Dr. Toon: Comic-Packed Discs
Sure, I remember Fantastic Four #1. I'll tell you where I first saw it: on the lower magazine shelf among the other comic books, in Roger's Drug Store on Blue Hill Ave. in Dorchester, Massachusetts. The big green monster on the cover was very cool, but, at that age, I had my mind set on other things. I looked up at my Bubby and pointed to the latest issue of Hot Stuff. Two minutes and 10 cents later, we were headed back up Callendar Street. My first and last chance to own FF#1 had unwittingly passed me by like cosmic rays fading into the cool air of that late fall day. Reed Richards, I hardly knew ye.
Roger's Drug Store was the only place it was possible to purchase comic books in 1961, as there were no comic book shops. My pals and I bought our comics, read them in the backyard or the clubhouse (in our case the slatted area beneath the porch), and left them riffling in the breeze wherever they happened to fall. No Mylar, no acid-free backing, no archival-quality products protecting anything. A comic book went from M to VF to P in a single afternoon, and no one thought about it twice, because we had already read the books, absorbed the stories, and came out flying, ready to clobber Lex Luthor's giant robots, trash Starro the Conqueror, or stand beside the Blackhawks in battle.
So it was for many years. A monthly comic book fix was possible only through the local drugstore or bookstore -- and later, convenience store -- if you wanted to read about your favorite superheroes. None of them were animated. While it is true that the Fleischer Superman cartoons were available oat the dawn of Saturday morning TV, they were actually old theatrical cartoons interspersed with sundry Harveytoons and Warner shorts.
In 1966, things changed for the better. Before that, fans of the DC or Marvel superhero genre had to make do with parodic fare such as Underdog or Mighty Mouse. Through the magic of animated cartoons, comic books began appearing on our TV screens. It took CBS executive Fred Silverman and Filmation Studios to bring an animated version of Superman to television. The New Adventures of Superman, despite its pedestrian animation, garnered the highest rating in the history of Saturday morning kidvid
Silverman and Filmation opened the floodgates for established comic book properties to come to TV. During that watershed year of 1966, Marvel Superheroes was produced by Steve Krantz under the aegis of Grantray-Lawrence Production and Paramount Studios. This well-remembered and beloved series consisted of drawings made by Marvel's top artists (usually consisting of extreme poses) that strongly resembled comic book panels. The "action" consisted of little more than camera pans and tilted angles, but one had the uncanny sense that one was actually reading a comic book in which physical action was taking place.
By 1967, the same outfit had produced a crude but popular Spider-Man series. The Fantastic Four followed Spidey to TV via ABC that season, and soon both DC and Marvel were emptying their pages on to what had become a very dynamic Saturday morning schedule. The superhero series that took over this specific timeslot throughout the late 1960s and early 1970s are too numerous to specifically mention in this piece; suffice it to say that at any given hour no one could turn the channel without seeing some caped and mighty hero (or team of same) bringing justice to their equally super foes.
After disappearing from television due to the protests of anti-violence watchdog groups, the Marvel and DC superheroes of the comic books returned in a far more sophisticated form in the 1990s. There was no comparison between Super Friends and Batman: The Animated Series because, during the mid-1980s, the concept of what it meant to be a superhero had changed. Although Marvel had introduced superheroes with emotional and personal baggage as far back as the initiation of their "silver age," most of the leading superhero comic books began to share a common thread by 1990.
Stories had become darker and more complex, and the psychological burdens of the characters became heavier as well. With the cost of comics rising steadily, more buyers were adults, and they had to be given more than just another tussle between Batman and the Joker or another slugfest featuring Ultron and the Avengers. They had to be given entertainment that suited new cultural mores, and if the comics were to be translated into animated shows, the same rules would have to apply.
Bruce Timm, Eric Radowski, and Alan Burnett delivered exactly that with Batman: The Animated Series, their landmark 1992 offering via Warner Bros. Television Animation. Much time could be spent extolling the outstanding features of this series, but chief among them was the mature content and sharp insight into any featured character's motivations. Marvel's most popular character, Spider-Man, had been animated many times before, but never was he lineated as brilliantly as in the (far too brief) 2003 opus Spider-Man: The New Animated Series. This show boasted Brian Michael Bendis as an executive co-producer, the same talent that had worked on the Ultimate Spider-Man comic. During the period, new animated incarnations of the X-Men, The Incredible Hulk, and the Fantastic Four were also making the rounds.
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