As a lot of us in the cartoon world
know, we lost a monolith in our community last month with the passing
of Lou Scheimer. No one lives forever, but leaving behind a body of
work as impressive as Scheimer's is something to be recognized. If I
could accomplish even slightly what that man did, I would be on good
terms with my own mortality. So many people my age and older (because
I actually came in towards the “end” of his career) will always
have a special place in our hearts for his creations. I just wanted
to preface this month with a tremendous “thanks”, to Lou Scheimer
and his family, for making my childhood cartoon watching as awesome
as it was. That being said....
Howdy there partners! I reckon y’all ain't from 'round these parts. It's a rough and tumble world and it is definitely not for the weak of heart. Them outlaws are mighty ornery and after your mining claims! There's a whole host of wily critters a'headed for those hills that are glistening with Kerium. Luckily for you, there's a law man in town who knows how to round 'em up and ride 'em out!
Normally, I'm not a huge fan of
westerns, but this one takes place in space, so yeah, I'm in. The tag
line sums it up very well, “We needed a hundred lawmen to tame New
Texas. We got one. You know something? He was enough.” Welcome,
partners, to the 23rd century on the planet New Texas,
just a mere 600 parsecs from Earth for this month's Best Cartoon Ever
(of the Month) – BraveStarr!
Howler, Tex Hex and
Skuzz
Stampede, the last
remaining Broncosaur and supplier of Tex Hex's powers
I usually start off with the good
guys, but this time we're going to meet the main bad guy first. Tex
Hex was originally slated to be on Filmation's Ghostbusters show, but
Scheimer apparently thought he deserved his own feature – whaddya
know, Scheimer had another great idea! To best describe this fella, I
would say he is a mutant wizard space ghost. Yeah. That's as accurate
as I can get. As in several other notable Filmation series, both the
heroes and villains draw their power from a mystical source. Tex's
comes from Stampede – a demonic space dinosaur, specifically he's a
Broncosaur. The main motivator for our antagonists is a substance
called Kerium. It's a mineral that lends to the Old West gold-rush
feel of the show. “He who controls the spice controls the universe”
is also applicable to Kerium in this world, so it's a cutthroat
market.
For the side of good this month, we
join the ranks of Marshall BraveStarr, Thirty-Thirty, and deputy
Fuzz. BraveStarr is by far my favorite of the somewhat politically
correct Native American heroes of the time. He was raised by his
guardian, the Shaman who lives atop Starr Peak, wherein both Shaman
and BraveStarr draw their powers. Speaking of powers, and true to his
Native American heritage, BraveStarr has several spirit animals that
grant him special abilities. They're self-explanatory; Strength of
the Bear, Eyes of the Hawk, Speed of the Puma, Ears of the Wolf.
Thirty-Thirty is a special race of horse-like robotoid – he can
transform between running on all fours, as a steed for BraveStarr, to
walking upright on two legs to fire his bad ass shotgun Sarah Jane.
Fuzz is one of the most annoying creatures on the show and while he
has a lot of appearances early in the show, he kind of drops off
towards the end enough to make the show much more tolerable. There
are several other prominent “good guys/gals” but these three are
our main heroes.
BraveStarr and
Thirty-Thirty
There is a multitude of “critters”,
both good and bad. My favorite of which are the Krang, a race of
panther-like humanoids. In addition there are Dingos/Coyotoids,
Equestroids (Thirty-Thirty), Fuufta (very meek Sheep people, haha, by
definition, sheeple), Prairie people (Deputy Fuzz), Sand Walrus,
Reptillianiods, Rigellans, and Solacows.
We have several of my favorite voice
actors. Charlie Adler (Transformers, among tons of others), Pat
Fraley (TMNT), Ed Gilbert (Transformers), Alan Oppenheimer (Skeletor
and others on MOTU plus tons of other Filmation shows), and our main
man Lou Scheimer shows up a lot. Susan Blu (Transformers and Jem)
covers almost all the female roles, whatever she didn't do,
Scheimer's daughter Erika did.
As with Filmation's other shows, this
one always comes with a moral. There are some fairly risky lessons we
learn thanks to BraveStarr that don't really ever come up in other
cartoons of the era. One of Tex Hex's cohorts, Skuzz, is a heavy
smoker. He does his little bit about how bad smoking is, but he keeps
smoking. Another, very traumatic, lesson BraveStarr tackles is drug
use. While this is a relatively common theme for kids shows, no one
ever really goes off the deep end, much less dies. In BraveStarr's A
Very Special Episode “The Price”, a young man gets turned onto a
hallucinogen comparable to LSD called Spin. He spirals out of control
pretty quickly, stealing his mom's purse and hitting up friends for
Kerium to give to his dingo dealer (image above). Unlike any other
Very Special Episode I know of, this kid actually overdoses. It's
really a mind-blower.
Whitson and Sherlock
Holmes
By far the best episodes of the show
are “Sherlock Holmes in the 23rd Century Parts 1 &
2”. These two episodes are absolutely phenomenal with their
incorporation of the classic Sherlock stories with a steam punk
setting. There is a little mixing up, for creativity-sake. Mycroft
Holmes is no longer Sherlock's brother, but rather his niece. A
similar gender switch liberty was taken with Inspector Lestrade.
Normally, completely changing gender and relationships to such a
character as Sherlock Holmes would send up my nerd flags, but these
two ladies are more than just smokin' hot, so I'm okay with it. The
episode starts off with Holmes plummeting off Richenbach Falls.
Moriarty sees Holmes take the plunge and creates a suspended
animation chamber to meet up with his rival. Unbeknownst to Watson
(replaced in the future by Whitson), Holmes is sucked into a time
warp to the 23rd century – enter BraveStarr. Our
protagonist comes to Earth in search of a star-child named Fleeder.
This kid has a hypnotic voice and was on board a stolen Kerium
freighter. In the future, music has come a long way. No more Miley
Cyrus and One Direction (I'll pause here for the great sigh of relief
you must have). Instead we have Hypno-Rock (“strange music,
illegally changed electronically to make it hypnotic”) and the
leading band in this genre is Dischord. Luckily, there's a
battle-of-the-bands type contest on Earth and Tex Hex pairs up with
Moriarty to rule the world, with the forced help of Fleeder. There is
such a great payoff for this story, and you just need to see it.
If you're looking for a spectacular
show with impressive story lines, look no further. While it may take
a little while for you to get into the show, it's definitely worth
giving it a fair chance to impress you. There are only 65 episodes,
so it's not overwhelming but very nicely developed. Of all the space
westerns out there BraveStarr is tied for my first place spot.
Again, I can't extend my gratitude to Lou Scheimer and Filmation
enough for having such a profound influence on my childhood, for
having a rather critical impact on me during my developmental years.
Lou Scheimer 1928 –
2013 R.I.P.
-Kalan
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