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Batman as he is about to kick ass in Batman: The Animated Series, a cartoon that was on TV in the early to mid 90s[/caption]I mean immediately what comes to the minds of most people in the new millennium would be stuff like, ‘The Dark Knight Rises’ (The Latest Batman movie), or Bryan Singer’s time working on the X-Men series, or hell, even watching the mega-box office smash hit that came out a few months ago in, ‘The Avengers’…
But for most of us who were kids in the 90s, we were not quite so lucky to have these historically epic smash hit Super Hero movies to enjoy… As a matter of fact, during that time , outside of the Batman movies on the big screen, ‘Louis & Clark: The New Adventures of Superman,’ or, ‘Buffy: The Vampire Slayer’, there honestly wasn’t to many live action super hero (or super hero styled) movie or TV shows that we could enjoy!
So what did we have… We had cartoons of course, there was such truly classic super hero cartoons as, ‘X-Men’, ‘Spider Man’, ‘Batman’ and in the older term s, the old Superman movies…
You might think that because I am making this sound like the rant of an old man that, ‘we were happy to get what we could back then’… Well believe it or not, this is quite the contrary… As a matter of fact I have to say that those old cartoons were great! In some ways you could almost say that they were better than the movies!
It’s more true then you know, (and in almost every case the 90s Batman cartoon was drastically better then George Clooney’s Batman!) But either way hear me out…
What I mean by this is that, most Super Hero movies or TV series, rather they be on the big screen or the small screen, rather they are animated or live action tend to derive from their comic book predecessors, especially the ones that I have mentioned above have come from either the DC or Marvel Universes! (Of course that doesn’t go for all Superheroes on either on the big screen or the small screen but, those are for another blog…)
With the above mentioned in mind, if you are a fan of comics like I am, then you will understand why these old school cartoons about these classic super heroes are so great! What I mean by this (and the live action films do a pretty solid job of this, and some of the cartoons of today do them just,) but one of the things that the animators did on these early 90s super hero TV series did that I actually kind of thought was pretty excellent was that they drew their, ‘X-Men’, or their, ‘Superman’ in such a way so that rather they know it or not was actually an homage to the comics from where they came from!
So if you’re as much of fan of comic books as I am, it was a real treat because you got to actually kind of see these amazing, larger than life heroes come to life in some cases in the adventures that made them so popular in the comic book series!
Another thing that was kind of a real treat I believe for kids in regard to these old super hero cartoons (I know it worked for me in this fashion because in some cases I was still a child when some of these cartoons were released,) that it could start to give children their first taste, regardless of the fact that it is pretty fictionalized, that there is more out there then just there house, school, or even city, state, country or planet… I would even go so far as to say that it could give kids there first, (albeit fictionalized) taste of the importance of Science, or Science Fiction and could end up leading children in to space/space related industry or some form of Law Enforcement careers!
Now listen, I know I am putting an awful lot of importance on these old cartoons, what I said may or may not be true for your kid (I just know that it was for me when I was a kid), in the end though, these old cartoons are just a lot of fun, and can be in some ways educational for those of you out there who have kids!
http://youtu.be/HsQ5EBskkFg
http://youtu.be/KZw64rBswqc
