A Celebration of 1990s Animation, Part 1: Introduction

 

 

Those of you who have read my blog are fairly aware that the TV genre I have fundamentally ignored in this column is animation. As I have said, it is not because I do not recognize that there have been some truly brilliant entries into the genre, particularly from the Cartoon Network.  Every so often I have written about one of their brilliant series that has inspired me, such as Craig of The Creek or Midnight Train (which I was so sad to hear was prematurely cancelled. ) I never got a chance to fully appreciate such classics as Adventure Time or Steven Universe but that doesn’t mean I didn’t recognize their technical brilliance and superb storylines. And eventually I intend to write a rave about the brand new My Adventures With Superman which I have to say may be the single best retelling of this comic I’ve seen, full stop. (Some fans would not go that far, but everyone who has seen has already acknowledged it’s  a classic.)

In fact part of the reason I have never quite gone as much in depth on animated series is because I fear that my childhood prejudice would show. Because when I was a child and well into my college years I was fortunate enough to live in what really was the Camelot of animated cartoons.

It helped immensely that I was very lucky in my childhood that there were so many cable channels willing to show the greatest cartoons ever.  Some of my earliest memories of television are being exposed to the short subjects that are now practically impossible to find except late nights on some syndicated channels. I speak not just of the peerless work of Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies but the incredible array that MGM put together over decades. I don’t just mean Tom & Jerry, though I did get my fair share but much of the work that was done by Tex Avery at MGM, involving Droopy, Screwy Squirrel and all the bizarre animations in between. I had no idea what the fourth wall was until I was in my twenties but I sure as hell knew that every cartoon character wasn’t paying attention to it.  I witnessed the era of Popeye – the black and white ones  which were far more surreal, so many of the Disney short subjects – quite a few of which were clearly never meant for children – and so many animated cartoons that just seemed to be revues.  I didn’t get all the references when I saw Daffy Duck cavorting with Little Red Riding Hood among magazines and book stores but that didn’t mean I wasn’t laughing hysterically.

I also grew up in what would be the last gasp of network television to attempt animated cartoons. By the time I was thirteen NBC had decided to get out of the business  of Saturday morning cartoons; by the time I was in my senior year of high school, all of the networks save the WB had done the same. I’m not going to pretend that all of the cartoons that aired during my childhood were of the order of Garfield & Friends or Muppet Babies or The New Adventures of Winnie The Pooh but I do know that there was at least as much treasure as their was trash. The fact that the networks chose to dispose of so many of their cartoons after just one or two seasons has always been a tragedy of sorts: I don’t pretend they were all gems, but some of them – such as CBS’ Wildfire – deserved more than they got.

And of course from the time I was nine until my adulthood, syndication was more than willing to pick up the slack.  Those of us who came of age in the 1990s were witness to some of the most extraordinary cartoons in history. To be clear; with a few exceptions most of them were adaptations of source material. But what adaptations!  Who can forget the wonders of The Disney Afternoon and so many of incredible variations? We were privileged to enjoy the original Duck Tales, saw Chip and Dale come in to their own and see The Jungle Book adapted in a way no one could have thought possible, let alone work. Later on Disney would get more ambitious and original with such daring products as Darkwing Duck and the truly groundbreaking Gargoyles.

This would last until the WB took over syndication but it didn’t lead to the end. Indeed some of the best work would come from that era, such as Pinky and The Brain, Animaniacs, and one of the most undervalued gems I’ve ever seen: Hysteria! Of course Fox had taken quite a bit from its own with WB, including the incredible Tiny Toon Adventures.

And I must admit part of the reason I have had such a problem accepting any live action adaptation of a comic book in the 20^th century is because during the 1990s networks like Fox and The WB had set the bar so high that few live actions films are still unable to pass it more than twenty years later.  I am not alone in thinking this either. It is considered a universal truth by the most devoted fans of DC and Marvel that the best versions of Batman or the X-Men were by far the animated series that Fox assembled during the decade.  You ask any fan of Batman whether Christian Bale or Michael Keaton was their favorite one; I’m pretty sure most of them will say it’s Kevin Conroy and it’s still hard to argue with many of them.

Few comic book series were at that same level to be sure, but there were many during that era that were among the best versions of their franchises to this day. There are many who still argue the best version of Superman we got was the one on the WB or that any version of the animated Justice League was infinitely better than what we got from Zack Snyder. (I’m not convinced of the former; I fully concur with the latter.) Millions of us are still waiting for a follow up to Batman Beyond in some form. And while the lion’s share of the Marvel cartoons were not at the level of X-Men  quite a few did show more ambition than we got in so many of their equivalents in the MCU and in some cases haven’t come close even in Phase Five.

So many of the animated series of this era are rightfully considered classics or deserve to be considered such. So why have I never written about them before? Honestly because I didn’t want to be one of those people on the Internet who is convinced that the shows he saw in his childhood were perfect and can never be improved upon. Considering how much time I have spent railing against the hypocrisy of the traditionalists in so many of these same subjects, I did not want to be accused of the pot calling the kettle black.

The thing is in the case of many of these shows it is not nostalgia that is driving me so much as it frustration.  In the case of Disney it is the fact that seem to be focused on spending the last decade not making any original material but essentially doing live-action versions of their old movies.  That Disney seems to have de facto given up on this after spending the better part of 1990s creating some truly brilliant original material for television – even though some of it was sourced material – is maddening. The creators of those shows were capable of brilliance once. Why are they so laser focused on just rebuilding the old over and over?

With the comic book series, it’s a different kind of frustration. It is the decision to reboot the same material essentially every ten years or so and consistently get diminishing results when it comes to DC. For Marvel, it’s a more personal judgment. I think the MCU ran out of whatever motivation for its existence at Endgame at the latest and they have been running on fumes and nostalgia ever since. This would not trouble me if I had any reason to think there was much of individual interest in most of the individual Marvel movies and that they kept getting more unwieldy every time they got to the end of a Phase.  Like many people I think they are overrated but my reason for thinking so is because I’ve seen examples done in my childhood in animation that are infinitely superior to anything I’ve seen in any Avengers film.  Indeed two of the articles in this series are going to make it very clear how badly the MCU looks in comparison to two 1990s animated series.

They say that those who don’t learn from the past are doomed to repeat it. In the case of Disney and comic books, it’s clear that all involved have decided that the best animated series is still inferior to the worst live action version of the same franchise. Many of these articles will illustrate why this is just not true.

So for those of you who are young or simply young at heart, this series will take a trip back in time to some of your fondest memories growing up.  And rest assured, unlike some of my other works I intend to reassure you that the cartoons you saw were as good as you remember them being – and in fact may have actually been far better than your childhood mind could have appreciated.