Mighty Mouse: The New Adventures

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Mighty Mouse: The New Adventures
Mighty Mouse in Ralph Bakshi's adaptation
Format	Adventure, Science Fiction
Developed by	Sunbow Productions
Starring	Jason Michas
No. of episodes	19
Production
Running time	30 minutes
Broadcast
Original run	November 22, 1987 – March 06, 1988

Mighty Mouse: The New Adventures (not to be confused with Filmation's The New Adventures of Mighty Mouse) is a revival of the classic Mighty Mouse cartoon, made by Bakshi-Hyde Ventures (a joint venture of animator Ralph Bakshi and producer John W. Hyde). It aired on CBS from 1987 to 1988 and was briefly rerun on Fox Kids in November 1992.

The series gave Mighty Mouse a true identity (Mike Mouse, a worker at Pearl Pureheart's factory), a sidekick in the form of the orphan Scrappy Mouse, friends in the forms of Bruce Vein the Bat-Bat (a parody of Bruce Wayne/Batman), Bat-Bat's sidekick Tick the Bug Wonder, and the League of Super-Rodents, and new antagonists including Petey Pate, the Glove and the Cow. The original villain Oil Can Harry makes a couple of appearances.

The show was a huge springboard for many cartoonists and animators who would later become famous, including John Kricfalusi (creator of The Ren and Stimpy Show), Bruce W. Timm (producer of Batman: The Animated Series), Jim Reardon (writer for Tiny Toon Adventures, Wall-E and director of many Simpsons episodes), Tom Minton (writer and producer for many Warner Bros. television cartoons, including Tiny Toons, Animaniacs, The Sylvester and Tweety Mysteries, Baby Looney Tunes and Duck Dodgers), Lynne Naylor (co-founder of Spümcø, character designer for Batman: The Animated Series and storyboard artist for The Powerpuff Girls and Cow and Chicken among other work), Rich Moore (animation director for The Simpsons and Futurama), Andrew Stanton (director of Finding Nemo and Wall-E) and others. Kricfalusi supervised the production and directed eight of the twenty-six episodes.^[1]

Another factor incorporated into the show was the reintroduction of cartoon characters from the 1940s finding themselves in 1987, which was when the cartoon first aired. One such character called "Gandy Goose" had been frozen solid in the Arctic Circle during the Second World War and is unfrozen in 1987, where he finds he has been forgotten and that wartime ration books are no longer used. He recognizes Mighty Mouse, who promises to find him his long lost friend Sourpuss, but not before being somewhat of an annoyance to Mighty Mouse, such as forgetting not to address him as "Mighty Mouse" when he is in civilian attire. When Mighty Mouse is relieved at successfully reuniting Sourpuss with Gandy Goose, the narrator says Mighty Mouse had better not rest on his laurels as Deputy Dawg, a 1960s TV character, will soon be unfrozen.

The show lasted two seasons and inspired a 10-issue Mighty Mouse comic book series published by Marvel Comics in 1990 and 1991.

Development

Writing style

Kricfalusi described Mighty Mouse: The New Adventures as the origin of "‘Creator-Driven’ revolution" and that he hired artists "dissatisfied with the formula cartoons they were forced to work on at other studios." Kricfalusi referred to Mighty Mouse: The New Adventures as a "witty, satirical and wildly imaginative" series ^[2] and "quite a revolution when compared to the cartoons being made everywhere else."^[3]

Kricfalusi said that he supervised the development of the cartoon in all aspects except the final editing. Kricfalusi said that he restored the "old time -director-unit system" in which three or four directors theoretically supervise all of the creative aspects of each individual cartoon. He said that two of the directors felt "kind of" reluctant to participate as they did not "really approve" of the direction. Kricfalusi intended for the cartoon to be "like a Warner Bros. cartoon." and that the show does not have his personal humor style. He described the team as "slightly cautious" in presenting ideas to CBS's executives. ^[3]

Kricfalusi said that an article about the series in Amazing Heroes #129 made it appear like Bakshi was the director of the show; Kricfalusi clarified that Bakshi was the producer. Kricfalusi added that Bakshi's creative involvement was the highest during the first several weeks of the production of Mighty Mouse and "So basically, he was a sounding board." When Harry McCracken, the editor of Animato! asked Kricfalusi if Bakshi "pretty much stood out of your way and let you go about your business," Kricfalusi replied affirmatively.^[4]

Controversy

The controversial crushed flower scene.

The show faced controversy, as some jokes were aimed more at adults than at children. A viewer notified media watchdog Reverend Donald Wildmon claiming that, in the episode "The Littlest Tramp", it looks like Mighty Mouse reaches into a pocket and snorts cocaine from his hand. Wildmon was disbelieving at first, but after investigating the episode and learning of producer Ralph Bakshi's background (e.g., directing the adult cartoon Fritz The Cat), alerted the media that this may have been intentional. While Bakshi defended the episode, stating that Wildmon had interpreted the scene out of context, he removed the scene from future airings of the episode because of his concern that the controversy might lead children to believe that what Wildmon was saying was true. Wildmon interpreted the cut as an admission that the claims were true.^{[5][self-published source?]} Bakshi denies it to this day, maintaining that Mighty Mouse smelled some crushed flowers given to him by the titular "Littlest Tramp" Polly Pineblossom, of whom he was reminiscing, and that the jet leading from his hand to his nose was a cartoon "smell line" moving super-fast from the mighty inhale.^{[1][6][not in citation given]}

Release

On January 5th, 2010, CBS DVD/Paramount will release The Complete Series on 3 DVDs, with every installment of the Saturday morning cartoon digitally remastered and presented in the original full screen video format. Among the extras will be bonus Mighty Mouse cartoons, from the original Terrytoons theatrical shorts, as taken from Paramount's vaults. This will mark the first-ever official release of Terrytoons material on DVD. If the sales are good it is possible that Paramount will opens it vaults in its entierty.

Episode list

Season 1 (1987-1988)

Season 2 (1988-1989)

Cast

• Patrick Pinney – "Mighty Mouse/Mike Mouse"
• Maggie Roswell – Pearl Pureheart/additional voices
• Dana Hill – Scrappy Mouse is an orphan who had a miserable life on the streets until he became the sidekick and best friend of Mighty Mouse. Mighty often rescued Scrappy from bad guys. Shortly after the events of Mighty Mouse: The New Adventures, Scrappy abandoned Mighty Mouse and his love interest Pearl Pureheart, and spent all his time at the Four Fingers Video Arcade. When the Four Fingers Video Arcade closed down, Scrappy vanished. In the second issue of Marvel Comics' early 1990s Mighty Mouse comic book, it turns out Mighty Mouse's enemy The Glove was behind the Four Fingers Video Arcade. Mighty saves Scrappy in the end, but Scrappy is still "zapped" into playing video games. Scrappy is then sent to rehab and is back to normal a few issues later. In the tenth and final issue of the comic, Scrappy substitutes for Pearl Pureheart when Pearl gives up her role in the comic. Scrappy is a gray mouse, but has a shock of red hair.
• Charles Adler – Bat-Bat (Bruce Vein)/additional voices
• Joe Alaskey – Sourpuss/additional voices
• Michael Pataki – The Cow/additional voices
• Beau Weaver – Fractured Narrator/additional voices
• Rodger Bumpass – additional voices
• Candy Candido – additional voices
• Joe Colligan – additional voices
• Jeannie Elias – additional voices
• Bill Farmer – additional voices
• Ellen Gerstell – additional voices
• Tami Holbrook – additional voices
• Mona Marshall – additional voices
• Janet May – additional voices
• Terry McGovern – additional voices
• Lisa Raggio – additional voices
• Clive Revill – additional voices
• Neil Ross – additional voices
• Pamela Rowan – additional voices
• Jim Ward – additional voices
• Wendell Washer – additional voices
• Alan Oppenheimer – additional voices (uncredited)

References

External links

• Mighty Mouse, The New Adventures at the Internet Movie Database
• Mighty Mouse: The New Adventures Episode Guideat the Big Cartoon DataBase
• Mighty Mouse: The New Adventures at TV.com