Over the past few days, I've had a craving for a little something from my childhood, so I went into my back issues and pulled out the 2002 Thundercats series from Wildstorm, and I reread most of them. First off, I completely forgot about the big-named artists that worked on this: Ed Benes, J Scott Campbell, and Ed McGuinness. The book may have been decent to ok, but it got me thinking, why don't we have more comics based off of franchises from the 80s? There's so much good stuff out there that is going untapped. Most of these books had their own comic runs, a few with Marvel to be exact, during the 80s, but what about now? Why aren't some of these great franchises being tapped?
== TEASER ==
Sure, there's a lot of cheeseball stuff in there that wouldn't be so great today, but clean it up and you could have yourself a great show. It may take away from what the show was originally about, but why not make it violent and more suited for adults? The people who would really want this book are in their late-20s to early 30s now, so give us what we really want. On a side note, like most 80s cartoons, there was a stupid annoying sidekick. This show had a couple. There was a "Snarf" (Thundercats reference) like character, but more annoying for me, was BraveStarr's horse. He suffered from that 80s too cool for school syndrome. Let BraveStarr do all the talking, and the horse do all the shooting, and make it dark.
Again, this is something that would need to be a little bit of a darker show, in order to make it really good. There's lots of team books out there, and many of them work, even G.I. Joe, but this show and book would be on more of a local level. Just one city they need to protect. One very large city. Even following one individual around from the team, like Bulletproof, in the center of the picture. Out of all the team cartoons out there, this one would probably work the best since there are so many different personalities and characters to choose from.
Why hasn't someone like Boom! Studios jumped on this yet? This would be a great kids adventure book! You essentially wouldn't have to change a thing from the original cartoon. The one thing I always feel kid's comics are missing now-a-days is adventure and a grandiose scale. That's all this book is. It's a lot of Indiana Jones type adventure with Disney characters many children know and love.
I know many of you are already a little ticked I didn't include Silverhawks. I was never a huge fan though. Over all of these previously mentioned cartoons, I'd like to see a revamp of the Thundercats series more than anything. In my opinion, it was the strongest cartoon of them all, and it still stands the test of time, and it would make a great comic with a strong creative team on it. what about you guys? What 80s cartoons would you like to see make it into comic book format and why?
~Mat "InferiorEgo" Elfring is a comedian, teacher, comic book writer, comic store employee, and huge 80s cartoon fan.~
