Category: Cartoons

Final Fantasy 7 and Iconic Images

2011-07-16, 5:31 pm
Categories: Cartoons, Comics, Games, Movies, Stream of Consciousness, Tech

I closed Part One of my Final Fantasy 7 retrospective by saying that the Phoenix Rejuvenation Project, a mod designed to replace all the super-deformed field character models in the game with more detailed and realistically-proportioned ones, was the product of a lot of hard work by a lot of talented people...but just a bad idea on principle. The reason I believe this comes down to one essential point:

Final Fantasy 7 is ridiculous.

Now, the game has a huge fanbase, most of which was captivated by its epic story, cinematic atmosphere, and shocking moments. And I think that, given those elements, people tend to forget exactly how damn silly it is.

Here's an example. You're following Sephiroth -- the man who left a trail of blood and bodies ending in a dead President, a man who burned the heroes' village to the ground -- and his trail leads to...an amusement park. After you get your fortune told by a talking stuffed cat, and optionally ride the roller coaster and play an arcade game about the mating habits of Moogles, you find another trail of blood and bodies, these cut down by machine-gun fire. It's briefly implied that your colleague Barrett is the killer, but it turns out it's actually his best friend Dyne. Dyne's gone off the deep end and just wants to burn everything down; when he hears his daughter is still alive and Barrett's adopted her, he threatens to kill her and Barrett has to kill him first.

And then you go race a Chocobo.

Seriously. That is not an exaggeration. At all. The delay between Barrett having to gun down his best friend in order to protect his daughter and Cloud becoming a jockey in a race between giant pastel-colored birds is approximately thirty seconds.

The tone of FF7 shifts so often and so wildly that if you think too hard about it your brain will get whiplash. Do I even need to get into Wall Market and Don Corneo's Mansion? Do I ever want to see a realistically-proportioned Don Corneo thrusting his hips at me? (Actually, I looked for one from the Rejuvenation Project to inflict upon you, my audience, and couldn't find one. Maybe they don't want to see it any more than we do.)

And I can't stress this enough: one of your party members is a talking stuffed cat.

Final Fantasy games, at least since the 16-bit era, are a delicate balancing act of the serious and the silly, and 7 is probably the one that shows that contrast most clearly. And key to its balancing act is its use of exaggerated, iconic character models.

In the essential Understanding Comics, Scott McCloud explores the power of simple, iconic images:

Image: Understanding Comics
Image: Understanding Comics

It doesn't just apply to comics, of course; it works for any form of cartooning. Similarly, a few years back some dumbass critic wrote a review of Monster House where he loudly proclaimed that it was the most important animated film of all time, and summarily dismissed the entire history of animation on the grounds that, prior to performance capture, cartoons couldn't truly convey emotion. I'm convinced he was just trolling, but Amid Amidi at Cartoon Brew tore him a new one across multiple blog posts, including one with this side-by-side comparison:

Image: Monster House vs. Bugs Bunny

One's got a dead-eyed Uncanny Valley face, and the other one is Bugs goddamn Bunny. Bugs is an enduring icon who is recognized the world over and has remained popular for over 70 years, whereas Monster House...well, did you even remember what Monster House was when I mentioned it?

The point is, in cartooning, you take essential elements and exaggerate them. FF7's chibis do that: little bodies, big heads, and exaggerated movements in a story that is itself bigger-than-life. The Phoenix Rejuvenation Project injects more realistically-proportioned figures into those same exaggerated movements and bigger-than-life story, and the result is a pretty clear clash:

Image: Comparison of Barrett waving his arms, original vs. Rejuvenation
Image: Comparison of Barrett shaking his fist, original vs. Rejuvenation

FF7's field models lack even the basic facial emotions of FF6; each character has only one unchanging facial expression, and emotions are conveyed through exaggerated movement. In the Phoenix Rejuvenation Project, that doesn't change -- and it's a lot easier to accept a static facial expression when it's just a couple of lines and dots than when it's more fully formed, easier to accept ridiculous arm-waving from a squat little Playmobil man than one who's more reasonably proportioned.

And even if they could somehow take all that out, give the characters emote animations that fit their new models, you'd still have the Honeybee Inn, Sephiroth tossing people around like ragdolls in Nibelheim, Yuffie leaping across the screen, and, oh yeah, a talking stuffed cat. There are large swaths of the game that simply cannot be made to fit this art style.

I'm not opposed to overhauling FF7's field graphics by any means -- but Team Avalanche has the right idea: keep them chibi, just make them smoother and more detailed chibis.

Of course, even that approach is fraught with peril; FF9 tried it and we got a leading lady who doesn't look like a detailed chibi so much as, well, a dwarf.

Image: Final Fantasy 9's Princess Garnet

Next time: An attempt at a thorough critical analysis of Final Fantasy 7, what it did right and what it did wrong. Combat! Love triangles! Japanese nuclear anxiety! Recurring themes, both literary and musical! Keep goin'? Off course!

And in the meantime, don't forget to join the discussion currently raging at Brontoforumus!

Revisiting NIMH

2010-12-29, 7:43 pm
Categories: Books, Cartoons, Movies, Stream of Consciousness

My mom read me Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH when I was a kid. A few times, as I recall.

I first saw Secret of NIMH on VHS when I was in fourth grade. Mostly I was put off by the divergences from the book.

Now, the movie's got a pretty devoted fanbase, and I do love me some Bluth, so I decided to give it another shot 18 years later and see what the fuss was about. I figured my older self would be more ready to appreciate the movie on its own merits.

On one level, I was right: it was much easier to appreciate the gorgeous animation, the superb voice casting, and the sheer scope and ambition of the project than when I was 10. On the other, my gripes with the movie remain surprisingly similar to what they were back then.

Some spoilers follow, as well as my dim recollections of how things went in a book I haven't revisited in twentyish years.

First, the good: the movie is fucking beautiful. Just amazingly animated. I love the character designs, from the scabby, scaly claws of Nicodemus and the owl to Dragon the cat, who resembles a nightmare version of the Cheshire Cat. Bluth was a visionary who helped drag animation from the dark ages after Disney's death, and he assembled one hell of a crew (I noticed a Bruce W Timm in the credits). And the cast -- well, Derek Jacobi is currently touring internationally in a critically-acclaimed performance of King Lear.

It's also, as best I remember it, a decent if truncated recreation of the major arc of the book: Mrs. Frisby (Brisby in the movie) needs to move her house because her sick child can't travel, she's directed to a group of superintelligent rats living under the rosebush, and they help her because her husband was a compatriot of theirs. It turns out they were subjected to scientific experiments at the National Institute of Mental Health; they've escaped and are currently in hiding, stealing electricity from a farmer's house, but they want to move shop and survive on their own resources. This has to happen a lot faster than anticipated because the scientists from NIMH track them down and seek to destroy their lair.

The movie does a pretty good job of telling that story in under 90 minutes. But it's got its share of flaws, too.

First of all, I can see why the movie had trouble finding an audience on release: because it finds trouble finding its audience in its presentation. It's too scary for young children, but the humor is too dopey for older ones.

As for the changes -- well, I think bringing Jenner in as a present antagonist instead of relegating him to flashbacks, and giving the film a clear villain, is a smart move. However, I have to go with 10-year-old Thad's assessment that all the nuance is drained out of his character from the book. Book Jenner was a tragic figure; not evil per se, just someone who had a fundamental disagreement with Nicodemus's plan. Here he's a conniving, mustache-twirling, murderous cliché. And an irrational one at that -- when Mrs. Brisby warns the rats that the NIMH scientists are coming to destroy their lair, Jenner calls her a liar and attacks her. How does that make sense? He may be a power-mad murderer, but he has no reason to doubt her, and it's hardly in his best interest just to assume she's lying and go back home without investigating whether or not anyone actually is coming to kill him and undo the life's work he's fought so hard to preserve. All in all, the movie trades a complex character for a lame caricature.

And about that "NIMH is coming, you have to escape" bit? No payoff! We never see the rats scrambling to move; we just find out they got out of there, seemingly with no pain or trouble in the process. The climax of the book is completely gone, with the fight with Jenner taking its place.

And the fight with Jenner -- well, I'm not as bothered by Nicodemus's death in the movie as 10-year-old Thad was; it's a tragic, affecting scene, and killing off the wise old mentor character is a classic storytelling component that is probably more satisfying to a general audience than the book's ending, where Nicodemus survives but Justin apparently, but not certainly, dies.

But then there's a swordfight.

Don't get me wrong, swordfights are awesome. And this particular swordfight is awesome. But it doesn't really fit. Those miniature swords look awfully well-made; they're not what you'd expect a group of rats living under a rosebush to make, no matter how highly developed they were. And what do they have them for? Justin's a guard, but we never actually see him turn a sword on anyone outside of this scene. The rats presumably don't want to swordfight the cat because it would risk revealing their existence to the farmer -- so why do they have them in the first place?

And the swordfight leads to the movie's biggest weakness: the fucking amulet.

See, in the movie, Nicodemus has two magic artifacts: a screenie thing that lets him watch the outside world and show flashbacks, and a magic amulet. I'll come back to the amulet in a minute, but let me start by saying the screen contributes absolutely nothing to the story. We see Nicodemus looking through it at the beginning and narrating to the audience that Mrs. Brisby is going to ask him for help, and then later he has her look through it so she can see the origin story.

You don't need a damn magic screen for either of these things.

Nicodemus is sharp enough to know Mrs. Brisby is going to come knocking on his door following her husband's death without a damn magic screen. And Mrs. Brisby doesn't need to see the origin story flashback; only the audience does. The screen as a framing device is used as an excuse for some of the best animation in the film, but again, you don't need a magic screen to set up the use of special effects to frame a flashback; that's a movie trope that the audience already understands.

But the real irony of using the magic screen to show the origin story is that it effectively demonstrates why the magic screen doesn't fit the story. We're looking at a story about rats who become superintelligent as a result of medical experiments. It is fundamentally a science fiction story. The magic artifacts don't match the SF premise, and are never fucking explained; Nicodemus just has them, because wise old people in movies have magical artifacts.

Which brings us to the amulet. The movie doesn't bother explaining where it came from, just that Nicodemus has it for some reason, and that Jenner apparently knows what it is but doesn't know Nicodemus has it. Which really doesn't make a whole lot of sense, because you have to figure that if Jenner knew about a magic artifact but didn't know who had it, Nicodemus would be a really, really obvious guess.

So okay. The rats set up an elaborate pulley system to move Mrs. Brisby's house; Jenner sabotages it and causes the whole thing to collapse and kill Nicodemus. Jenner gets in a swordfight with Justin; Jenner's lackey, who's been reluctant about this whole "let's kill Nicodemus" plan for some time, saves Justin and then he and Jenner both die. Then, when all hope seems lost, Mrs. Brisby moves her house using her magic amulet.

So okay. My biggest problem with the amulet? It's not that it doesn't make sense in the context of the story, it's not that its origin and purpose are never explained, it's not that it's a MacGuffin and a deus ex machina. My biggest problem with the amulet is that fucking amulet is an asshole. Seriously. The fucking thing could have moved Mrs. Brisby's house any time, but it waited until three people were dead. And two of them seemed like pretty nice guys!

List of Thundercats Episodes

2010-06-27, 9:05 pm
Categories: Cartoons, Stream of Consciousness, TV

First, a note on ordering, which is much more complicated with Thundercats than Silverhawks.

Regardless of what you may have seen on IMDb and various other sites, Thundercats ran four seasons, not two. Since the extent of the research the guys at Warner did for the Thundercats DVD release appears to have been "look it up on IMDb", the DVD's themselves give the wrong number of seasons.

(The best proof I've found for the four-season claim -- other than my own not-inconsiderable memory -- is on purrsiathunder.org. Purrsia has collected some original scripts, which are dated.)

(Also, if all goes well, you may be reading this at some point in the future when IMDb is no longer wrong. I'm trying to fix it but it's taken some time to convince the editors.)

(Update 2014-10-09: Per the excellent Hear the Roar! by David Crichton, there were two production seasons which were split into four broadcast seasons. The second production season was made up of 60 episodes and split into 3 broadcast seasons of 20 episodes, each added to syndication a year apart. Thanks to Mr. Crichton's book, I have finally convinced IMDb to fix its stupid madeup airdates.)

But it's still not that simple, because the original broadcast order of Thundercats was itself wrong, with first-season episodes airing out of story order -- notably, the Lion-O's Anointment arc aired with a bunch of episodes in-between instead of all five episodes running in a row. So there's an alternate order for those, too. Purrsia calls it the Modern Order. It's apocryphal, but I'm using it here because it makes a damn sight more sense than the broadcast order.

So, to wit, I've given three different versions of the numbering: MO for Modern Order, BO for Broadcast Order, and DVD for DVD order (which is the same as broadcast order but numbered differently).

Thundercats-Ho! aired as a TV movie and then was split up into 5 episodes. Note that numbering it as 1x66-70 is not strictly accurate, as it falls between season 1 and 2, but I'm using that numbering for sorting purposes.

So, to it.

Update 2014-10-09: Also per Hear the Roar, it may interest you to note that Julian P. Gardner is an alias used by Jules Bass. (Probably less interesting, but still notable: Bill Ratter is an alias used by a writer named Deborah Goodwin, who to my knowledge does not have any credits beyond Thundercats and Silverhawks.)

MO BO DVD Title Writer
1x01 1x01 1x01 Exodus Leonard Starr
1x02 1x02 1x02 The Unholy Alliance Leonard Starr
1x03 1x03 1x03 Berbils Leonard Starr
1x04 1x04 1x04 The Slaves of Castle Plun-Darr Leonard Starr
1x05 1x07 1x07 Trouble With Time Ron Goulart & Julian P. Gardner
1x06 1x05 1x05 Pumm-Ra Julian P. Gardner
1x07 1x06 1x06 The Terror of Hammerhand Ron Goulart & Julian P. Gardner
1x08 1x08 1x08 The Tower of Traps Leonard Starr
1x09 1x09 1x09 The Garden of Delights Barney Cohen & Julian P. Gardner
1x10 1x10 1x10 Mandora — The Evil Chaser William Overgard
1x11 1x11 1x11 The Ghost Warrior Leonard Starr
1x12 1x12 1x12 The Doomgaze Stephen Perry
1x13 1x13 1x13 Lord of the Snows Bob Haney
1x14 1x14 1x14 The Spaceship Beneath the Sands Leonard Starr
1x15 1x15 1x15 The Time Capsule Peter Lawrence
1x16 1x16 1x16 The Fireballs of Plun-Darr William Overgard
1x17 1x17 1x17 All That Glitters Bob Haney
1x18 1x18 1x18 Spitting Image Howard Post
1x19 1x37 1x37 Lion-O's Anointment First Day — The Trial of Strength Leonard Starr
1x20 1x42 1x42 Lion-O's Anointment Second Day — The Trial of Speed Leonard Starr
1x21 1x46 1x46 Lion-O's Anointment Third Day — The Trial of Cunning Leonard Starr
1x22 1x50 1x50 Lion-O's Anointment Fourth Day — The Trial of Mind Power Leonard Starr
1x23 1x61 1x61 Lion-O's Anointment Final Day — The Trial of Evil Leonard Starr
1x24 1x19 1x19 Mongor Peter Lawrence
1x25 1x20 1x20 Return to Thundera Bob Haney
1x26 1x25 1x25 Snarf Takes Up the Challenge Peter Lawrence
1x27 1x31 1x31 Mandora and the Pirates William Overgard
1x28 1x23 1x23 The Crystal Queen Leonard Starr
1x29 1x24 1x24 Safari Joe Stephen Perry
1x30 1x32 1x32 Return of the Driller Howard Post
1x31 1x45 1x45 Turmagar the Tuska C. H. Trengove
1x32 1x26 1x26 Sixth Sense Peter Lawrence
1x33 1x21 1x21 Dr. Dometone William Overgard
1x34 1x22 1x22 The Astral Prison Peter Lawrence
1x35 1x34 1x34 Queen of 8 Legs Stephen Perry
1x36 1x33 1x33 Dimension Doom Bob Haney
1x37 1x43 1x43 The Rock Giant Peter Lawrence
1x38 1x27 1x27 The Thunder-Cutter William Overgard
1x39 1x48 1x48 Mechanical Plague Peter Lawrence
1x40 1x38 1x38 The Demolisher Bob Haney & Peter Lawrence
1x41 1x29 1x29 Feliner, Part 1 Stephen Perry
1x42 1x30 1x30 Feliner, Part 2 Stephen Perry
1x43 1x51 1x51 Excalibur Peter Lawrence
1x44 1x52 1x52 Secret of the Ice King Bob Haney
1x45 1x35 1x35 Sword in a Hole William Overgard
1x46 1x28 1x28 The Wolfrat C. H. Trengove
1x47 1x53 1x53 Good and Ugly Peter Lawrence
1x48 1x55 1x55 Divide and Conquer Lee Schneider
1x49 1x41 1x41 The Micrits Bruce Smith
1x50 1x59 1x59 The Superpower Potion C. H. Trengove
1x51 1x36 1x36 The Evil Harp of Charr-Nin Douglas Bernstein & Denis Markell
1x52 1x40 1x40 Tight Squeeze Stephen Perry
1x53 1x39 1x39 Monkian's Bargain Lee Schneider
1x54 1x57 1x57 Out of Sight C. H. Trengove
1x55 1x44 1x44 Jackalman's Rebellion Bruce Smith
1x56 1x58 1x58 The Mountain Danny Peary
1x57 1x60 1x60 Eye of the Beholder Kenneth E. Vose
1x58 1x47 1x47 The Mumm-Ra Berbil Jeri Craden
1x59 1x62 1x62 The Trouble with Thunderkittens Kimberly B. Morris
1x60 1x63 1x63 Mumm-Rana Bob Haney
1x61 1x49 1x49 Trapped Stephen Perry
1x62 1x54 1x54 The Transfer Lawrence Dukore & Lee Schneider
1x63 1x64 1x64 The Shifter Matthew Malach
1x64 1x56 1x56 Dream Master Heather M. Winters & Annabelle Gurwitch
1x65 1x65 1x65 Fond Memories Lee Schneider
1x66 1x66 2x01 Thundercats-Ho! Part 1 Leonard Starr
1x67 1x67 2x02 Thundercats-Ho! Part 2 Leonard Starr
1x68 1x68 2x03 Thundercats-Ho! Part 3 Leonard Starr
1x69 1x69 2x04 Thundercats-Ho! Part 4 Leonard Starr
1x70 1x70 2x05 Thundercats-Ho! Part 5 Leonard Starr
2x01 2x01 2x06 Mumm-Ra Lives! Part 1 Leonard Starr
2x02 2x02 2x07 Mumm-Ra Lives! Part 2 Leonard Starr
2x03 2x03 2x08 Mumm-Ra Lives! Part 3 Leonard Starr
2x04 2x04 2x09 Mumm-Ra Lives! Part 4 Leonard Starr
2x05 2x05 2x10 Mumm-Ra Lives! Part 5 Leonard Starr
2x06 2x06 2x11 Catfight Chris Trengove
2x07 2x07 2x12 Psych Out Sandy Fries
2x08 2x08 2x13 The Mask of Gorgon Romeo Muller
2x09 2x09 2x14 The Mad Bubbler Kimberly Morris
2x10 2x10 2x15 Together We Stand Herb Engelhardt
2x11 2x11 2x16 Ravage Island George Hampton & Mike Moore
2x12 2x12 2x17 Time Switch Sandy Fries
2x13 2x13 2x18 The Sound Stones J. Larry Carroll
2x14 2x14 2x19 Day of the Eclipse Kimberly Morris
2x15 2x15 2x20 Sideswipe William Overgard
2x16 2x16 2x21 Mumm-Rana's Belt James Rose
2x17 2x17 2x22 Hachiman's Honor J. Larry Carroll
2x18 2x18 2x23 Runaways Bill Ratter
2x19 2x19 2x24 Hair of the Dog Chris Trengove
2x20 2x20 2x25 Vultureman's Revenge Herb Engelhardt
3x01 3x01 2x26 Thundercubs, Part 1 Peter Lawrence
3x02 3x02 2x27 Thundercubs, Part 2 Peter Lawrence
3x03 3x03 2x28 Thundercubs, Part 3 Peter Lawrence
3x04 3x04 2x29 Thundercubs, Part 4 Peter Lawrence
3x05 3x05 2x30 Thundercubs, Part 5 Peter Lawrence
3x06 3x06 2x31 Totem of Dera J. Larry Carroll
3x07 3x07 2x32 Chain of Loyalty Bill Ratter & Peter Lawrence
3x08 3x08 2x33 Crystal Canyon Sandy Fries
3x09 3x09 2x34 The Telepathy Beam Kimberly Morris
3x10 3x10 2x35 Exile Isle William Overgard
3x11 3x11 2x36 The Key to Thundera Matthew Malach
3x12 3x12 2x37 Return of the Thundercubs J. Larry Carroll
3x13 3x13 2x38 The Formula Kimberly Morris
3x14 3x14 2x39 Locket of Lies Bill Ratter
3x15 3x15 2x40 Bracelet of Power Bill Ratter
3x16 3x16 2x41 The Wild Workout Becky Hartman
3x17 3x17 2x42 The Thunderscope George Hampton & Mike Moore
3x18 3x18 2x43 The Jade Dragon William Overgard
3x19 3x19 2x44 The Circus Train William Overgard
3x20 3x20 2x45 The Last Day J. Larry Carroll
4x01 4x01 2x46 Return to Thundera! Part 1 Peter Lawrence
4x02 4x02 2x47 Return to Thundera! Part 2 Peter Lawrence
4x03 4x03 2x48 Return to Thundera! Part 3 Peter Lawrence
4x04 4x04 2x49 Return to Thundera! Part 4 Peter Lawrence
4x05 4x05 2x50 Return to Thundera! Part 5 Peter Lawrence
4x06 4x06 2x51 Leah J. Larry Carroll & David Carren
4x07 4x07 2x52 Frogman Kimberly Morris
4x08 4x08 2x53 The Heritage Bill Ratter & Peter Lawrence
4x09 4x09 2x54 Screwloose William Overgard
4x10 4x10 2x55 Malcar George Hampton & Mike Moore
4x11 4x11 2x56 Helpless Laughter Matthew Malach
4x12 4x12 2x57 Cracker's Revenge William Overgard
4x13 4x13 2x58 The Mossland Monster Chris Trengove
4x14 4x14 2x59 Ma-Mutt's Confusion Beth Bornstein
4x15 4x15 2x60 Shadowmaster Dennis J. Woodyard
4x16 4x16 2x61 Swan Song William Overgard
4x17 4x17 2x62 Touch of Amortus Bill Ratter
4x18 4x18 2x63 The Zaxx Factor Matthew Malach
4x19 4x19 2x64 Well of Doubt Dennis J. Woodyard
4x20 4x20 2x65 The Book of Omens William Overgard

This post originally used Stuart Langridge's sorttable but was updated 2014-10-09 to use jQuery, tablesorter, and parser-ignore-articles, and then on 2015-09-25 to use Mottie's tablesorter fork; icons courtesy of Font Awesome.

List of Silverhawks Episodes

2010-06-12, 3:13 pm
Categories: Cartoons, TV

# Title Writer
01 The Origin Story Peter Lawrence
02 Journey To Limbo Peter Lawrence
03 The Planet Eater William Overgard
04 Save The Sun Peter Lawrence
05 Stop Time Stopper Lee Schneider
06 Darkbird Steve Perry
07 The Backroom William Overgard
08 The Threat Of Drift Bruce Smith
09 Sky Shadow Kimberly Morris
10 Magnetic Atraction Chris Trengove
11 Gold Shield Bruce Smith
12 Zero The Memory Thief Jeri Craden
13 The Milk Run Lee Schneider
14 The Hardware Trap, Part 1 Peter Lawrence
15 The Hardware Trap, Part 2 Lee Schneider
16 Race Against Time Chris Trengove
17 Operation Big Freeze Jeri Craden
18 The Ghost Ship Chris Trengove
19 The Great Galaxy Race William Overgard
20 Fantascreen Steve Perry
21 Hotwing Hits Limbo Peter Lawrence
22 The Bounty Hunter J.V.P. Mundy
23 Zeek's Fumble Peter Lawrence
24 The Fighting Hawks Kimberly Morris
25 The Renegade Hero Leonard Starr
26 One On One William Overgard
27 No More Mr. Nice Guy Chris Trengove
28 Music Of The Spheres Lee Schneider
29 Limbo Gold Rush Steve Perry
30 Countdown To Zero Chris Trengove
31 Amber Amplifier Bill Ratter
32 The Saviour Stone Bob Haney
33 Smiley Bruce Shlain
34 Gotbucks Bob Haney
35 Melodia's Siren Song Lawrence Dukore
36 Tally-Hawk Returns Stephanie Swafford
37 Undercover Danny Peary
38 Eye Of Infinity Kenneth Vose
39 A Piece Of The Action Bruce Smith
40 Flashback Kimberly Morris
41 Super Birds Bruce Shlain
42 The Blue Door Cy Young
43 The Star Of Bedlama Kimberly Morris
44 The Illusionist Jeri Craden
45 The Bounty Hunter Returns Steve Perry
46 The Chase Bruce Smith
47 Switch Beth Bornstein & J.V.P. Mundy
48 Junkyard Dog Bob Haney
49 Window In Time J.V.P. Mundy
50 Gangwar, Part 1 William Overgard
51 Gangwar, Part 2 William Overgard
52 Sneak Attack, Part 1 Cy Young
53 Sneak Attack, Part 2 Cy Young
54 Moon-Star Peter Larson & Alice Knox
55 Diamond Stick-Pin Peter Lawrence
56 Burnout Bill Ratter
57 Battle Cruiser Lee Schneider
58 Small World Kimberly Morris
59 Match-Up Bruce Smith
60 Stargazer's Refit William Overgard
61 The Invisible Destroyer Dow Flint Kowalczyk
62 The Harder They Fall Chris Trengove
63 Uncle Rattler Beth Bornstein
64 Zeek's Power Matthew Malach
65 Airshow Peter Lawrence

Updated 2010-06-27 to make the table sortable, courtesy of Stuart Langridge's sorttable.

Updated 2014-10-09; switched to jQuery, tablesorter, and parser-ignore-articles; icons courtesy of Font Awesome.

Updated 2015-09-25: switched to Mottie's tablesorter fork.

Steve Perry

2010-05-24, 6:37 pm
Categories: Cartoons, Comics, TV

I was 26 before I heard Steve Perry's name, but I was probably 2 the first time I saw his work.

Perry was a writer for Thundercats, a cartoon that's always been dear to my heart. He made the news on comics sites last year, when Steve Bissette revealed Perry was dying of cancer and didn't have a dime to his name.

With help from the Hero Initiative, Perry pulled through, but this past Friday, news came out that he's missing and possibly murdered. Details are incomplete and grisly, and I feel like repeating them here would be exploitative; I'll just give a link to Bissette's blog instead.

But one thing that jumped out at me from that post:

I would welcome a complete listing of Steve's writing credits for [Thundercats and Silverhawks]; please note that the imdb listing for 'Steve Perry' is incorrect, conflating his TV writing credits with another animation writer named Steve Perry (http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0675310/), who is possibly the science-fiction novelist Steve Perry. My friend Steve Perry only scripted for story editor Peter Lawrence on the two Rankin/Bass series noted here.

On top of everything else that's horrible about this story, it's not right that Perry's work is not known. And so I've gone through and compiled a list of the writers for each Thundercats episode myself -- I'll publish it in full shortly, but in the meantime, here's a list of Perry's episodes.

  • The Doomgaze
  • Safari Joe
  • Queen of 8 Legs
  • Feliner (2-parter)
  • Tight Squeeze
  • Trapped

(There may be a few more; I'll have to break out my VHS collection to check, as Warner decided some of the episodes on the DVD's didn't need title cards. Or background music. Or to be listed in the correct order. And that the last three years of the show were all the same season.)

Thundercats meant a lot to me. Perry and others filled my youth with fantasy and science fiction and magic and good and evil, with dreams of heroism and nightmares of Mumm-Ra watching me in his cauldron. The news about Perry serves as a jarring reminder of how nasty the real world is, and how unlike those fantasy worlds, where good always triumphs, evil fears its own reflection (at least until season 2), and despite an abundance of weapons, nobody ever really gets hurt.

Gail Simone has suggested honoring Perry by donating to the Hero Initiative, the organization responsible for giving Perry hope this past year. His plight is a tragically common one; there are a whole lot of people in the comics industry who don't see royalties from their work and who can't support themselves later in life.

Thank you, Steve Perry. Justice, truth, honor, and loyalty.

Form and Function

2010-02-18, 9:46 pm
Categories: Cartoons, Comics, Games, Movies, Music, Stream of Consciousness, Tech, TV

A few weeks back, I rented Hellboy: Sword of Storms. It was a neat little movie, and adhered pretty well to the the comics' folklore vibe. The highlight was a sequence adapting Heads.

And it occurred to me, you know, the best Hellboy stories are 8-page adaptations of folk tales, in which Hellboy himself plays only a minor role. Similarly, wouldn't it be great to see some 10-minute Hellboy animated shorts?

It's a real pity that both 8-page comic stories and 10-minute animated shorts have fallen by the wayside. DC, at least, seems interested in bringing them back: they've been doing 8-page "secondary features" in some of their popular titles, and next week's animated Crisis on Two Earths will also include a 10-minute Spectre short. Which is the perfect length for a Spectre story.

And of course all this has me thinking, Why 22 pages? Why 22 minutes? Why 6-issue arcs? Stories should take all the time they need; no more and no less.

Which isn't to say that rigid parameters can't foster creativity. The BioWare Writing Contest I participated in a few years back had some very tight guidelines -- only so many characters, only one location allowed, and that location has to be a pretty tiny square. But in a way, that stimulated creativity. Sometimes, you need parameters.

Douglas Adams is a favorite example. His best Hitchhiker's Guide work was written for radio, with a rigid three-act structure and length requirement for each episode, with the requisite pacing those things entail. Those episodes were adapted as the first two books of the Trilogy. The third, Life, the Universe and Everything, was adapted from an unused Doctor Who pitch, so it was conceived around a predefined structure as well. The last two books, where Adams took a more freestyle approach, tended to flail a bit; they were adapted by Dirk Maggs for radio a few years back and, for my money, worked much better with his judicious editing.

(The awesomeness of The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul does not fit my narrative as, to the best of my knowledge, it wasn't adapted from a radio or TV format. The first Dirk book was, though.)

There are plenty of writers who could benefit from tighter restrictions. Will Eisner put as much plot in a 7-page Spirit story as Brian Michael Bendis does in a 132-page Avengers arc. Sometimes I like longer, decompressed stories that spend more time on the scenery and the atmosphere. But there should still be a place for those weird little Hellboy stories.

I recently read Fables: 1001 Nights of Snowfall. Its pacing and form were noticeably different from the typical Fables books, because of its format: it was written as a graphic novel, rather than simply collecting 6 issues of a serial comic.

(A tangent on nomenclature: I absolutely despise the term graphic novel as it is commonly used, ie as a synonym for "comic book" used by people who think they're too cool for Spider-Man. However, it is a useful term when used in its original sense, ie a comic written in long form instead of being serialized in stapled, 22-page, monthly increments.)

Of course, 1001 Nights isn't a graphic novel so much as a graphic short story collection -- far from being a longform Fables story that takes its time, it's a series of stories which are shorter and tighter than a typical issue of Fables. So actually, it's more along the lines of those 8-page Hellboy stories I've been yammering about.

More in the "paced like a novel" vein would be DC's upcoming Earth One books. While it is obvious that these stories need to be published, as nobody has retold Superman's origin story in over three weeks, it's going to be interesting seeing them told with a little more breathing room, without the overwhelming, breakneck pace of Superman: Secret Origin.

I kid, but you know, the nice thing about constantly retelling Superman's origin is that now the Siegel heirs get a cut.

At any rate, once the rehashes are done, it would be quite nice to see DC tell some new stories with these characters in this format -- stories as long or as short as they need to be, at whatever pace suits the piece, without having to speed toward a cliffhanger every 22 pages.

V for Vendetta is actually a decent example -- yes, it was serialized, but its chapters don't fit into a consistent, forced length or pace. And while some of the chapters were climactic action sequences of V stabbing people a lot, others had him simply soliloquizing about anarchy.

(And funnily enough, the guy writing Earth One: Superman is J Michael Straczynski, the same guy whose The Brave and the Bold is currently the best 22-page superhero book that actually tells 22-page stories -- but whose run on Thor was decompressed, organic, and even meandering. Which is not a criticism, as I loved his Thor; it's just a statement that the man can write very well in different formats.)

If the world is a just and beautiful place, Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog is a template for the future of television. It manages the rather neat trick of adhering to a rigid structure that also just happens to be noticeably different from the traditional structure of a TV show: three 13-minute acts, each itself featuring a beginning, a middle, an end, and four songs. It's similar to, but distinct from, the standard three-act structure and 44-minute length of an American TV show.

Even The Daily Show -- God, not a week goes by anymore but one of the interviews goes over. Which is swell, but the way this is handled online is completely boneheaded: if you go to Full Episodes on thedailyshow.com, or view an episode on Hulu, you get the broadcast episode, which shows the truncated interview, followed by an admonition to check out the website, followed by Moment of Zen and credits. I can see this as an unfortunate requirement for broadcast, but guys, Internet videos can be more than 22 minutes. Why in the hell do I have to click through to a different page on the site (or, if I'm watching from Hulu, a different site entirely) to watch the rest of the interview? It's viewer-unfriendly, especially if you use your PC as a media center hooked up to your TV. Cut the full interview into the damn episode. Add an extra commercial in the middle if you have to. (It would be swell if you didn't show the exact same commercial at every single break, but that's a separate presumably-silly-and-useless "rant".)

At least they've wised up a little and started showing just the first part of the interview in the broadcast episode and then showing the rest in the "Full Interview" link on the website. It used to be they'd show a chopped-up version of the interview in the broadcast episode, meaning that instead of the Full Interview link picking up where the show left off, it had five minutes' worth of the same content spread out across it.

You know, it seems like the youngest of the major media is also the one with the least rigid requirements for length. Video games can be anything from a three-second WarioWare microgame to a persistent world that players sink years into. People may grouse a bit that Portal or Arkham Asylum is too short, but it doesn't prevent them from being highly-regarded, bestselling titles.

Which is, of course, not to say that longer games don't have to function under tight restrictions. They're often very high-budget affairs with a hell of a lot of people involved (as Dragon Age tries to forcibly remind you with its absurdly slow credits crawl) -- programmers, writers, artists, and so on. The Mass Effect games have voiced player dialogue and let the player choose Shepard's sex, which means every single one of those lines has to be recorded twice. (And frankly that doesn't seem like enough variety -- I have a Samuel L Jackson lookalike who says "aboot".)

And those restrictions are probably why every dialogue choice in ME is broken up into a predictable paragon/neutral/renegade choice. That kind of very-unsubtle delineation is exactly the sort of thing western RPG developers have been trying to get out of (as in both The Witcher and Dragon Age), but in the context of ME it works quite well -- I've even tried my hand at writing in a three-choices, no-hubs dialogue style and it works very organically. (For the ludicrous amount of dialogue in Dragon Age, there were places I could see the seams showing -- spots where I'd have three dialogue options and, as soon as the NPC spoke, knew that all three led to that exact same response. But that's probably a lot harder to notice if you've never written a dialogue tree yourself, and it's certainly an artform in and of itself, giving a response that works equally well for three different questions. I can only think of one occasion in the dozens of hours of Dragon Age where a writer screwed up and had a question hub that began with an NPC answering a specific question in a way that didn't make any sense if the dialogue looped back.)

And of course it's the medium that allows this kind of longform storytelling. Game length is no longer restricted by the arcade environment. Which is, of course, not to say that short-play games don't get made anymore -- Street Fighter 4 is a high-budget, "hardcore gamer" example, but Nintendo's entire business is built around games a casual player can pick up and play for ten minutes at a time. Ditto every Flash game on the Web, and most games on the iPhone.

And, indeed, Internet delivery is going to liberate other media from their restrictions. Eventually, we're bound to see shows like The Daily Show just run more than 22 minutes if they have to, and, God willing, we'll see more offbeat stuff like Dr. Horrible. The Web's given us comics as diverse as Achewood, Dr. McNinja, Templar, Arizona, and FreakAngels, and cartoons from Adventure Time to Homestar Runner to Charlie the Unicorn to Gotham Girls to the complete version of Turtles Forever. It's also allowed MST3K to continue in the form of the downloadable RiffTrax and the direct-order Cinematic Titanic.

Variety is the spice of life. I love comics -- and yeah, that includes mainstream superhero comics. But I'm sick of all of them having the exact same structure. Fortunately, I think we're on the edge of an age of experimentation.

Or another damn market crash. It is an odd-numbered decade now, after all.

Shocking Exposé

2008-02-18, 6:58 pm
Categories: Cartoons, Politics

So it seems that today's top election news is that a recent Barack Obama speech lifted lines from a 2006 speech by Massachusetts Governor Devall Patrick. Judge for yourself:

Obama:

Don't tell me words don't matter. "I have a dream" -- just words? "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal" -- just words? "We have nothing to fear but fear itself" -- just words? Just speeches?

Patrick:

"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal" -- just words? Just words? "We have nothing to fear but fear itself" -- just words? "Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country." Just words? "I have a dream" -- just words?

Truly the most shocking thing any Presidential candidate has done in the past week. (Well, if you don't count, say, McCain deciding he's pretty okay with the whole torture thing after all. Did I mention how proud I am to have voted for him in '04?)

But my friends, I have unearthed something strikingly similar that predates both quotes. Again, judge for yourself:

Just a statue? Is the Statue of Liberty just a statue? Is the Leaning Tower of Pizza just a statue?

That was Homer Simpson in The Telltale Head, which first aired February 25, 1990, significantly predating both speeches.

So there you have it -- both men plagiarized their speeches, from an 18-year-old episode of The Simpsons.

Stunning, I know. I expect a book deal out of this. We may even be talking Pulitzer material.

I Want to Believe

2008-01-21, 2:13 am
Categories: Cartoons, Politics, Stream of Consciousness

This evening, as I was driving home from Phoenix, NPR was playing Dr. King's Why I Oppose the War In Vietnam speech. I got distracted and missed my exit. That may not have been causal -- I don't usually come that way and have missed that exit before -- but it was the first time I'd heard the audio and it certainly had my attention.

Kudos to NPR for acknowledging King's more controversial later years -- every year at this time, we see the usual round of King retrospectives, and too often they skip from I Have a Dream to the assassination, glossing over his outspoken opposition to the war and his focus on economic inequality.

I also just read Barack Obama's speech from the Ebenezer Baptist Church, and it reminded me why he struck such a chord in '04. The man gives a damn fine speech, and today he delivered one worthy of being spoken from Dr. King's own pulpit.

But I am a cynic.

Obama says, "The Scripture tells us that we are judged not just by word, but by deed." Very well. "We have scorned our gay brothers and sisters instead of embracing them" are some very pretty words. But touring with the vehemently anti-gay Donnie McClurkin was a not-so-pretty deed. And his backpedaling explanation that McClurkin isn't anti-gay but only wants to cure "unhappy gays" is not only political weaselry, it's also the plot of X-Men 3.

"It is not enough to decry the disparities of health care and yet allow the insurance companies and the drug companies to block much-needed reforms" -- those are pretty words too. Words which lead me to wonder why Obama wants the insurance companies and the drug companies to help him write his healthcare plan.

Obama says a lot of pretty -- hell, downright inspiring -- things. But in 2006 he voted for a non-binding withdrawal plan for the Iraq War over Kerry and Feingold's bill to set a date. In 2005 he voted to renew the PATRIOT Act. Judged not just by word but by deed indeed, Senator.

Two years ago The Boondocks produced one of the finest half-hours of television I have ever seen, an episode titled "Return of the King" which explored the premise of Dr. King waking up from a 30-year coma in the modern era. At one point, King asks, "What happened, Huey? What happened to our people?" Huey responds, hesitantly, "I think...everyone was waiting for Martin Luther King to come back."

And that's the tragedy of the modern civil rights movement: for forty years, America has been waiting for Martin Luther King to come back. (It's also the tragedy of the current season of Boondocks, which has descended from this Peabody-winning meditation on our culture to jokes about movie ticket prices, and whose Katrina episode centered around Granddad trying to get rid of his mooching relatives, but that's a tangent.)

And for a nation and a movement so desperate to see Martin Luther King come back, it can be very tempting to mistake Barack Obama for him. He is an inspiring orator, and if he becomes President it will be the most significant step for racial equality since the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

But Obama is not Martin Luther King. I seldom find myself in the position of defending Hillary Clinton, but she was right when she said, "Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. led a movement. He was gassed. He was beaten. He was jailed. And he gave a speech that was one of the most beautifully, profoundly important speeches ever written in America, the I Have a Dream speech." Obama, meanwhile, has sat quietly on the Senate floor and taken safe positions on controversial issues rather than risk his reputation for what he believes is right. (Clinton has too, of course -- even moreso, I would argue -- but that doesn't make the King/Obama contrast false.)

I also think Clinton has been attacked unfairly for her remark that it took LBJ to sign the Civil Rights Act. She wasn't impugning Dr. King's legacy, she was merely recognizing President Johnson's role -- and I don't think any rational person could argue that, had Richard Nixon been President in 1964, the act still would have passed.

All this to say...I hate politics. There are moments when Barack Obama's words inspire me, when I think of how he could be a great leader, how he could restore America's position in the world and, more, how he could bring us closer than ever to recognizing those self-evident truths that Jefferson mentioned back in 1776. I hear him speak of the continuing struggles for equality, not just racial but also sexual and economic, and I want to see a leader who can speak to the nation's conscience and make those dreams a reality.

But in the end, all available data show that he is just another politician. I may well mark his name on my ballot two weeks from now, but I fear that too will be an exercise in cynicism -- if I vote for him, it will not be because I trust him, but because I mistrust him less than I do Clinton.

I think it's hard to be an optimist in America in this day and age. Perhaps incremental improvement is all we can hope for. I can't say I think that's enough...but I guess I'll take it.

An Open Letter to Mayor Thomas M Menino

2007-02-01, 9:23 pm
Categories: Cartoons, E-Mail, Politics

I'd like to dedicate this post to the late, great Molly Ivins. I may not have her wit, but I do share her love of sarcastic mockery of absurd politicians. Consider this my way of making the ridiculous look ridiculous.

(Context, for those who haven't heard it. And please feel free to contact the mayor yourself.)

Dear Mr. Mayor,

I am not a constituent. I live in Arizona -- though I'd love to move to Boston one of these days.

I'm sure you're receiving a lot of messages from out-of-towners today. I will not sugarcoat -- that is because today, you are a national laughingstock.

Sir, your city was brought to its knees by Lite-Brite representations of blocky cartoon characters flashing obscene gestures.

Please reread that sentence. Take a moment for it to sink in. Because it certainly doesn't seem as if you've done so yet.

Again, Sir, I will be blunt: you should be embarrassed. That people within your city government would see an object like that and conclude that it was an explosive device is absurd. What were they thinking -- that Boston is under attack by the Riddler? Use your head, man -- if it were the Riddler, there would have been riddles!

But are you embarrassed? No. You have attempted to hide your Keystone Kops' incompetence behind a wall of outrage. You have set the narrative for the news reports; you have used language like "hoax" and listened as the media parroted your words. And incidentally, Sir, controlling a message by repeating distorted language and getting the media to do the same? That's a tactic best associated with Republicans.

Sir, this was not a hoax. Nobody, anywhere, ever dreamed that any human being could possibly mistake those objects for bombs. This is not a case of somebody crying "Wolf!" This is somebody saying, I don't know, "Toothbrush!" and your city officials reacting as if they heard "Wolf!" Instead of suggesting that perhaps the officials made a mistake, you are acting outraged -- outraged! -- that someone would dare say "Toothbrush!" in a post 9/11 world, knowing fully well how much it sounds like "Wolf!"

Yes, this is a sign of a post-9/11 world -- it is a sign of frightened, hysterical people who cannot think clearly and have unsound judgement. Mr. Mayor, a little old lady is no threat when she has a bottle of hand lotion in her carry-on bag. Cellophane and duct tape will not make us any safer in our beds. And a brightly-colored cartoon character flipping the bird bears no resemblance to a bomb. (Actually, perhaps this isn't intrinsically post-9/11 thinking after all -- I remember quite a few people stockpiling canned food in 1999.)

End this foolishness. Don't make any more arrests. Don't file any lawsuits. Just slink away. You don't even have to apologize for your behavior (though that's what somebody with class would do -- and possibly shrug it off with a self-effacing joke in the process). Just move on.

Otherwise, your legacy will be "the mayor who wasted tax dollars suing a cartoon company because his underlings couldn't tell the difference between a bomb and a Lite-Brite".

Think about it, Sir.

And have a happy Groundhog Day.

I assume you will enjoy it -- it's a holiday celebrating a rodent that jumps at his own shadow.

Yours,

Thaddeus R R Boyd
Phoenix, AZ