Top 4: Animated Series Based on Comic Books

From Spiderman and His Amazing Friends to The Superfriends, my childhood was filled with cartoons based on popular comic book characters, but putting nostalgia aside, most of the series before about 1990 are painful to watch now. The animation is cheap, the voice actors over emote every line, the stories are repetitive, and the dialogue is written to ensure that even the slowest 5 year old doesn't miss a single plot point. But in the late 80s and early 90s, cartoons started to raise the bar by including actually interesting plots, non-campy dialogue, and skilled voice acting.

#4. X-Men: The Animated Series - In 1992, Fox added this faithful adaptation of Marvel's X-Men to their "Fox Kids" Saturday morning lineup, and it was quickly one of my favorites. It featured a mix of classic and newer X-Men team members, with Xavier, Cyclops, Jean Grey, Storm, Wolverine, Beast, Rogue, Gambit, and Jubilee serving as the main team members for the run of the series. It drew not only on heroes and villains (Magneto, Juggernaut, Apocalypse, and Mr. Sinister, to name a few), but on classic X-Men storylines as well. The Phalanx Covenant, Legacy Virus, Days of Future Past, and Dark Phoenix Saga all inspired prominent arcs of the series.

Dark and dramatic, with much more adult themes than traditional Saturday morning cartoons (addressing divorce, religion, and intolerance), it became one of the top rated series in the Fox Kids lineup. After a few spectacular seasons, however, things started to fall apart. The plots started to become more and more far fetched, the Soap Opera Continuity started to become distracting, and, in the fifth and final season, production was moved to a new studio with a dramatic dropoff in the quality of the animation and voice acting. But for a few years, X-Men was as good as anything, introducing a new generation (including me) to the Marvel universe.


#3. The Tick - 17 year old Ben Edlund created the Tick in 1986 for a local comic book shop, and soon it was a hit underground comic book (the original 12 books can often still be found in print from New England Comics and they're very much worth the read). An astonishingly stupid and nigh-invulnerable big blue pile of muscles, leaping from building to building with his moth-suited accountant sidekick Arthur in the pursuit of evil-doers, it was an undeniably funny take on superheroes and the conventions of their world. In 1994, Fox brought the Tick to television, and Edlund oversaw production of the series, which, aside from dropping a few not-for-kids elements (like the Tick being an escaped mental patient), retained the look and feel of the comics, and was hilariously absurd.

Sadly, The Tick lasted only 36 episodes, but partly because of its short run, every episode was a classic. It's only recently starting to show up on DVD, with the second season due out later this summer. In 2001, there was a live action series on Fox starring Patrick Warburton (Putty from Seinfeld), also featuring the writing talents of Ben Edlund and several other of the animated series' writers, but unfortunately the copyright for several of the animated series' characters belonged to the production studio, so many of the live action characters had to be ripoffs of their own characters (Die Fledermaus and American Maid became Batmanuel and Captain Liberty, for example). The live action version lasted only one season (available on DVD), and Edlund would go on to co-write the movie Titan A.E. and work on a number of television series (Angel, Firefly, The Inside, Point Pleasant, (Tick writer Jackson Publick's creation) The Venture Bros., and Supernatural).

#2. Justice League/Justice League Unlimited - After a number of successful series based on DC Comics' properties, the creative team behind the DC Animated Universe (or "Timmverse", named after Bruce Timm, who's had his hands in all the series in this universe) decided to tackle the Justice League for the Cartoon Network, the team of superheroes combining forces to defend the earth from its greatest threats. In the first two seasons, which ran from 2001 to 2004, it featured Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, the Flash, the Martian Manhunter, Green Lantern, and Hawkgirl. It told a series of ambitious stories in two and three episode installments, but while it was a solid effort, it never really impressed me all that much. Apparently, it had the same affect on audiences, as the third season took the show in a while new direction.

Retitled Justice League Unlimited, the series not only incorporated dozens of other characters from the DC Universe (Green Arrow, the Atom, Captain Marvel, Zatanna, the Question, and Supergirl, among many, many others), but ditched the three parters for mostly self contained single episode stories that contributed to a season long arc (Buffy-style). Most episodes centered around a small group of heroes, sometimes major players (like Batman, Superman, and Wonder Woman in the adaptation of my favorite Superman story, For the Man Who Has Everything), sometimes virtual unknowns (Shining Knight, Crimson Avenger, Vigilante, and Speedy in "Patriot Act"). Compared to the "limited" first two seasons, he storytelling was a lot more focused, sometimes darker, and all around a lot better. Justice League (which I don't especially recommend) and Justice League Unlimited (which I strongly endorse) are available on separately titled (and separately numbered) DVD sets.


#1. Batman: The Animated Series - In 1992, partly to capitalize on the then still-successful Batman movie franchise, Fox began Batman: The Animated Series on weekday afternoons. It was immediately apparent that this was something new, different, and special. Many of the backgrounds were painted on black paper, a highly unusual practice that helped make Gotham feel like an appropriate setting for the Dark Knight. The technology and style of everything had an odd retro-futuristic quality. Scientists built robots and the police had a fleet of blimps, but Gotham TV broadcast in black and white, mobsters used tommy guns, and everything had an art deco style to it. And it wasn't just the visuals, the series had an orchestral score (based in part on the Danny Elfman theme to the 1989 Batman movie) and brilliant voice casting (Mark Hamill as The Joker and Richard Moll (Bull from Night Court) as Harvey Dent are two performances I hope the people behind The Dark Knight are aware of).

With decades of comics to draw from, the stories took full advantage of Batman's massive rogue's gallery, including the major players (The Joker, Two-Face, Penguin, Riddler, etc), the minor players (The Clock King, Killer Croc, etc), and a few new ones. The series was so well received, that some of the ideas from the animated series made their way into the comics, from Harley Quinn, the Joker's jester costumed girlfriend, to Mr. Freeze's more sympathetic backstory and abandonment of the campy demeanor that had been with him since his inception. And comic book geeks are normally first in line to trash any adaptation of their precious characters, so when they embrace a tv adaptation, you know it's pretty good.

The series was retitled and restylized several times, but I consider the first 85 episodes (plus the two movies, Mask of the Phantasm and Sub-Zero) to be part of this series, and the New Batman Adventures that ran as part of the The New Batman/Superman Adventures to be separate. But in any case, DVDs of the series are available and definitely worth checking out.

Honorable Mention - Duckman (based on a Dark Horse comic, it's a series that's almost completely forgotten these days despite being pretty funny at times), Spider-Man (the 1994 one, which poorly mixed CGI and traditional animation, but was pretty faithful to the comics otherwise), Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (seriously, go back and watch it, it doesn't hold up as well as the top 4, but it has some jokes that still work, the dialogue isn't dreadful like other cartoons of that era).