We Interrupt This Interruption for a Bit of Fun

In desperate need of relief from my selfish mourning rage (see last post), I've been watching the just-released two-disc set of Filmation's DC Super Heroes cartoons from 1967 -- 18 cartoons that initially ran between the Superman cartoons that aired on CBS on Saturday mornings and later in syndication.

Historical note to youngsters: in my day, there were no 24/7 kids/cartoon channels like Nick and CN; we ruled the TV ONLY on Saturdays from roughly 8 AM-1 PM, and maybe for a few hours on Sunday mornings, and that was it. If Whitey hadn't taken all the satellite dishes from the much smarter Native Americans, we'd still be getting TV signals for the three main broadcast networks via aerials atop our covered wagons. It's all true! Google it!

(And, yes, I am sure they had some formative influence along with the old '60s Marvel cartoons and the West/Ward Batman series on me that ultimately led me to come up with SuperHuman Times, so there is some relevance to this blog.)

Anyway, the set contains cartoons featuring pre-Paul Dini/Bruce Timm renditions of the JLA, Green Lantern (Hal), the Atom, Hawkman and the Teen Titans. They HAD to have inspired them to become artists so they could create something better.

Among the highlights (for me, anyway):

* The limited animation makes the first season of The Flintstones look like The Clone Wars.

* The menu screen shows stills of Hanna-Barbera's Birdman instead of Hawkman. (At least he earned his own DVD set.)

* Green Lantern is voiced by the animated Fantastic Four's own Reed Richards, radio star Gerald Mohr, and his first cartoon has Paul Frees (the animated FF's Ben Grimm) voicing every other character.

* When Paul Frees doesn't voice all but the central character of every cartoon, Ted Knight does.

* The opening music in the JLA cartoons sounds like they're taking the stage in Vegas instead of preparing to fight evil.

* There are too many "WTF?!" moments in every episode to describe here.

Check it out here if you get a chance. For all their flaws, I treasure them more than ever because they couldn't have come out at a better time.

-- L.

PS: Check out the documentary about Filmation founder Lou Scheimer on disk 2. You may not come away with more respect for the cartoons, but the man responsible for them has class.