Dave Reviews Cartoons — page 4

The great actor Chadwick Boseman died last week, and it’s going to be a tremendous struggle to find a man as good as him to play Black Panther, which really was one of the best Marvel movies ever produced. With the character in mind, I thought I’d have a look at some of the appearances of Black Panther in animation building up to his explosion on film.

Previously (SLAM!) on X-Men!

• The X-Men escaped enslavement on Genosha.
• Who is Cable?
• Who is the “Scottish scientist”?
• What has happened to the X-Mansion?

Carrying on with the second half of season one…

I had something planned that blended both comics and wrestling, but ran out of time. In a bit of a notice, school is back in from next week, so I’ll be revising my review schedule and what I review and when. I hope you’re still enjoying reading about what I’m reviewing.

I looked at Pryde of the X-Men a few weeks ago, a failed pilot that was intended to launch an X-Men TV series. Just a few years later, an X-Men series would be launched that many consider THE X-Men series, even with a few subsequent versions that are pretty good in their way. I’ve always liked the show, never loved it, though, so I thought it was ripe for a look at again.

The writers really made use of the serial format, and the first season was definitely a go for broke effort, so I’m going to look at it in order here and there to give it a reappraisal.

Tried this a few weeks ago, but it didn’t really hit when I looked at The Legend of Prince Valiant, possibly as much because people are busy on the weekend, but let’s try again with Defenders of the Earth, which is like the Avengers or Justice League of King Features Syndicate, starring:

• Flash Gordon, and his son Rick
• The Phantom (27th iteration) and his daughter Jedda
• Mandrake the Magician and his ward Kshin, with pet alien Zuffy
• Lothar, Mandrake’s bodyguard, and his son LJ

Opposing them are Ming the Merciless, with his own son Prince Kro-Tan, and his ice warriors.

When I reviewed the Jim Cornette story compilation from IDW someone asked if I would do more “wrestling comics”. The answer was no, but I have found some wrestling-related comics that I think will be interesting. A big one will be coming next week, but for now it’s Batman vs. Bane in the Batman ’66 comic, which is written and drawn as if it’s the classic TV show with Adam West and Burt Ward. Let’s go to the match!

Full disclosure, I. Love. MASK. It was a great toyline and an even better cartoon series. There are some episodes of questionable quality, but overall I love it, so The Prometheon from Superman and The Rock Giant from Thundercats had me thinking about MASK’s episode that reminds me of it.

The Prometheon in one of the Superman episodes I reviewed yesterday reminds me of a character from a Thundercats episode I like, so I thought I’d review that and two other episodes I like too.

Seeing as I’ve broken into doing some Batman: The Animated Series episodes, I thought I’d have a look at a random smattering of Superman episodes, with animation again from the top level TMS production company.

Watching the beautifully animated Mighty Orbots made me want to watch the episodes that TMS animated for Batman: The Animated Series, so you get to read about them as I watch them.

I feel like that title was just lazy. Not cheap and lazy, just lazy.

What do you know about Mighty Orbots? Not a lot, but I’ve got the DVD of the series, always meant to watch it. I guess now will do. Let’s watch.

“You’ve looked at Bigfoot and the Muscle Machines and Inhumanoids, are you going to look at Robotix and Jem?”, I was asked.

“Sure!”, I replied. Let’s start with Robotix. Jem might be a little further off as I’m not as familiar with it because it was a “girly” show (even though I loved She-Ra, and more on that on Wednesday), but I’ll get there. We’ll have to get through Visionaries and Dino-Riders before that, though.

Yesterday’s review was of Bigfoot and the Muscle Machines, so as Inhumanoids originated from that same Super Sunday block and there were some comments about vaguely remembering it, I thought I’d have a look at the five-part mini-series that was shown in smaller chunks (quite obviously, as we’ll get to) alongside Bigfoot and the others.

I’ve recently been transferring some shows from video to DVD and this is one of them. My own history with it is seeing the trailer for it on a Transformers video as a kid, but never seeing or getting it fully myself. Then a friend of mine picked it up when we were in our teens and we watched it to make fun of it, mocking some of the voices and plot contrivances. As an adult, I picked it up on tape and was able to enjoy it more as what it was intended to be.

This is effectively a “movie”, although it only runs for 53 minutes. Sunbow produced it as a series of small parts to be included in a block they had with Robotix, Inhumanoids and Jem. Inhumanoids went a bit further and Jem went a lot further, but Bigfoot and Robotix didn’t develop beyond getting their “movie” collections of all the shorts stitched together.

I was planning on looking at Spider-Man: Blue today for my comic review, but when I went to the bookshelf to pull it I remembered I had this put aside and hadn’t properly looked at it, so today I’m going to read and review Jim Cornette Presents Behind the Curtain: Real Pro Wrestling Stories.

The recent reviews of Spider-Man and His Amazing Friends, including featuring appearances from the X-Men, prompted me to have a look at the 1989 pilot for a new X-Men show from Marvel Productions that didn’t get taken to series, Pryde of the X-Men. The single episode ended up being released on VHS, which is where it’s probably more widely been seen. It’s never been on DVD and isn’t on Disney+, so YouTube is the place to go for it now.

A little bit late today with my cartoon review. Time to look at the new Transformers show on Netflix. Spoilers ahead, I will be discussing events that occur in the show.

Teen Titans Go recommendation yesterday? Sure, as long as I can throw in some Brave and the Bold too!

Back one more time to the Spider-Friends. We’ve looked at the individual origin episodes, we’ve looked at the first season, now we’re going to finish up with the final season, from 1983.

“Is this guy gonna do Teen Titans?”, I was asked. Sure! Let’s have a look at Filmation’s Teen Titans segments from the sixties, Teen Titans from the noughties, and Teen Titans Go from the last few years.