Super Friends To The Rescue!

Amazon had them on sale for less than $10 each, so last week, I ordered the last two incarnations of Super Friends from the early 1980s - The Legendary Super Powers Show and Super Powers Team: Galactic Guardians -  on DVD. These two seasons were tailored to tie-in with Kenner's popular DC "Super Powers" action figure line, hence the prominence of the term in both titles.

Both shows featured Jack Kirby's Darkseid as the major villain and had slightly more sophisticated stories than previous incarnations of the Super Friends franchise. In the Galactic Guardians run, Hanna-Barbara's artists switched from the original Alex Toth character designs to new ones by Jose Garcia-Lopez, giving it a fresher look; it was also the first Super Friends show to have full half-hour (well, 20 minute, really) episodes each week instead of two 10-minute stories per installment.

I missed these seasons when they originally aired on Saturday mornings (I was in Art School by then), but I'm looking forward to enjoying some Old School super-hero 'toons over the next week or two.

Congratulations, Mars Curiosity Rover!

Crayon Dragon

This delightfully whimsical student film by animator Toniko Pantoja is not only incredibly charming, but exhibits some of the most expressive character animation that I've seen in a long, long time. Take three minutes out of your day and watch it - unless you're a hopeless grump, you'll be glad you did.

She's a Wonder...

Another incredibly awesome "cold open" from Batman: The Brave And The Bold - this time featuring the amazing amazon, Wonder Woman, in her classic costume... and accompanied by her original 70's TV theme music!

I'm collecting The Brave And The Bold cartoon on DVD, and I'm going to really miss it when it's gone. The creators of the show - unlike the cynical jokers currently in charge of DC Comics, who just published a comic book with Catwoman and Batman having sex actually on-panel- remember that super-hero stories are supposed to be good-spirited fun.

Stop-Motion JONNY QUEST!!!

Jonny Quest Opening Titles from Roger D. Evans on Vimeo.

This is AMAZING!!!! And here is the website where artist Roger Evans explains the making of it. Enjoy!

Another Cute Cartoon

I really like this student film by Megan Tupper. Funny and nicely designed.

Extreme Nuts

I'm On My Way!

...and you should be, too! I received an e-mail in the wee hours of this morning from Jim Doherty informing me that a new tribute site to the great Dick Tracy, Plainclothes, has just been launched. In his words:

It includes a Tracy comic book story, "Fireworks," written by Max Allan Collins and illustrated by Joe Staton.  Originally intended for DISNEY ADVENTURES but never actually printed, it was intended to cash in on the then-hot DICK TRACY movie.  Collins, of course, was then the writer of the Tracy strip, and was also the creator of such comics sleuths as MS. TREE, a Chicago private eye who took over her husband's P.I. agency after his murder, MIKE MIST, another Chicago shamus who starred in a series of "solve-them-yourself" whodunits, as well as the writer of ROAD TO PERDITION, the first graphic novel ever to make it to the New York TIMES best-seller list.

It also includes two prose stories about Tracy.  "The Treasure of Captain Cannonsmoke," by the aptly-named Tracy Kazaleh, is set in the world of the UPA animated TRACY cartoons, and features more humorous takes on Tracy's famous Rogues' Gallery, together on a cruise ship in search of hidden treasure.

"Murder Is My Hobby," by Jim Doherty, pits Tracy against a serial killer.

The centerpiece of the site is a new comics story in newspaper strip format, "Major Crimes Squad," illustrated by Staton and written by Mike Curtis, publisher of Shandafa Comics.  It features the return of that long-ago villain Willie "The Fifth" Millyun and his odious lawyer Flyface, and answers the question that has baffled Tracy fans for decades:

"Whatever happened to the Space Coupe?"

Dick Tracy, Joe Staton, Max Allan Collins, previously-unpublished stories... yeah, I'm definitely on my way. See you there!

Scott Mcloud - SPACE ANGEL!

Space Angel was a television cartoon produced by Cambria Productions from 1962-1964 for independent television stations. It was produced in 5-part, 5-minute chapters that could be serialized every weekday morning as part of a local station's cartoon kiddie shows.

It's notable for a number of reasons. It was one of the first programs aimed at children that exploited the 60s space race, it was the first job in animation for acclaimed comics artists Alex Toth and Doug Wildley, and it employed the patented "SyncroVox" process. This amazing process involved superimposing the highly rouged lips of live actors over the faces of cartoon characters, for absolutely perfect, synchronized dialogue! Among Cambria Production’s other innovations was an extremely liberal interpretation of the word "animation," as they relied pretty heavily on utterly static drawings of their characters.

This six-page comic story was drawn by Toth to promote the cartoon, and appeared - I believe - in an issue of Jack & Jill magazine.

Read my review of the Space Angel cartoon DVD collection at DVD Late Show.

What? It's August already?!

Sorry I haven't been posting much lately. My gout still hasn't gone away, even though the worst of the pain has subsided and I have been able to work again the last few days. It turns out that the gout is most likely caused by the fact that I now only have one kidney, and that one's not working at 100%, so it's probably not producing enough uric acid. Gout, paradoxically, can apparently be caused by having either too much or too little uric acid in your system.

Unfortunately the best medication for treating gout has the potential to damage kidneys, and since I only got one and it's fragile enough already, my doc doesn't want to prescribe it. As she says, I'm "basically screwed." (Yeah, she can be pretty blunt.) So it looks like I'm doomed to experience this particular "ailment of kings" for the rest of my life. And since I also have an unusually high resistance to pain killers... well, my doc put it most succinctly when she said, "Gee, sucks to be you."

Sigh.

Last weekend, my wife and I switched offices. The room I'd chosen when we moved in proved to be too small for all my crap, and as I had a new computer coming for design gigs, I needed additional space for a second work station. So we switched.

My back is still killing me. Desks and books and bookcases and comic boxes are friggin' heavy.

Still, I rather like my new workspace. I'm actually able to display more of my toys (or, as I think of them, inspirations), and now have all my bookcases in one room. I do know that it gets really cold in here in the winter... but I'll deal with that when the time comes. And – I got a new desk chair, so I don't have to use the wooden kitchen chair anymore.

I picked up a few interesting DVDs recently, among them the latest Doctor Who adventure, Planet of the Dead, (liked it) and the latest DC animated feature, Green Lantern: First Flight. I've read some online reviews complaining that the Green Lantern movie is just a cop story set in space, but, um, Green Lantern is a cop in space! With a magic ring! Personally, I loved it... and I was worried I wouldn't, because I really disliked the studio's previous Wonder Woman film.

But, as far as I'm concerned, GL: First Flight is a terrific adventure with some very nice design, animation and excellent voice work, especially on the part of Victor Garber.

We also rented the latest Torchwood series (a Doctor Who spin-off) through Netflix, Children of Earth. I thought it was about 90% successful. It had shocking moments, a downright terrifying alien threat, and some truly horrible ethical choices that the characters had to make. Unfortunately, I thought the main character was, well, somewhat out of character, and I was a bit let down by the ending.

Still, though, it was a pretty remarkable, disturbing five hours of sci-fi drama, and I'm really glad we watched it.

As far as my projects go, I'm trying to make up for my nearly three week incapacitation, and am working on a new Kolchak script for Moonstone. I planned on having it done back at the end of June, so it's my current priority.

I spoke with my Gravedigger collaborators Rick Burchett and Fred Harper today, and according to Rick, he's only a couple pages from completing the second half of the next Gravedigger graphic novella, The Predators! The first half is inked, and Fred will start in on the second half just as soon as Rick sends him the penciled pages. I've given up trying to predict when my comics will be finished, but we all want it out for next Spring.

Richard Clark is steadily sending me lovely pages from our Captain Midnight Zero issue, so that's coming along nicely, and I also received pages this week from Gene Gonzales for Perils On Planet X. They're beautiful – as you can see for yourself from the panels above.

It may take a while, but we'll get there!

I also re-connected with a talented artist I knew about ten years ago, and we're discussing the possibility of collaborating on a new creator-owned comics project. I hope we can get it off the ground – it's another one of those concepts I've been wanting to do for twenty years.

And, finally, the comics line that I'm editing for Michael Hudson – Sequential Pulp – is nearing take off. Our first title, Fredric Brown's Martians, Go Home, adapted from the classic novel by Martin Powell and Mike Manley, will be solicited through Dark Horse Comics this Fall, with Otis Adelbert Kline's Swords of Venus hopefully following soon after.

Then I'll really be busy!

Weekend Theater: Bravo Scooby Doo

Back in the day, Cartoon Network programmers had some genuine respect for classic animation, and so did the creators of their original World Premiere Toons, also known as What A Cartoon Show and Cartoon Cartoons.

This episode of the Johnny Bravo series (which I was a huge fan of, along with its companion series, Dexter's Laboratory, Cow & Chicken, and I Am Weasel) is a fun and funny parody of the original Hanna-Barbera Scooby Doo: Where Are You? TV series, but it also has a bunch of clever references to other classic cartoons, including a couple of vintage Looney Tunes shorts. Sadly, in the short ten years since this was made, Cartoon Network has devolved beyond being capable of producing anything this clever. (Bigfoot?!)

Makes me glad I no longer have cable.