Wednesday, May 26, 2010

Yay! "Mighty Mouse: The New Adventures" on DVD

I've been wanting to purchase this for a while, but at $35, it was a little too steep for my blood.

I finally got ahold of a copy, by using some of my Citibank points and I am in heaven. It looks like my friend Mike Kazaleh drew the cover, which is appropriate since he worked on the cartoons and is one of many interviewed on the disc.

Of course, it is Ralph Bakshi's and John Kricfalusi's baby. Hot off the success of The Rolling Stones' "Harlem Shuffle" video, Bakshi was interested in doing more cartoons, and after many discussions, this was the result.

Many people suggest that Disney's "DuckTales" changed the course of animation history in 1987, but even though it debuted two weeks later, I would give the nod to this show.

Although "DuckTales" was steps ahead of what appeared earlier in the decade, it was still really more of the same for Disney, and similar to what they did a couple of years earlier with "Wuzzles" and "Gummi Bears".

"Mighty Mouse" really broke the mold and brought back "funny" to animated cartoons, and I strongly feel that even Disney was inspired by this when they did "The Little Mermaid" feature film. They certainly were years later with series like "Shnookums and Meat", which took this new style to the ultimate extreme for a Disney cartoon.

On the down side, it did kind of start the trend of "toilet humor" in cartoons that was solidified in Kricfalusi's next series "The Ren and Stimpy Show" (which I also love, at least the earlier episodes).

Anyway, if you haven't seen or don't like Mighty Mouse, you are in for a treat. If you do like Mighty Mouse, and can't get enough, there's even three original theatrical Mighty Mouse cartoons included as well.

No comments: