Thundarr the Barbarian

 

I haven't had time to blog very much, but there a good number of other adventure-oriented Saturday morning shows in the sixities and seventies which are of note.

It was the sixties, slightly before my time, that were the heyday of the action-adenture cartoon, it seems, starting with Jonny Quest, and following through with HB's Space Ghost, Dino Boy, Herculoids, Mightor, Filmation's Journey to the Center of the Earth, not to mention the numerous super-hero shows Filmation and HB produced.

I f I'd know them them then, many of them would have been among my all-time favorites. Space Ghost and Herculoids did have re-runs in 1977, and brand-new episodes on the Space-Stars show in 1981, but more about all this in a later post.

The sometimes violent nature of these shows apparently resuted in the their censorship, and the studios drifted toward comedic shows

The seventies did have their share of action adventure, fortunately for me.

But was during the eighties that the above show premeired, on ABC, and produced by Ruby-Spears, former workers at HB. They also scripted the Scooby-esque teen mystery series Fangface, and Kroft's teen farce Magic Mongo. Did they also script Kroft's Wonder Bug, a live action take off on HB's Speed Buggy? Maybe, as the theme of he intrpid group of teens and their hunorous mascot certainly had become a staple by then.

But Thundarr the Barbarian was a different type of show, something that looked and felt like it belonged back in the raw, primal world of sixties action-adventure. I was almost to the point of not watching Saurday Morning shows regularly at the time, and it was not, as remember, the one show I was determined not to miss every weekend; as I recall that honor migh have belonged to Filmation's Blackstar. But this was the cartoon, that, in hindsite, was more innovative, and whose plots were more of the serious sci-fi/fantasy varity, and seemed geared more toward older teens and adults. In fact, Alex Toth, who had done the production art for some of the fantsy adventure toons of sixties also worked on the character designs for Thundarr.

Thundarr took place, not in the mist-shrouded past, like Conan's Hyborian age, as one might have expected, but in a post-apocalyptic future. The series intro informed viewers that in Thundarr's universe, a meteor had passed between the earth and the moon in the year 1994, unleashing a world-wide cataclysm. Humanity survived however, as a thousand years later, ''a strange new world rises from the old.'' This new world was overrun by wizards who employed a strange hybrid of sorcery and super-science, mutant monsters, weird races, and warring human tribes. While cruelty and injustice dominated this strange world, ''one man bursts his bonds to fight for freedom.'' The series chronicled the adventures of this man, Thundarr, who appeared rather like a blond Conan, and who wielded his  flaming ''sun-sword' against the forces of evil. His companions were Princess Arial, and Ookla the Moch, a member of a race of peacable sentient creatures with fur and fangs. Arial, a skilled magic user, and educated in the history of the anicients, was able to pit her brains and sorcery against the numerous bizarre menaces the trio faced. They crossed paths with many evil wizards.


 One semi-recocuring for as the wizard Gemini, who was literally two faced; the villains cyberbetic head could swivel to alter his contenance at will. The esign of Gemini was based on the work of famed comic artist Jack Kirby, and it showed. Other foes included inhuman races like the rat-like Groundlings and the reptilian Carocs, monsters such as furred and spotted serpents with butterfly antenue, and giant crustaceans. On one accasion, Thundarr and company ran afoul of a monster from another world.

The adventuring trio  often encountered remnants of twentieh-century culture, and the educated Arial would need to explain to Thundarr the ways of the ancients, and how to pronounce certain twentieth-century words. Upon encountering the ruins of New York City, Thundarr remarks that the ancient humans must have had wings.

At first glance, the chief inspirations for Thundarr appear to have been Robert E. Howard's Conan, and perhaps the other barbarians like Thongor and Brakk, invented by Howard's imitators. The sixties and seventies had seen a boom in barbarian-themed literature and comics.

However, there is a far more likely source to have directly inspired this series, one that I don't think many viewers were aware of.

This is a realtively obscure comic book title put out by Gold Key during the early seventies entitled Mighty Samson. If you've never heard of it, then no, it's not the Biblical character. Samson was another barbarian-type hero, but instead of inhabiting some long ago sorcerous age, his adventures took place, much like Thundarr's, in a post-apocalyptic future overrun by mutant monsters and warring tribes. Samson's companion were also and educated young woman, as well as a doctor/scientist, and they lived among the remnants of New York--now called N'Yark, centuries after the world had been devestated by a nuclear holacaust. They, too, frequently referred to the people of our own time as ''the ancients.'' And the learned young woman would have explain the ancient words' pronunciation to Samson. The covers of Samson typically featured the barbarian locked in combat with some hideously muted monstrosity.

 

Coincidence--to did Thundarr owe his existence to this earlier comic series?

 

 

Fortunately for its fans, the Thundarr series was reently released on DVD, and action figures have been produced of the leading trio of characters.




http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LhAobPugvsk

above is the link to Thundarr's intro. The pic of one of the Samson covers was in the wrong place, and tried to delete it, but it didn't work, then it posted twice. Can't repair the damage, sorry about that.

Filmation's Tarzan

In the 1970s, children's televsion was generally cheesily produced by such studios and Hanna-Barbera and Filmation. As with entertainment of any generation, that of Generation-X was mostly mediocre, some bad, some good, some crushinly awful, and some truely outstanding. One of the best at the time, in my opinion, was Filmation's Tarzan series, officially called Tarzan: Lord of the Jungle.On a personal note, it was perhaps the third "biggest" shows from my childhood, right behind Jonny Quest and Land of the Lost. As with most series, the first season was arguably the best, but I didn't really start watching until about halfway through the season. After, Land of the Lost was still on, but by this time it was already into its'terribly cheesy third season. I was already familiar with Tarzan from DC comics at the time (Marvel would soon launch a short lived series following the DC Tarzan's cancellation). I knew of the lost lands of Pal-ul-don and Pellucidar from the reprint's Russ Mannings comic strips, which were often printed in the DC Tarzans. I was unaware at the time, however, that many of Filmation's Tarzan episodes were genuine adaptations of Burroughs' novels. To be sure, these stories were severely homogenized and shortened for young viewers. Violence was kept to a strict minimum, and the Ape Man did not carry a knife. Children's TV was still relatively new at the time, and many of the producers of the Saturday morning lineup were the targets of angry campeigns over televised violence, and other supposed dangers that threatened young viewers. These messages were less intended to influence the attitudes of kids themselves then to appease the demands of grownups with clean, wholesome entertainment. Filmation, for some reason, seemed to be the "preachiest" of these companies. Almost all their series, it seemed, had a "moral of the week" tacked on to the episodes. Some, like Batman and the eighties animated Ghostbusters, actually told you what the moral was at the end, just in case you didn't get it, even though though the morals were all about as subtle as a nuclear warhead. Looking back, I really don't think Saturday morning morals were a good thing. They painted an unrealistic view of life, and I was betrayed by actually beleiving such morals once. LOTL and JQ had no "moral of the day" for the kids, and were better shows for that (JQ first aired long before Peggy Charren and her concerned parents took over, thank the Lord.)
The thing is, Filmation's Tarzan's morals did indeed work with my own parents.Becuase of the moralistic content of the stories,they thought it was one of the best shows ever, and heartily approved of my watching. I myself actually liked this seemingly more noble and heroic version better than the Tarzan of the comics. For one thing, Filmation's Tarzan never killed animals,even in battle. He would always simply subdue the beast,and send it on its way by saying the word, "unk!"(that's right--the show used many of Burroughs own ape terms, and much of my knowledge of Mangani-English came from this show). I was a huge animal fanatic at the time, and I actually thought the Tarzan of the comics was a louse for killing panthers and lions in battle. I was even embarrassed to show the comics ( which were, of course, far truer to Burroughs than the TV show) to my parents, who, in turn, reacted with shock and dismay. After graduating to the books, I realized that in realistic fiction writing, it would severely strain credibility to have even Tarzan merely subdue powerful predators again and again, and come away with nary a scratch.
Another curious aspect of Filmation's Tarzan was the total lack of any Black Africans on any of the episodes. Most of the episodes featured the inhabitants of Burroughs' lost cities, none of whom, by the way, were true African natives (I'll leave alone for now the theory that Burroughs' Africa actually exists in a separate reality were Blacks may not have been the continents first inhabitants), and occasionally white poachers and adventurers. I wondered about this at the time, but the reason was what is now known as "political correctness." Filmation was not adverse to featuring Black characters: witness the stars of Superstretch and Microwoman. It seems there were no Blacks on Tarzan because the producers feared it offend by making the ancestors of African Americans look like savages.Not to mention what with the higly moral tone of the stories, a white man setting them straight every week would probably be seen as unforgivable.
But in spite of all this, the basic plots of many of Burroughs original novels remained remarkably intact. And even in those that deviate largely from their sources remain largely the same in their basic content. There is an adaptation Tarzand & the Golden Lion, which features Tarzan's rescue and training of Jad-bal-ja, and the liberation of the devolved humans (not negroid in this version) form their slavery in the Valley of Diamonds. Another features tarzan's journey to the Valley of the Suplecre form Tarzan Lord of the Jungle, which ends in a jousting matching between Tarzan and Malord, a villain taken directly from the book. There is also an adaption of Tarzan and City of Gold, which includes Queen Nemone, her lion Belthar, Tomos the Cathnean Prime Minister, and Tarzan's battle with Phobeg. This scene is remarkbaly true to what ERB wrote, with Phobeg eventually returning the favor for sparing his life. Phobeg is much more of jerkish braggart in ERB original, though. The episode even includes the scene in which Nemone, having fallen for Tarzan, tells him, "Belthar does not like you!" The city of Cathne, BTW, was re-christianed "Zandor" on the TV show, perhaps to avoid confusion with the name of the rival city, Athne, which retained its original name. Filmation also included episodes on which Tarzan returned to both he Valley of Diamonds and to Cathne/Zandor. Strangely, he never visited Athne, even though he helped Athneans on each of these episodes (he did eventually visit Athne in the novels). Stranger still, Tarzan would return again to both locals during the 1979 season.




Above are production drawings of Queen Nemone (top), the Athnean girl Thea (middle), and Phobeg, Tomos, Belthar, and Nemone respectively (bottom)

There are also adaptations of Tarzan and the Forbidden City and Tarzan at the Earth's Core, though the latter bears very little resemblence, plotwise, to the original. No dirible transports the Jungle Lord through the polar opening, and there is no mention of David Innes. Instead, Tarzan helps a young Pelluicdaran whose Neanderthal tribe is at war with a race of pallid underground dwellers. The kid looks higher evolved like a Cro-Magnon, BTW. During their journey through cavern world, they encounter an eryops, a huge labrinthodont amphibian, which would be called a "sithic" in Pellucidar. Tarzan incorrectly refers to the beast as "an ancient ancestor of Gimla." Once they enter Pelluicdar itself, Tarzan and the lad are menaced by a tyrrannosaurus rex, which the boy refers to as a "Zabor." Actually, the true Pellucidaran term is "zarith." Tarzan is able to defeat the beast by ramming a tree in his mouth. Later, they encounter a pterandon (thipdar), which is called by the correct pellucidaran term. The huge pterosaur swoops down and captures Tarzan, nearing feeding him to her brood of squalling young. Yes, the flight to the thipdar's nest is the one scene on the episode lifted directly from the book. They also encounter a dimetrodon (grator) which Tarzan wrestles twice in the episode. There are also mammoths and huge panther that Tarzan summons to his aid during the battle between the cavemen and the pallids at the end. The episode ends with the two tribes seeing the error of their ways and becoming allies. In contrast, the Forbidden City episode reasonably follows the original, with Tarzan helpinmg a couple locate their missing son, held captive in the ciy of Ashair for seeking the fabled Father of Diamonds. One difference is that Tarzan's battle with a dwarf t-rex has been pruned. Also, there is a giant Octopus but no giant eel in Ashair's aquarium. The ending, in which the long sought-after Father of Diamonds turns out to be a mere lump of coal, is also intact, although the villain does not fall over dead from shock like in the book.
The first season also includes many original tales, most with Burroughs-type themes, such as the discovery of lost cities and races, including a displaced Viking colony, and city built entirely form elephant ivory. This last was not Athne, "city of ivory", and resembled none of Burroughs lost civilization. It was ruled by an evil monarch who has his soldiers slaughter the jungles elephants for their tusks. He captures Tarzan and tries to get the Ape Man to divulge the location of the Elephants' graveyard. Eventually, the mangani and Tarzan's other animal friends save him, ands the tyrant is overthrown. Also of note on this episode is that Tarzan gathers a huge congregation of animals on "the plain of the baobob trees," as a distraction for the king's soldiers. Also, the inhabitants of the city worship a giant wooly mammoth as a sort of god of elephants. The beasts is eventually set free by Tarzan. Where did the mammoth come form--Pellucidar? The great chasm seen in the earth would suggest it. The mammoth's name, Ben-Tor, BTW, means "great beast," in the language of the primitives of Pal-ul-don--hardly a coincidence, since the mammoth is also called"Great Beast" in English. Another episode has Tarzan encountering robot double of himself created by two diamond-smugglers intent on plundering the vaults of Opar. Strangely enough, this is the only episode involving Opar at all, and even here, La and beastmen are nowhere in sight. Wait, not quite, about there being no Opar at all in the other episodes. In the episode "Tarzan the Hated," the female archeologist refers to the Valley fo Diamonds as being "in the Opar region."
Another episode had Tarzan encountering an ancient Egyptian civilization. In the original novels, only Ashair, the Forbidden city, was possibly of Egyptian derivation, but the city on this episode is very obviously Egyptian in origin, complete with pyramids. The city is ruled by an evil queen who has the inhabitants convinced she was a powerful sorceress. Tarzan exposes her "magic" for the fakery it is. He also is pitted against a Nile crocodile. Of note in this episode is that the city's inhabitants hail tarzan as a savior becuase of towering statue of him with Nkima perched on his shoulder, which stands over the entrance to the city. The statue's origin remains a mystery to the end, in which Tarzan says, "Well he is a good-looking chap isn't he?" and then throws back his head and laughs. I've actually thought of a possible origin for that statue, depending on whether you consider Phillip Jose Farmer's Tarzan pastiches canon; one of Farmer's stories has Tarzan (who according to Farmer, is immortal) going back in time and having adventures from the end of the Plesticene to the modern era! This is why in Farmer's Hadon of Ancient Opar there are rumors of a bronzed god-man who rides an elephant. So was Tarzan there previously, in the ancient past? Did he become revered as an Egyptian deity? Of course, the Filmation cartoon series can hardly be considered canonical itself, but it makes you wonder. Nikima, by the way, IS very much in this series. He's the one character (other than Jad-bal-ja), who is also a regular in the Tarzan novels. That is, until the 1979 episodes, but I'll get to that later.
For the second season, Tarzan was paired with Filmation's Batman cartoon, under the title The Batman/Tarzan Advnture Hour. They did this sort of thing with kids' shows all through the seventies. I've read this was idea of Fred Silverman, one of the Bigwigs in charge of children's programing. He thought this approach would be more attractive to children, even though they were still obviously very separate shows--Tarzan and Batman certainly didn't team up, though there was a far more recent Dark Horse commic series where they did. Although the episodes were still good at this time, the overall quality seemed to be slipping. Fewer animals were shown, more invented cities, and less Burroughs-derived material was the general rule this time. I remember them showing one new episode, followed by one old one, the old ones being generally the better. The episodes also seemed to take on a more fantasitic quality. There was one where Tarzan befriended a beached whale who took him to a sunken colony of Atlantis, where whales and dolphins were enslaved by a cruel monarch with no sense of animal rights. The villan was overthrown, though he came to realize the error of his ways. There was an episode where Tarzan encounters a race of bird-people, winged men who lived in luxury, while they oppressed the "land people," a tribe of peasants. This episode was the first to feature "Argus", the giant eagle, a character from the Dell comics series! They did do an episode that seemed like a semi-adaptation of Tarzan and the Ant Men, which featured two warring races of miniturized humans. One of the tribes invents a huge robot called the colossus to defeat the other. The political conflict on this episode made it seem rather like "Tarzan in Lilliput," although like Burroughs' novel, it also had the Ape Man shrunk down to miniture size.
One of my favorite second season episodes was the one where Tarzan and Nikima venture into the mountains and encounter the Den-Lu-Mangani, a race dwafish prehumans. A band of Spanish conquistodors seeks the treasure of dimunitive ape-men, which is located high in an ice-cliff. Tarzan saves one of Den-Lu-Mangani first from the ruthless leader of the conquistodors, then from Tar-sheeta, "the great snow tiger," whom the Ape Man battles. The name "Tar-sheeta" technically would mean "white leopard," in ape lingo but Tarsheeta is a huge, shaggy-furred white saber-tooth. The rest of the conquistodors abandon their leader once his pursuit of the treasure causes a cave-in that nearly kills them all. They are saved by trzan and Tar-sheeta, now an ally. Peace between the conquistodors and the Den-Lu-Mangani is attained by the end. It is never explained where the 15th-centry Spaniards have come from, but perhaps they hail from another displaced city, one form 15th century Spain, somewhere in the vastness of Tarzan's jungle.
This season also included a one-time venture to Pal-ul-don. The story was a take on Alexandre Dumas's The Man in the Iron Mask, with a Waz-don chief named Den-at imprisoned behind mask in a tower by his evil twin, Tan-at, who impersoantes him and takes over the tribe. He tells the other Wz-dons that the tower holds a deadly beast. Tarzan climbs the tower and learns of the ruse, and that the key to the mask has been desposited in the cave of a fierce dimetrodon. Tarzan allows Tan-at to capture him and put him to work in the mines. The jungle lord sneaks off to find the key. After wrestling the dimetrodon, he succeeds in recovering it. All is put right in the end, with Den-at opting to banish his evil sibling, rather than subject him to the mask, a true act of mercy. Oh, and Tarzan summons a gryf (a Pal-ul-donian triceratops) whose injured foot he had cared for earlier, to save the Waz-don tribe when the tower nearly collapses. Not that it matters greatly for the cartoon, but I doubt Burroughs' Waz-dons could work iron.
By the following season, Tarzan was whittled down to fifteen minutes in order to fit among various other Filmation series, in Tarzan and the Super Seven. Needless to say, this move didn't do the show any good. The season's new episodes were rushed, and had little to no authentic Burroughs in them (though they managed to retain relative quality), and the old episodes had many of their better scenes cut out. The moral messages this season were somehow more blatant, and very heavy-handedly politically correct. One episode carries a very environmentalist theme, with a "lost civilization" that has invented steam-powered saw machines, and is devestating Tarzan's jungle. A group of rebels have saved some of the trees in their own land, by pretending a certain forest is haunted. Eventually, the city's queen and her underlings learn the value of trees, and destroy no more forest. Another episode has Tarzan and a female aviator discover a valley where mythical creatures thrive. They recover a lost orbital satelite from the lair of a minotaur. This episode features a mischeivous satyr who learns the folly of his practical joking. Perhaps the best episode this season features Jad-bal-ja, and a lost colony of ancient Mayas. In the original novel, Tarzan and the Castaways, Tarzan also discovers a lost colony of Mayans, but it is on an island, NOT in Africa. Here, the Mayan city is ruled by a man-god who calls himself Kukulkan, and can assume the form of a winged serpent, which is also the likeness of the Mayan deity of the same name. It turns out that Kukulcan is actually an extraterrestrial who is keeping the cities' inhabitants as his own personal lab animals. Remarkably, this episode is strikingly similar to one of Filmation's Star Trek series, on which Kukulcan is also revealed as of extraterrestrial origin. He is, I beleive, portrayed as being more benevolent on the Star Trek series. There is also a similarity to an episode of The Young Sentinels, on which the Egyptian jackel-headed god Anubis is also an extraterrestrial. Filmation may have used the same writer for each of these stories.
In contrast to the fairly low quality and heavy moralizing of these episodes, the following season, 1979-80, proved to be a pleasant surprise. Tarzan returned to its half-hour format, this time paired with Filmation's new Lone Ranger cartoon. And contrary to the general rule that when a show jumps the shark, it's all downhill from there, this new season proved as good as the first, and in some ways even better. For one thing, contrary to an increasing trend to show less wildlife, far more animals were shown this season, including Horta the warthog, and Dango the hyena. There also seemed a conscious attempt on the part of the writers and animators to steer the series back in the direction of authentic Burroughs. Some of the characters and locations of the first series returned, and most episodes had a very Burroughsian flavor, whether directly inspired or not. On a more minor note, it was this season where they used a real elephant sound for the "voice" or Tantor. The kookaburra call, so common to many actual Tarzan movies, was heard in the background during this season. This gave the series a more authenic jungle flavor not felt until then, even though it's not technically accurate at all--kookaburras a native to Australia only.
Tarzan again revisited the Valley of Dianmonds and the city of Zandor/Cathne (although the latter epsiode was a virtual repeat of the earlier episode set in an ancient Egyptian civilization, only with Queen Nemone as the one practicing fake magic to deceive the populace). The one in the Valley of Diamonds featured a character known as "Fana the Huntress," a female warrior who is trapping animals in Tarzan's jungle. Fana's trusted pet is Pasha, a white tiger whom she captured in India. Though Fana seems to have a fondness for her feline companion, she sometimes curses him as a "stupid beast", and lashes him with a whip. Her goal is to capture Tarzan's friend Jad-bal-ja, the Golden Lion, and train Jad to hunt with her alongside Pasha. Naturally, Tarzan is very opposed to this, and warns Fana to leave his jungle. He and Jad take refuge on the veldt. Meanwhile Fana and Pasha are captured by the Bolgani and taken to the Valley of Diamonds. The Bolgoni intend to keep Fana as hostage in order to lure Tarzan. Pasha manages to escape, but refuses to free his mistress on account of his earlier harsh treatment by her. Tarzan later saves Pasha from as pack of hyenas. He, Pasha, and Jad are then able to rescue Fana from the Bolgoni. As a result of her captivity, Fana learns to respect the rights of non-human animals, and promises to return Pasha to his own country and free him there.
Another episode, "Tarzan and the Sifu," had the Ape-Man encountering a displaced Chinese civilization, something Burroughs never got around to inventing (but Burne Hogarth, in the newpaper strips, did). Tarzan befriends a young martial artist who intorduces himself as "nephew of the Sifu." Tarzan accompanies the lad to his city, Dhou Jing, where they learn that a traitor named Wu Han has imprisoned the Sifu and assumed the throne. Wu Han informs the Ape-Man that he intends to attack and conquer the other cities in this jungle (it would be interesting to see a Chinese army storming Cathne). It seems that Wu Han has gained possession the "Dragon Pearl", an orb he uses to summon a fire-brething dragon from its lair beneath the city. When Tarzan battles the beast in the arean, Wu Han calls Tarzan a mighty warrior and offers to make him a fellow conqueror. Tarzan declines the offer of course. The imprisoned Sifu gives Tarzan the "inner strength" for him to bend the bars of their cell. Tarzan, the boy, and his uncle escape, and Tarzan summons Tantor from the jungle to defeat the dragon. It ends well, of course, with Wu Han overtrown, and the Sifu reinstated.
The most remarkable development this season was, however, the inclusion of Jane on one episode. It is generally assumed that Jane was absent in this series. Well, almost. Jane does appear on this season in a semi-adaptation of Tarzan of the Apes. Jane and her father are abandoned by mutineers on the Congo river. Tarzan trails then, once saving them from a python and then a lion. Tarzan takes them to the cabin on the coast that was built by his parents. Not long afterward, the rogue ape Kerchak abducts Jane. Tarzan had defeated and banished Kercahk in an earlier scene, and the ape wants revenge, as well as a desire to take jane has his mate. That's right-- this scene is actually in the episode. Only here Tarzan only defeats Kerchak instead of killing him in battle, then rescues him from falling over a cliff. Naturally, Kerchak learns the error of his ways. This incident pays off later, when Jane and her father discover the ruins of the lost city of Kaluum, a realm never found in the pages of Burroughs. They are attacked by the city's fabled guardian, a gargantuan ceratosaurus-like monster. The city's inhabitants tell Tarzan that the beast came from below, and drove the city's populace undergound, the same place the beast came from. Does this indicate that the prehistoric-looking behemoth is, perhaps, Pellucidaran in origin? Anyway, Tarzan, with the help of the grateful Kerchak, is able to defeat the monster and drive him back whence he came. Interestingly, the creature looks EXACTLY the same as one of the dinosaur-like monsters of the planet Mongo that appeared on Filmation's Flash Gordon series, also running at the time. The story ends with Tarzan, having fallen in love with Jane, promising that he'll see her again.
All of this seemed a great improvement. The 1980 season, however, (if it can even be CALLED a new season), proved a major disapointment. Not only were no new Tarzan episodes produced, the old ones were whittled down once again to fit a fifteen-minute time-slot, along with similarly shortened episodes of The Lone Ranger, to make way for episodes of an animated Zorro. It is easy to blame this new Zorro cartoon for Tarzan's demise, although it was aruably as good as both the Tarzan and Lone Ranger series; it just didn't go over as well. Zorro was soon cancelled, and Tarzan and The Lone Ranger with it.
Around that time, I graduated to the actual Tarzan books, as well as to other Burroughs creations. AS sufficient as these cartoons were at the time in their depiction of lost cities and monstrous beasts, they still pale in comparison with the original stories that inspired them. I never had a need to return after encountering the real Tarzan. At least, not for a while. Years later, I was able to find some tapes of the Filmation series at a comci convention.More recently, I did manage to find all of them on DVD, though not an official release, of course. They are worth a look for anyone who can find these cartoons today. After all, despite their shortcomings, there was actaully more authentic Burroughs to them than many other adaptations, including the Ron Ely TV show, which was also running in sindication at the time, and the many movie adaptations.

Jana of the Jungle

Jana of the Jungle was, in my opinion, one of the rare cases of Saturday Morning injustice. Most of the better shows, like Filmation’s Tarzan and Flash Gordon series, as well as Jana’s companion series Godzilla, not ot mention Land of the Lost, did well with veiwers. Jana was an accomplished adventure series, featuring a female tarzan. These stories were set in the Brazilian rainforest of South America, seemingly HB’s favorite continent, as so many of the Johnny Quest stories took place there. Jana was abandoned in the Amazon Jungle when her father’s boat, the Amazon Queen crashed (it was never revealed what became of her missing father; she spent the series searching for him). She was rasied by Montaro, the last survivor of an ancient warrior tribe of Indians. Her friends included Teeko, a small yapok, or water possum, her white jaguar Ghost, whom she rescued form a poacher’s trap as a cub, and Ben Cooper, a wildlife biologist.









Some stories had an environmental theme, and featured poachers, land developers or treasure-seekers invading the Amazon. Others were very much of the “lost race” genre common to ERB and 30s pulps novels, and featured hidden civilization deep in the jungle vastness, including Indian cities of gold, a lost Mayan colony, a fierce tribe of blond women warriors, who gave the Amazon river its mane, and a tribe of giant beast-men. Jana first aired in 1978, as half of the adventure themed The Godzilla Power Hour. The first half starred Toho movie productions famous monster, in new adventures where he saved the wolrd repeatedly from various mutant menaces. About mid-season, the show expanded into the ninety minute Godzilla Super 90 as original Johnny Quest episodes were added. Godzilla survived the season, and new episodes were aired the following one, but Jana did not. Later, Godzilla was paired in an hour long show with the Super Globe Trotters, and for the following season with Honk reruns of Kong Phooey and Dynomutt. None of these combinations went as well with the Godzilla series as either the Jana episodes or the JQ reruns. It is not entirely clear why Jana herself flopped. It may have been because adventure shows like this one were mored aimed toward boys, and boys could not identify well with a female protagonists. Girls simply may not have been interested. Thus, the show missed both its audiences. I have written a fanfcic on Jana of the Jungle, which you can find below.
VALE OF LOST MEN

http://www.angelfire.com/tv2/buford/vale.htm

Cut and paste this link.
In the story Jana and her friends discover a lost colony pf phoenicians. And yes, the explorer's missing son, Todd, is supposed to be Dino Boy. I'd planned a sequal where they venture into the Lost Valley and cross over with Dino Boy and Ugg. I was going to have Ugg's backstory in which he was banished form his own tribe of Neanderthals for a crime he didn't commit. Unfortunately, I haven't had tiem to write it.

The original page may be found here:

http://www.angelfire.com/tv2/buford/Jana.htm

Jonny Quest

Ah, Jonny Quest. One of the greatest cartoon shows of all time. It was this show that got me hooked on Saturday morning back in 1972. I only four at the time, and I had very little experience with Saturday morning, save with things like Batfink and Cool McCool, shows that my dad tried to get me to watch. Those shows were okay, but none of them caught on. Then one day the TV just happened to be on, and this show came on that just blew me away!












Black panthers, crocdiles, S. American natives, two shots of a screaming pteranodon, raging komodo dragons, swooping condors, a a giant daddy-long-legs monster with a single eye, flying platforms, lazers, explosions. All things I loved as a kid. There was also a rampaging mummy, but humna-type monsters like mummies was the one thing on the show I WASN't into. I didn't much care for the episode "Curse of Anubis"--except for the those snakes.

Yes, even at that young age, I knew where South America was. This was the continent where many of the Quest teams adventures took place. Not that many in Asia or Africa. "The Curse of Anubis" and "The Devil's Plateau" were the only ones in Africa, and only the latter in Africa proper. There were a few, like the Calcutta adventure that took place in Asia and were pretty good. But S. America seemed to be their favorite. I knew all about the wildlife of those continents and I used to get out my parents World We Live In and look at the magnifcent murals of the Amazon rainforest. Not to mention the great prehistorc mural of Zallinger's Life Through the Ages, but that's another story. S. America seemed also to be Hanna Barbera's favorite continent. Other of their great shows took place there, including the two lost world shows, Dino Boy and Valley of the Dinosaurs, and, or course, Jana of the Jungle.
Anyway, the very first episode I saw happened to be the best. It featured the swooping screaming pterodactyl whom I'd seen on the introduction. His name, I soon learned was "Tero" (actually Turu, as I misheard the name). He was the loyal pet of an evil man who used him to terrorize the natives. Though the ending was VERY tragic (Turu drowned in boiling tar), I looked foreward to this show every single Saturday, and was in anticipation, in particualr of this particular episode. I was soon calling the show, "the pteradactyl show," before I finally learned its real name. Every Saturday I had to be in fornt of ther TV at the crack of dawn. I would watch every show leading up to it, and didn't dare turn the station for fear of missing it. The other shows included the Osmonds, Lidsville, The Curiousity Shop, and a think I remember episodes of Bewitched showing somewhere in the middle, incongruously among the kids' shows. Anyway, JQ came on late in the morning, sort of like the dessert to the whole lineup. We had an old B&W TV set a the time, and I was really WOWed when we visited my grandmother's house, and got to see the thing in color. I'll never forget the dark day when the seasons changed and suddenly it was gone. It seems to me that I actually saw the Turu episode one more time at my grandmother's house after it had been cancelled, but I could be wrong. But eventually a found other favorite shows, and waking up every Saturday was by then a tradition. There were The New Scooby-Doo Movies, the animated Addams Family, Lost in Space re-runs, but there was never any show with quite the magnitude JQ had until Land of the Lost debuted in 1974.

What I didn't know, of course, was at the time I saw JQ and assumed it was a brand new show, it was already quite. What I was seeing were actaully re-runs of a popular series that debuted back in 1964. At the time, it was one of Hanna Barbera's first prime time TV series to be shown on Saturday Morning. In fact, it was origianlly slated for evening viewing, which explains why they were alike to get away with adult-themed violence. And, of course, the censors had yet to take over kids' TV in those days. HB had originally planned to do an adventure-themed series based on the character of Jack Armstrong, but when they couldn't obtain the rights, they simply invented their own character, the young son of an adventurer-scientist named Dr. Benton Quest, and a future sceintist himself. Togather with their friend Roger "Race" Bannon, Jonny's friend Hadji, and their black-masked dog Bandit, they traveled to exotic locales and faced unknown menaces every week. The brief scene on the end-credits showing spear-wielding African warriors, and the JQ plane taking off across the Sahara, is actually left-over footage from the proposed Armstrong series.

Here are portraits of each Quest Team member:

Jonny Quest

The main character, but not the leader of the Quest team, Jonny was the son of Dr. Benton Quest, and a young future sceintist. His mother had died sometime in the past, so he accompanied his father on his adventures. For this reason, his father hired a bodyguard to look after Jonny when he wasn't able to.

Dr. Benton Quest

Jonny's Father, Dr. Benton Quest was a scientist who travled the globe on scientific missions.


Roger "Race" Bannon

Race Bannon was a martial arts expert whom Dr. Quest hired as a bodyguard for Jonny. Jonny would be worth much in ransom, if Dr. Quest's enemies were ever to capture him.
Hadji

A young Hindu boy whom the Quest team picked up in India when Dr. Quest was giving a lecture. An orphan of the streets, Hadji saved Dr. Quest's life from villains. He was on every episode, except the first.

Bandit

The Quest team's dog, named for the black mask over his eyes, who accompanied them on all their travels.

Jezebel Jade

Jezebel Jade was Race's girlfriend, and an occasional member of the Quest team. She identified an imposter sent by Dr. Zinn to impersonate Race in "Double Danger" (the imposter didn't kiss that well), and saved them from Chu Ling's monsters in "Terror Island." She also occurred in at least one issue of the JQ comic.



It wasn't until 1978 that I got to see the old episodes again. The best HB show of that season was The Godzilla Power Hour, which featured Godzilla facing verious monsters, and it's companion series Jana of the Jungle, featuring a blonde jungle girl and her white jaguar. About mid-season, in effort to boost ratings, the POwer Hour was expanded into "The Godzilla Super-Ninety", a ninety minute adventure themned show with old JQ episodes added to Godzilla and Jana. Naturally, I was excited about this, but it turned out I was in for a bit of a disapointment. The old intro, with all its mayhem, had been pruned. Even worse, not all the old episodes were shown, and Turu was among the missing!I almost worried that I'd imagined it all, though that could hardly have bee the case. I at last glimpsed Turu on the following TV season. JQ had been given its own time-slot, and, though the episodes were the same, and the intro still missing, I did get to Turu diving out of the blood-red sky at the clsoignof the end credits, and a final scene of Dr. Quest and Race with their jetpacks and bazookas over a blasted, crimson landscape.



It was not until I was fouteen and in the eighth grade, that I finally saw the Turu episode again. Old JQ episodes were playing on a religous channel owned by a local evangelists. Finally, an episode came on wiht the familar panther staking through the jungle (actually it was a black jaguar). Turu himself appeared high on the cliff, and launched himself screaming, into the air. This station also showed some episodes I would have loved back in '72, but have no memory of them, like "Monsters in the Monastary," and "Terror Island."

A bit later in the eighties, they made brand new episodes of JQ. I've heard a lot of people hate these. The animation is clearly inferior to what was produced back in 1964. But the new series kept the formula and stayed true to the original. There was another "prehistoric" among these, about a scientist reviving dinosaurs from dormant DNA (this was years before Jurassic Park). What he actually creates are dino-hybrids, like a cross between a pterodactyl and an apatosaur, a hybrid triceratops/dimetrodon, a stegosaur with a pteranodon-like head, and a t-rex with pterosaur wings. The scientist's crowning creation, however, is hybrid dinosaur-human, something like what dinosaurs themselves might have evolved into. Another
good episode featured the Quest Team discovering a giant red-furred arctic ape frozen in ice, and wearing ancient Viking armour. Dr. Quest explains that he is a breed of polar gorilla who were trained as warriors by the ancient Vikings--which is totally fiction, of course. The ape, whom the kids name Vikong, unfreezes, and helps the team defeat a villain who attempts to exploit him. These episodes were often shown alongside episodes of the classic series.

During the nineties there were episodes of The Real Adventures of Jonny Quest (which I never saw), and Jonny Quest and the cyber-Insects, which I DID see, and disliked, mainly because the story seemed basically a excercise in gender political-correctness, with Jonny himself being a sexist jerk throughout the entire show.A little more recently, I happened to see online a JQ spoof, in which Jonny Quest met up with Squidly Diddly. Squidly may be classic HB, but his presence here turned the animated short into a spoof. Which wasa shame, since the rest of the feature looked like an attempt to creae a brand-new vintage JQ epsiode, with the animation quality of the original.

Not many years back, the entire series of classic episodes came out on DVD. Looking them over, there are definitely some that were entirely new to me, which I would have loved as a kid. The animation quality is absolutely top notch on the first several episodes, and is only slightly diminished in the latter ones. This is the sort of show I wish would be produced nowadays, with the old-school type style, but with quality that is the best possible. I also recently bought the original Space Ghost, and while I enjoyed it, the animation isn't nearly so up to par. Back in the day, the success of JQ led to other great action shows like Dinoboy and Mighty Mightor, which I would have loved as a kid, and only got to see later. Peggy Charen and the censors put an end to all the fun and many of the action themed shows were lost at the start of the seventies. But doubtless later shows like Jana of the Jungle, Godzilla, and Thundarr the barbarian show the early influence.

Now a look at a few favorite episodes, starting with the best .....





Turu the Terrible
I've already indicated that this was my all time fave. Turu was the pet of an evil madman who lived atop a plateau deep in the Amazon. What is not explained on the episode was what the villain's background was, and how he acquired a living pterodactyl as a pet! He used Turu to capture natives form the local Indian tribes to work in the mines for what he thought was silver. The metal was actually trinoxite, an alloy which Dr. Quest identified as essential for the space program. After several harrowing encounters with Turu, Quest and Race manage to injure himn with a bazooka. Turu falls into the tar and drowns, and the villain drowns trying to save his pet. Now--why couldn't have Dr. QUest have used tranaquilizer dart on Turur and captured him? Dr. Quest also makes a false statement implying man and dinosaurs were contemporaries (I've a lot more respect for the prehistoric man). Now, I suppose this could count as possible alternate history ( there are other examples on other HB adventure shows, including one on Godzilla where the female scientist is not at all surprised to find cavemen alive alongside dinosaurs, even though she correctly points out that flowers hadn't evolved yet!(assuming it's the Jurassic rather than the Cretaceous), but I suppose that the writers just fudged. Then again, what's a pterosaur doing alive in 1964 Amazonia????

An interesting note, I found out that this episode initially aired on Dec. 25, making it the official "Christmas Episode"!





Shadow of the Condor"Shadow of the Condor" was my second favorite episode after Turu. It might be because condors were my favorite bird at the time. The condor's scream is actually the same as Turu's (actaully the recording of an elephant). In some ways, it's better than Turu. The condor not only survives, it is actually the hero!. When I first saw it, my childlike brain thought the condor might of been killed in the plane fight at the end, but then turned out to be alive. Actually, the episode has sort of a conservation message. The villain regularly shoots at the condors (these are Andean condors, which I beleive are endangered, though not so much as California condors), and at the end, when the condor causes the baron's plane to crash, saving Race, it's almost like the bird is taking its revenge. The birds themselves do seem menacing for a while, and there are a couple of harrowing scenes, notably when a condor attacks a horned owl, itself a fierce bird of prey, and anther when one nearly flies off with Bandit!



The Robot Spy
This is another very cool episode. The spider-robot of Dr. Zinn menacing an army base was both creepy and terrifying, with its ability to "zap" people with its antenae, and its weird crimson eye. I refered to it as a "daddy long-legs", and it did resemble one of those insects more than it did a spider. I was also a bit disapointed when the mechanical monster was destroyed at the end. JQ certainly had some element that are now un-PC, like the tendency to depicted Asians (know then as Orientials)as bad guys. While the show was pro-science for the most part--Dr. Quest himself was a scientist, and their adventures invloved scientific progress--there were also a good number of "mad scientist" bad guys on the show, and dangerous experiments gone awry.




The Dragons of Ashida
I called this one the "Komodo Dragon" episode. Yes, I did know what Komodo dragons were when I saw first saw it. And indeed, they are native to remote Indonesian island, and very much resmble komodos. In fact, they are actually of a small species Dr. Quest identifies as "the tabora lizard." Dr. Ashida, the Asian mad-scientist of the tale, and a brillaint zoologist, has bred them up to crocodile size wiht controlled gene selection. He uses them as guard-beasts and bloodhounds, especially against people who have somehow offended him. Unfortunately, Ashida loses a wrestling match to the mad doctor, who then becomes obsessed with revenge. Dr. Quest becomes convinced that Ashida has become a very dangerous man, but when they attempt to leave, Ashida, sics his dragons on them. The Quest team barely escapes the island with their lives. In this episode, like in "Shadow of the Condor, it's the animals who win, as Ashida falls victim to his own pets.


Pursuit of the PohoThis was another good one set in the South American rainforest. A fellow scientist is captured by the Poho, a fierce tribe of S. American Indians. We also get to see some wildlife here, including a pink fairy armodillo, and two shots of a black jaguar, one of which nearly attacks Race and the boys.




The Treasure of the Temple





This episode is set in Central America, not South America, this time. Technically, this is part of N. America, though it is not often referred to as such. The story involves a treasure in the ancient Mayan ruins of the area. Wildlife shown includes a toucan, a giant anteater, a gila monster, and two painted vultures, among others There is also a huge, fist-sized cave spider that menaces Race.




A Small Matter of Pygmies
Set in the Brazilian rainforest, Race and the boys save a small Indian from a black jaguar. The man was about to be sacrificed by his own people--a tribe of pygmy Inidians. Eventually the rescued man is instrumental in helping them escape form his tribe. This is the one episode where I spotted the one zoological error I was able to identify; birds of paradise are native to New Guinea, NOT the American tropics.



The Invisible Monster

I just found out that this is the favorite episode among most viewers. And it was pretty awesome when I was a kid. Dr. Isiah, scienntist freind of Dr. Quest, is experimenting with "mass and energy" when he inadvertently creates "something monstrous beyond beleif." truely invisible, the monster stomps around the jungle leaving footprints, and consumes the hapless scientist who created it. The Quest team investigates, discovering that the monster feeds on energy from any source, including the bodies of living creatures. Jonny has the idea to bombard the energy-creature with bags of paint. Once "painted", the monster looks truely weird, with a single staring huge eye and a gaping maw. A flaw in the animation reveals itself when you don't see the monster leave footprints after it's painted. They are able to lure the monster with it's favorite "food", electricity, and then destroy it by reversing the process Dr. Isiah used to create the monster. The episode reminds me a little of the short story by Ambrose Bierce, "The Damned Thing," also about an invisible monster, which is of a color that exists outside the visible human spectrum.



Monsters In the Monstary
On this episode, a bunch of villains dressed as yetis terrorize a Tibetan monestary high in the Himmelayas. It's kind of a letdown, as the monsters cool-looking, but all fake. Rather like "Werewolf of the Timberland" the one ep I was actually disapointed with when I saw it (The werewolf of the title is a fake, and the only real menace are the human villains). That is, until the very end, when a REAL Yeti (pictured above) shows up and slaughters all of the imposters.






Terror Island

On this episode one of the last (if not THE last), the Quest team finds an island overrun by monsters, small animals that Chu Ling, a mad scientist has engineered to gigantic size. The villain captures Dr. Quest, and tries to persuade him to join his side, or he will be fed to the monsters. In addition to those pictured above, there is also another huge reptile that rose out of the sea. Some of the mutant bacteria from Chu Ling's experiments had seeped into the ocean. The monster attacks Chu Ling, and both creator and creation both end up ebing electrocuted in a power plant.

And....



This is my own JQ collection. The Turu and the Spider Robot resin kits are by Anubis. It was very hard to find both of them--but the person wanted to get rid of them, and gave them to me free of charge!