After all of the negative reception surrounding Cartoon Network’s 2016 reboot of The Powerpuff Girls, I thought that we could flash back to something PPG related that people would enjoy. Here’s a CN promo that was made years ago showing a collision between the Powerpuff Girls and Hanna-Barbera’s Saturday morning cartoon Super Friends. Enjoy:
Kudos to CN for being able to get Shannon Farnon to reprise her role as Wonder Woman here.
Today’s 2 Funny is the rather long but hilarious intro for the Nintendo Gamecube’s Mario Power Tennis. Bush-league baddies Wario and Waluigi are drummed out of the competition, but get some private coaching from a ‘mysterious’ benefactor. Enjoy.
If we could get 1 Super Mario Bros. TV show with animation and antics like this, it would more than make up for the lackluster animation from the previous Mario TV cartoons and it could even cause folks to forget that live-action Super Mario Brothers movie (almost). Make this happen, Nintendo!
Today Beyond the Background spotlights a trio of intergalactic teenagers from beyond the stars. No, it’s not the Teen Force from NBC’s Space Stars or the Neutrinos from TMNT. I’m talking about My Life as a Teenage Robot‘s The Teen Team.
“IT’S TEEN TEAM TIME! (Hey kids, is this a catchphrase yet??)”
For the uninformed, the Teen Team were a band of teenage superheroes from different galaxies in “outer space, or course”, who appeared in 1 1/3 episodes of Teenage Robot (I’ll elaborate on this later). Their roster consisted of The Amazing Orion, The Stupendous Squish and The Elusive (or Mysterious) Mistery.
“Wow. A team of teenage superheroes. Never saw that before!”
Yeah, no prizes for guessing, these three were fun-house mirror versions of Glen Murukami and Cartoon Network’s Teen Titans.
They just don’t live in a nifty T-shaped tower.
Basically each Teen Team member was a mash-up of 1 or 2 Titans characters:
Though Star’s cuter.
“GAH!! Toothpaste! My arch-nemesis!!”
The Teen Team appeared as a team in only a single episode, titled appropriately enough, “Teen Team Time”. They initially befriend Jenny and even make her a team member at one one point.
Stylin’!
But it isn’t long before things begin to go awry. Here’s the short in its’ entirety so’s I don’t have to explain the plot.
http://www.veoh.com/watch/v17490884xfMtzxTM
Mistery made a second appearance by herself (this is what I meant by 1 1/3 episode appearances) in a follow-up short entitled “Teenage Mutant Ninja Troubles”, in which Misty returns to Earth after stating that the Teen Team has disbanded due to internal conflicts (it is mentioned that after the split, Orion took up ballet!) and so she begins attending Jenny’s school, where she is teased by the Krust Cousins, Brit and Tiff. Not standing for any of that noise, Misty engages in a prank war with the Krusts, however she takes things too far, escalating things to the point of Misty squaring off against Jenny herself. Things end on a less that auspicious note, with Misty taking off for parts unknown.
This latter episode bummed me out; I liked the idea of Jenny finally having another girl character to talk to and confide in, and I liked someone finally laying some well-deserved smack-down on the Krust Cousins (though I did kind of like their characters in a way, I had always hoped they’d reform one day and if not become Jenny’s buddies, at least become good-natured goofs a la Bulk and Skull), but having Misty go heel didn’t please me and I was really dismayed that the writers broke up the Teen Team. I thought they were kind of cool, and would’ve liked to have seen more of them as heroes. Why are Supers so cool when placed in teams of 3? You have the DC Trinity…
…The Galaxy Trio…
…And the Troika from Jim Lee’s Wild C.A.T.s.
Normally, I’m not down with glorifying villains, but I liked these guys. One of them was a flipping talking, transforming robot, for corn’s sake!
Superheroes are almost always cooler as trios.
-Of course, there are always exceptions.
The Kids in the Hall turn up in another 2 Funny. This time Bruce McCulloch intruduces us to “The Daves I Know”. Enjoy.
Note that one of the Daves who shows up during the last verse is fellow Kid in the Hall Dave Foley, who interestingly doesn’t get a verse about him.
Today’s Cartoon Country takes a look at one of my favorite episodes of Marvel’s Super Hero Squad Show: episode 18, “Mysterious Mayhem at Mutant High!”.
This episode’s title card is a parody of the comic book cover for X-Men Vol.2, issue #1, in case anyone’s interested.
Premise: Captain America sends Wolverine back to Xavier Academy to get his diploma and finish his remaining credits. Reptil, being the mutant fanboy that he is (I can relate), tags along to see what Xavier Academy is like and meet the X-Men. To make matters worse, Ringmaster shows up and hypnotizes the entire X-Men team in order to find an Infinity Fractal for Doctor Doom.
I’m not going to bother reviewing this episode or running down everything blow by blow; we don’t do reviews here, and most fans of SHS have already seen this episode a few times already by now (It’s floating around on the internet in various places, so if you haven’t already seen “Mysterious Mayhem at Mutant High!”, I’m sure you can find it somewhere in cyberspace). Instead, I’ll just be geeking out over the things I liked about this episode.
Firstly, it centers on the X-Men, one of my favorite Marvel franchises, and it takes place largely at the Xavier Academy, one of my favorite locations within Superhero City.
The Xavier School for Gifted Children. The giant X-shaped roof makes it look cool, although curiously, in this episode the roof of the Academy is gold, rather than the pale slate gray that it’s typically seen as in the establishing shots and opening title sequence.
Also, it’s a Reptil-heavy episode and Reptil’s one of my favorite characters on the show.
In Iron Man’s obligatory appearance, he admonishes Reptil for keeping his room like a wild animal (what do you expect from a kid whose power is morphing into dinosaurs?) and insists that Wolverine take the shrimp with him in the hopes that “maybe Xavier can pound some discipline into him.” Reptil’s one of the few ‘kid sidekick’ character who isn’t instantly annoying.
Curiously, the Xavier Academy has the semblance of a stereotypical American public high school rather than the austere private boarding school that it’s usually depicted as. Perhaps this was done intentionally to parody cliched high-school tropes. Given the farcial nature of The Super Hero Squad Show, that wouldn’t surprise me.
The X-Men characters here (Prof. X and his alumni, all, you know, 6 of them) are likewise reminiscent of typical high school archetypes: Iceman is the class clown, Colossus is the somewhat thick but genial jock, Storm (who like Wolvie is only there on a technicality–all of her foreign credits evidently didn’t make it over to the States) is the elegant foreign student, etc.
Cyclops is the preppy Class President type who’s “Darn glad to meet ya!” Any kids cartoon that can slip in a National Lampoon’s Animal House reference is A-OK in my book.
And then we come to Jean Grey, here depicted as vain, vapid cheerleader (voiced here by Hynden ‘Starfire/Princess Bubblegum’ Walch) wearing a skimpy cheerleader version of her comics uniform.
BOM-CHICKA-WOW-WOW!
At one point, the Ringmaster (disguised as a lunch lady, don’t ask) hypnotizes Jean…
“BOINNGG! I. Am. Totally. Hypnotized.”
And before telekinetically tearing the hallway a new one, she busts out with the perfect cheer:
“Call me Phoenix/Call me Jean/Red-haired mutant prom night queen!/I’ll hit you with a mental/hurl/if you call me Marvel Girl!” GO MUTANTS!!”
“Ooh, baby! Huh-huh-huh! Come to Butt-Head!”
“Yeah! Heh-hehe-heh! And then come to me! Heh-heh-heh!”
“How’d you like a face full of laser?”
(Afterwards, Xavier attempted to telepathically erase their brains, but since their heads are already empty, nothing happened.)
Speaking of the Professor, I’ve got to call baloney on the scene where the Ringmaster puts the whammy on Xavier. Charles Xavier is supposed to be THE most powerful telepath on Earth; I get that this is a silly comedic take on the Marvel Universe, but there’s no way that Xavier should’ve been manipulated so easily, especially by a D-List super-villain who specializes in cheap parlor tricks.
“Your honuh, I wuz Hyp-Mo-Tized!”
Also, did you notice how Colossus was in his armored form throughout this entire episode? He was metallic in all of the scenes of the Deadpool trailer as well (still haven’t seen the movie yet, forgive me). So is Piotr strictly metallic now? Or were the animators just lazy?
SHADOWCAT AND LOCKHEED CAMEO!
–The Super Hero Squad Show was basically killed after Disney acquired Marvel. I don’t need for there to be a 3rd season of the show (the Squaddies saved the flippin’ UNIVERSE in season 2, how could they possibly top that? Plus, I liked season 1 a little more since season 2 largely discarded Superhero City–one of my favorite elements of the show–as a backdrop), but one thing I do regret is that we never got another X-Men centered episode. It would have been cool to see some of the mutant characters who never appeared in SHS form on the show, like Angel…
Or Rogue…
..Or Beast.
Ms. Marvel mentioned Beast in the show’s pilot episode, titled appropriately “And Lo!…A Pilot Shall Come!”, but he never appeared on camera.
Plus, we never got to see Magneto and Xavier appear in an episode together. That might’ve been fun. Or maybe Reptil could’ve met Jubilee; the 2 of them could’ve competed for the role of Wolverine’s teen sidekick or something.
Finally, a word about Angelica Jones, aka Firestar.
Firestar didn’t appear until a season later, in “Too Many Wolverines!”, attending the same class as Reptil and getting paired with him for a science project. Personally, I think it would’ve made more sense for Angelica to have been a student at the Xavier Academy, given that she’s a mutant, but Firestar had to have been in the same class as Reptil, otherwise they wouldn’t have had a story. If only the circumstances had allowed for them to have been classmates at the Academy.
The mind boggles.
Twin Images 
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