I know what you’re thinking: “My god, another entry? What is this, five or six today? Doesn’t this guy have anything better to do?” Well, actually, I probably do, but I don’t feel like doing it. It’s a pretty dull afternoon here in the Comma Mines. Much more fun to post silly blog entries about silly things… like, say, one of my favorite Saturday morning cartoons when I was a kid, a bizarre and violent mash-up of Star Wars, post-apocalyptic scenarios, and Alex Raymond-style background art called Thundaar the Barbarian. Author Chris Roberson (who credits this show as the [subconscious] inspiration for his excellent novel Paragaea: A Planetary Romance) reminded me of Thundaar this afternoon by posting a video clip of the opening credits. Here it is:
A shattered moon hanging in the sky over the ruins of our world? A hot babe with magical powers? A giant cat-man sidekick? A hero who wields a lightsaber rip-off? Tell me how a ten- or twelve-year-old boy could not be enthralled with this stuff. I understand the show is on DVD now. I might have to throw it into my ever-lengthening Netflix queue…
“The year is 1994…”
That’s awesome. It must have sounded so futuristic then…
Wow.. if it’s viewable, it’s been on YouTube. The old 80’s narrative of the opener and yes, blatantly ripping off Star Wars even down to the helmet mullet that Thundarr wears. I loved that he could put his sword hilt on to his metal wristbands and carry it there. There was a time I thought that was cooler than hanging a lightsaber from your belt.
Now I’ve had to go and watch all of the openings to the cartoons I loved as a kid.
see what you’ve done…
Brian, the ’90s and early ’00s (or whatever we call them) have been disappointing for me, as one of these “futuristic” dates after another have come and gone and nothing much has happened. NASA did not launch the last of America’s deep-space probes in 1987 with a pilot named William “Buck” Rogers at the controls; no runaway planet shattered the moon and sucked off half our atmosphere in 1994; there was no war with a genetic superman named Khan in 1999, nor a moonbase named Alpha; and the big one, no giant spacecraft headed toward Jupiter in 2001 with a psychotic A.I. named HAL on board. Sigh… the real world is so dull…
And Cheno? Sorry, man… now you know how I spent much of Friday afternoon…
Fair enough, but we did come through with handheld communicators, flat panel view screens, captain’s (b)logs, and even the U.S.S. Enterprise! Also, there’s the invisibility cloak and a start on something like LeForge’s visor.
Can’t really complain about tecnology’s progress in the last 15 years…
Brian, this was probably another case of me trying to be funny and failing miserably. 🙂
I just find it weird — on my own personal, inside-my-own-head level — when we reach one of these iconic dates that always figured so largely in the stories I loved as a kid and I realize that the real world doesn’t correspond to what was supposed to be here, according to those stories. Although, as you point out, we’ve made a lot of cool advancements anyway. And also, it seems like a lot of those science-fiction milestones years are associated with catastrophes of some sort, so I’d say it’s a good thing we’ve avoided those…