The New Adventures Of Mighty Mouse!

God Almighty! I'd kind of forgotten about Ralph Bakshi's revival of vintage Terrytoons super critter dubbed Mighty Mouse back in the late 80's. Then I chanced upon it on Amazon and a few keystrokes later this nifty DVD was rolling in my direction. I've taken the time to sit down and enjoy these far too few cartoons (a mere nineteen episodes).

Now the project was a bit under the gun and slapdash and frankly that shows in the first season's episodes which are really aspiring to be what the show could become.  A number of old Terrytoon cartoons were dusted off, and integrated into the new stuff to fill time, but with the second season which was incomplete, you can tell what a truly "mighty" endeavor this was going to turn into given more time and continued effort.

The satire was sharp and sometimes nasty, and the creators were well steeped in popular culture and made good use of that arcane understanding. As I'm sure almost everyone knows, much of the talent on this show went on to create Ren and Stimpy, another show that made us all think twice about picking our noses. I would be hard pressed to pick just one episode but like most folks I'd likely choose the revival (of sorts) of the Mighty Heroes who like the JSA at DC had fallen victim to the rigors of time. (Why is there not a Mighty Heroes dvd out there for me to buy?) These are really good cartoons, not always great, but sometimes. I'm glad I finally picked up a collection. Now I need to read the comics. 

Alongside Ralph Bakshi's Mighty Mouse cartoon, I'd love to have a nifty collection of these comics from Marvel, which carried forward the zany self-referential humor of the cartoon series. I think I have the Crisis parodies around here somewhere, but I was not savvy enough to capture most of the issues. The series was actually a revival of sorts, since Marvel had during the 40's published some Mighty Mouse comics (along with about everyone it seems).

The revival featured the art of Ernie Colon, though other fan favorites such as George Perez, Steve Lightle, and John Byrne. Even one of my heroes George Wildman, an artist on Popeye and important editor at Charlton Comics lent a brush to the doings. These look to be some exceedingly fun comics. Admit it, you want one too.

This is a revised Dojo classic re-post.  

Rip Off