great height.  You tend to see this type of crazy equestrianism in older adventure films and it's always bugged me.  According to the concept art though, it looks like it was planned from the beginning…

The last bit of art I wanted to highlight is without a doubt more of Kirby's work, and it's also a scene mentioned by Steve Gerber in the Buzz Dixon Fangoria article.  When describing Ookla the Mok, Gerber relates how he's sort of the comic relief of the series (I've read that he wasn't happy with the character and that he was urged to include a "wookie" in the series), and that when confronted with technology he'll inevitably break it and use it as a blunt object.   Actually, Gerber refers to the Mok getting frustrated with trying to fly a helicopter, so much so that he rips out the joystick, tries to spin the blades by hand, and eventually just throws the whole thing at an enemy.  You can certainly see this frustration in the concept art…

The final sequence in the episode is sort of an amalgam of Gerber's description and Kirby's art.  Ookla is left in the hovering vehicle as Thundarr goes to rescue Ariel.  When Thundarr calls for Ookla to maneuver the chopper closer to them he gets frustrated trying to work the controls (which he indeed rips right out of the console.)  He's so pissed that he wedges his feet between himself and the entire cockpit console and kicks it right out of the helicopter causing it to crash.  Personally I would have liked Kirby's outcome a bit better, as pitching something out of frustration is less broad and cartoon-y, but what are you going to do?

I'm finding that Woman's Day magazines are gold mines for awesome vintage kid-centric advertisements.  Stands to reason when you consider that mothers make most of the household purchasing decisions, but it was the last place I thought to look.  Here's another shinning example of pure early 80s ad cheese for a staple of my childhood fashion sense, Members Only jackets…

I was a proud member from around 1983 to around Christmas of 1987 when I received a beloved Billabong denim jacket that I wore non-stop from 1988-1992.   I think I might have some pictures where I'm sporting my MO jacket, but if memory serves mine was powder blue and was more in the matte design like the blonde kid in the back of the ad.   Oh what I would have done for a red faux-leather jacket more like that hip kid up front with the topsiders and the hat all cocked to a jaunty angle.  So was the Members Only jacket the nerd tux?

This ad is spectacular on so many levels by the way.  First and foremost is how it's set up like an 80s era toy ad, with the crazy virtual reality landscape grid (think Tron, the opening to the Transformers cartoon, etc.) and the hazy sunset behind the mountain range.  Looks like a scene out of Top Gun or Red Dawn.  Then there's all the crazy interaction between the models.  If they're not flirting with each other or admiring each other's jackets, then they're buring a hole through your soul with their piercing stares (the girl in the pink jacket is making me blush...)  The coup de grace?  The American flag reflected in the solid gold engraved logo.  Members Only = Being an American.

Consequently, I actually saw the modern day incarnation of MO jackets at a men's clothing store recently.   It took all my energy to keep from buying one.  As much as I wanted it, I just can't do that ironic fashion thing…

**Update** I found that photo of me in my jacket. I'm wondering if it was a legit Members Only jacket or if it was a knock off. What would a knock off be called? V.I.P.J. (Very Important Person's Jacket?)

So I finally received my copy of the Warner Bros. Presents Saturday Morning Cartoons, 1980s DVD set, and more importantly I've finally had the first opportunity to watch a full episode of Thundarr the Barbarian since I was a kid.   I don't know about anyone else, but for the most part I have a weird mental block on watching cartoons on Youtube or Hulu.  It's something about the (typically) lower audio/video quality, the small viewable screen size, having to load all the separate parts (in youtube's case), and more importantly the fact that sitting down in front of the computer tends to put me in the mind set of work.  I spend about 6 hours a day in front of a monitor for the day job, and a couple hours each night working on articles for Branded.   The last thing I want to do is try and watch stuff on the computer as well.  Anyway, the point is that I haven't brought myself to watch any of the Thundarr episodes online and since I don’t have access to Boomerang with my cable service I've had to wait on seeing the show.

The downside of the WB Saturday Moring collections is that they pretty much only feature single episodes of the included series, so we only get one episode of Thundarr the Barbarian.  In WB's defense it is the first episode (in the production order I believe), titled Secret of the Black Pearl, which was released in 1980.   Even though it's only 22 minutes of the series, what a 22 minutes it is!  Though I grew up mainly on He-Man, I did watch a bit of Thundarr and I seem to recall being really jazzed by the show.   If there were ever any 80s cartoon series that I thought aged well, Thundarr would probably be at the top of that list.

The opening sequence of the series falls into the style of expositive cartoon intros, which I'm typically not a fan of (unless the story is told with a catchy theme song, ala Galaxy High), but I have to give it a pass because it's so well done.   The writers and artists managed to cram so many ideas into those first 60 seconds that I felt like I'd already watched a few episodes before the show even really began.  There's something outright magical about picking the perfect narration and matching it to great artwork and key scenes that describe the setting, where every single word and image counts, and there's absolutely no fat to the storytelling…

"Thundarr the Barbarian! The year 1994.   From out of space comes a runaway planet hurtling between the Earth and the Moon, unleashing cosmic destruction.  Man's civilization is cast in ruins!  2,000 years later Earth is reborn.  A strange new world rises from the old, a world of savagery, super-science and sorcery.  But one man bursts his bonds to fight for justice with his companions Ookla the Mok and Princess Ariel.  He pits his strength, his courage, and his fabulous sun sword against the forces of evil.   He is Thundarr the Barbarian!"

Another aspect of the opening that I really dig is that unlike most of the Saturday morning cartoons of the 70s, Thundarr actually delivers on what that sequence promises, in particular the visuals.   It's one thing to design an intriguing show concept, and quite another to deliver on it, especially considering the cost and time constraints of television animation, and the pervading 70s era ideal of dumbing down cartoons to "protect" the young viewing audience.  When the key phrase of the day was limited animation, it's refreshing to see a production take the time to really create a dynamic and believable post-apocalyptic Earth for these characters to run around in, not to mention filling that world with interesting background characters, monsters and villains.  After the promise of a crazy futuristic fantasy setting my expectations were kind of high and it was one of the first things I was really looking for in the episode.

Right from the get-go the episode delivers as we pan across an overgrown landscape rife with the rotting carcasses of old trucks and aircraft.  The episode has a really murky feel to it because of its dark color palette with lots of blues, blacks, greens, greys and purples.  Again, not to keep harping on the 70s, but in an era of bright primary colored cartoons, this was a breath of fresh, albeit murky, air.  There was a tangible realism, not necessarily in the rendering, but in the tone that we were really only seeing in feature film animation at the time, and usually only in the more independent stuff coming from places like the Ralph Bakshi studio.   Another part of what really added to this realism was a depth of field that the animators achieved by heavily layering in foreground elements over the mid-ground action.  There are a lot of shots where the camera p.o.v. appears to be deep in this lush forest, so when Thundarr, Ookla, and Ariel are speeding along a trail there's a ton of overgrowth blocking the characters.   The animators carry this forward to some of the exposition scenes as well, and it just adds a level of believability that's lacking from a lot of Saturday morning cartoons.

Another promise delivered is the idea of a "…world of savagery, super-science, and sorcery…"  In the opening we flash on all sorts of monsters and creatures, as well as wizards and magic, and I was hoping we'd get a glimpse at a few during this initial series episode. Within the first few minutes our heroes run into a miscellaneous gill-man and a whole slew of evil rat-men before we even get an inkling of the plot.  Over the course of the episode we get to see Thundarr and the gang in a second battle with the rat-men (on motorcycles no less), as well as running into the evil wizard Gemini, his horde of robotic knights, and the colossus that is the Statue of Liberty brought to life and set upon one of the last pockets of humanity living in the remnants of New York City.

What's also interesting is that I get the feeling that there aren't any reoccurring villains.  Instead, the gang battle against a series of wizards that each control different areas of the world, who keep a strangle hold on the last vestiges of human society with their knowledge of ancient technology and sorcery.  This variety of adversaries ends up adding so much more tension to the adventure as we never know what's next.  It also opens up the episodes to another level of realism in that there's an opportunity for finality in each plot.  In a lot of similar shows a lot of the tension is eradicated by the knowledge that the villain will be back in the next episode no worse for wear.

The one aspect of the show that really surprised me was the level of action and violence.  To be honest I'm not really coming from one point of view or another when it comes to the level and execution of action in my cartoons, but I'm so used to non-violent cartoons that when I see one that pushes a little further I get kind of floored.   I'm just as happy watching He-Man refuse to punch a living being as I am watching something uber-violent like Akira, though.  After reading the Thundarr articles from Fangoria and Fantastic magazines, I was sort of expecting the show to fall on the side of Masters of the Universe.  Steve Gerber seemed pretty upset about the extent to which the production was hamstrung by the network standards and practices yearning to please parent's groups (like Action for Children's Television.)

If you look at the 1st episode concept art above you can get a pretty good idea of how much the action and adventure elements were calmed down, as well as how much Jack Kirby's concepts were changed.

But even for these changes and after watching the 1st episode I have to say that there is plenty of decent action.  Sure, Thundarr isn't slicing rat-men in half with his sun sword, but he is using it to knock weapons out of their hands mimicking a more realistic combat.  The production team also utilized the tried and true concept of having robotic villains and henchmen leaving the hero of the cartoon open to doing some damage.  There's a scene where Thundarr and Ookla are besieged by a bunch of Gemini's knights and after knocking one down Thundarr hears the mechanical whirring of the robot's gears.  With this knowledge, in the next sequence he proceeds to run another knight through with his sun sword.  The animators even had the knight stare down at his wound as Thundarr stabbed him, which added a kind of disturbing level of reality to the scene.

In another fight sequence, Thundarr ends up kicking some rat-men off their motorcycles, which I would think would be a huge no-no in a network censor's eyes as that action would be highly mimicable by children.  Of course mixed in with are a lot of more traditionally non-violent action scenes.  In their first encounter with the rat-men, we mainly see Ookla flinging them by their tails off-camera into their tree fortress.  We don't see any impact for the most part, so it comes off pretty tame as the creatures just silently glide past our heroes.   The evil wizard Gemini is also prone to shooting harmless paralyzing eye beams at Thundarr, Ookla and Ariel instead of displaying any sort of real danger or physical harm.  So there is certainly a compromise happening on screen.

Because the show does tend towards more realistic violence, and if there's one good thing I can say about the Warner Brothers DVD release of this episode, it's that they didn't go in and muck with it.   The WB studio is known for retroactively kiddifying their cartoon releases by editing episodes to match up with today's ridiculous politically correct environment.   They've cut down episodes of Johnny Quest and omited episodes of Tom and Jerry from DVD sets, in an effort to erase perceived racy content and violence.   In fact I was kind of shocked to see that they left in a shot of the decimated Twin Towers during a pan across the apocalyptic landscape of New York City.  It is funny to note that on the back of the DVD case there's a note that these episodes are intended for an adult audience and that they aren't recommended for children.  Hooey!

The one aspect of the show that I could see myself getting tired of is all of the jokes about the antiquated technology and bits of the old world lying around.   For the most part the characters in the show are ignorant of humanity's original society, and only a select few know about how to use the old technology or even what most of it is.  Ariel, whose step-father is a wizard, is well versed in the old culture and she kind of acts as the straight man to Thudarr's silly barbarian ignorance.  There's a running gag where he'll see something and think it's an important clue to solving a plot issue, like a poster for Jaws 9 in a subway scene in this episode, and Ariel will have to point out that it's just an old movie poster (to which Thundarr basically asks, "What's a moo-v?")   Sometimes this comes off kind of funny, like in a scene where Thundarr and Ookla steal a helicopter and in a fit of rage while trying to fly the crazy contraption Ookla first rips out the steering column, and then kicks the rest of the control panel out of the chopper causing it to crash (similar humor to the Chewbacca/Millennium Falcon scenes from the Star Wars movies.)  But I can see it getting old really quick.

By far, my favorite scene in the episode was the last cinematic battle sequence in which Gemini, approaching a small pocket of humans and our heroes while flying atop a thunder cloud, brings the rotting Statue of Liberty to life, acting as a harbinger of doom for New York (years before the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man even thought about stepping on a church in that town.)  Granted, it came out almost a decade before Ghostbusters II and I doubt it was an influence, but there's something really fulfilling in seeing that iconic statue coming to life and attacking a city, knowing that later on it'll play the opposite side of that coin (to mix my metaphors.)  The statue's main weapon is her torch which is transformed into a flamethrower laser which she uses to lay waste to the city and harbor, zapping entire buildings at a time.   It's so crazy and over the top, and by far my favorite Statue of Liberty action sequence beating out Remo Williams fighting on the 80s era statue cleaning scaffolding, Ghostbusters II, and the horrible physics and goofy improbability of the first X-Men movie (though maybe not as neat as the Statue reveal in Planet of the Apes…).

Unfortunately Ruby Spears chose to use very general, non-episode-specific end credits sequence, so I'm not sure who specifically wrote the episode.   I do know that you can feel the hand of Steve Gerber, Mark Evanier, Buzz Dixon, Jack Kirby and Alex Toth in the overall design and tone.  I really loved the episode and I hope Warner Brothers gets off their butt and puts out a proper full series release for the show some day.   I enjoyed this episode so much, I might have to forgo my comfort and watch more on youtube…

By the by, that Thundarr article from Fangoria magazine I posted a little while ago seems to be a little bit at odds with itself considering Buzz Dixon wrote both it, and was apparently a writer on the show.  I guess since Fangoria was just getting off teh ground the editor was fine with self-promotion pieces to fill up the zine, but it makes you wonder...

This week, Rocky IV wrappers from 1985.  Talked about the stickers from this set here.

Love the fighting wax pack theme on these Rocky cards…

It's kind of strange sensation, but there are a lot of toys that should scream "80s" for me, but don't.  Stuff like G.I Joe and the Transformers are in that group, most likely because I never really stopped living with their branding over the years.  But there's also stuff like the Thundercats or the Smurfs that also don't really "bring me back" all that much even though they haven't been in the forefront of my mind in awhile.  I think this stuff is just too popular and therefore it never seems dated.  More and more I'm finding that the stuff that really epitomizes the 80s for me are the obscure toy lines that I had some familiarity with at the time.  The Robo Force toys do this for me, as do Kronoform watches, and the Visionaries toys.  But one of the most "It's from the 80s..." inducing is the Starriors line of robot action figures from Tomy (pronounced toe-me), which really send me right back to 1984…

I saw this guy sitting in a display case at HD Comics and Toys in the N. Georgia Pendergrass flea market and for a second I felt like I was 7 years-old again. 

As a quick aside, if you're in the Atlanta area, or if you're traveling through Georgia and have a chance to stop at the Pendergrass flea market, do youself a favor and check in on Steve and Billy at HD Comics and Toys.  The place is a wonderland of stuff (Bravestarr, Tundercats, Silverhawks, G.I. Joe, Go Bots, Starriors, Food Fighters, Supernaturals, Lone Ranger, Super Powers, tons of Marvel and DC figures, Masters of the Universe, the original Battlestar Galactica, Dr. Who, original Indiana Jones and Star Wars figures, and six million other obscure and interesting toys from the last 40-odd years.)  If you stop in, tell 'em Shawn from Branded in the 80s sent you, they and I will appreciate it!

Anyway, when it comes to the nostaliga factor of these guys, it's all in the head/cockpit (because as a kid that's all I had.)  I have no memory of where I came across it, but at some point I ended up with a little Starriors cockpit/head that just fascinated the crap out of me.   First of all I had a weird thing for clear plastic cockpits on toys when I was young, in particular the larger triangular, clear blue Lego window pieces from the Space Police series.   I almost always started construction of a new Lego creation around these hinged window pieces, but I also loved this functionality in all of my toys.  Between the translucent yellow chest-flaps of the Insecticons, the plethora of canopies and cockpits in the G.I. Joe vehicles, and the awesome pink cockpit of Miles Mayhem's Switchblade vehicle from M.A.S.K.  I was enthralled by this idea in design and it carried forth to the detachable heads of the Starriors (and Zoids, it's sister toy line) toys from 1984…

I think part of my fascination was the included little silver and gold pilot figures, what I understand now is actually a bunch of circuits made in the image of men that forms the brain of the Starriors characters.   First off, these little chrome figures reminded me of Twiki from Buck Rogers, and second, it just looked so damn cool to have these tiny, little, shiny guys in a small cockpit.  Keep in mind that this was before Micro Machines.

Overall the design of the Starriors figures is just really fun.  Sure, they maynot have a ton of articulation, and no paint, but there's a lot of molded detail that I really dig.  My wife made fun of me a bit for buying a robot with chrome laser boobs, but I didn't even see that until she pointed it out...

This particular figure is named Hot Shot, and he's the leader of the Protectors faction of the Starriors robots.  I'm still digging into the back story behind the toys and comics, but the general gist of the story revolves around the human race going into a self-enforced hibernation.  Before hiding away the humans built a couple armies of robots, one called the Destructors to fight against their enemies in their absence, and the Protectors to rebuild the Earth and keep it running smoothly for their eventual return.  Very biblically epic in scope, the story of the Starriors unfolded in six different mini comics that were packaged with the figures, as well as a four-issue series from Marvel comics.

Again, the toys themselves are actually kind of cool even though they're limited in movement.  They're built to be taken apart and reassembled into different combinations, a feature that works very well in conjunction with the Starriors fiction which has characters "killed off" and then reborn (by having their circuits/consciousness transferred to new bodies.)  It also provided a similar play feature to the transforming function of the Go Bots and Transformers.   In addition, all of the figures had some sort of wind-up functionality.  Hot shot could be wound up causing his chest lasers to rock back and forth in their housing as if they were firing repeatedly.  Unfortunately, even though this guy was still card-fresh when I got him, his simple motor abilities didn't survive the last 26 years intact.

Also, very much like the transformers (and a lot of other toy lines from the 80s), there were a limited number of molds for the figures, so the heroes and villains were essentially mirror images of each other in different color schemes and with slightly different accoutrements…

If you're into collecting expensive geeky fine art, the iconic artist Bill Sienkiewicz, has a couple of his Marvel comics Starriors covers for sale on his website (both of which heavily feature the Hot Shot toy I just bought…)

It's kind of weird when I think about it, but even though I feel like I experienced a good chunk of the television programming from the 80s (the first time around) it's sort of impossible to have really gotten into most of the shows enough to really experience them.  There's just not enough time in the day, even as a kid with no job and only homework to deal with.  When I try and envision all these shows that I think I remember, I imagine this giant orb of light that's made up of all these television images, screen shots linked together like a puzzle.   All of them are familiar and all give that sense of nostalgia, but inside this orb there's nothing.   I expect it to be filled with memories of watching these shows, or pointless trivia, but when I glimpse inside there's only darkness.

Max Headroom lives on one of these television screens covering the giant empty orb at the back of my brain.  On the surface I remember the television commercials, the New Coke ads, and the fact that the character was on a number of different TV shows.   I remember that the main show was a dystopian, futuristic, cyberpunk adventure that feature Matt Frewer as both a reporter named Edison Carter and the titular Max Headroom, but I'm not sure why because for the life of me I can't recall a single episode.

In doing a little bit of research I find it kind of strange that this character and the sci-fi television show lasted as long as it did considering that the various iterations were all at odds with each other.  One the one hand you have Max Headroom the cyberspace TV host showing music videos and battering on with some odd comedy routines.   Then you have the product spokesman schilling an un-liked improvement to Coca Cola that no one really wanted.  Finally you have Max Headroom, the cyber manifestation consisting of the downloaded memories of a counter culture news reporter that's fighting against corporate greed and advertising.   It's all one big cynical joke that feeds on itself.  Maybe this is why I find it so fascinating…

Equally as fascinating is that of all the possible merchandising angles that could have been taken with the character, in 1986 Topps chose to use the sci-fi TV show as the inspiration for a set of 33 Max Headroom sticker cards.  Granted, the show was on the air off and on for two years, but I doubt it ever caught the hearts and minds of kids, which must have been the target audience for these sticker cards.  I'm surprised they didn't partner with Coke and do a bunch of more brightly colored Headroom portrait stickers…

You do see a little bit of that in this set, in particular with the Headroom floating head stickers, but all in all it's a pretty dark bunch of stickers featuring assassins, a bunch of cyberpunk rejects that look like they were swiped from a Terry Gilliam film, and some odd shots of the Matt Frewer character Edison Carter caught on film.   If I had to guess I'd say that these probably didn’t sell all that well for Topps.  As far as the stickers themselves go, I was a little disappointed that these weren't die-cut.  For some reason that's one of the aspects that I've really come to love about trading card stickers, in particular the output from Topps.

I have to say that I'm pretty stoked about the fact that he show is finally coming to DVD late this summer (August 10th).  Shout! Factory is releasing the complete series with bonus features, so I'll finally be able to go back and get a better feel for the series…