What A Cartoon! - Thundarr The Barbarian "Secret of the Black Pearl"

I loved this show when I was a wee lad in 1981. I confess that I even made a lame Sun Sword out of Legos (which were more like Blockos back then) when my friends and I would play...me as Thundaar, my friend as Not Chewie and his sister as Arial. But it wasn't the Conan style action that drew me in. You might be too young too remember a time when even children had realized that in Reagan's America, it was not a question of if the world would end but when. End of the world stuff would draw my interest. Many cartoons of this time would have an episode with a doomsday style scenario or future vision. For example Battle of the Planets (aka Gatchaman) had an episode where G Force leader Mark woke to find 20 years had passed and earth had been conquered. Shockingly this was not the first HB/Ruby Spears story to look at the end of the world...the final episode of the Challenge of the Super Friends "History of Doomsday" dealt with an alternate timeline where the Legion of Doom accidentally destroyed the world. While these episodes would be dreams or alternate realities fixed by episode end, since I was morbidly fascinated by the idea that civilization would be cast in ruins to paraphrase the opening narration, I was immediately drawn to Thundaar. I loved it because there was no magic reset button at the end...earth was destroyed and nothing would change it. Each week they wandered through a new devastated landscape with no hope for escape but it was normal for them. Hell that Halloween I even drew in a broken moon in the sky for my art class drawings to add a layer of extra spooookyness. Yes Thundaar is pretty cheesy and almost unwatchable today, even my son rolled his eyes when I showed him the amazing opening sequence. But as a cultural artifact of Gen X fatalism, it's pretty telling. An interesting aside...since you mentioned the Flash Gordon movie. Sam Jones had many of his lines redubbed by an uncredited voice actor. Listening carefully, I always had a hunch it was the actor of Thundaar....Robert Ridgely. As I dig deeper it seems it would be fitting since Ridgely played Flash Gordan in Filmation's New Adventures of Flash Gordon from that same era. Coincidence or psychic phenomenon?

Stephen C. Nedell

Brass is the sound of ADVENTURE!

RyoGeo

Woof. I found Thundarr exceptionally hard to listen to. The constant music with its harsh brass. The awful screaming of the monster dude. While I like the idea of barbarians in an apocalyptic world this was just too painful for me.

Abrahm Simons

This cartoon was so damn funny to me, from the insanity of the very premise to the constant screaming of his Chewie clone I actually had a blast watching this, which is more than I can say about He-Man

Dylan (batmanboy11) Freitag

Beat me to it! ^_^

To Boldy Joe... Moore

Back in the 70s & 80s, the big three networks used to air cartoon preview shows to tease the cartoons they would be airing on Saturday mornings, come fall. These shows always aired during prime time, if you can believe it, and were a BIG DEAL to my child brain. Lemme tell you, when I saw the preview for Thundarr, I was mesmerized. "Oh my god, the Earth got WRECKED?! There's magic, and swords, and a monster guy; I cannot WAIT for this to start!" Given the alternatives at the time, this show, for all its corniness, plot holes, poorly animated sequences, and bad dialog, was goddam amazing to my child eyes. I LOVED it. I had grown up reading my dad’s old Marvel comics from the 60s, and this show resonated with me for obvious reasons. The design of Gemini, to Henry’s point, is just pure Kirby. The backgrounds are actually really wonderful too (at least to my eye) even by today’s standards. There was a lot of detail in them. I was semi-crushed when they stopped making this show so soon. Having said all that, I was walking down the street listening to the show, literally (the real literally, not the instagram literally) laughing out loud listening to your respective takes on the show. Ookla’s constant yowling got annoying even in 1980, and at the 34:20 mark, when Ookla just busted out a HUGE roar, seemingly for so reason, I burst out laughing along with the three of you. Sweet jeebuz, that was a funny moment, and I still enjoy watching this show with modern eyes. Oh, BTW, I'm surprised you missed recognizing the fact that Robert Ridgely, the voice of Thundarr, is none other that The Colonel, from, “Boogie Nights.” He also voiced Tarzan for Filmation back in 1976; a show set in Africa that, to my recollection, strangely had exactly zero black characters in it. I still love Thundarr (I bought the DVD set), but yes, it’s stupid, non-sensical, and ultimately awesome, much in the way of the old John Carter books. So glad you featured this show. I love hearing your Millennial take on the old stuff that preceded you.

RyoGeo

Howard the Duck was in Endgame as part of Strange's portal revival: https://nerdbot.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/00ytx52gq9v21.jpg

Frank Grimes

Korgoth is so good, at least the pilot is on YouTube. I wind up watching it at least a couple of times a year. This episode makes me want to rewatch Son of Zorn. I remember it being better than it had any right to be.

Brian Hortin

All the Steve Gerber talk in this episode reminded me of one of my favorite stories about him and Howard. The short version is that he used a Savage Dragon/Howard the Duck crossover issue he wrote after leaving Marvel to steal the character back and put him into "witness protection" using clones to take his place in Marvel. He even went so far as to rename the real Howard to Leonard and have him dye his feathers for protection. I remember hearing this story for the first time in the Steve Howe book on Marvel Comics, but there are a few articles online that sum it up without buying the book (not that it is a bad book actually). You have to admire the audacity of pretending to work with a company you swore off just to "steal" back your own creation. Having them pay you to do it has to have been an extra bonus. Here is a decent article the sums it up too for those who don't want to head to the library to get a copy of the book. https://birthmoviesdeath.com/2014/08/07/how-howard-the-ducks-creator-stole-him-from-marvel

Pumpkinbob

I could have sworn I'd seen this show in its initial airing but it was actually "Galtar and the Golden Lance". https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xruT7wUdsHI Which actually, was a He-Man ripoff as opposed to Thundarr which He-Man ripped off, among a few other things. Regarding: "Who cares about putting any budget into animation. They're kids!" I'm watching Duck Tales (2017) and I realize that a kid that everything I like about this show, i.e. the subtext between characters, little flourishes of animation, comedy beats, etc would be completely lost on six year old me. The people who make this show *Really Do Care* in ways that Thundarr and Galtar's creators really don't, but in the end I don't know if it would have mattered to then-me.

John Simon

So this and Herculoids were my favorite cartoons as a child. I loved the designs and thought that this was a kick-ass story. In my defense, I as 6 or 7 when this came out. Also the competition was not all that fierce.

Whenever I tried to think of an episode of this I just immediately confused it with Herculoids. But man, all this episode did was make me angry Adult Swim passed on Korgoth of Barbaria. And I hope some fine high roller makes you guys watch the Prince Valiant cartoon! Prince Valiant is more of an illustrated picture book than a comic but Hal Foster was unmatched and newspaper's format gave him a larger canvas than any magazine or floppy. The original size collections by Fantagraphics are beautiful.

Justen Brown