Shout Factory

US culture has gone through its fair share of ‘retro’ periods, but none has been quite so enduring and tenacious as our revisitation to the 1980s. I believe that this is because our attachment and willingness to return to our innocent childhoods in the 80s is directly proportional to how dissatisfied we are with the way the world operates today. That, and Men Without Hats were pretty amazing.

The recent 25th anniversary of GI Joe surely brought my generation a bit of cognitive dissonance. While our general unhappiness with the government seems to dominate our mindset (until recently), GI Joe also represents that same government. Of course, GI Joe actually represents the government what we wish we had – America’s secret fightin’ team faces off against hissing terrorists with a penchant for stealing the Statue of Liberty and emerge victorious, mitigating damage to the point where the whole situation ends with a hearty laugh and the bad guys sulk away, soundly humiliated. Those guys got stuff done, dammit.

Do we need all of these re-envisionings of our childhood heroes into super-exploding, larger than life, realistic movies? Absolutely not, but maybe the eleven and twelve year olds of today do. Cel animation just doesn’t charm like it used to.

Shout! Factory’s release of GI Joe Season 1.1 has all of this, plus gigantic rub-on tattoos. Unless your kid has serious glandular problems, it’s pretty obvious that these are meant for the adult collector. These would dwarf lesser arms. This is just one of many indications that this set has been made for the collectors.

All 22 episodes remain firmly intact across four discs, complete with animation blips, ‘we’ll be right back’ bumpers and credits that feature the original Hasbro logo. It’s as close to the original airings as possible, which collectors will definitely appreciate. The set also includes a booklet with handy episode synopses, which might help you pinpoint that favorite episode across one of the many 5-episode arcs. Given how often we have to suffer through poorly ‘remastered’ versions of things, this is awesome.

DVD bonuses include a three-part interview with one of the original authors, which runs for about 20 minutes in total. While an insight into the process of writing something both narrative and toyetic is interesting, it’s a little dry and definitely for dedicated fans.

Of special interest to me is the original 1963 GI Joe 12” figure presentation that Hasbro showed to press and investors at the 1963 Toy Fair. As a Toy Fair attendee, I am very comforted by the fact that Hasbro’s been boring the living snot out of people with patronizing presentations for decades, and that it’s not just me. I loves ya, Hasbro, but 2 hours of Powerpoint? I got a cramp in my everything and I never wanted to see another toy again.

The DVD also presents some original, and oft parodied (warning : link NSFW!), ‘Knowledge is Half the Battle’ PSAs – six in all. Future anthropologists will surely wonder about the IQ of the 20th century, what with animated kids swimming in thunderstorms and eating glass and playing in traffic.

With this release of GI Joe on DVD, we’re one step closer towards completing the holy quartet of 1980s boy cartoons. We already have handsome editions of Thundercats and Masters of the Universe, so with Shout!’s GI Joe and Transformers reissues, both pure in their content and presentation, we’re almost there.

And, appropriately, happy Fourth of July.

I can’t count how many times my college roommate and I played the Transformers G1 theme song in our dorm room, appreciating the simplicity and impenetrable complexity of the exposition-laden tune. We did the same thing with Tiny Tim’s ‘Livin’ in the Sunlight’, except as loud as we possibly could, and projected into the dining hall courtyard. What a team we were.

I also have a confession to make. I never watched Transformers as a kid. I mean, not consciously. My heart and soul were owned by the Thundercats and Masters of the Universe, both of which were more comfortably fantastical and less explodey than the uber-masculine GI Joe and Transformers cartoons. I had a light green Transformers dumptruck that I lost the stickers to, and I’m sure that there was at least one Optimus Prime floating around the house, but despite my later obsession with all things robotic, Transformers just didn’t factor into those early years. I know – I’m a horrible child of the 80s. I’ll turn in my membership card at the end of this post.

This doesn’t mean that retroactively loving the Transformers, for what they were and have become, is out of the question. I maintain enough youthful glee and scholarly appreciation of pop culture and animation to ‘get’ what the Transformers were about. And if I ever forget, I’ll just refer back to that amazing theme song. And I’d be lying if I didn’t also admit to having a box full of Transformers toys, just because they’re neat as hell.

The Transformers, as in the original Transformers (or ‘Generation 1′ as they’re referred to) came before watching Beast Wars while eating cereal and getting ready to go to high school, and long before waking up at 5 AM with Cartoon Network blaring some especially obnoxious iteration of Transformers with huge anime eyes (which even I knew was trash).

It’s nice to get back to the roots of the Transformers with this Complete First Season DVD set, which is something a precursor to the Matrix of Leadership collection due out  in mid-July, both of which celebrate 25 years of Transformers in the US. Let’s hope that the giant, complete Matrix set doesn’t preclude the slow release of the original season sets after this first collection. These newest releases are unique, however. Shout! Factory didn’t just re-release old DVDs of Transformers material – in these 16 episodes (many of them multi-part epics), Shout! actually went back and found lost footage and rearranged the animation so that it would appear as originally broadcast, so if you’re looking for a pure experience, this is the first place to find it…. I mean, next to taking a time machine back to the 1980s and hijacking a TV and some Nintendo Cereal System. That’s right, I said it.

So, the value of this DVD set to purist collectors is immediately apparent. Plus, there’s a freakin’ huge Autobot magnet in the package.

The first 2 discs in the 3-disc set are pure episodic fun, and I love diving into cel animation with lush, painted backgrounds and viewing ‘the art of doing a lot with as few frames as possible’. Disc 3 is all of the bonus materials, which are mostly comprised of a 20-minute documentary about the relationship between the toys and the cartoon – which existed to sell each other. No one’s shy about the fact that the original Transformers was a giant toy commercial, and while it’s not talked about quite as much anymore, it’s pretty obvious that this has never changed. Transformers has been one of the toy brands that never really disappeared from toy shelves over a 25 year history, which is a statement that doesn’t apply to many action figures at all.

Other bonuses : Transformers toy commercials that charmingly look like they were copied off of a jittery VHS tape, a vintage PSA about running away from home, and a printable script. This all leads me to believe that there’s a lot more coming by way of bonuses in subsequent sets. While these are nice, they only seem to scratch a surface of something that has developed a very complex mythos and dedicated fanbase.

Potential Transformers fans, this is your gateway in. Finally understand the difference between the Autobots and the Decepticons. Learn that robots actually have personalities and emotions and different powers. And finally, begin to grasp about a thousand cultural references that happen in today’s more awesome TV shows. Pick it up this week for around $30.

‘Swamp Thing’ is a name that’s almost as well known as your average Batman or Human Torch, but makes surprisingly few cultural or comic appearances for his notoriety. What you might not know is that Swamp Thing isn’t just some movie monster anti-hero concocted for terror – he’s a legitimate DC Comics hero, and was a comic book star for many years before ever becoming a movie, a TV show, a thankfully short-lived cartoon and a line of action figures. He’s hung out with Batman, and he’s probably one of the nicest guys you’ll ever meet. When you’re made of trees, you pretty much have to be.

After hearing that Swamp Thing’s 1990 live-action show would finally be coming to DVD, I had high hopes for something outright bizarre and hypnotic, and I wasn’t even remotely disappointed. I have been assaulted on all fronts with bizarre. The cartoon show’s opening theme alone left a disfiguring scar across my psyche.

Shout! Factory, purveyors of many great TV shows on DVD, have released the first two seasons in a handsomely packaged 4-DVD set. That’s 22 half-hour format episodes, running at about nine hours total, with additional interview material with Dick Durock, the actor who portrays Swamp Thing, and Len Wein, the original comic author. Both are two well-chosen and relevant personalities to interview, as opposed to say, the little blonde kid who ties up the screen for 95% of every episode… but we’ll get to that. Dick Durock also happens to be the same actor who portrayed Swampy in the two cinematic releases that preceded this, because if you’re going to get a guy to reprise a role, make sure it’s the guy under 3 inches of rubber mask that barely speaks. Regardless, he makes a good, stoic Swamp Thing.

The entire show dives right into post-movie continuity, and doesn’t bother to explain that this ‘Swamp Thing’ is actually Dr. Alec Holland, a good-natured scientist who fled into the swamp near his lab when an experiment blew up in his face. Because exploding experiments will always, always give you superpowers, the mysterious swamp matter somehow merged with the good Doctor, and while disfigured and green and slimy, he was still alive and could now communicate fluently, and often control, the natural elements around him. Other explanations of Swamp Thing are far more complicated, but this is the simple (?) reality that this series is predicated upon. There, I’ve just done all of the work for you.

Here are a few important things that I learned from watching the Swamp Thing TV series.

1) It’s perfectly safe to just wander aimlessly for walks in the swamp. Kids do it, elderly women do it, and honestly, you’re living near a swamp. There’s nothing else to do, and nothing there could possibly ever hurt you. This is evidenced by people doing JUST THAT in every episode, repeatedly. Alligators are just a rural myth.

2) When you see an 8-foot tall, shambling mass of wet weeds and muck and eyes in the shape of a terrifying human, treat him like you would treat some jerk in a mildly offensive t-shirt. Do not ever express fear or disbelief. Suitable substitutions for any kind of caution might be ‘immediate kinship’, ‘acting like you just found that pack of hot dogs that you thought you ate in the back of the fridge (and subsequently discovering that they’re still edible)’, or ‘indifference’. Swamp people seem to remain unfazed in all possible circumstances.

3) Don’t combine falcons and science, because you’ll end up with a whiny bird-man with one giant bear arm that doesn’t get wet when he swims, who also can’t perform CPR properly, but what do you expect? He’s a bird man.

4) If you find a small heap of junk in the swamp, it’s safe to think, immediately, that something is hidden in there, so dig around! And if you DO find something in the swamp that you lost there 20 years ago, just kinda look at it and smile and leave it there, because it’s just a clumsy metaphor.

The list goes on, and that’s only culled from the first three episodes. Between the sheer emotionless of ‘Jim’, Swamp Thing’s schoolboy friend (who never seems to go to school), the pure evil and pure hair of Dr. Anton Arcane, and the whole ‘Another Fine Mess You’re Gotten Us Into’ mentality, taken way, way too seriously, I actually couldn’t wait to take my lunch break so I could come home and watch another episode. It might present itself as a situation where you need to suspend your disbelief for maximum enjoyment, but it becomes pretty clear that you’ll need to suspend it from a gallows to even swallow one second of the totally out-there series, and in this way, it is glorious. Will Dr. Arcane bring another working girl back to his cave, or will he force his way upon her in a circus trailer this time? Will the episode end without really resolving anything? Will the overly-articulate and world-weary blonde kid ever show an emotion besides ‘whatever’? I bet that you know the beautiful answers.

I count it as a star among my B-movie style DVDs, a great evening’s entertainment among trusted friends, and absolutely worth a purchase. Fans of Garth Marenghi’s Darkplace, The Lost Skeleton of Cadavra, or anyone who likes to play MST3K will have a field day. Plus, I’d like to remind you, he hangs out with Batman.

I’m in love.

Let me preface this all by saying the following : this is a great DVD. It’s hilarious in its own way, and I’m very happy to have it in my collection.

So, you know those guys who go around the world eating elephant brains just because it’s considered a local delicacy for one tribe of forgotten peoples in the middle of nowhere? You know those guys who intentionally get themselves bitten by animals and shot with projectiles so they get on the internet and television? They ain’t got nothin’ on me, because I watched the third season of Captain N.

This week, the missing third season of Captain N was released by Shout Factory. What I (and other casual DVD collectors) had not realized was that the previously released ‘Captain N : The Complete Series‘ was not, in fact, complete at all – and I’m nothing if not a completist. See, the first two seasons of Captain N are considered to be a relatively good cartoon show. They existed in a 22-or-so minute format, and the animation was pretty well done – and then, the third season happened. And boy, did it happen.

Captain N became a 11-or-so minute show, and the original animation studio was dropped, or all got the floppyhands, or SOMETHING – because nothing was the same. Movements became jerky and uneven, no character looked the same from scene to scene, and worst of all, the dynamic Mother Brain – chief archnemesis for the whole show, became a poor outline of her previous appearance. Just check out these comparison shots.

[left to right : Mother Brain from the original Metroid
video game, Mother Brain from the first seasons of Captain N,
and the regrettable Mother Brain from season 3]

What were once semi-relevant, interesting plotlines became hollow explorations into lame sports games and yes, even Tetris. You can never, ever, ever make a convincing nemesis out of a Tetris block, nor can you make an acceptable villain out of a scoreboard in Basketball World (or, as they call it, Hoopland) – and yet, AND YET, ‘Clock Man’ emerges to terrorize the N Team. In the stand-out most horrendously agonizing cartoon episode I’ve ever seen, a little boy named Hoopless makes a robot so that he might score a shot through a magic basketball hoop on Hoop-De-Doo-Dah Day. Apparently, living in Hoopland means that you need to throw the word ‘hoop’ randomly into every other sentence, and most of your indigenous animals are shaped like hoops and shoot hoops out of their mouths. I wish I was kidding. I wish so very much.

What I find most tangentially interesting is the fact that Mother Brain was voiced by none other than notable singer Levi Stubbs – member of the Four Tops and The Coasters, the latter of which was managed by Ian Levine, who I’d written about here once before. Everything is interconnected. So, in addition to be a colossal collector, Ian Levine was also in league with Mother Brain.

There are seven Captain N episodes contained in this 2-disc set, while ‘The Complete Series’ set has 26. Omitted form both is episode number 27, which was only a much-dreaded clip show anyhow.

But that’s not all! This set also includes 13 episodes of ‘The New Super Mario World’, the final of a trio of shows to feature the ‘Super Mario’ name. The Mario cartoon world had previously seen a total of 65 episodes, most released on DVD at this point. Of course, nothing will ever beat the original Super Mario Brothers Super Show, which featured live-action Lou Albano segments and voiceovers, but ‘Super Mario World’ is a fitting death knell to the Super Mario cartoon legacy.

Happening sometime after the release of Super Mario World for the SNES, this cartoon incorporated many elements from the video game – all of King Koopa’s horribly obnoxious children, the horribly obnoxious Yoshi, and other various horribly obnoxious bad guys. Of course, it also added a great deal of unrelated, nearly irrelevant elements – such as cavemen, everywhere, making you long for the days of Super Mario 3’s various mushroom kings and FryGuys and TriClydes. It feels kinda like wishing to return to the good ol’ days of the Great Depression.

Interestingly, the presence of cavemen in the show created some very Luddite narratives – the introduction of TV hypnotized the cavepeople, fast food was evil, cars caused traffic jams and chaos, and the phone made people talk too much. Maybe the message was that technology removes us from our roots and ourselves, or maybe just that stupid people can’t handle complex things. Or maybe they were just really, really easy episodes to write.

The DVD includes a brief storyboarding of the title sequence, and some original Yoshi sketches, but nothing else. Since episodes of Super Mario and Captain N aired back to back in their original format, they are presented as such within the DVD, but you do get the option of watching just the Mario or just the Captain N episodes. Their arrangement on the disc differs slightly from the original pairings and airdates, but you’ll be internally bleeding far too much to care.

It’s a great DVD set. The cartoons are so bizarre and awkward that it’s pretty amazing to watch. It completes the Captain N collection, it’s an important addition to the Super Mario collection, and seriously, if you’re watching these shows today, it’s not because they’re really, really good. It’s for pure nostalgia, and to laugh at yourself, and appreciate them for what they are. There’s a whole lot to be appreciated in the 4 hours of cartoons presented here.

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