Si Spurrier says: SAVE US, 80’s CARTOONS, YOU’RE OUR ONLY HOPE
It has been noted that today’s world has taken a peculiar lurch toward 80sdom. Uberconservatism in politics, racism in the news, trouble in the Falklands, riots on the streets, assaults upon the welfare state, godawful haircuts, an overzealous deployment of secondary colours in fashion, yuppiescum wiping their arses on the communal cashpot, and a general all-consuming pall of evil, doom and villainy hanging above the West.
How did we survive last time round? I’ll tell you how:
LIKE THIS, YO. …that is to say, with a torrent of French/Japanese/American animations about groups of broadly-anatomically-correct men and women in cellshade supercolour costumes, hitting/shooting/chasing shit, fighting against mincing cacklefops, walking jerkily past lavishly-painted backgrounds and always always always ending the day laughing unconvincingly at an irritating slapstick pet/sidekick and decrying the Evil Of Drugs. Also, the greatest themetunes EVER KNOWN.
You know the type, yes? Thundercats, Pole Position, Masters Of The Universe, Jayce and the Wheeled Warriors, Ulysses 31, Dungeons & Dragons, She-Ra, Mask, Defenders Of The Earth, Mysterious Cities of Gold, aaaand so on. These are the cultural bedrock of my generation, oh chittering art-monkeys, and I have never ended a pub conversation without an attempt to remember all Marshall Bravestarr’s animal powers. “Smells like a wolf”, arf arf.
I’m not going to give you too many rules here. Instead I have a very simple command: I want you to deliver us from cultural evil, nothing more. Just as the original versions of these splendid fictions saved us all in the 80’s, you shall pick one, you shall modernise it, you shall reinvent it in ways hitherto unforeseen, and YOU WILL SSSSSSSAVE US ALLL.
Me: guess which reference I use.
This entry won me a place on Bleeding Cool
Brian le Golem 