T Campbell's Blog

Well, that took me long enough to put together. Fleen honors History with an actual review, and gave me the opportunity to respond. I did so, responding not only to Gary Tyrrell's points but to the tense culture that he seems to be striving against. Probably one of my better essays, overall:

Tyrrell handles his critical role as gingerly as a thermonuclear bomb with a busted timer, as if trying to be forthright and fair enough to compensate for the bad behavior of all the book’s other critics.

Relax, Gary. You took time to read the damn thing all the way through and worked off the actual text. You didn’t rely on lies, hearsay, illogical assumptions or character assassination. Just as importantly, you didn’t decide to like it because I seemed a decent sort, or because you’d read my other work, or because you thought I meant well. That already punts you into the top 2% of the bell curve.

Not that there’s not room for improvements on Tyrrell’s improvements. My biggest problem’s one that I didn’t expect to have: he doesn’t hit hard enough.

More "Reflections..." let's just leave it at "soon."

"Reflections" is on hold for a short bit while I deal with a few other issues, both writing-related and otherwise. If your reading list is the same as mine you already know what one of them is, if not, a link later today or tomorrow should explain everything. My apologies for the delay.

More bad news for those who wish to be "the DC and Marvel of webcomics:" DC and Marvel are beginning to think that they might like to be.

Last year, I made some remarks to the effect that Marvel's online "efforts" were more like online "halfhearted swipes."

What a difference a few months made. Marvel's gone after the Web hard, with Wikipediastic pages for its main characters, the restoration of the venerable no-prize, and smart, easy-to-find releases on their various multi-media releases.

And Marvel is not alone. Tokyopop's page now strongly emphasizes user-generated content and
clearly takes from the leading social-networking sites ("Pop it," digg?).

Marvel's current site design may be a bit too cluttered, the boundary between T-Pop's UGC and its copyrighted content a bit too indistinct, but both sites have clearly committed more resources and more capital into the Web in the last two years than previously.

Viz, DC and Image haven't come quite so far, but they have made real progress-- and the term "online comics" is appearing on company sites more and more often. Back in the day, "online comics" was a more-commonly-used synonym for webcomics... and particularly in the case of webmanga, it's getting harder and harder to tell which category to use.

Fittingly, the most conservative major publisher is the one whose website is the most awkward, with horrible typography, a mishmash of various clashing not-quite-Dan-DeCarlo art styles, "mystery links" and an inexplicable obsession with fictional geography. It hasn't quite figured out who it's for yet, but give it time. Marvel.com's unhealthy obsession with its stockholders was its biggest weakness in its early days. For all the in-jokes older fans make about it, the Archie brand still carries plenty of charm, and as soon as the website develops a similar spirit, it can start growing in the right direction.

The idea that comics' "old media" had to wake up to the Web sooner or later isn't all that groundbreaking: what's new is that it seems to be happening sooner. Both Marvel and DC have embraced podcasting (Joe Quesada on a personal basis). And in a recent interview, Paul Levitz had this to say about smaller, primarily online publishers, as well as bookstore-focused publishers:

"You're avoiding a lot of the bricks and mortar and overhead and legacy systems... one of the challenges of being the oldest company in a business, like DC is, is that you build things according to the logic of their time, and they survive past that logic..."

A sign of which way the wind is blowing? I suspect so.

I'm well aware that a lot of webcartoonists would view the notion of serious competition from DC Comics with either derisive laughter or contempt. I don't take either view. I think cross-fertilization is a big part of creative vitality; I think that Web-native cartooning and the house identities of DC and Marvel and Archie and Tokyopop have a lot to teach each other. It's going to be interesting to see which cartoonists decide to learn... and which close their ears and cling to the it's-been-done-before. It might not be the ones whom we expect.

More. Soon!

How many comics should there be?

Are there too many now? Too few? Just about enough?

Everyone's going to have a different answer to that question. Here's mine:

How many different kinds of people are in the world?

How many different subjects are worth talking about?

Multiply those by each other.

Multiply the result by 3 (a little competition keeps everyone honest).

And that's how many comics there should be.

I don't look upon this new medium as a cartoonist's playground, I look upon the production of work on all topics, for all moods-- solidly crafted work with something to say and a sensawunda and a sensahuma and a sensakewl-- as the comics field's collective duty. This is one time when "you can" does mean "you should." Comics have things to say about retail and Rwanda, psychology and philosophy. Even the strips that seem to be harmless fun have a sort of journalistic role, reflecting the world through the lens of their subject matter and authorial perspective, observing, interpreting, telling us new things.

"The challenge is to grow outward." For my money, this is one of the most important things Scott McCloud's said, much more important than anything about micro-infinite penny canvases. (It's near the beginning of Reinventing Comics, if you're curious. An electronic no-prize to the first person who tells us the page!)

Cartoonists have always recognized this duty, but performing it suddenly makes business sense. But I don't believe "the audience is fragmenting" so much as performing mitosis. Readers and viewers-- at least the ones most likely to support what they like-- are usually not narrow-minded zealots, people who only watch romantic comedies, or only read gamer strips, or only like angry documentaries. Media's most valuable consumers are gourmets, sampling a little from all three and many other things besides. It's a million different people doing the knocking... and they're knocking on more than one door.

(This metaphor is now officially TAPPED. Conservationists have been notified.)

So... companies of one are outperforming companies of many, and they can travel from the far end of the long tail to the upper limits far more easily than they could before. This is still a tough racket-- it probably always will be-- but the small are as upwardly mobile as they have ever been. Does that, then, mean the end for Warner and Marvel and Universal? Are they nothing more than a tasty snack for 1,000,000 pen-wielding piranha? Has the revolution arrived?

Not quite.

Oh, don't look so crushed, webcommies. You knew it wouldn't be that easy.

(Continued after this weekend. Got some other things to focus on 'tween now and then. When we return... The Sleeping Giants Wake.)

Collectively, professional webcomics collectives have seen more promising days.

Back in '99, it sure seemed like the right idea. God knew WE didn't feel like organized businesspeople (we made COMICS for Odin's sake) so why not work with people who did? Join a business and have our hosting all taken care of, our ad sales all taken care of, our publishing all taken care of, and our income all... um... factored into a complex algorithm involving pageview percentages and halving revenue or profit, then mailed to us in a series of sometimes timely and sometimes shamefully late checks. Wait, I'm getting ahead of myself. Of COURSE the money would be all taken care of. Focus on what we do best-- comics-- and leave the rest to our "publisher." That was called "horizontal specialization!" We had looked it up.

There was a time... you younger kids don't remember this, but strewth... when it was possible to pity those poor vagabonds without any kind of pro collective to call their own. When were they going to grow up and get with the program? Would they join Keenspace and try to get Spotted (or Smashed, or... Modern-Told) before it was too late?

Well, it's been great inside our air-conditioned pro collectives. The experience was nice, the networking was good, and we earned a lot of recognition and readers that we might never have gotten in the sweltering world outside.

Oh, but moneywise?

Those bums have been kicking our asses.

Because no one in this field posts earnings statements, and because it's kind of gauche to ask, it's hard to verify how many people are "succeeding" or "making a living at this" in any given year, but from what I overhear, I'm going to say "fifteen to twenty," backing up the overwhelmingly reliable source that is Checkerboard Nightmare's WCCA speech. Of those, almost none rely upon a collective's check as their primary source of income.

Even James Kochalka and Eric Millikin, Modern Tales-related webcartoonists who've been celebrated for not having a day job, are supplementing their income with non-comics work. Keenspot and Modern Tales both recently lost their top-earning strips. And I've been a top-earning creator at four different collectives over the last four years, and let's just say my hypothetical future kids want a raise in their allowances. And three meals a day.

Some of those "successes" have joined more informal collectives (Dumbrella, Blank Label, Dayfree, possibly Boxcar) but the key word there is "informal"-- the members pool their resources where they collectively feel it's appropriate but sell and do business as individuals. Their allegiances are decided not by formal contract but by the more arcane and less restrictive rules of social networking.

Certainly, you don't have to join a business in order not to make a lot of money doing webcomics. You can do that just as well on your own! And I'M NOT SAYING that membership in a formal collective is bad for you. (That'd sure be a great parting gift for Tim Demeter, wouldn't it? Oh, and by the way, Tim, "R. Life" webcomics are so played!)

I think most people on Keenspot, Modern Tales, Wirepop and Clickwheel would say they've gained more than they've lost from their membership. (A bit more on that later.)

They just haven't gained a living.

This is bad news for those who, like me, have likened Keenspot and Modern Tales to "the DC and Marvel of webcomics" or "the comic-strip syndicates of webcomics." This was certainly true in intent and for a while it seemed true in execution. And after that, we wanted it to be true, because we were particularly good at being members of collectives or because we just wanted to make and make and make comics without having to complicate our taxes.

Bad news for us, and yet... great news for everyone doing webcomics, because the businesses that are doing best in webcomics are businesses of one. And all you need to be a business of one is the decision to be.

No one else is going to do this for you, but you can do it for yourself. You have particular experiences, particular ideas, particular weaknesses but also particular strengths that no one else on Earth has. You can fill a niche that no one else on Earth can fill.

And don't tell me that the public is as narrow-minded as that superhero-obsessed editor who has no time for your ideas. Some members of the public might be, but you're not doing this for them.

Opportunity knocks but once... on a million different doors... and it's a million different hands doing the knocking, all at once.

(To be continued-- this evening, I hope. This series is getting much longer than I anticipated: there's a lot to cover that I don't expect to be covering again for a while. Along with some of my older essays here and on Comixpedia, this may just be the beginnings of another book, here.)

I hate "teh dr4ma."

It compromises everything I love about webcomics: leeches our productivity, impairs our ability to work together and help one another, turns off the casual reader and encourages our audiences to become narrow-minded street gangs.

But I have also LOVED "teh dr4ma."

Particularly when it happened to OTHER PEOPLE. That way I could sit back, sip a diet soda and cluck my tongue at those poor souls and wonder why they couldn't just get along, basking all the while in the combatants' acerbic wit, the battle's dramatic heat and my own sense of superiority.

But in some capillary of my heart I even loved it when it happened to ME. The attention from new quarters was oddly flattering. And I'm not so devoted to peace and forgiveness that I don't enjoy a good old verbal smackdown when I feel justified in giving one. I would have loved my webfights a lot more if they weren't with people whom, by and large, I respected. I recently got into a frank exchange of e-mails with someone whom I did NOT respect, an exchange which I won, and OHHH IT FELT SOOOO GOOOOOOOD.

I think that anyone who wants to communicate with other people-- which is one of the things comics are all about-- has to acknowledge their inner drama-queen. Acknowledge it, then lock it up and keep it secure. Because it will rule you if you let it.

What astonishes and delights me lately is that I see people actually doing this, at least in the little field that is my focus.

The general world culture certainly isn't any more civilized now than it was in the Nineties, and new media? Probably less. But it feels like webcomics have reached an unprecedented maturity since that flamewar to end all flamewars back in March. (I won't link... you can find it by searching "Pulse Webhead 9.") There are a few practical reasons this might stick:

1) A new generation is working its way in, leaching influence away from the contentious old-timers, and they don't particularly care about yesterday's issues. We all finally recognize, for instance, that "subscription vs. free" isn't quite the passion-stirrer it once was.

2) The old-timers are tired of wasting all our time fighting over nothing important. The battle over net neutrality had a way of putting our little flamefights nicely in perspective, much like that antimatter wall in CRISIS ON INFINITE EARTHS.

3) Webcartoonists are beginning to realize that they are being watched by publishers and Hollywoodians who might just give them money or at least raise their profile, and cultivating a reputation for "playing well with others" just makes sound business sense.

It could stick. I hope it does. There are opportunities to be seized (which I'll cover in Part Four) and new problems to be faced (Part Five). and most of them will have to be seized and faced without me, because I'm entering a new phase (back to that in Part Six). More... tomorrow, at this rate.

I'm hard to follow sometimes... I admit it.

It's true, I don't like personal blogs... and yet I really do think that they're aiding international understanding. How can both be true?

First of all, it's okay to just present your life, if your life is indeed fascinating. I couldn't get enough of Salam Pax's blog at the height of the Iraq war.

Second, there's nothing wrong with keeping a record of your doings for your friends and relatives, as long as you're clear that that is what it is.

But most blogs seem to carry the expectation, implied or overt, of attention and validation from strangers. If you're going to demand the attention of strangers, you'd better have something of almost inarguable value to say to them, something they can't get from their existing circle of friends. Otherwise, you're just seeding tomorrow's egosearch.

I don't even like personal blogging very much.

(Happy 571st post, readers!)

Ninety-nine times out of a hundred, it's an addictive, reactive, egocentric enterprise. The few blogs I like are the ones that have some sort of focus other than "my blog about me." Unless you're as adept at turning your personal life into art as James Kochalka or Harvey Pekar, you are probably wasting the global village's time. I sure feel like I have with this blog, often enough.

(This distaste didn't stop me from shamelessly plundering the personal blogs of cartoonists as research material for the book, but a boring body of work can still contain a few gems and be good research fodder. I don't read obituaries for fun, either.)

So... why "T Campbell's Blog," then? Do I hate the global village that much? For a while, I was as confused as you probably are.

There was a period when I was desperate to beat out the other [FirstName] T. Campbells on Google searches, but that battle's long since won. That wasn't the reason I kept things going.

I think the blog had more to do with seeking a new identity. For five years I'd been "the writer of Fans," and after that... well, I wasn't sure who I was going to be after that. Y'know, some of us wonder why cartoonists stick with one feature year after year, decade after decade... and I think a lot of it has to do not with job security, but with identity security. Take away Garfield, and who is Jim Davis? (To himself, I mean. To you, he's obviously a hack/seminal influence.)

I didn't know what my big, defining project was going to be-- I had so many ideas, colliding into each other as they came down the stairs like that scene in Clue. I'm glad I tried them all, but they didn't leave me any more enlightened. Was I an editor? A scriptwriter? A search engine designer? A historian? A podcaster? A... (ick) blogger? I didn't really know, and I missed knowing who I was, so I used the blog to, as much as anything else, keep my identities straight. I also wasn't sure how much it should be self-promotion ("I RAWWWWWK") and how much disclosure ("I SUUUUUUCK").

Well, the last couple of months-- and specifically June 30-- have made things much clearer to me. Answer: NEITHER. I no longer feel the need to hype myself, and I no longer feel the need to tell everyone everything I'm thinking and feeling, all the time-- the need which fuels the existence of the blogosphere and the MySpacesphere and the Facebooksphere. CURRENT MOOD: WOULDN'T YOU LIKE TO KNOW.

This blog now exists for two reasons: one, to showcase work of mine that doesn't belong anywhere else (like this "Reflections" series), and two, to point people to work of mine that does belong other places.

No more self-promotion. No more egosearching. No more link love for its own sake-- no offense to the many, many deserving cartoonists out there, but if I linked to one of you I'd have to link to all of you, and you're too many and my fingers are too tired. To my non-cartoonist friends, see previous sentence. No more public reactions to the latest webcomics controversy, just because I have an opinion or feel it's important to note. And there was never a LOT about my personal life in here, but no more of that, either.

There may be some more essays, but if so, they won't be reactive so much as... reflective.

I'm getting out of "the community," at least for a good long while. And I'm aiming to get further into the writing game... much further in.

But as I shift gears, I find I have a new perspective on that sociological phenom known as "Internet drama," and that silly optimistic belief that someone else might find my thoughts useful, the belief which keeps making me DO these darn things. PART THREE'S NEXT TRICK: Discussing drama without starting any! CAN IT BE DONE???

Scott Kurtz and I kissed and made up at the SDCC 2006.

Even the slashficcers didn't see that one coming... though they shouldn't have been surprised.

Say what you will, say what I will, Scott knows how to extend the olive branch. I mean, greet me warmly on Friday, call me a friend and tell the Image guys "anything on this table is free for this guy?" Sold! What flamewar?

Though I didn't quite have the temerity to bring it up, I suspect we laid the groundwork for this rapprochement when I disclosed that I was leaving Clickwheel and the reasons why. If I may retain a facade of public discretion, let it suffice to say that those reasons disproved, decisively, certain notions that Scott seemed to carry about me, which in turn permitted him to disprove notions I carried about him. Misunderstanding, I remain convinced, is the source of most conflict in this world. Bloggers in Israel and Lebanon: keep building those bridges.

(The Rant Which Started It All is still on Scott's blog as I write this, but if he's anything like me, deleting outmoded blog entries is not high on the List of Priorities.)

You didn't hear about this.

Nobody mentioned it on their blog. It never came up in a podcast. The New York Times remained strangely unmoved. Fiddy didn't put it in any lyrics. Your local pastor didn't quote Matthew 5:9.

Partly because it wasn't important, and partly because it was boring.

At best, it was a rehash of the Tycho-vs-McCloud anticlimax we got last year. Remember that hullabaloo? Remember how it trailed off into an insubstantial bubblegum backbeat? Me neither, and I wrote about it.

And oh, yeah... I didn't see a reason to tell you until now, either.

Find out why... IN OUR NEXT INSTALLING ENTHRALLMENT. Part Two, coming... soon.

A year and change ago, I stopped writing Fans and finished my scripts for Rip & Teri. It was time to move on to new and greater ambitions. Rather than just create webcomics, I wanted to benefit the medium itself.

It was certainly an interesting year. Full of successes and failures, some failures looking like successes and some successes looking like failures. It gave me some insight into Web culture that I wish I'd had when I was writing "The Screen Scene" for the History. It gave me some insight into myself that I wish I'd had when planning this phase of my career.

I'd like to tell you what I've learned. Since the attention span of the Web is limited, I'm going to work it into a series of compact essays over the next several days. First up: "Teh Drama."

(I'm getting closer, but I'm still not quite ready to get back to the Web full-time. Couple more days, probably. In the meantime, enjoy this... and let me know if you would be interested in a book full of this sort of thing.)

Transformers Season One. Ah, for the days when you could suggest "computery" with a simple distorted color-on-color grid.

Gotta love how unconcerned the Autobots seem to be about all that laser fire: rather than staying low to the ground in vehicle form or finding a foxhole somewhere, they just run at the Decepticons like they're ready for some football.

Jazz, the popular pimped-out Porsche, gets a special award for Creative Use of Transformation in Combat.

I really like the penultimate shot: it shows that the Autobots really have to sweat to get the job done, since (at this stage) the Decepticons can fly and they can't. This is unfortunately mitigated somewhat by the last shot, which-- um-- shows the Autobots flying. (Truth in advertising, in a way: The TV series was wildly inconsistent on this one.) Nice use of the American Midwest setting, though.

Transformers Season Two. Now we're talkin'. Look how much they can cram into 33 seconds:

:01-03: Three seconds in and already we have a cooler image than anything that turned up in the actual series: the Autobot and Decepticon symbols FLYING THROUGH SPACE as if they are ROBOTS THEMSELVES. This cuts right to the animism that makes Transformers so appealing in the first place, the idea that ANYTHING might be alive but most ordinary people (i.e., grownups) wouldn't know about it until it was too late.

:04: Planet Cybertron.

:05: Earth.

:06-08: A desert volcano erupting with both red and purple lava, the gang colors of the Autobots and Decepticons.

:08-11: The Dinobots, probably the most appealing subset of Transformer characters. Dinosaurs are the ultimate power fantasy for kids and still a powerful one for adults: it's not that they're so strong they don't have to be smart, it's that they're so strong that the very DEFINITION of "smart" bends around them like light around a black hole. When ROBOT dinosaurs are in the house, "smart" means staying out of their frikkin' WAY.

:12-13: Blitzwing, a "triple-changer" who goes from plane to robot to tank in two seconds flat.

:14: Blink and you'll miss Omega Supreme in tank-to-tank combat with Blitzwing, which quickly resolves as...

:15=16: Omega transforms into giant robot mode and SQUISHES THAT NAZI LIKE AN OVERSIZED COCKROACH. This was the first sign we'd get that Transformers could be HARDCORE. The only thing that would make this moment better would be if one of the Constructicons rushed in and carted the ex-Blitzwing off the battlefield for repair or possibly for spare parts.

:17: OH WAIT, THAT ACTUALLY HAPPENS.

:18-20: Astrotrain does his best to go with the flow and hopes we won't notice how lame a concept it is to transform into a train AND a space shuttle. It doesn't work, because in train mode, he can only go in a straight line and is practically BEGGING to be shot, and then he asks us to believe that a space shuttle launches itself from the ground. Even when we're kids we know that's not how it works.

:21-23: I wasn't aware that insects made their homes in lava, but the Insecticons are creepy and cool so they get a pass.

:24-26: A brief invocation of the first season's intro, with better graphics. Note how Megatron, despite having a weapon three times the size of Optimus', is not remotely as good a shot. Say it with me: it's not the size, it's how you use it.

Transformers Season Three. I didn't see the movie between seasons two and three like everyone else (I caught it a few years later), so my knowledge was limited to these few but important facts:

1) They had KILLED Optimus Prime.

2) The guy with the kewl flames on his chest was NOT OPTIMUS PRIME. You could tell because the opening sequence barely showed him at ALL.

3) They had done... something... to Megatron.

4) No matter what they said, the guy with the "futuristic" crown and the seemingly permanent PMS was NOT MEGATRON. (Sure, they both had a tendency to fly off the handle, but Megatron had a certain emotional RANGE the new guy lacked.)

5) Unicron, the eater of worlds who had looked pretty impressive in the spoileriffic previews, was now dead.

6) That was Unicron's severed head in the opening credits, which was good for about one storyline when it looked like he might regain his body, and afterwards was just a reminder that no threat in Season Three came close to the urgency of a planet-eater.

7) I was pretty sure that when two robot cities fought, they didn't actually whirl around and around like the Tasmanian Devil.

8) Somebody in production was really REALLY REEEEALLY reaching with some of these transitions.

9) When you're being shot at in an open area, transforming into a boom box doesn't seem like the most viable strategy.

He-Man and the Masters of the Universe. A few thoughts:

1) I always thought He-Man's disguise was actually pretty good. His voice was completely different, his musculature was exactly the same as 98% of all the males on Eternia, and unlike Adam, he was black.

...WELL, I DIDN'T KNOW! I didn't grow up next to a tanning salon! It's not like there was a wide range of human skin tones on the program! (Evil-Lyn may have been Asian-- toy says yes, toon says no.) Besides, I still like the theory... there's nothing in the cartoons that disproves it, and it makes the secret ID much more plausible. Which is necessary, because...

2) Imagine that every time Clark Kent ducks into a supply closet or a phone booth, lightning strikes him and he announces in a booming voice that HE HAS THE POWER. Granted, the secret ID thing has never been the most plausible part of superhero mythology (and comic books seem to be undergoing a collective "crisis of faith" about it now) but it's not like Adam's transformation is as easily disguised as a session with a PLAYBOY in the men's room. Billy Batson, as far as I can tell, covers for his transformations into Captain Marvel by having no social life whatsoever, but Adam is a flippin' PRINCE, and a notorious bad boy at that. The Sorceress had to be expending most of her magical resources on "impair logical deduction" spells.

3) Omniphobia is funny. We used to get cowardly characters in cartoons all the time, from Cringer to Scooby-Doo to Snarf to Dan Quayle. We don't anymore, and I'm not sure why, although it is hard to tell sometimes whether Cringer is just an introvert who needs regular shots of magical steroid lightning, or a genuine split personality traumatized by the actions of his danger-loving alter ego. Neither option makes He-Man look like the world's most responsible pet owner.

4) Why is He-Man punching me? Was it something I said? Man-At-Arms and Orko too? What IS this?

5) The version I see here references "the evil Masters of the Universe," which quickly got changed to "the evil forces of Skeletor." Good thing too, because the series title doesn't make a lick of sense. Who are the Masters of the Universe? He-Man and crew? They never seem to regulate the orbit of Venus or tax Andorians or anything. Skeletor and co? If they're already Masters, why not call in an alien armada and drop a few dozen A-bombs on the palace already? Maybe it's just propaganda, like the "Thousand-Year Reich?" Or maybe it's like an M.A.?

Thundercats. Quite possibly the best of all the 1980s animated intros. The animation is fluid and exciting, the use of anatomy honors the tradition of Neal Adams (within the limited abilities of overworked Japanese studio hands), the lyrics are meaningless but the tune is infectious and fun, and the whole thing remains very much on message. That message is: THESE GUYS ARE NOT TO BE MESSED WITH.

Seriously. We start with a sequence in which Lion-O is channeling energies visible from space. Then follows a collection of action sequences where our major players mow down like a hundred guys. Then they all assemble for the "family photo" shot and you're just starting to wonder why they occupy so little of the screen when the final member of the family sorta-casually turns into the frame.

"Yeah, that's right. We've got a GIANT GHOST on our side. You know what he's like? HE'S LIKE GOD, ONLY MORE HANDS-ON. GAME. OVER."

Mumm-Ra isn't given a lot of space for a rebuttal, but he does pretty well, considering. We get a quick shot of Slithe and the others cowering before his power, which nicely drives the point home: this is the guy that the GENOCIDAL COALITION is afraid of. Lion-O's shown as no lightweight with an impressively animated leap and more ruby-colored ordnance, but Mumm-Ra's looking pretty hale and hearty in those last few seconds. It's unusual for a series intro to end with the implication that the hero might be in real trouble here, but that's what we get.

Which is what set Thundercats apart. When He-Man went up against Skeletor or Optimus against Megatron, you knew that in the end the good guy would win because he was stronger. But you DIDN'T know that with the Thundercats, especially in the early shows. And considering how kickass they're shown to be in this intro (which only demonstrates a fraction of their full powers and abilities) that's pretty damned impressive.

Granted, Mumm-Ra had a weakness that anyone with sufficiently whitened teeth could exploit. Granted, Slithe's team was so incompetent he made Skeletor look like Patton. And granted, in the intro, Mumm-Ra's scream is less one of rage and more one of getting the world's first palm-to-crotch paper cut. Nothing is perfect in this life.

SilverHawks. You can tell this is done by the same team that did Thundercats because of the animation quality, the music quality and the general here-are-the-awesome-good-guys-here-are-the-awesome-bad-guys setup.

Unfortunately, the character designs aren't as good. Full-face masks are cool and all, but Spider-Man notwithstanding, it's tough to cheer for characters whose faces we can't see. "Partly metal, partly real" made no sense to me in the Eighties and doesn't now-- what keeps those fleshy "real" parts from exploding in the vacuum of space? (No, don't send me the explanation. I'm talking first impressions here.) And the heavy approach to anatomy that worked so well with cat-men works considerably less well when you're trying to imagine humans capable of flight.

The only thing that keeps this from being a complete wash for me is the fighting style of the Silverhawks, unique in cartoons and clearly inspired by nature, and Bluegrass' superior smirk. Look at him. "I am so cool that I don't even need wings or my own fight sequence. I haven't joined this team. It's joined ME."