Favorite Covers - The Mighty Heroes!

The Mighty Heroes were created by Ralph Bakshi when he worked for Terrytoons. The story goes that the guys at Terrytoons were making a pitch for Saturday morning shows and nothing was going over with Fred Silverman, one of TV's big kahunas at the time. Then a young and brash Bakshi jumped in and whipped up this superteam on the spot. It sold and they got a show, albeit not for all that long. The cover above by Rurik Tyler and Larry Mahlstedt is the best in the very short comic book career of the Mighty Heroes. This is cover from a 1998 one-shot which featured new stories about the team. 

For the record the members are Diaper Man, Strong Man, Tornado Man, Rope Man, and Cuckoo Man. 

Beginning in 1967 The Mighty Heroes had rated a four-issue series from Dell Comics. They shared the book with other Terrytoon characters such as Mighty Mouse and Hector Heathcote. No information is available that I can find on who worked on the feature. Here's a link where you can find the fourth issue. 

This new team of superheroes also appears as a back-up feature in the pages of Mighty Mouse in issues #170 and #171 after their own title ended. 

In 1987 during the black and white comic book glut which savaged the direct sales markets, the team rated a single issue from Spotlight Comics with a new story. Jim Engel's cover is pretty good. Joe Gill is credited with the story. 

 

The Mighty Heroes have never been released on a sanctioned DVD, an easy thing to package since only twenty-one episodes were ever made. But a fan can get a slim volume dedicated to the team. It's pretty comprehensive given their brief existence. I recommend Ralph Bakshi's The Mighty Heroes Declassified to any fan of the team, which I surely am. Bakshi did participate in this production. 

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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.  

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