May you have no need this day for the services of International Rescue. Because Thunderbirds are not go! They’re taking the day off.
Category: Cartooning
Speaking of Belgium
Some of the early installments of Tintin by Georges Remi, aka Hergé, are racist. The Nazis allowed Remi to work undisturbed in German-occupied Belgium, leading to his arrest as a collaborator after the war. The case was later dropped.
The Adventures of Tintin, from 1991-92, is a mostly faithful cartoon adaptation of the books, minus the objectionable material. Some enterprising person has made the series available online in its original aspect ratio. Some other copies are zoomed and cropped to distraction.
The Less Than Fantastic Four
(I was going to publish this months ago, but then Archive.org was hacked and taken down. Now that it’s been restored I can embed the site’s videos again.)
Jonny Quest was a big deal for me, and a lot of other young animation fans, when it appeared on ABC prime time TV in 1964-65. I have both the DVD collection of the series and the Blu-ray set, which restored Doug Wildey’s name to the closing credits.
I used to sign my name that same way, enclosed in a box like a TV screen. The series is included with HBO’s MAX streaming service.
After Jonny Quest, Space Ghost in 1966 was a big step down in animation quality for Hanna-Barbera. On the plus side, the art generally stayed on model with Alex Toth’s character designs. A year later, it was all too obvious the budget had been cut even more for The Fantastic Four.
The only way, that I’m aware of, to see the FF cartoons today is on Archive.org. Whoever transferred them from the old Boomerang cable channel did as good a job as anyone could do.
Alex Toth’s character designs are very good, but the animation rarely does them justice. Nonetheless, I’d like to see these cartoons given a proper restoration and presentation.
Mostly, I’m interested in the episodes that are adaptations of the original Marvel Comics stories. The groundbreaking Kirby/Lee/Sinnott “Galactus Trilogy” from FF #48-50 is crammed into a single episode. It’s #14 in this playlist.
Sparky’s Self-Analysis
Five minutes with Charles M. Schulz explaining his work and the personal philosophy behind it. I hear something in here that’s similar to the ideas that Fred Rogers explored in his own creative endeavors.
KHAAANNNNN!!!!!
Two Sci-Fi movie favorites and a silent Max Fleischer cartoon, with its own Sci-Fi elements, have made it into the National Film Registry this year.
I am especially pleased with the addition of Invaders from Mars.
Also getting the nod this year is Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, the feature that put Trek on a different track from Star Trek: The Motion Picture.
Speaking of Trek, William Shatner is scheduled to appear once again at the Star Trek Original Series Set Tour in Ticonderoga, New York. I’m semi-seriously considering being there. A lot this coming year will depend on my medical status.
https://startrektour.com/product-category/2025-06-shatner/
Kudos to animation historian Jerry Beck for helping to make the restoration of “Koko’s Earth Control” happen.
Rerun Rudolph Rerun
Who’d a thunk that sixty years after it first aired, the stop-motion Christmas special Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer would continue to be shown on network TV? After being on CBS for decades, this year it returned to NBC, where it premiered in 1964.
This time it ran for 75 minutes, with the extra 15 minutes used for more commercials, rather than an introduction to note the anniversary. On the plus side, Rudolph looked brand-new, even better than on my Blu-ray copy.
Fifteen years ago here, I answered the question “Hermey or Herbie?” As heard in this video clip, there’s no confusion why there’s always been some confusion about the wannabe dentist elf’s name.