What A Cartoon! - Harvey Birdman: Attorney At Law "A Very Personal Injury"

I immediately had to look up the origin of that coffee filtered through a mummy joke, and the only thing that comes up is a short stort in a livejournal entry by YOU, BOB MACKY?!

Dylan Martin

I fucking love this show. I think my favourite running gag in the show might be Phil Ken Sebben's ongoing crush on Birdgirl, who he refuses to realize is actually his daughter, and how it keeps escalating to the point where she's going to marry him in order to keep her identity a secret. It's a good knock on some of the absurdity of comic book secret identities

Dylan (batmanboy11) Freitag

Ah, very interesting. Thanks for the reply!

Jack Christmas

Yes, this is a civil case because Apache Chief is suing Java Lux and that makes him the plaintiff. As for whether or not Harvey would represent him, it really depends on what type of law he practices. For instance, a family lawyer could practice on behalf of both plaintiffs and defendants because they might sue or be sued for custody. Also the size of the firm he practices with would matter, as well as things like pro bonos that pretty much all big firms require their associates to take on a certain number of hours too. A state prosecutor is the only type of lawyer that I can think of that for certain would never wind up representing a defendant because prosecution is their full time job. But the state does have lawyers that do both. The attorney general of any state would both bring suits and defend against them. Bottom line, I don't think it's that unusual that a lawyer that usually does criminal defense might wind up representing the plaintiff in civil court.

Ron Sterling

I looked up The New Adventures of the Wonder Twins and I love this overly defensive note from the Superfriends Wiki (<a href="https://superfriends.wikia.com/wiki/Be_Kind,_Rewind):" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">https://superfriends.wikia.com/wiki/Be_Kind,_Rewind</a>): "The implication that Marvin made when he was referring to Zan and Jayna watching Adult films was that they are in a somewhat kinky type of incestuous relationship, or that watching porno together turns them on in an almost incestuous way. This is further thought to be the case by the positioning of each other after they made their transformation. This is of course is what many fans have accused the Wonder Twins of for years, but this was just an accidental situation where they ended up in an unusual circumstance that gave them that appearance. If anything this episode confirms they are not incestuous."

rubber cat

If Harvey Birdman is a defense attorney, why is he representing Apache Chief in this episode, who (as I understand it) is the one bringing legal action against the coffee shop? Is it because this is a civil case rather than a criminal one, and the defense/prosecution binary doesn't apply? If so, wouldn't criminal defense lawyers be too specialized to take on civil cases in general? ... I'm sure they got it all figured out, but I have to check. I wouldn't want a cartoon about a man who can fly and shoot laser beams out of his eyes practising law to be UNREALISTIC.

Jack Christmas

Yeah Henry really wasn't fair to how far ahead of the curve Black Panther and Marvel were compared to DC. Jim Shooter, who was literally a teenager writing the Legion of Superheroes, was blocked by DC editorial from adding black members, even as incidental members, while Marvel introduced Black Panther into one of their biggest comics in 1966, and that despite breaking that barrier, DC didn't follow suit for literally a decade, until the embarrassing racial separatist Tyroc (1976) and less embarrassing but terribly named Black Lightning (1977). To be less fair to Lee (and it definitely feels like Lee, not Kirby), in Black Panther's second appearance, he said call him 'Black Leopard,' to try to distance himself from the movement, but it was too late, the name had already stuck.

Chris Dobson

As long as we're talking about the history of Apache Chief, I'd like to bring up my favorite version, from DC &amp; Cartoon Network's "Young Justice" animated series a few years back. The new version of Tye Longshadow debuted in the 2012 episode "Beneath" as a teenager running away from his mom's abusive boyfriend, a washout jerk of a man who resents Tye's grandfather—the current chief of their tribe—and misplaces that hostility toward Tye—heir apparent to the title of chief for whatever that's worth in a modern day Native American tribe. After being abducted by aliens (it's a whole thing), Tye's latent superpowers are activated, allowing him to create a several-story-tall physical projection of his astral form. Tye never gets a codename (at least, not yet. There IS a new season coming out on DC Universe next year) but between his surname and his family history, he seems to be a tidied-up reimagining of both Apache Chief and Longshadow. Plus, he rolls with Virgil Hawkins, aka Static (who you might remember from "Static Shock"), so that's already a more interesting character than any previous version of Apache Chief.

Man, when I saw which episode y'all were doing my first thought was "I hope Hank goes into detail on Black Lightning vs Black Vulcan" and I was not disappointed. I never knew the origin story of The Bear before. I love his weird derpy character design that doesn't quite fit with the rest of the char designs.

Zachary Adams

Bob doesnt know about Blue Falcon(e)? This is an OUTRAGE!

Jenny Ibrahim

My favorite episode is the employee training video for the law office.. I still laugh very hard at that one

Codeaholic

Comic Pedantry Alert: Henry is wrong about the Black Panther Party predating the comic book character, though he may have been thinking of an earlier use of the symbol. As Henry correctly noted, Black Panther the character debuted in Fantastic Four #52 in July 1966, while the Black Panther Party was founded in October 1966. The shared name appears to be a complete coincidence. However, the Black Panther Party was inspired to use the black panther symbol by Alabama's Lowndes County Freedom Organization (LCFO), an African-American electoral organization established by the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee in 1965 to promote African-American voter registration in Lowndes County, which was at the time the most Klan-dominated area in Alabama. The LCFO chose the black panther as their symbol to show that while they wanted to defend their rights legally, they were prepared to fight back with force of their own if attacked. There was also apparently a segregated African-American tank battalion in World War II that took a black panther as their symbol. Stan Lee denies that the character's name came from any political usage, and it's pretty unlikely that he or Jack Kirby knew about a regional voter organization in rural Alabama or some WWII tank battalion. I think it just happens that the panther is a well-known animal representing power and danger, and since there are panther species that are black, the name "black panther" follows pretty naturally. Anyway, just wanted to jump on that small point before someone else got to it.

Guy Incognito

Cartoon Network was the original MCU. They filled their programming blocks during week days with awful Hanna Barbera cartoons like Birdman, Space Ghost, Herculoids, Blue Falcon, Sea Lab,etc before throwing them all together for shows like this one. Obviously, they never planned for this, but it's pretty fortunate for them that they got kids like me to waste their summer vacations inside watching these bad shows "just because" and then reaped the reward when Adult Swim launched and I knew who these people were. Without those afternoons, I would have no idea who any of these characters were except for the real big ones like Yogi. I don't think it's much of a hot take to suggest that Birdman was the best of the early Adult Swim shows. I recently caught Cartoon Network airing the first episode a few weeks ago (maybe to celebrate an anniversary?) and - holy hell - did that show look like a putrid pile puss. They stretched the image and tried to format it for modern televisions and it was almost unwatchable. And I'm the type who can contently watch the FXX hack-jobs they do on early episodes of The Simpsons, but apparently I have found my limit.

Joe Hodgson

So something I decided to look up. I only now realized that Birdman is basically the DC character Hawkman. Both are heroes based on birds, and both got their power from Egypt, the difference being their weapons. So I looked this up and found something interesting. On the DVD release of DC Superheroes: The Filmation Adventures, Birdman accidentally shows up in the menu. Warner Home Video said that this was indeed a mistake and that was supposed to be Hawkman. So yes, Birdman is based on Hawkman to the point where they got mixed up once.

ShyRanger