The M Stands for "Mighty" Part One

There were a few cartoons I was absolutely a die-hard fan of in the 90s.  You had your Batman: The Animated Series, you had Gargoyles and Duck Tales and Darkwing Duck.  You had Captain Planet and the Planeteers.  Tiny Toon Adventures and Animaniacs and Pinky and the Brain.  The 90s were essentially a golden age for cartoons, one that faltered in later years and is just now really coming back.

But by far, the series that I absolutely loved to the point that I used to schedule records on a VCR to watch it when I realized it was on television at four in the morning... was Mighty Max.

So starting with episode one, let's look back and see what made it so great (and pray it still holds up).



First off, we have to discuss the opening, which is the most 90s-est theme song to ever rock.

But this show immediately captured my imagination.  The main hero is a young man who fights everything from space aliens to dragons.  There's touches of horror (bats) and adventure (giant spider in a tomb).  There was absolutely nothing about this show that wouldn't appeal to me at that age.

The show begins with several...well, I can only think of describing them as "mining/boring metal spiders" digging a cavern while Tim Curry narrates from his too awesome underground volcano base.  At least, I think it's underground.  He says "the surface" at one point.

Now, I'm not sure if Tim Curry's character customized that mountain face, but if he didn't, then I don't think anybody could have a base like that without turning evil and potentially having their voice turn into Tim Curry.  Nobody would run a scrap booking center or a place to donate redeemable cans out of somewhere like that.  At least, not for very long.

Tim Curry's character is watching the surface world through a large gem on a pole and talking desperately about how he wants a) to be free and b) bring ruin upon mankind.  Possibly not in that order.

From there we cut to a suburban home in <no name given>, <error, no state provided>, where our hero, Max, gets home, and I have to say I love the fact that the creators of the show pretty much gave up trying to give him any kind of unique style and just let him run around in every episode wearing a large, baggy white t-shirt with the initial to his first name on it.

Also, nice hair.

Max plays a message on the answering machine (see, in the past we didn't have voice mail, we had cassettes, which wer- nevermind) from his mother stating she's out at another swap meat, and I have to point out that their house looks like she pillaged that warehouse from the end of Raiders of the Lost Ark.  You have shields, helmets, tribal masks, and all sorts of stuff cluttering the area.

Max heads up to his room which is memorable for two reasons: He has a giant neon sign that reads "MAXIMIZE" over the headboard of his bed (only the "MAX" part flashes off and on, the rest stays dark), and when the door swings open it hits a trigger that turns on the SIX TELEVISIONS he has stacked like a pyramid, all tuned to the same channel.

This is the greatest kids room that ever existed back in 1992.  All it needs is a ramp for sweet Rollerblade tricks and a cooler full of Pink Swimmingo Kool-Aid.

Max receives a package from a delivery man, and opens it to find an Egyptian-looking statue.  He busts out a book explaining hieroglyphics, which he uses to translate the message.  It, in essence, explains that he is the "chosen one" to be the "cap bearer" and that he needs to go to the "mini mart" and wait for a sign.

Yes, the ancient Egyptians had a hieroglyph for "mini mart."  Don't question it.

Startled, he drops the statue and it shatters (they just don't make them like they used to) and discovers a red cap stored within.  Because ancient Egypt was all about baseball caps, right?  Right?  Right.

Upon donning the cap (because admit it, you'd put it on, too), a burst of light comes from it, and another emits from the crystal back at the bad guy's cavern underground.  Our villain despairs the fact that the "chosen one" is coming to destroy him, as per some prophecy or something, and sends one of his minions (a creature made of lava) to find him first and destroy him.

I mean, sure, you don't know where the "chosen one" is or what he looks like yet, but hey, how many kids wear baseball caps in the 90s?

Max shows up at the mini mart, missing the steaming giant footprints melted into the nearby sidewalk and heads in to find the shop owner engaged in combat with the muck monster.  It grabs hold of the man's bat and melts it before charging forward, and the guy yells for Max to run, calling to him by name.

The monster charges forward, and I can only assume that the guy who works the counter dies horribly via magma monster.

We're going to need this:

Current casualties: 1

Max takes off on his bike, but apparently magma men are fast because, after it simply melts through the sliding doors of the mini mart, it slides along the ground after him, leaving a melted groove in the road.  That'll be fun for the local road crews to explain.

Right when Max is about to pancake against a house wall, his hat suddenly glows and opens a portal for him to fall through.

Man, wouldn't it be cool if Chell and Max teamed up?  They'd be unstoppable.

Once he emerges from another portal in Mongolia, Max meets Norman and Virgil.  One is a huge mountain of a man voiced by Richard Moll, the other is a talking chicken (fowl, actually) voiced by Tony Jay.  You probably know Tony Jay as the voice of Frollo in The Hunchback of Notre Dame.  Oh, and I think I forgot to mention that Max is voiced by one of my favorite voice actors of all time, Rob Paulsen, who you might remember my mentioning before. 

Virgil goes into a speech about how Max is "the chosen one" and gets to use the "cosmic cap" and travel through the portals which were the means of travel of "the gods" ... you know, I don't remember it all being quite this epic when I first watched it.  They use the portals to travel from Mongolia to the Sphinx to the Taj Mahal to Paris back to (conveniently) the block Max lives at, begging the question why Virgil and Norman had to ship the hat there but couldn't just arrive themselves.

Oh, and he says that Tim Curry's character is called "Skullmaster" which is a great cartoon villain name.

After discovering a basement with the portal that leads to Skull Mountain (as Virgil explains "why not?  You are the chosen one"), they're once again confronted by the lava beast   Max steps back as his hat opens a portal, but Virgil pushes him out of the way, falling in himself with the lava beast right behind.  Max pledges to save Virgil, and he and Norman leap through the portal after it reopens via Max's hat.

Max and Norman get separated, and Max finds himself alone against Skullmaster.  Tim Curry does a masterful job here, expressing Skullmaster's disgust at the fact that the "chosen one" is simply a child, meaning that he's been afraid and angry for five thousand years, waiting for that day, for nothing...and he's overjoyed because the chosen one, fated to destroy him, is a child.

Max manages a desperate escape by (almost) knocking over the crystal that Skullmaster was looking into before, and runs up into the mountain where he finds Virgil and Norman.  After freeing them, they get out of the mountain to where Skullmaster's digging machines are making tunnels.  Confronted by Skullmaster, Max decides they need a bigger weapon and climbs into the machinery, activating it and collapsing the tunnels Skullmaster was digging.  He then promptly rolls over Skullmaster and pilots it into a river of lava, which is where the portal back (supposedly) exists.  With Skullmaster clinging to the side of the machinery, they jump off and fall through the portal, while Skullmaster and his machine plummet off of a lava waterfall to the depths below.

I'm not counting that as a casualty, because I know he's the "big bad" of the show and will be back.

And I'm not counting the rock creatures Norman killed, because who cares about rock creatures?

I mean, besides the one from The Neverending Story.

But not his kid.

The heroes land in Australia, and start the fifty mile walk to the next portal.

Something tells me Max won't be back in time for school the next day.

Oh, and after the episode wraps up, Max gives us a history of the Taj Mahal, a nice little footnote to the episode.

The Good:

You know, the episode holds up pretty well.  The animation isn't really DVD-crisp (having never been put on DVD), but it does give a true sense of just how "huge" the adventure is.  Now that they've already established that Max's hat can go anywhere in the world, including within it, there really is no limit to the stories they can tell.

The voice cast is superb, and ranks up with the best I've ever listened to in one show.  Rob Paulsen as Max brings youth and attitude to the role, Tony Jay is English without the accent and proper, and Richard Moll is stoic and powerful as Norman.  Tim Curry is at his prime here, with a voice that pulls you in while also terrifying you at the threats he says.  How many people can really get away with the phrase "I'll rip the limbs from your body and suck the marrow from your bones?"

The Bad:

Man, I'm going to hate saying this, but Rob Paulsen... well, you know I love ya, man, and I'm sure it was the writing staff who gave you the lines, but you'd think a kid who suddenly gets heroism thrust upon him by a chicken and fights a lava creature would panic a bit more or protest some at being "chosen."  There's a lot of attitude that doesn't really belong (then again, it was the 90s, which was all about attitude), and it dissolves some of the tension when the hero is talking smack to Tim Curry even while backing away in terror.

That's...really all I have.  Oh, except it would've been nice if they clarified whether or not the mini mart owner actually did die, but for now I'm counting him as a casualty.  He won't be alone.

Overall:

While completely 90s (to the EXTREME MAXIMUM), the show does hold up under its own weight.  The way it pitches just what the hat does and how it works is vague enough to be acceptable while detailed enough to get a pretty good legend out of it.  They have a great villain to regularly harass Max and even though we never meet his mother in this episode we can already tell the supporting cast is going to be pretty interesting.

I might hold off on the Overalls from this point and just focus on the good and the bad, giving a massive series wrap-up once I get to a good stopping point, but I sincerely hope they bring this show out on DVD at some point soon, because digging up the footage and images isn't easy.