After reading Adam Eisenberg's Thundarr article from a 1980 issue of Fantastic magazine earlier in the week, I've been thinking a lot about the issue of violence and marketing in cartoons, and the whole debacle of Action for Children's Television in the early 80s.  9.999 times out of 10 there are usually only two reactions to the debate; people either tend to agree with A.C.T. and believe that merchandised cartoons are just 30 minute commercials that have almost nothing to offer children, or they disagree and don't see the harm in matching toy lines and feel that cartoons are either good for kids or are at least not doing harm.  It's easy to forget that even though the issue appears black and white, the world is always a weird gray place filled with all kinds of people (that 0.001 out of 10 people.)  For this Cartoon Commentary I'm going to take a look at someone else's commentary for a change...

Steve (the Evil King Macrocranios) over at the Roboplastic Apocalypse pointed me to a April 25th, 1985 Washington Post editorial by Jane A. Welch, a concerned mother of two who has the most unique (at least I hope so) opinion of the merits of the He-Man and the Masters of the Universe property I’ve ever come across…

First off, though Welch's editorial reads like the semi-crazy ranting that tends to get buried in the lifestyle section of a local paper and is really yesterday's news on the day it sees print, the story actually caught on.  While doing a bit of research in trying to pin down the impact of Welch's rant I came across a number of other papers from all over the country that picked up the editorial, so this was most likely Welch's fifteen minutes.

So what is so crazy about Welch's commentary?  Well for starters she takes the unique stance that Filmation's He-Man cartoon has the potential to turn her then two year-old son into a bleeding heart pantywaist!  For once, a parent stands up and says that there isn't ENOUGH violence in a cartoon and that morality of avoiding fighting and violence is downright un-American.  Welch might just be a long lost relative of Roger Sweet, the initial creator of the Masters of the Universe toy line for Mattel, as she seems to closely mimic his feelings towards the Filmation version of the He-Man storyline.

There are a couple things that I find really interesting in the editorial including the idea that the cartoon and toy line differ so much in execution and tone.  Whereas the toys were designed in the image of fierce warrior barbarians with axes, swords, and rippling muscles, the cartoon, which uses most of the same imagery, all but ignores these violent aspects of the characters in favor of moralistic, fable-like storytelling where He-Man is more likely to thrown Beastman in the mud then physically harm him in any way.  Though this dichotomy is apparent in most cartoon merchandising, it points to the underlying issue that's really been bugging me about how my generation appropriates pop culture icons.

What I'm seeing is an issue of potential and the wish fulfillment of seeing that potential realized based on the idea of "how things work in the real world."  So when we have a character like Superman/Clark Kent who is ripped with an unstoppable alien musculature powered by Earth's yellow sun and very rarely unleashes the full brunt that he can dish out, it's understandable to want to see this potential released.   What's more maddening than a cocked gun that isn't fired, right?   People want to see Superman punch a fist-sized hole right through Lex Luther's head, because A) he's got it coming, B) Superman could totally do it if he wanted to, and C) in the "real world", if a Superman existed, he probably would do it for the "greater good".  I think the quest set in front of the writers of this type of fiction is how to balance character potential and relatable character depth without breaking the character.   As an aging audience, I think more and more we want to see these characters broken.  As children everything is still new to us and we’re content with going along on the adventures that have limitless possibilities, and this makes serialized stories and ideal experience.   As adults we develop a different perspective on life.  We don't see limitless possibilities, we see stark reality and the eventually of our own mortality.  Add to this the possibility of a long time familiarity with a character and it's easy to see how we can take them for granted and want to go to that next step, the step that changes that character forever.

For fear of standing up on a soapbox, I think I should get back to the crazy editorial.  Welch complains that a character that illustrates such obvious violent potential that is never realized sends the wrong message to her son.  The idea that her son isn't getting enough machismos, that he might learn to solve difficult issues with forethought and compassion actually scares her, which I think is so absurd it's hilarious.  Even more surprising is her apparent stance on politics of gender, in particular in how it relates to the dynamic between Prince Adam/He-Man and Teela.  She writes:

"And there's Teela.  At first glance she's not extraordinary.  He-Man's female companion has the round, full hips and tiny waist so loved by comic book artists.  The serpentine objects encircling her breasts might seem a bit much for preschoolers, but after all, cleavage didn't hurt Wonder Woman.

Teela is Captain of the guard.  She isn't just a soldier, but a leader of soldiers.  No kitchen duty for this woman.  More times than not, she rescues He-Man – or at least helps.  No damsel in distress here.

Again, how is this affecting children?   Young Americans might begin to think that men and women are equals – that sex isn't necessarily destiny."

At first blush I was taking this for sarcasm, that Welch was going to make a point about how even though she thinks He-Man is a bit of a emotional cream puff, at least Teela is handled as strong and independent.   But in re-reading it I don't think she's kidding.   I think she yearns for a more subservient female role model, which is strange since she brings up Wonder Woman, who's about as strong and independent a role model for women there is in pop culture (well, except for maybe Xena.)

I want to believe that the whole editorial is a joke, or more accurately that it was snidely disguised social commentary with a tongue firmly planted in the writer's cheek, but I'm scared that it isn't.  What's troubling is that in the version carried by some of the other papers, the editorial is edited, removing some of the more troubling exclamations about gender roles and at the time current American military skirmishes.  The above exceprt about Teela is reduced to the following when the editorial appears on May 8th in the Orlando Sentinel:

"…and his female companion, Teela, is a decidedly modern woman.  She's not only a soldier, she's a leader of soldiers."

The question I have is, are editorials edited by the paper's staff, or did Welch submit her thoughts to various papers in different iterations?  Either way, the clear message of useless morals and backward antiquated roles for men and women is absurdly hilarious and just a little bit frightening.  If the editorial was published as widely as it appears, I can only hope it made its way into the Filmation studios because I think I can still hear the laughter echoing from those hallways after 25 years, and it's deep, rich and "...sounds like Gary Owens in an echo chamber…"

In honor of episode 22 of the Saturday Supercast I thought I'd break out some of my Filmation He-Man animation cels.   I have a few from one of the episodes we discussed on the podcast, episode 56 of season 1, Quest for the Sword…

The first one I wanted to share today is of the character Raybar which comes from the last scene with this character in both the episode and the series…



Raybar is an adventurous member of a race of rock people who live in a vast cave on Eternia.  The cave contains a hole that leads to the center of the planet and provides a vast amount of mystic energy that is most likely the source of this race.   In the episode Raybar finds He-Man's power sword and uses it to become what he believes is a great leader of the rock people, but in the end, as He-Man eloquently states, it just makes him a bully.

Anyway, I mainly picked up these rock men cels for a friend, but before I shipped them off I thought I'd scan them in and discuss them in hopes of digging a little deeper into the He-Man series.   The thing that stood out to me the most about these cels is the color of the paint.  When compared to the screen captures from the episode in question on DVD, the paint on the original cels appears a bit darker and a little more brown than gray.  Part of this is my scanner, but the original is still a bit off from the original episode.   I wonder is this is because the cels have sat around in storage for 26 years or if maybe BCI touched up the episodes on the DVDs, color correcting them digitally?



This cel also came with an accompanying pencil under-drawing which I always love to see.   In this case the pencil drawing is missing the mouth of the creature as Ray bar was talking in this scene and it required a series of different mouth drawings.  The cel I picked up came with a secondary cel that just had the one mouth position, so I guess there are a few other cels floating around with just Raybar mouths on them.  Glad I managed to find the combo with the base drawing/painting of the creature included.



These other cels are all part of a single scene, though because of the movement required it was separated onto various layers.   Included are Raybar with the power sword…



…and his friend Togar with Man-At-Arms laser gun.



These two aren't nearly as tight when it comes to the line work.  They're a bit sketchy, which I assume came out of a time crunch to get these episodes finished.  Filmation was one of the 1st studios producing first run syndicated cartoons, which meant that they needed to finish 65 episodes of He-Man over the course of a year and that's a lot for any studio to handle.   On top of this they were doing all of the work in-house which is monumental when you think about the hundreds of thousands of cels that needed to be produced for a 65 episode run.  This episode was towards the end of the 1st season so I'd be willing to bet corners were being cut wherever they could.   In this scene in particular Raybar and Togar are only onscreen in this position for a second before Orko swoops in front of the camera, so again, corners could be cut.  Actually, if you'll notice from the screen grab below, the couple of cels that I have a slightly different…



In the screen grab you can see that Raybar's face wasn't completely drawn on the right.  The characters were also shifting a little and by the time my two cels show up Orko is obscuring the characters.   It's kind of weird to think that these cels are hidden since they're a bit cleaner than the two that end up unobscured on screen.)

On a slightly different note, I have to say that the character design on Togar is pretty weird and baby-like.  It's kind of disturbing when you see him pitch a fit in the episode.

A quick note on the organization of the Cartoon Commentary! columns here at Branded in the 80s.  I've been slowly tweaking the tags and archiving of some of the sections on the site for awhile to try and make this beast a little easier to navigate (since the engine Branded is built on doesn't support a lot of the nicer things like next page functionality, or multiple tags.)  Anyway, I wanted to take a second and point to a new portal page I set up for Cartoon Commentary! which divides the articles I've written by cartoon series as well as individual posts.  By clicking on the banner above, or the one in the sidebar to the left you can reach the portal page where you can choose to view all posts on a particular series or the specific episodes from that series.  It should make navigating the site easier so you wouldn't have to load every single Commentary post on one page.  Next up, wrangling the best that is Peel Here, but that's for another day…

Anyway, in honor of the release of episode 21 of the Saturday Supercast (where I and co-hosts Kevin Cross and Jerzy Drozd deconstruct the He-Man and the Masters of the Universe cartoon series) I thought I'd take a closer look at the first broadcast episode of He-Man, the Robby London penned Diamond Ray of Disappearance which had its debut on September 5th, 1983.



As we mentioned in episode 21 of the Supercast, Diamond Ray of Disappearance does a pretty good job of setting the stage for the Masters of the Universe series.  Though it's not an origin episode (not many 80s cartoons had the foresight to set up a continuity), it does spend some time introducing a lot of the main characters that populate the world of Eternia, as well as giving a pretty good overview of what He-Man is capable of.   One subtle aspect to this episode’s introductory nature is the opening title card screen that was chosen for this first episode, a shot from space of the planet and its main continents.  You can get a general gist of the main body of lush green jungle-like land, with the icy mountains to the north, a treacherous desert to the south and to the east, which separates the peaceful region with the fire and brimstone of the region that Skeletor overseas to the far east.

As far as the episode proper, it opens on a shot of the imposing Snake Mountain, which again is a subtle way of starting off the series by introducing the main struggle.  I mean, we're already watching a show called He-Man, and in the opening credits we get the point by point on Adam and his quest, so it makes sense to get into the nitty gritty with Skeletor summoning his minions.  What I really dig about this sequence is that it does a fairly good job of setting the tone for some of the dark fantasy that makes up the periphery of the show.   Between Snake Mountain, and the various spikes and skeletal accoutrements that make up the décor, it sets a pretty creepy tone for a kids show.   Some of the imagery is downright Giger-esque in design, and Skeletor's throne of bone is only slightly removed from the seriously f-ed up human and animal bone furniture in the Texas chainsaw Massacre flick (or for that matter TCM’s real world influences of Ed Gein and Ilse Koch.)  Granted skeletal imagery and evil in fantasy worlds sort of go hand in hand and could be viewed as pretty tame, but it does has some real world connotations that can get pretty heady, especially for kids.  I just think it was a brave move on Filmation's part.



As Skeletor calls his henchmen to his side to explain his nefarious plot with the Diamond Ray, I always thought it was pretty hilarious that he calls Merman who just happens to be in the middle of wrestling a huge aquatic monster…



Another thing that jumped out at me in this opening sequence is some of the Filmation visual trademarks that really define the look and feel of the cartoon.  Because of the limited budget the studio had to produce 65 syndicated episodes of He-Man, there was a lot of limited animation and an extensive collection of stock sequences were devised, so that each episode's new animation burden could be whittled away.  One of these stock sequences features Skeletor in a fit of megalomaniacal fist pumping.   It really is sort of a strange shot, as the edit sort of cuts to an aside soliloquy featuring a mimed or laughing punctuation from the evil leader.



I also thought it was interesting in the first battle sequence that both factions have their own Sky Sleds, though in slightly differing colors…



As a kid I never thought twice about this, but from the perspective of a grown man this seems very odd.   I mean I just always sort of thought that each side designed and constructed their own vehicles.  I know Man-At-Arms is always building and tinkering for the good guys.  Maybe Tri-Klops is doing the same for Skeletor? Anyway, because their both using the same sleds (well except that the evil ones have fangs and the good have molded ears on the gargoyle head that acts as a ram), it gives the impression that there is a third party out there designing vehicles and weaponry for the battle waging across Eternia.

Also, a quick note on Trap Jaw's character design from toy to cartoon.   I thought it was cute that Filmation decided to keep his little hook/eyelet on the top of his helmet, a feature from the toy that let him slide down a zip-line, but in the show is just ornamental.  I've talked before about the differences in cartoon and toy design, and it's always fun to see stuff that should be exclusive to the toys end up in either packaging art or the final cartoon versions.   I mean typically these little things don't have to translate from toy design to other media, I mean not that many kids thought too hard about what happens to Optimus Prime's trailer section when he transforms in the show…



It's also fun to see a little bit of Star Wars influence on the cartoon.   I mean it came out right in the middle of the hype for Return of the Jedi, so it's not surprising, but even so it's fun to see Man-At-Arms wielding a makeshift lightsaber…



I also love the inclusion of Skeletor's Battle Robots to the show's list of villains.  Because Lou Scheimer and Hal Sutherland had such strong ideas on the virtual non-violence in the action of the He-Man cartoon, these robots become yet another in a very long line of violence-friendly punching bags…



There was also a scene with the Sorceress' magic mirror that I thought was neat for a couple of reasons.   One, there is another Filmation visual, a shot framed by He-Man's feet in the foreground which is just really dynamic.   You see this a lot in Filmation's cartoon work, these interesting shot set-ups and uber weird camera angles (either extreme worm's-eye-view or security camera, high up in a corner shots.)   Secondly we get to see the Filmation designer's mind's eye view of what it would look like inside this magical universe, which is apparently a world of Atari?!?



The last thing that really jumped out at me in this episode (that we don't cover in episode 21 of the Saturday Supercast) is an early Orko sequence that has him getting in on the final battle a bit.  There are a lot of character match-ups in this series and this episode in particular.   In fact the set of evil and good characters is almost symmetrical.   He-Man offsets Skeletor, Evil-Lyn the Sorceress, Man-At-Arms and Tri-Klops, Ram-Man and Beastman, Stratos and Trap Jaw, Man-E-Faces and Merman, not to mention Cringer/Battle Cat and Panthor.  Orko though is sort of the odd man out.  There really isn't a reoccurring character that fits Orko's bill on the evil side, his bumbling ways are only sort of echoed in Merman and Beastman.  He's more of an in for the children as viewers, giving them a character to latch onto, one who is a guide to the world of Eternia.



So it's strange to see him step into the battle at the end of the episode and spin Tri-Klops' head silly.   It's sort of out-of-character for Orko, but fun none-the-less.

Again, to listen to Jerzy, Kevin and I wax nostalgic on this episode of He-Man you can download Episode 21 of the Saturday Supercast from the Sugary Serials site (or directly here), or you can subscribe to the show through iTunes.   We're really proud of how the podcast is developing so far and we can't wait to tackle more cartoons in future episodes.  We've got a lot of big plans…

I feel like I'm so behind in keeping a regular posting schedule around here.  My day job is sapping so much of my time lately, and yeah, blah, blah, blah I know no one wants to read about my day job woes.  Anyway, there is a bright light on the horizon though as things are starting to fit into place and are getting back to normal (which means a regular schedule and routine), so hopefully I'll be back to normal soon.

In the mean time, here is another edition of Cartoon Commentary!, and yet another piece from my 80s animation cel collection.  This week I'm going to take another look at a cel from the Filmation He-Man and the Masters of the Universe cartoon, circa 1984-85.  This one features another one of my favorite characters, Battle Cat, the alter ego of Cringer and steed/side kick to the muscled man himself, He-Man.



I think when it comes to Masters of the Universe I tend to fall in love with characters based on their design more than their personality per-se.  So as far as design goes, I really dig Battle Cat, in particular his gnarly helmet/mask, which highlights his almost serpentine yellow eyes.  I also love that the toy and cartoon designers managed to use the red and green color scheme without evoking even a lick of Christmas, which I have to say seems almost an impossible feat.  As far as personality goes, I like that they managed to turn give the Scooby Doo archetype a bit of a twist with his transformation from the meek fraidy cat Cringer into the bold and gruff Battle Cat.

Also, I managed to get a more overall scan of the cel this time so the production notes are included at the bottom (like I've mentioned, my scanner isn't all that big.)  I haven't managed to decode all of the notes yet, but I do know that the MU-92 refers to Masters of the Universe episode #92.  I'm not positive but I think that this cel is part of a sequence in which Battle Cat is about to leap up, and not the play bow that it appears to be.  Here's a closer view of the cropped image…



There isn't a whole lot to learn from this cel and its pencil under drawing.  The one thing I did notice that is kind of interesting is in the pencil drawing.  The animator made sure to color in a couple areas in Battle Cat's mouth, I'm assuming to show the final ink & paint artist where there would some color variation in that area.  You can see that whoever painted this cel could have misinterpreted the area to the right of Battle Cat's teeth as another place to paint in a darker red as it appears to be colored in like the area to the left, but upon closer inspection this is just where some of the blue pencil lines came close together.  I can see where it would be easy to miss-color something in the painting process, and again where Filmation benefits from having it all done in house where the communication would be better.



I have one more cel, from She-Ra, to share next week before I move on to another Filmation cartoon that I loved growing up, Bravestarr.

It's been awhile since I had a moment to sit down and sort of deconstruct a cartoon episode for the Cartoon Commentary! column.  I'm not tooting my horn in terms of importance or quality when I say this, but these columns tend to be pretty time intensive including watching and re-watching cartoon episodes, note taking, getting the screen grabs for the scenes I want to talk about, etc.  It's still something that I want to and enjoy doing; it's just been on the back burner for a bit.  Before I get too far removed from doing them though I wanted to sort of revive the column by including another facet to my 80s cartoon nostalgia.

Recently I began thinking about how I want to 'collect' and remember the cartoons I loved as a kid.  I have a few goals as far as a collection goes, and since I have some silly issues about buying up old toys and stuff off of eBay I've mainly been focusing on picking up whatever I can on DVD.  My original goal was to get at least one episode from every show on DVD, but as the format changed and season boxsets became first the rage, and then affordable, I've been focusing on those.

Lately though I've stumbled unto another money sucking aspect to the collection, but one that really solidifies the idea of 'owning' a piece of my childhood, which are animation cels.  Pretty much, for me at least, animation cels represent the ultimate keepsake when it comes to cartoons, as you can't get much closer to the source material beyond finding a weird Charlie Kafuman-esque way of crawling into the heads of the animators and writers who created these shows (and it's much less disturbing in that stalker sort of way.)  Also, as far as the collecting gene that I suffer from, I'm the type that prefers the ability to easily look at (my wife would say 'blankly stare at') the collection, as opposed to simply squirreling it away with the knowledge that it's there (which is one of the reasons I can't bring myself to buy individual comic books anymore as they don't display well.)  So the nice original hand-painted cels will hopefully look really swell framed and on the wall.  Anyway, I figured since I'm going to be scanning these in as I buy them for posterity reasons, I might as well share them on the site, and it might as well be under the Cartoon Commentary! heading as it fits in really nicely.

Today I thought I'd share the first cel I decided to buy.  It's a medium sized shot of Orko from the He-Man and the Masters of the Universe show…



Now for those of you who are unfamiliar with the process of traditional animation, each second of footage in a cartoon in made up of a series of drawings and paintings done on cellulose acetate (think of a clear plastic sheet much like a transparency) overlaid on top of an opaque painted background.  Typically, each separate element in an animation scene that moves will be painted on it's own transparent cel, and then the cels are laid on top of each other to form a scene.  So when I say I'm picking up animation cels for the collection, they are usually going to be one of the individual elements on it's own cel without the background (as this is pretty much the only way I've seen them available for purchase.)  Since the backgrounds are re-used so much they are a bit rarer and might have been sold off in separate lots than the bulk sets of animation cels when studios liquidate their stock.  Also, there are typically a series of production numbers at the bottom of a cel (so the animators can keep track of each cel as there are thousands per episode), and I'm going to try and keep those in the scan when I can, but my scanner only has an 8"x12" bed, so for the Orko cel above I couldn't fit both the painting and the production notes.

I was really happy with this cel (especially for the price), as it's a character I adored from the He-Man cartoon and the actual image itself it pretty nice.  He's floating in a more or less normal pose, which his full body in the shot and his eyes are open.  This points to another aspect of collecting cels that's sort of weird.  Like I mentioned above, there are thousands upon thousands of cels produced for each and every cartoon covering a whole range of movement and perspective, so it's a gamble as to whether or not you'll find a cel where the character or element you want is small, medium or close-up, whether it's in a weird position, whether the character's eyes are closed or if there's an element from another cel intended to sit directly on top of this one you want (in which case that portion isn't painted as it wouldn't show on film anyway.)  Sometimes characters are cut-off on the side of a cel if they are entering the scene from either side, and it depends on what you are looking for as to where there is a full body shot or if it's more of a bust-like close-up.  It really is a crap-shoot.

As far as the actual quality of the artwork itself, this particular cel has survived pretty well over the 24 year or so that's it been around changing hands.  None of the paint has chipped off or stuck to the pencil under drawing that was included (see below), and all of the tiny little blemishes in the black line work appear to be original from when the cel was first produced.  Again, going into a little bit of the process of cel animation, and I'm certainly not an authority on the matter, but from what I can gather there are a series of pencil tests done on paper that is the same size as the finished cels.  These pencil tests include drawings of the various elements through out their series of movements in a scene.  Each pose is rendered on a separate piece of paper which are them scanned in or photographed to see how well the movement works.  If these pass the inspection, they are passed on to junior animators who fill in the gaps of the movements, again in pencil on separate pages.  When the final set are approved, they go onto to yet another group who use model sheets as guides and they re-draw all the pages so that it all looks like one artist drew the final sequence.  These final pencil drawings are then copied to the acetate cels, either hand inked, or photocopied.  I'm not positive but I would assume with the speed at which television animation needs to be produced that they are typically photocopied onto the acetate and then painters come behind them and paint the cels.

The blemishes in the black linework in the above Orko cel look like a bad photocopy job, is basically what I'm getting at here.  Now, for completeness sake I thought I'd also scan in the back of the cel where the actual paint is applied…



Now the Orko cel above is pretty simple in terms of color choices, there aren't any shading or color variations in the final image.  So basically it was simply a matter of painting on the back of the cel (so that the front will look crisp and clean) underneath the copied black linework (so that the line work when the image if flipped around will be showing with the paint under), taking care to paint anything perspective-wise that would be closer to the camera (for instance his right hand and ear with overlap both is cloak and hat respectively.)  You'd want to paint the closer aspects first so that they appear to overlap the colors that are 'behind' them and so that the red of his cloak doesn't bleed onto his hands, which would break the suspension of disbelief aspect to the image.  So when you look at the back of the cel you can see that the paint is pretty messy, but because of the way it's layered it looks crisp and clean from the other side.



The last element of the process (which is actually the last image created before the final cel is painted) is the pencil under drawing above.  This is the final drawing that is transferred onto the cel before it's painted.  As you can see in the drawing, it's initially done in non-photo blue lead to get the pose and basic shapes down, and then is 'inked' with a regular graphite lead for the final line work.  You can see in the artwork above where the animators kept changing the placement of the tip of Orko's hat.  When the final pencils are done there is no need to erase the blue under pencils because they won't copy onto the cel.

So I don't have a ton of animation cels in my collection yet, but over the next few months I'll try and share them as I scan them in.