This week I've really been delving into cartoons, especially ones I've heard about for quite some time, but have never had the opportunity to view. Cartoons, such as Mighty Mouse: The New Adventures, a show which has the heavy award of being the launchpad for animators such as John K. of Ren and Stimpy infamy, and Bruce Timm, of Batman: The Animated Series. The show was spearheaded by Ralph Bakshi, a man known for stretching the limits of adult animation, creating what is now known as some of the first pieces of "adult animation", albeit in its crudest forms, with movies such as Fritz the Cat, Coonskin, and Wizards.
The show initially debuted in the fall of 1987, for saturday mornings on CBS. The network gave the program the dreaded 8 AM slot, in its first season; but it would lead to substantial ratings until the show hit a minor snag. In an episode entitled "The Littlest Tramp", Mighty Mouse appears to crush a white flower into a powder, and sniff it, thereby fixing his weakness. One watchdog reverend saw it as drug usage in a kid's cartoon, being highly unacceptable. He raised an issue, CBS cut the scene, and not long after, buried the show(by then in its second season) in the death slot of 12:30 PM, leaving it privy to pre-emptions each and every week. The show was canned not long after.
However, in having an incredibly short run, this show really laid the groundwork for cartoons in the 90s. Remind yourself, that in 1990, Tiny Toon Adventures premiered. A show that would break the fourth wall, include humor that appealed to kids as well as adults, double entendres, and such. In 1991 Ren & Stimpy would come along. 1992 - Batman: The Animated Series. You get the idea. These shows may not have a lot in common, stylistically, but when you boil it down to the practice being preached here - these are cartoons that weren't exactly out to push a toy line, or just keep kids glued to the tv, while parents watched, bored out of their minds.
All of these shows would be nowhere if it wasn't for Mighty Mouse: The New Adventures. Mainly because the team that worked on the show initially, included people who were involved in the creation of these groundbreaking programs. John K(R&S), Bruce Timm(Batman), Eddie Fitzgerald(Tiny Toons), these guys created a cartoon that was way ahead of its time, and when it got cancelled, and the team broke off into their seperate ways, they all would come back a couple years later, respectively, with their own strong products.
The show is [apparently, according to cartoon brew] finally heading to DVD, for a projected release date of early next year. I'm pretty excited for this, because it will really give me a chance to view this show, warts and all, and compare it fully to the creations that the team would later make.
And to think, without Ralph Bakshi approaching CBS about making a kids cartoon, we may have never had Ren & Stimpy.
