As I look at the coming Batman Beyond mini series coming from DC, I decided to reflect on the role cartoons have played in guiding kids to popular comic characters and teams. Those who are old enough to remember Fox Kids afternoon lineup will know exactly what I mean.
Being a more recent comic fan I look back at the early 1990's as a sort of golden age for comic book cartoon shows. With things like animated X-Men, Spiderman's animated adventures, Batman the Animated Series and Superman animated again right on his heels.
These are all pretty big name characters with 30+ years of history for each one. Yet each one was shown to a new generation. The stories were well written and highly entertaining (more so early on, but we'll come back to that). Many of these stories were of course based on the more classic stories, but many of them also changed or improved things for the t.v. show. I don't think anything stands out more that the Batman the Animated series episode 'Heart of Ice' retelling the creation of Mr. Freeze.
The shows did have a few short comings as well. The use of ultra high tech looking laser weapons instead of guns in the marvel based shows by everyone was a little off putting. Gotham city being a place where you can find virtual reality technology but the police drive cars from the 50's and use zeppelins instead of helicopters.
Beyond all this, what truly made the shows great was the way they remained faithful to the source material. The X-Men cartoon may have had a different lineup than what originally started in the comics, but it was still about a group fighting for the dream of acceptance. It presented characters to us until they were familiar. Then the next time we went by a comic shop or a book store and saw more adventures with these characters we all enjoyed. If you were very lucky there was even a comic shop guy willing to give you the 'real' story behind each character and which rack to buy it off.
Comments
UnshavenMarc Fri, Mar 19th, 2010 at 6:46 PM The first comic I paid for was an X-Men Adventures book, retelling the cartoon version of Juggernaut vs. Collosus.
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