The "M" Stands For Mighty Part Ten

There are a lot of cartoons that have been forgotten from the past twenty or so years.  Few people remember Attack of the Killer Tomatoes had a cartoon series.  As did Toxic Crusaders, Kid n' Play, Mother Goose & Grimm, and Fievel's American Tails.

Most of them deserve it.  Some not so much.  I mean, how did Yo, Yogi! ever miss out on a complete DVD run?

Has there ever been anything more 90s than THAT?

But, sadly, one that has been pretty much lost to the dustbin of time is Mighty Max, which is a shame because it's one of my favorite shows from that decade, which is why I'm up to the tenth episode in my weekly review period.

Oh, and in the spirit of December, we have zombies!

You know, back before they were cool.


We start out down at Skullmaster's lair, where Tim Curry bemoans the fact that the Mighty One (remember, a child) has yet to die so that his gruesomeness can get around to...oh, you know, the usual.  Take over the world.

He comes up with a new plan, and honestly, I can't help but wonder how it is new plans don't get thrown at heroes every other day when they face a villain who exists like this.  Nothing clearly stops him from unleashing his power upon the world, so why wouldn't he just keep sending wave after wave of destruction down on Max and his friends?

I mean, besides the fact that the show would be very short-lived and the bad guy would win.

Anyway, the newest plan apparently involves unleashing zombies from the bottom of the ocean to hunt down Max and destroy him.

We cut away to Max who, FINALLY, is doing what any self-respecting superhero with a device that allows him to teleport anywhere around the world would do in his shoes.

He gathers up his friends, takes them to a beach halfway around the world, and watches a beach volleyball tournament.  An "intra-sorority" one, at that.

Why he felt the need to bring his most likely future romantic interest Bea along, I'm not sure, but she'd probably murder him if he went to an exotic beach for fun and didn't bring her along.

A telegram arrives for him from Virgil, who explains the whole "undead underwater zombie things that can track the cap wherever it is" deal, just in time for one to show up and ruin the tournament.  Max manages to meet up with Virgil and Norman up in the land of Eskimos just as another one punches its way up through the ice shelf to face them.  Virgil insists they can't fight them, and leads the trio through another portal into somewhere in the middle east.

This is where Max starts demanding answers ("How can they hold their breath for so long?") and Virgil finally buckles down and starts telling the truth.

So here's the deal.  Five thousand years ago Skullmaster's people lived in a city that was stupidly built just under sea level with a giant brick wall around it to keep the water out.  Seriously, no other land around, just a large circular wall with a city inside with the waves pushing against it.

These were not the best people to have on your team for multiplayer Civilization.

With the city prophesied to be destroyed, Skullmaster tricked the King and the people into giving up their souls to his giant "crystal on a stick" so that they could safely travel to a new land ("since the bodies could travel where the souls went to.")  Strangely enough, a guy named "Skullmaster" wound up betraying everybody, killed the king, and now commands an entire city's worth of undead who obey his every order.

Oh, and apparently they were responsible for killing another "cap-bearer" a few hundred years later.

That...is the dorkiest thing I've ever seen.  I don't even know where to begin, except to point out that even 4700 years ago (or so) it was still a baseball cap with a giant "M" on it.

The only thing I've ever seen that was a more bizarre mash-up of D&D Fantasy and modern times is that time Conan the Barbarian became a pimp in modern day New York.

Seriously, I can't make this stuff up.

Norman, Virgil, and Max jump around, trying to stay one step ahead of the undead, until Max gets fed up with the whole thing.  Virgil insists there are only two options: go down to Skull Mountain right now and face Skullmaster, or run until Max is old enough to complete the first option.  Max and Norman try facing off against one (read: only one) of the undead goons and promptly get their hides handed to them.  With the prophecy about to be ruined and Max about to be killed, we get what might be one of the moments in the series that blew my mind when I was young:

Virgil grabs the hat, dons it, and leaps through a portal alone in order to keep it out of Skullmaster's hands.

Max helps Norman out of the rubble he created by the undead creature using him to knock down a building, and we get a pretty funny line as Norman comes to:  "I hate Australian rules football."

That's right, folks, you ever need to save the world, go down under and get Geelong on your side.

(Though, personally I'd rather have the New Zealand All Blacks, but that's rugby.)

Where was I?  Oh, right.

Max and Norman follow one of the undead across South America to the peak of one of the Andes, where it appears the chicken is a) facing a disturbing amount of undead, and b) attempting to destroy the cap by getting it struck by lightning.  In a move I can only describe as "90s action hero," Norman is able to dive over and knock Virgil out of the way of a bolt of lightning before it can strike him.

How?  Because he's Norman, is how.  Now hush.

So now it's the three of them against an entire city's worth of zombies (well, the ones Skullmaster was able to summon, so, about thirty).  Fortunately, as Max puts the cap back on, the theme music kicks in, so you know something awesome is about to happen.  With Virgil knocked out, Max gets Norman to keep the zombies at bay (shut up, he's Norman and there's theme music, everybody's abilities are always triple what they were originally when you have theme music) while he consults the portal map.  He starts to lead Norman and Virgil towards a portal to escape, then suddenly veers off to the size and approaches the edge of a cliff.

He calls for Norman to toss him his sword, setting up one last stand.  Virgil protests, insisting that Max will die if he faces the zombies, but it seems Norman has a bit more faith in Max than Virgil does, and the sword flies through the air to land in Max's hands.  Max, being the hero of legend...jumps off the cliff.

Naturally, the zombies follow, and the dramatic timing of the weather has the storm break up right after the last one goes over the edge.  In a movie right out of The Last Crusade, though, Virgil and Norman grieve for the passing of Max, right before he calls out to let them know he's okay.  Apparently Norman's sword is sharp enough that Max was able to thrust it into the cliff face and hang from it, letting all of the zombies fall through another portal that leads to the Marianas Trench.

It'll take the zombies months to climb their way back out, and Max declares that it's time he, Virgil, and Norman come up with a plan to storm Skull Mountain and destroy the crystal.

Oh, and that's where it ends, after Max explains the Incan road system.

The Good:

This is some actual build-up for an ongoing story arc, and it's great to see the series take itself a bit more seriously, since most cartoons were simply "no week is connected to any other week" unless it was a Disney series.  The underwater undead have an actual interesting origin (if a bit dumb) than simply "summoned zombies," and you feel pretty bad for an entire civilization that's been sucked dry, soul-wise, by the major bad guy.  Oh, and the fact that they do a ghostly, haunted chant of "capbearer capbearer capbearer" over and over makes them pretty scary.

Seeing Virgil "man up" and attempt to destroy the cap rather than let it fall into the hands of the villains was a pretty interesting moment.  A conversation between Norman and Max about the difference between "free will" and "destiny" is also an interesting look at how prophecy works, and helps us get the sense that Max is really starting to take his job seriously instead of just "show up, solve problem, go home, tease Bea because I'm not mature enough yet to express how I feel."

The Bad:

The episode cuts a few corners when it comes to explaining just why Norman can't simply cleave his way through them with his sword, but hacking and slashing the undead like that didn't really become "okay" until more recent years.  I mean, sure, it's okay for humans to die in this show (and quite a lot of them), but killing zombies with a sword would just be...messy.

Overall:

One of the better episodes so far, not just in threat level (an army of strong, relentless hunters that will follow you across the world to get what they want) but in story build-up.  Of course, we still have three episodes to go until that epic show-down...first we have to get through werewolves and "ice aliens."

That's right, they made a cartoon episode based off of John Carpenter's The Thing.

...man, I can't wait to get through the werewolves to that one.

Oh, and it's time once again for Erik Overthinks Christmas Carols.  This time it's It's The Most Wonderful Time Of The Year.

For the most part, I like this song, even if it is a bit repetitive.  However, there's a lyric in there that says what you do during the holidays is tell "scary ghost stories."  Since when do people try to scare each other with ghost stories at Christmas?  I mean, besides A Christmas Carol.  But that was never really scary so much as "man, Scrooge is a jerk."

...well, okay, the Ghost of Christmas Yet To Come (how can he be a ghost anyway?  Future death?) is usually pretty scary...but still, that's to teach Scrooge a lesson, not to scare the people I'm spending holidays with.