Join the Fanholes for their discussion of Defenders of the Earth: The Story Begins and the Unaired Pilot on its 40th Anniversary!
Join the Fanholes for their discussion of Defenders of the Earth: The Story Begins and the Unaired Pilot on its 40th Anniversary!
Whenever I can make the time to get back to doing Comic Reader Resume podcasts again, I'll have to cover DotE, and I'm tempted to use this comment as a first draft. However, I'll restrain myself...(?)
ReplyDeleteI don't recall if you mentioned that Stan Lee wrote the lyrics to the show's theme song, and that says it all. I've talked before about how after the success of Batman '89, you had all this outdated shit like Dick Tracy and The Shadow greenlit. This was because Batman was a contemporary of the King Features Syndicate characters, and so all the old men in power in Hollywood saw a chance to geek out on what they liked as kids. Everyone in the early 20th century read comic strips, and they're what inspired kids like Stan and Jack Kirby... but they had to settle for working in the gutter trash medium of comic books, targeting young children, degenerates, and the feeble-minded. That's also why they moved into animation and strips whenever they could. Stuff like Star Wars, Indiana Jones, and Conan successfully mined that older, pulpier material by translating the appeal for contemporary audiences. And then there was stuff like the Doc Savage revival, which didn't. For the most part, same with DotE.
For years, I thought my first memory was seeing Star Wars at the drive-in, but I now think that may have been the 1979 re-release. If so, then I may have actually seen Buck Rogers in the 25th Century first, as it only had the one theatrical run in March before being re-cut into a two-part television pilot in the fall of 1979. I also saw Flash Gordon in 1980, but it didn't hit the same. I liked the aesthetic, but it was just sillier and less engaging. I also watched The New Adventures of Flash Gordon cartoon in first run on CBS, but I'm not sure in what order versus the film. Regardless, from the credit sequence alone, I was clued in that this was some old-timey science fantasy comic strip, which Buck Rogers wisely kept under wraps. Flash tipped his hand that he was my (proverbial) grandfather's hero, and so I always approached him as belonging to some other generation (as if Superman and Spider-Man were ever "mine" alone.) I didn't know shit about Mandrake, and The Phantom was that blueballs comic strip that looked like a super-hero thing, but had even less action than Stan Lee's goddamned awful Spider-Man one. As comparably receptive as I was towards DotE, it was giving "How Do You Do, Fellow Kids?"
That said, I was always moldy-oldie-curious when it came to non-Marvel/DC continuities, and I had an awareness that these were the prototypes for "real" comic book super-heroes. There was the swell theme song, Marvel animation, and just the sheer wealth of episodes. They ran weekday afternoons on Houston's UHF channel 26, so it was a prime slot around the same time as G.I. Joe and Thundercats. I perceived it as the most high profile UHF channel, and it became the FOX affiliate. The newer channel 20 was anchored by Transformers and Voltron, plus they had Super Sunday, but padded out with crap like Casper. They became a UPN affiliate, while the elder 39 eventually became a WB station. Before scoring the Disney Afternoon, they were stuck with also-rans like Silverhawks and Spiral Zone. I don't think the cartoon ran more than a season or two, even with the sizable episode count. From watching Secret Galaxy, it seems like it was part of the late '80s massacre of over-leveraged, would-be contenders. Still, I got my fill, unlike with Robotech, which I could never catch more than the back half of after school.
ReplyDeleteI liked the action figures, which were reasonably affordable and had nice sculpts. I still have my Flash Gordon, worse for wear, but lost Lothar, Phantom, and Mandrake early on along the way. Lothar especially was maybe the best looking figure in that size with African features. My main issue with them were that they were of awkward dimensions, too tall for Super Secret Power Wars, but dinky compared to MOTU/C.O.P.S./etc. So like my Indiana Jones from Temple, they tended to be "character actors" instead of stars in my play. Since I only held on to Flash, and he's got that formal military look, he was often the asshole martinet/Vermin Vundabar type, not a action stud. I was able ignore the literal stick up his backside, and the novelty (if not the mechanism) of the swinging fists wore off quick. Correcting a statement from the podcast, only the arm at the elbow was die-cast. The chest was "crunchy" hard plastic, contrasted against the weighted metal and the very soft, squishy heads that made them look a bit miss-matched. I also scored a NECA Flash for like $10 new, so he photo-bombed the Martian Manhunters' top level of my office toy shelves. I haven't seen any of the others go for less than $25-30, which is too rich for my passive level of fandom.
I sampled the Mad Cave Flash (along with Gatchaman and Dick Tracy,) but DotE had the wrong creative team. Dan Didio isn't a terrible scripter, but I don't need grimdark revisionist DotE, and I especially don't need them drawn by Jim Calafiore. I did buy Dynamite's Kings Watch trades, but never got around to actually reading them. I've also sampled The Phantom in comics many times, but there was always too much Tarzan where I wanted more Batman. Man, those Peter Chung designs on Phantom 2040 were something, though.