Television Oddities: Justice League of America (1997)

 

Television Oddities title card

Today, dear readers, I want to take you back. Back to a time when superhero media was no where as prevalent as it is today. Back to the ramshackle days of the mid-to-late 1990s, when superheroes weren't blowing up international box offices and were still largely the denizens of comic book shops, toy boxes, video game consoles and Saturday morning TV. With maybe the occasional evening drama or big budget movie to serve as an exception to the rule.

It was into this environment that this pilot was made. After the ambitious but ultimately doomed 1990 series The Flash, and 1993's rousing success of Lois & Clark: The New Adventures of Superman, DC Comics was still interested in continuing to showcase their characters on TV. That's when a pilot for CBS was greenlit for one of DC Comics' premiere teams, The Justice League of America.

Group shot of the cast of Justice League of America.

Now, this is kind of an infamous pilot in some circles. And it's been talked about a lot. But many of the videos and blog posts I've encountered about it seem to mostly be the same thing. They all just kind of seem like comic book fanboys kvetching about how the pilot, and particularly the cast, don't match perfectly with their platonic ideal of what a Justice League of America television show should be. I'm hoping to take a different tack and cover both why it didn't work from a comics fan perspective and why it just doesn't pass muster as a pilot.

Part of me wants to give you a “quick-and-dirty” run down of the history of the Justice League, but that would be a bit much. So, I've decided to save all that for a different post and focus on the one version of the Justice League that this pilot is ostensibly based on.

In 1987, DC Comics wanted to relaunch the Justice League of America. This came right after a big event story titled Crisis on Infinite Earths, which changed the DC Universe to a large degree. And which they were now using as an excuse to try to clean up and revamp their big name characters. Origin stories were retold in different ways. Wonder Woman was relaunched completely. The Flash was a different person. A lot going on. Now, DC wanted to relaunch the JLA with all the big name characters. The last version didn't have any of them (I'll explain that some other time) and it didn't work out well. There was just one problem and it was that all the big name characters were being relaunched too. The editors of those comic books told the editor of Justice League to kindly keep their hands off. So, writers Keith Giffen, J.M. DeMatteis and artist Kevin Maguire reaching for whoever was available. They ended up with a cast of lesser lights, newbies and characters who were being tried for a revival. The cast changed but a general line-up would be something like Martian Manhunter, Green Lantern (the Guy Gardner one), Captain Atom, Rocket Red, Blue Beetle, Booster Gold, Fire and Ice. They had a couple of tricks up there sleeves, though. One is that they maintained the sense of scope for their team even without Superman in their ranks by making the team official. The Justice League was rechristened the Justice League International and was now officially sanctioned by the United Nations. So, now they had to deal with global politics too. The other was the philosophy for the JLI. The idea was that the League would be a place where superheroes could act like people complete with flaws, foibles and rough edges. Some became fast friends, others grated on each others' nerves. And a lot of these interactions would be leveraged towards humor. Giffen, DeMatteis and Maguire essentially created possibly the first superhero workplace comedy.

The comic that introduced the Justice League International.

It was wildly popular. Popular enough for Justice League International to be spun into two series Justice League America and Justice League Europe. Plus a quarterly book they would share.

This was the Justice League I largely grew up with. It's also the Justice League that this pilot is supposedly based on.

Supposedly . . .

We start out with Tori Olafsdotter aka Ice giving a documentary-style confessional to a camera about her lack of confidence and how she never expected to end up a superhero.

In comics, Ice is Tora Olafsdotter and she hails from a race of Nordic “Ice Gods”. Here, she's a meteorologist with self-esteem issues who works for Dr. Eno at the Eno Institute. They are tracking a shurricane headed to New Metro City. A storm that has been predicted by a cryptic individual known as The Weatherman.

Ah, New Metro City. Of all the fake cities associated with DC superheroes, this one seems the fakest. Somehow the city is near a desert and a waterfront and has some sort of film/TV industry going on and yet has no truly noteworthy character. It's not gloomy like Gotham, awe-inspiring like Metropolis or bustling like Central City. It just kind of is.

Then we get another confessional featuring Barry Allen aka The Flash. The Barry Allen we know from the comics and recent TV shows is a forensic scientist. This one is unemployed. And he's seemingly going out of his way to communicate that he is basically “Joe Shmoe”. He talks about how he likes to go bowling and watch football on the tube and all that. And then we're treated to a scene of Barry's landlord evicting him from his apartment, including throwing his stuff out of a second-story window. Right before Barry has to race off and deal with the rogue hurricane.

Next the camera trains itself on Guy Gardner, aka Green Lantern. There have been a number of different Green Lanterns in the comics. This version seems to be three different ones squished together into one character. For a more accurate take on the Guy Gardner version, watch 2025's Superman movie. Anyway, he laments that Barry gets to have such an uncomplicated life while his is so complex. We then see him on a date trying to make up with his girlfriend Cheryl, who apparently is angry because he keeps disappearing to save the city. And then he disappears to save the city.

I feel like this will go a long time if I keep doing this as a blow-by-blow.

To keep things short, we are introduced to two more heroes via on-camera confessional. One is B.B. DaCosta aka Fire. In comics, Beatriz DaCosta, a Brazilian supermodel and secret agent with fire powers. Here, she's a struggling actress. The other is Ray Palmer aka The Atom. Here he's a science teacher who can shrink down in size. In the comics . . . actually, Ray's pretty much spot on. Except he's a college professor instead of a science teacher.

The Justice League right before they run off to the final battle. 

The confessionals continue throughout the pilot. The plot becomes about finding and stopping the Weatherman, who is manipulating the weather while dealing with their own personal struggles. Barry keeps looking for a job. Guy keeps trying to get back together with Cheryl. B.B. Doesn't struggle so much with pursuing acting as being pursued by a guy she meets at an audition who's way too young for her. Ray deals with his growing attraction to Tori while Tori deals with her confidence issues. This is also an origin story for Tori as she gains ice powers from being zapped by the Weatherman's machine.

To aid Tori in her quest to control her powers, she's brought to the Justice League's mysterious, shadowy leader/mentor, The Martian Manhunter. He's played by David Ogden Stiers, of M*A*S*H fame. He's got an amazing voice for the role, but he's more than a little, shall we say, paunchy. The pilot uses Martian Manhunter very sparingly anyway. The two times he leaves the League's secret underwater headquarters, it's shape-shifted into someone else.

David Ogden Stiers as The Martian Manhunter

As for the Weatherman . . . I'm just going to spoil it up front. The Weatherman is Tori's boss Dr. Eno, played by Miguel Ferrer. They tried to do a fake-out thing where one of Tori's co-workers is hinted to be the Weatherman. But anyone watching should have figured it out. Because there are only two actors in the whole cast that seem capable of projecting enough gravitas to be a supervillain. One is David Ogden Stiers, who is already playing Martian Manhunter. The other is Miguel Ferrer.

So, I'm going to say something that would be considered blasphemy in some comic book circles: the problem with this pilot was not the lack of Superman, Batman and Wonder Woman. Adding them to this specific pilot would not have improved anything (imagine Barry complaining about not having a job while billionaire Bruce Wayne is right there). And under normal circumstances and with proper characterization, the characters they did have are good characters. After all, Justice League International was able to succeed using a group of characters who are even lower tier than this (Note for the uninitiated: The Flash and the Atom are generally considered to be bigger characters than, say, Blue Beetle or Booster Gold). And most regular people and network executives would not be comparing it to a comic book.

The problem is that it's just a bad pilot.

I mean, the costumes are a problem and the special effects are a problem. But a further problem is that it's just so generic. The city they're in is generic. The villain is generic.  The characters feel like the generic character types you'd pick if you were doing “Five young people getting by in the big city”. There's the guy with relationship problems, the guy who has trouble holding down a job, the struggling actress and two varaiations of the nerd with self-confidence issues. They're clearly trying to run with the same “What if superheroes were human beings with feelings” approach as the comic book and seem to have circled around again to “What if superheroes' personal lives were kind of boring and mundane”. The scope has gone downright local and domestic. And they're relying on trends of 1990s television to make it work. Instead of a workplace comedy like the original JLI, they went with a friend group dynamic like the NBC show Friends. And while the confessional bits may remind modern people of The Office, back then it would have been considered evocative of the MTV reality show The Real World.

The final line-up sans Martian Manhunter and including Ice.

But for some reason I still find it kind of charming. Because it reminds me of a time earlier in my life when depicting the Justice League didn't have quite so many rules attached to it.

Anyway, this pilot never aired in the United States. But I believe it did air in some places overseas. And bootlegs of it did start popping up on the comic con circuit shortly thereafter. If you're morbidly curious, I found it online at Dailymotion.

Cartoon Stars Re-Animated: Felix the Cat.

 

Cartoon Stars Re-Animated title card

There's a famous quote by Walt Disney that goes “I only hope that we never lose sight of one thing-that it was all started by a mouse”.

And that may be true of Disney's huge business empire. However, in cartoons before there was a mouse there was a cat.

The artform of the animated cartoon started before Disney and a lot of others came on the scene. The concept first arose in the teens (uh, the decade runnng from 1910 to 1919. There really isn't a non-awkward term for this decade). Much of it grew out of the world of newspaper cartooning and comic strips. One of the earliest movers and shakers in the animated cartoon world was Winsor McKay, cartoonist of the comic strip Little Nemo in Slumberland, and creator of the animated Gertie the Dinosaur. William Randolph Hearst, newspaper magnate and owner of the King Features comic strip syndicate, even started his own animation studio. But as the teens moved into the '20s, we saw some of the old studios go under and new ones arise. It was at this time that we saw the rise of Pat Sullivan Studios.

Pat Sullivan was Australian and had lived a rather checkered past before coming to the U.S. and becoming a newspaper cartoonist. Sullivan was working to turn some of the comic strips he worked on into animated cartoons when he met a young cartoonist named Otto Messmer. Messmer was only learning the basics of cartoon animation when Sullivan met Messmer but as Messmer got better and better, Sullivan gave him more and more responsibility for the cartoons until he stopped drawing them altogether. Though, he continued taking credit for all of Messmer's work.

It was under Messmer's pen that gold was struck in 1919. With the studio being particularly busy, Sullivan prompted Messmer to create a cartoon at home on his free time (Sullivan really isn't beating any “bad boss” allegations, is he?). What Messmer created was a cartoon titled Feline Follies, which starred a black cat that at the time was called Master Tom. Paramount loved it, which netted Pat Sullivan Studios a contract to be part of their Paramount Screen Magazine that aired before Paramount feature films. Moreover, the public seemed to love the little black cat as well. And over subsequent cartoons, the character would be developed further in design and would get a new name.

An early Felix the Cat

He became Felix the Cat. And Felix would go on to be one of the biggest cartoon stars of the 1920s. He also went on to be one of the first highly merchandised cartoon stars in history. Sullivan would license out the character to numerous different parties. Felix toys would be manufactured. A Felix comic strip would be developed (back then, it usually went the other way. A comic strip first and then an animated cartoon) which Messmer worked on for years. Musical acts would write and record songs that mentioned Felix.

Why was Felix so successful. Well, one of the big things was that he had “personality”. A lot of animated cartoons back then were mostly just strings of visual gags and lots of motion for about six minutes. The characters weren't characters yet even in the strictest sense. But “personality animation”, something Walt Disney specialized in and propelled his cartoon empire, wasn't really a thing yet. But people saw the beginnings of it with Felix. One of the big things that hit with people was “the walk”. When Felix met with an obstacle, he would do this specific walk. Head down, hands clasped behind his back, hunched forward and eyes narrowed. It was a thinking walk. Felix had hit a roadblock, was disappointed, but was thinking of a way around it. This was one of the first suggestions that an animated cartoon character had some kind of internal life. (Here's a fan recreation of the Felix walk done by FTF the Toonist).

The surreal gags and animation probably helped too. The cartoons of the 1920s were big on surreal gags. One thing Felix frequently did was detach his tail and transform it into other things like a telescope or a walking stick. He would also sometimes interact with things in the cartoon that weren't supposed to be physical parts of the environment. Like, he'd get surprised and a bunch of question marks would appear above his head, and then he'd climb up onto the question marks. One of my favorite early Felix cartoons is probably Comicalamities, in which Felix interacts with his own animator (which was much more common in 1920s cartoons than you may think).

Before we move on from Felix's original run, I think maybe we should stop and acknowledge that I may have been making all this sound a lot better than it was. Largely, because I've been leaving out elements that were just there as part of a less enlightened era.

Yes, the cartoons were successful. We already acknowledged that Sullivan, though a shrewd businessman, probably wasn't a very good boss. The other thing we need to acknowledge is that Felix and a lot of other 1920s and early 1930s cartoon characters drew elements and mannerisms from a type of show that is very fairly maligned now. That is, minstrel shows and the “pickaninny” blackface stereotypes therein. It's not just Felix, either. There's a lot of it in Mickey Mouse too. Heck, Harman and Ising's character Bosko pretty much took the subtext and made it text. Even the white gloves many cartoon characters wear have roots in costuming used in minstrel shows, despite them having an actual purpose in setting their hands apart from bodies that were often rendered in all black (note: Felix somehow side-stepped the white gloves). The thing is that, back then, it was an easy way of communicating that a character was happy and cheerful and mischevious to an audience largely made up of white people who didn't know how awful they were being.

So now, with that out of the way . . .

Felix the Cat did not survive the transition to sound cartoons. A number of studios hesitated on transitioning to sound and it really hurt them. It hurt Pat Sullivan Studios a fair bit. Mind you, the failure of Pat Sullivan Studios was exacerbated by Sullivan's alcoholism and his failing health after the death of his wife.

Revivals were attempted. The first was by Van Beuren Studio, another studio that definitely existed but would not last a long time. They licensed Felix for three cartoons in their Rainbow Parade series. Those cartoons were Felix the Cat and the Goose that Laidthe Golden Egg, Neptune's Nonsense, and Bold King Cole. The first of these cartoons came about in 1936. To a large extent, these cartoons traded the more surreal elements of 1920s cartoon with fantasticism. Felix found himself fighting pirates to save a magical goose, walking around underwater and meeting King Neptune, and helping a braggart nursery rhyme king from being bedeviled by the ghosts of his ancestors. These cartoons didn't really create a long term revival for Felix. Maybe a better takeaway for them is that cartoon revivals have been attempted for a lot longer than a lot of people think.

In 1953, Official Films purchased the Sullivan-Messmer shorts and gave them new soundtracks, distributing them to home movie and television networks.

In 1958, a new Felix the Cat television series premiered. This one was headed up by Joe Oriolo, who had been Messmer's assistant and taken over the Felix comic strip (he was also one of the creators of Casper the Friendly Ghost). This cartoon, made by Paramount Cartoon Studios and distributed by Trans-Lux Entertainment, saw a much less mischevious Felix get into numerous adventures as a number of villains like the Professor, Rock Bottom and the robotic Master Cylinder try to steal Felix's magic bag of tricks, a carpetbag that can transform and hold anything inside it (the bag of tricks is probably one of Oriolo's most lasting additions to the character). The cartoons were not of the best quality, with severely limited animation and a main character whose personality kind of felt like it was cribbed from Mickey Mouse. Critics and people who remember the earlier Felix the Cat were quick to criticize them as such. None of which mattered, because the cartoons were actually very popular with children at the time.

Title image for 1958 Felix the Cat.

In 1970, Joe Oriolo gained full control of the character. Ownership would later pass to his son Don Oriolo.

In the late 1980s, Don Oriolo teamed with various European animators to create Felix the Cat: The Movie. This movie actually took Felix, his friend Pointdexter, his enemy the Professor and Felix's magic bag to a distant science fantasy world called Oriana to save a princess and stop a dastardly plot by her evil uncle the Duke of Zil. Judging from the trailer, the movie was a big, crazy swing visually. But I can't say more about it because I haven't been able to find a copy to watch. Trust me, I've looked! Anyway, the movie went straight to video and was not a financial success.

Felix the Cat: The Movie poster

In 1994, Felix was brought back to TV again for The Twisted Tales of Felix the Cat. This series tried to combine all the elements from different versions of Felix while doubling down on the surreal imagery from the 1920s cartoons. This was probably seen as a viable option because there were more and more cartoons at the time using more outlandish imagery (think Ren & Stimpy). But this production was troubled and only lasted two seasons. Among other things, word is Don Oriolo kept trying to push the show to be more like the version his father created in the '50s.

A host of characters from The Twisted Tales of Felix the Cat.

Personal note: Of all the different versions of Felix, Twisted Tales is probably my favorite version. With the 1920s cartoons coming in second and the Van Beuren ones third. I just prefer a more mischevious Felix.

Anyway, Baby Felix followed in 2000 for the Japanese market (did I mention that Felix is big in Japan.  You haven't experienced Japanese commercials until Felix the Cat tries to sell you a car). This was a preschool show starring the characters from 1958 show. Then in 2004, there was the direct-to-video Felix the Cat Saves Christmas, again drawing inspiration from the 1958 show.

Baby Felix

And that's basically been it for a while. The earliest Felix cartoons have since moved into the public domain. In a move that's sounding very familiar, the later stuff was bought up by Dreamworks Classic (formerly Classic Media), putting him under the auspices of Universal. Though he is no longer owner, Don Oriolo is still very involved in promoting the character.

I know others may not see it this way because the character is just so old now, but it is a shame that one of the first big cartoon stars never really seemed to find a concrete way forward. A character once seen as having so much personality within his medium is now seen as having almost none (like a certain Mouse we alluded to earlier). On top of that, there's the push and pull between creators who want to have more surreal hijinks and those pushing for simple adventures for kids. It wasn't even the problematic origins of the character mentioned previously (after all, it never hurt Mickey). It was just not deciding on who Felix is in the modern day. At this point, it's easier to find him as a pop culture icon on a t-shirt than as an actual character.

So, what might they be able to do with Felix now?

I don't know. Maybe . . . video games?

There's been an uptick in video games that use very retro cartoon art styles in the last couple of decades. One of the big ones is Cuphead from 2017. There was also a horror game titled Bendy and the Ink Machine from the same year (though I'm not sure I'd like to see a horror version of Felix). And I still see trailers for retro cartoon style video games pop up in my YouTube feed today. There's one specific one with airplanes that keeps popping up as an ad, though I forgot the name of it (probably a sign that the advertising is only half working). On top of that, a rerelease of the Felix the Cat NES and Game Boy games from 1992 and 1993 respectively came out in 2024 from Limited Run. It feels like it's only a matter of time before someone does it with an actual classic cartoon character. And if they can run with the surreal visuals like Cuphead did and not turn it into a riff on the 1958 cartoon, maybe it would have a chance.

Beyond that, I don't think we'll see any big revival of Felix coming soon. He's probably a lot easier to make money on as an image for t-shirts and the like. And I don't see a lot of showrunners lining up to take on a 100+ year old cartoon character.

But still, it's a shame.

Television Oddities: Inner Tube (1987)

 

Television Oddities title card

Okay! So, my series Cartoon Stars Re-Animated continues apace. But it seems that there's a real lack of variety on this blog. So, I have an idea. Why don't we have a series about TV shows that never happened?! Thanks to the wonders of the internet, we now have access to many things that either were shown only once or weren't meant to be seen at all. By that, I mean failed pilots and pitch reels. Here I will draw attention to the existence of such things, talk about them and give my two cents on why they might have failed to become a series. And I call this series (for lack of a better name): Television Oddities.

I thought I'd start with something fairly safe and familiar . . .

Actually, no, I'm starting off with something that may be one of the strangest things you've seen on YouTube in a good, long while.

Ladies and gentlemen, this is Jim Henson's Inner Tube.

Inner Tube started as an idea titled In-TV. The basic idea was meant to be an update of the Muppet variety show concept, but with some parody and satire of the then-current state of cable television (it was 1987). The idea is that instead of being on a vaudeville-esque show with a bunch of oddballs, the guest star would get sucked into the TV and would then have to traverse from channel to channel in order to eventually get out. And it would be as they jumped from channel to channel that they would find themselves in the various sketches and musical acts. At the center of the show would be two characters, mechanics Henry and Jake who run their own fly-by-night cable channel out of the back of an electronics shop.

Jake and Henry from "Inner Tube"

A script for a pilot was written by David Misch with John Candy written in as a possible first guest star (no guest star actually appeared, though). Jim Henson had issues with the original script, though. And creative consultant Larry Mirkin called the original pilot “consistently dark, victimized and pessimisstic” and emphasized that it also seemed unfunny. But Jim Henson thought it still had potential and cut down the script to a ten minute pitch reel which was filmed to be shopped around to different networks.

The pitch reel itself establishes the satirical tone right off with an introduction of the “Inner Tube System” by Kermit the Frog (who assumedly would not be in the regular show), selling us the idea that Inner Tube would have “1500 channels so you can find the right channel to match your mood, your IQ, your income bracket and your clothes”. We're also introduced to the mechanics Henry and Jake. The former a younger, thinner, less savvy fellow and the latter older, fatter, mustachioed and with more of a grasp of the situation they're in. There's also a band of characters playing a wonderfully late-80s song which I'd assume is the theme song. And there are three antagonistic characters introduced. One is Crasher, a violent, punked-out fellow who channels his frustration at not being able to star in every show by jumping from channel to channel and literally crashing their shows. Another is Glitch, a msichevious animated glob-like thing that runs from channel to channel and which Henry and Jake seem very concerned with catching (I'm not sure why). And last was Zaloom, a “channel pirate” played by a human actor (or at least his head and hands), who takes over channels to spread his message about the dangers of technology through unusual means (fun fact: Zaloom is actually played by Paul Zaloom, who went on to play Beakman in the kids' science show Beakman's World).

Glitch

One thing I can't help noticing is that with Kermit's whole spiel and Henry and Jake's whole channel-hopping escapade to catch Glitch, the premise of the pitch reel seems to vary from the confirmed premise that's been chronicled online. Instead of two mechanics running a public access channel out of the back of their shop, Henry and Jake seem more like two technicians for the whole Inner Tube System. Perhaps the change came with Jim Henson's tweaking of the pilot into a pitch reel.

The show itself never came to pass. It was pitched to networks like NBC and nobody bit. Henson gave it one last go, pitching it as part of The Jim Henson Hour, now with the name changed from Inner Tube to Lead Free TV. Still didn't happen. The blue screen graphic of the main setting with all the TV screens would be reused for the MuppeTelevision portions of TheJim Henson Hour, and the band's keyboardist Digit would also appear on the show as a supporting player. But that's it.

Digit.  Originally created for Inner Tube, but officially from The Jim Henson Hour

Why did networks pass on it? I don't know for sure, but I can take a coupld of guesses.  For one, a television series that actively makes fun of your product was going to be a hard sell. Even if he only shopped it around to networks like ABC, CBS and NBC, most people were now accessing those channels through cable packages and the networks were benefitting from it. There have been episodes of TV shows that have poked fun at cable, certainly. But an entire series playing off the notion of “cable TV is weird and kind of excessive” probably wasn't going to fly.

Also, well, you've seen what the puppets on this show looked like. One of the unfortunate things about puppets is that they generally seem to fall into the categories of either “cute” or “creepy” with little space in between. And the more human you try to make the puppets, the creepier they seem. These are definitely falling more into the creepy category.

Still, if you can get past that, the pitch reel is an interesting snapshot of a specific time in media technology. The days when cable was king. Nowadays, the common criticism is now that “everyone has a streaming service”. But even before streaming, many of the jokes presented in the pitch reel became outmoded. For example, one of the main jokes seems to be how amazingly specific each channel has to be to justify its existence. But I remember a time in the late '90s or early 2000s when that hyper-specificity was starting to be done away with as cable channels started focusing more on demographic rather than genre. I remember when Cartoon Network started playing live action shows. I remember when the Sci-Fi Channel (later SyFy) started playing non-science fiction programs like the WWE. I remember when American Movie Classics (AMC) stopped focusing on airing classic movies. The days of a channel being focused on something like science fiction are now long gone in favor of being a channel focused on adult males aged 18-35.

Anyway, that's it for the first episode of Television Oddities. I have some idea of what I'd like to do for the next installment. But if anyone knows of a failed pilot or pitch for me to check out, please let me know in the comments.

Next time: more cartoons.

Cartoon Stars Reanimated: Mr. Magoo

 

Cartoon Stars Re-Animated title card.

So! Let's just dive into this one, shall we?

Mr. Magoo was the flagship character of United Productions of America, commonly known as UPA.

Classic Mr. Magoo.

UPA was born in the aftermath of the animators' strike that took place at Walt Disney Animation Studios in 1941. At which point a number of animators left the company. (Didn't know old Uncle Walt was an attempted union-buster? Yeah, life is full of little disappointments). Among those leaving Disney was layout artist John Hubley, who was not happy with Disney's animation philosophy, which involved painstaking imitation of reality and lots of minute detail. Hubley believed that animation didn't have to be a total imitation of cinematic reality in order to work, and that animation could use simpler designs and more abstraction in its art and still work. Hubley, Bobe Cannon and others at UPA aimed to create animated films that could experiment in design. Though Hubley and Cannon contributed to UPA's experimentation in style, UPA actually started as Industrial Film and Poster Service, founded in 1941 by Zack Schwartz, David Hilberman and Stephen Bosustow. They did a lot of work with the U.S. government. They would soon make two films sponsored by the United Auto Workers, at which point, the company was rebranded UPA. Eventually, in the shadow of McCarthyism, government contracts dried up as the government started severing ties with Hollywood. UPA would eventually make a deal with Columbia Pictures, who were dissatsfied with their existing animation studio, Screen Gems. And it was under Columbia's aegis that UPA made the majority of its theatrical cartoons.

There is a lot more to this. There's a lot more to the history of UPA and their creative endeavors in general. If you want to read more about it, I suggest you seek more information out. But I had to get you to this point.

Because in 1949's short The Ragtime Bear, UPA created its most famous character, a crotchety, near-sighted old man named Mister Magoo (probably their second most famous was a character named Gerald McBoing Boing, who was actually based on a story record by Dr. Seuss).

Mr. Magoo, for those not in the know, is a rich, stubborn, self-important, extremely nearsighted old man who constantly gets into and out of bizarre and dangerous situations due to his poor eyesight while being completely oblivious to the situation. Why? Well, Mr. Magoo (full name Quincy Magoo) is too stubborn to wear his glasses or admit that he even needs glasses in the first place. So, he generally just convinces himself that he's seeing what he wants to see. I find it to be a rather well-constructed character in communicating his upper-class stubborn pride. Anytime he percieves any kind of injustice, Magoo always seeks out the highest office he can in order to complain (Magoo is, in fact, a bit of a “Karen”). He also laughs at his own jokes all the time. I knew such a practice was frowned on, but had never noticed how self-congratulatory it can seem until I saw Magoo do it. But he's not necessarily a bad fellow. He loves his nephew Waldo. He loves his alma mater. And he's usually trying to do right by something despite being all wrong. And in his theatrical outings, he's perfectly voiced by actor Jim Backus (also famous for portarying Thurston Howell III on the TV show Gilligan's Island).

In the earliest Magoo cartoons, Magoo was more of a gruff, hard-nosed reactionary type. One can see a bit of political satire built into Magoo. A bit of a poke at the conservative upper class who, like Magoo, can be short-sighted and see things they want to see them. Even after Magoo got revised into more of a friendly, avuncular sort, some of that still remained. The cartoons frequently emphasize Magoo being a proud alumnus of Rutgers University, a famously conservative university at the time (whether it still is, I don't know).

Magoo had a long and distinguished cartoon career. UPA won two Academy Awards from the Magoo shorts When Magoo Flew from 1954 and Magoo's Puddle Jumper from 1956. In 1959, Magoo was featured in UPA's first feature length animated film 1001 Arabian Nights. In the 1960s, Mr. Magoo made the leap to television with a show aptly titled Mr. Magoo. Along the way, Magoo's one major supporting cast member, his nephew Waldo, was spun off into his own subseries of cartoons. Waldo's absence was largely accomodated by the introduction of Charlie, Magoo's servant who was an unfortunate Asian stereotype. Not long after, in 1962, Magoo would star in the first ever animated Christmas special, Mr. Magoo's Christmas Carol. And TV would remain a home for Mr. Magoo for a long stretch. Magoo's brush with Dickens would lead to a new series The Famous Adventures of Mr. Magoo, which would cast Magoo as numerous famous characters from literature and history. In 1970, Magoo would star in another TV special, Uncle Sam Magoo. After that from 1976-77 would come the new series What's New, Mr. Magoo. By this point though, UPA had given up in-house production. What's New, Mr. Magoo was produced by DePatie-Freleng, the same people who animated the Pink Panther.

Mr. Magoo's Christmas Carol

But positive vibes toward Mr. Magoo didn't last forever.

In 1997, chasing the success of Universal's live action The Flintstones movie, Disney put out a live action Mr. Magoo film starring Leslie Nielsen. The film actually met with a great deal of controversy from the National Federation of the Blind and was released with a disclaimer at the end (for more on that production, see the Mr. Magoo video by Hats Off Entertainment.

Disney's live-action Mr. Magoo.

Since then, Magoo projects have been few. A straight-to-DVD movie entitled Kung Fu Magoo was released in 2010. In 2019, a French animated series produced by Xilam Animation SAS was produced, first premiering in Portugal then on Boomerang Africa HD and then in the UK on CITV and the ITVX streaming service. Neither seem to have produced much in positive accolades.

The 2019 version of Mr. Magoo.

So, does Mr. Magoo still work in 2025?

Well, I still think his cartoons are funny. But that's not worth much. I find Magoo's bumblings and mistakes amusing. And I tend to find this sort of bumbling due to a combination of pride and nearsightedness a lot easier to forgive than bumbling and stumbling out of sheer stupidity (for an example of this type of stupid character, see Inspector Gadget). And his bumbling is in large part due to Magoo's pride and stubbornness. Because if Magoo just chose to wear his glasses, he'd have no problem. But it's still a hard sell. It's the pride, the stubbornness and the visual impairment that make the comedic situations happen. But a lot of people are just going to see it as laughing at an old man's disability.

Unfortunately, not every character can make it into modern media. Some of them are just better to leave where they are.

The odds of seeing anything new Magoo-related are slim anyway. Near as I can tell, the rights to the original theatrical shorts and the 1001 Arabian Nights movie are with Sony Pictures, the entity that swallowed up Columbia Pictures some time in the 1980s. But the rights to UPA's various TV shows and the character himself fall under the umbrella of Dreamworks Classic, just like Casper. That puts ot under the auspices of Comcast/Universal.

That's all I've got here but I thought I'd put a companion piece up on my other blog Fairy Tale Fandom, where I look at Magoo's 1001 Arabian Nights film. Check it out if you're interested.

Cartoon Stars Re-Animated: The Pink Panther

 

Cartoon Stars Re-Animated title card

I think first thing people remember about this cartoon is the groove.

That specific groove comes to the world via composer Harry Mancini (the same person who composed “Baby Elephant Walk”). And it wasn't composed for a cartoon originally. It was originally created for a 1963 mystery spoof about a bumbling detective searching for a stolen pink diamond that had a flaw that, when viewed closely, looked like a leaping panther. The film was, of course, The Pink Panther, created by Blake Edwards and Maurice Richlin, starring the incomparable Peter Sellers and produced by The Mirisch Company and United Artists (note: United Artists will sometimes be referred to as UA going forward). That movie went on to be a comedy classic and spawn eight sequels and two reboot films. But a funny thing happened along the way.

The movie had an animated opening title sequence in which an anthropomorphic pink panther meant to represent the villains of the story and the stolen diamond, repeatedly get the better of a cartoon inspector. The intro was made by DePatie-Freleng Enterprises, a studio founded by executive David H. DePatie and animation director/composer/producer Friz Freleng after the closing of Warner Bros. Animation in that same year of 1963. And while the Sellers movie was popular, the animated opening sequence was surprisingly well-received. So immediately well-received that actor David Niven, who played the film's villain nearly sued for being upstaged by a cartoon character. Anyway, this convinced Depatie-Freleng and United Artists that people might want to see more of this cool cartoon cat.

The Pink Panther

The first of The Pink Panther's theatrical shorts was titled The Pink Phink and it ranwith UA's film Kiss Me Stupid in 1964. It was also the only Pink Panther short to win an Academy Award. The Pink Panther starred in 92 theatrical shorts, though it wasn't always clear sailing. By the 1970s, the family audience which was the main audience for the cartoons was in decline at cinemas and UA considered ending the series. However, the series was saved when a backlog of DePatie-Freleng cartoons were licensed to NBC and aired as The Pink Panther Show. After that, they started making the shorts for TV and putting them out into theaters afterward.

The Pink Panther and the Little Man

But before moving on to the Pink Panther's cultural legacy, let's focus on what the appeal of the Pink Panther cartoons is. They're hardly the first cartoons to star a non-speaking animal protagonist. But there's a certain something that's different about them. Probably because of the era and the conditions under which he was first created. The art is more abstract. The music is jazzier and more laid-back. The main character isn't as manic as most cartoon animals. There's a certain vibe of 1960s cool that pervades them even as the jokes start flying. And they don't necessarily shy away from hallmarks of that era, either. In 1968, there was actually a cartoon entitled Psychedelic Pink. And going into the 1970s, they would have cartoons like 1976's Rocky Pink which made fun of the Pet Rock fad. The most well-remembered Pink Panther cartoons are probably the ones where he has to deal with the ever-uptight Little Man (yes, that's the official name of the character). Sometimes the Panther is just pranking him for an entire cartoon. Other times, the Panther has his own goal but ends up getting in the Little Man's way by accident thus evoking his very petty wrath, resulting in a duel of wits. One thing that surprised me is that the Pink Panther is notg always cool and in control, which is what I remembered. He's often bothered by any number of annoyances ranging from fleas, scientifically-altered fruit flies, vicious dogs, yowling cats and many other things. He also seems to be down-and-out a lot, being broke and living in what's basically a shack. Though, I wonder if the collective memory of him being cool and unflappable (or at least unflapped) is what makes the cartoon work. Like we're all watching to see if the Pink Panther regains his chill. I mean, cool and unflappable is pretty uch the only vibe that matches with the voice Rich Little gave him.

Yeah. The Pink Panther has a voice. Are you surprised?

The truth is that nearly every classic wordless cartoon character has talked at some point in their existence, either on screen or on the printed page. Tom & Jerry both talked in the 1992 film Tom & Jerry the Movie. Snoopy talked, or rather his thoughts were heard, when they adapted the musicals You're a Good Man, Charlie Brown and Snoopy the Musical into animation. Heck, the Road Runner would talk in rhyme in the old Gold Key and Dell comic books he was adapted into. And in the early days of the Pink Panther, he was voiced by impressionist Rich Little doing an impression of David Niven (the actor who wanted to sue for being upstaged by a cartoon). He first talks at the end of the cartoon Sink Pink, and it serves as a really great surprise. The problem is that the more the Pink Panther talks, the less it works. Which is something I think cartoon studios had to figure out the hard way.

Pink Panther's short-lived TV sons Pinky and Panky

The Pink Panther Show is not the end of the Pink Panther's TV career. In 1978, The Pink Panther Show changed networks and changed its name to The All New Pink Panther Show. There was a series of television specials. In 1984, there was the cartoon Pink Panther and Sons, starring the traditional Pink Panther but also his sons Pinky and Panky. The Pink Panther parts were what you'd expect, but the Pinky and Panky parts were the usual slice-of-life kids adventures you'd expect from early '80s cartoons. Then in 1993, there was a new show entitled The Pink Panther. Once again, the Panther has a voice. This time it's provided by Matt Frewer (the guy who played Max Headroom back in the '80s, though his voice pops up in a lot of places). The show wasn't bad, but Frewer's voice doesn't really feel like it adds anything to the show. They could have kept the Panther silent, and it wouldn't have been much of a problem. And in 2010, Cartoon Network aired Pink Panther and Pals, which featured an adolescent version of the Pink Panther.

Pink Panther Flakes box

The Panther also journeyed into the realms of merchandising and endorsements. There was a Pink Panther Flakes cereal from Post. I believe the pink food dye from that cereal was eventually banned by the FDA. He also had his own Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade balloon, like a lot of the characters I cover in this series. And he's been a pitchman for IBM, Safeco Insurance, the Virginia Lottery and Owens-Corning Insulation (I remember that last one from when I was a kid. Back then, I thought it was a bit odd that they were using a cartoon to try and sell insulation to all the hardware store-going dads out there).

So, is there a future for the Pink Panther in today's media landscape? Well, maybe. Not necessarily under the same hands as the ones who started it. UA has since been absorbed into MGM. DePatie-Freleng got bought out by Marvel in 1980 (yes, that Marvel), at that point it became Marvel Productions and started to produce a lot of cartoon tie-ins to popular toy lines. Marvel Productions then got bought up by Saban Entertainment, which in turn got bought up by Disney. And at this point, who knows what's left of it. The character's rights remain at MGM, though.

Pink Panther and Pals

There is one bright spot. One of the problems with past Pink Panther revivals is that even when they were pretty good, they didn't necessarily feel like Pink Panther. They were either too chatty or shifted the focus to new side characters. But the thing is, 2010's Pink Panther and Pals was actually pretty good and felt pretty close to classic Pink Panther. Sure, the premise of “classic cartoon character as a teenager” has come to be a red flag for cartoon fans that the studio is trying too hard to be hip. But this time it works. It's the good old silent Pink Panther only now he's a bit more sprightly and a bit more mischevious, and his comic situations include youthful activities like going to the skate park, playing video games or delivering pizzas. Plus, it also gives us a new take on another DePatie-Freleng cartoon, The Ant and the Aardvark. Give it a try if you're interested. The show is available on Amazon Prime Video (naturally, considering they own MGM now) and you can watch samples of it on the Official Pink Panther YouTube channel.

So, we might not see a Pink Panther revival all that soon. Maybe we will. Maybe we won't. But the last attempted revival actually wasn't that bad. And it feels like they've finally got a grasp of what makes the character work. So, here's hoping MGM keeps it up next time we see this cool cat.

Cartoon Stars Re-Animated: Casper the Friendly Ghost.

 

Cartoon Stars Re-Animated

This post probably should have gone up on Halloween, but we'll have to settle for early November.

Title card for Famous Studios' Casper

Casper the Friendly Ghost is a character that originated at Famous Studios, the cartoon studio that usaed to be Fleischer Studios after it was purchased by Paramount. The details of his creation are debated, but he was created by either Seymour Reit or Joe Oriolo. Oriolo claimed he created Casper to ease his four-year-old daughters fear of the dark. He created a cardboard cutout of a friendly ghost to hang from a tree to show his daughter that not all ghosts were scary. Reit claims that he created Casper for a short story andgave the story to Oriolo to illustrate. They intended to sell the initial story to Fleischer Studios where they both worked or to a children's storybook publisher. They eventually did line up a deal with the publisher Grossett & Dunlap. While Reit was away doing military duty, Oriolo sold the rights to the book to Famous Studios (formerly Fleischer) for $175. That one time payment was the only pay Oriolo received for what would eventually become a series of animated cartoons. Reit didn't receive any money at all.

An early sketch of Casper.  Possibly for the storybook?

Under Famous Studios and later Paramount Cartoon Studios, there were 55 Casper theatrical shorts produced and released. The grand majority of them follow the same formula. Casper is lonely because he wants a friend and other ghosts tease him because he doesn't want to scare anyone. He sets out to make a friend, encounters some trouble, but then saves the day from some calamity and makes multiple friends in the process. So, despite him making a whole bunch of friends in each cartoon, the status quo would reset by the next cartoon. While formulas are common in theatrical cartoons, this one has received some criticism for feeling repetitive.

Casper's first design, as a roly-poly little fellow.

Now, Casper's cartoon stardom would not live forever, but he would find another platform. Casper first started appearing in comic books in 1949 from St. John Publications. But it was in 1959 that Harvey Comics started publishing Casper comic books. It was in these comics that Casper's current design was formed and where they started using what I refer to as the “Casper rule”. Basically, the idea that Casper was not the ghost of a dead child (hinted at in Famous Studios cartoons) but that ghosts were just a type of magical creatures separate from humans and that ghost children are simply born from ghost parents. This rule comes in and out of vogue with different versions of the character. Anyway, in 1959, Harvey Comics bought the character of Casper outright, along with other Famous Studios characters like Little Audrey, Baby Huey and Herman and Katnip. They would join the stable with Harvey in-house creations like Little Dot, Little Lotta, Hot Stuff and Richie Rich. Casper was a very prolific character under Harvey Comics, having 36 different titles over the course of his run there (note: the record for highest number of different comic titles for a single character actually goes to Casper's Harvey Comics compatriot Richie Rich, with over 50 different titles). Anyway, it's such that more people probably know Casper as a comic book character than as a character from theatrical cartoons. It also led to spin-off characters like Spooky the Tuff Little Ghost, Wendy the Good Little Witch and The Ghostly Trio (note: The Ghostly Trio's names seem to change frequently. Originally they were Fatso, Fusso and Lazo. Then Eeko, Stretcho and Fatso. Then in the 1995 film, Stretch, Fatso and Stinkie. Fatso remains constant). After Harvey's run ended, Casper would appear as a licensed character in some other comics like Arden Entertainment's 2009 miniseries Casper and the Spectrals (I actually rather liked that one).

A typical Harvey Comics Casper title.

Casper has also had his share of television cartoons. Five in total. They are Matty's Funday Funnies (sponspored by Mattel, hence the name), The New Casper Cartoon Show, Casper and the Angels (a Hanna-Barbera production that starred Casper but also tried to capitalize on the popularity of Charlie's Angels and ChiPs but set in the future. I'm not even kidding), The Harveytoons Show, The Spooktacular New Adventures of Casper (this one was a spin-off from 1995 Casper movie, which I will talk about further on.  It also apparently doesn't have an intro, so I linked a compilation of clips) and Casper's Scare School.

Casper and the Spectrals.  Featuring new takes on Casper, Wendy and Hot Stuff.

People around my age and a bit younger will probably remember Casper best from Amblin and Universal's 1995 film Casper. The film was popular and was one of the first to feature a CGI main character. One of the memorable things it did was discarding the previously mentioned “Casper rule” and gave a back story to who Casper was before he became a ghost. In this version, he was a 12 year-old boy who died of pneumonia which he caught after he stayed out playing in the snow too late. Loss, grief and having trouble moving on become central themes of the movie. The film also made some odd choices with the character. Like playing the friendship between Casper and Christina Ricci's character Kat Harvey (Ha! I see what you did there!) as something more akin to a romance. I guess they decided that if they were going to bother going dark and grown-up on the origin story, they might as well pull the trigger on that too. Anyway, the movie spawned two straight-to-video prequels Casper: A Spirited Beginning and Casper Meets Wendy. The latter of which featured future Disney Channel star Hilary Duff as fellow Harvey Comics character Wendy the Good Little Witch. It also spawned a sequely cartoon on Fox Kids which was apparently called The Spooktacular New Adventures of Casper (I watched that cartoon when it aired and don't remember anyone ever calling it that). Anyway, it followed the events of the movie and included other Harvey characters like Spooky the Tuff Little Ghost and his girlfriend Poil (not Pearl. Poil. The Brooklyn accent is built into her name). It also followed the movies vibe of having a more adolescent Casper. Not by playing up any romance this time, but by hgaving Casper be a bit more of a little smart aleck.

Casper and Kat Harvey (Christina Richie) from the 1995 Casper movie.

Casper's appearances have been sparing over the past few years since Casper's Scare School ended in 2012. He appeared in a Geico insurance commercial in 2019. He also appeared in an episode of the Netflix cartoon Harvey Girls Forever which stars other Harvey Comics characters Little Audrey, Little Dot and Little Lotta. But that's about it.

So, is there a future for Casper the Friendly Ghost in the current media landsape?

Well, first let's figure out where he is. He started at Famous Studios, which was owned by Paramount. Then he got bought by Harvey Comics. Then, Harvey Comics got bought by Classic Media (an IP firm that has also bought up the Jay Ward library, UPA, Veggie Tales and Western Media. Western Publishing being the parent company of both Dell Comics and Little Golden Books. Along with probably others). Then Classic Media was bought by Dreamworks, which is currently owned by Universal Studios. So, Casper is ultimately owned by Universal (the same studio that made the 1995 movie) but is specifically part of the Dreamworks stable.

Casper.  Just a friendly little guy.

As for Casper's future? I don't know. Looking at the character's history, specifically the story about him being made for a four-year-old girl, the initial sale to a storybook publisher, the pro-social nature of the character and the simple story formula, I can't help but think the best recourse would be to skew even younger. He feels like a character designed especially for little kids, unlike other theatrical cartoon characters that were designed for kids and adults alike. Casper as a preschool show? Why not? I could see him talking to his TV friends from behind the screen like some sort of spectral Dora the Explorer. And if that route can be taken with franchises like Spider-Man, Iron Man, Star Trek and Doctor Who, it seems like an easy leap for a friendly little ghost.

I do hope Casper has some kind of pop culture future. I can't help but root for a character whose own theme song says they're “kind to every living creature”.