Toon Zone Talkback - "Conan the Adventurer" Season 1: By Crom, What a Disappointment!

[Ed Liu]

This is the talkback thread for "Conan the Adventurer" Season 1: By Crom, What a Disappointment!.



Still waiting on the Conan: Red Nails animated adaptation to bring the Howard Conan to animated life. Even so, I was still let down quite a bit by this show. Probably would have been more forgiving if I hadn't revisited Thundarr recently, though.

[Ben]

They should've made this into a series instead.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OBGOQ7SsJrw

[wonderfly]

Ah yes, Conan the Adventurer. This show came on right around the time I discovered the Conan comic books from Marvel (it's possible the show influenced my wanting to look for the comics, but then again, I could tell there was little comparison between what I saw on the covers of "Savage Sword of Conan" and this show).

This was, I believe, the last weekday morning cartoon that I watched before school each day, before graduating from high school. Does anyone remember it airing in the afternoons or on Saturday mornings? I found it strange that it only aired before school (good thing I got up early enough to catch it, most of the time). In the late 80's, for the longest time, I recall it was "Ninja Turtles" that we got to watch before school, and in the early '90's it was the "Super Mario Bros" cartoon, and this Conan cartoon replaced it. I wonder what in turn replaced it? I wouldn't know, I eventually graduated from high school so I started sleeping in.

So this was Sunbow animation? No wonder it was such a call back to the merchandising cartoons of the '80's. Much like "Pirates of Dark Water" (which also came out around this time), this was another action cartoon that was kind of adrift in the shifting animation landscape of the early '90s. I don't believe the '90's truly took off for cartoons until "Batman: The Animated Series" came out in the Fall of '92. Conan the Adventurer came out at the exact same time (just in the mornings, while Batman was in the afternoon), and there was just no comparison. So this is possibly the last great "hurrah" for Sunbow, and a relic of the '80s which had the misfortune of coming out in the '90's.

EDIT #1: Actually, after doing some research, I show Sunbow produced "The Tick", which is very much a '90's classic (coming out on the Fox Kids Block in '94 - if it came out on Fox in the '90's, it was cool). So "The Tick" is the last good thing that Sunbow created. In my humble opinion.

EDIT #2: This and this were the first Conan issues I ever bought, and those came out before the cartoon, so I guess I was a fan of the comic before I was a fan of the cartoon.

[Ed Liu]

I don't believe the '90's truly took off for cartoons until "Batman: The Animated Series" came out in the Fall of '92. Conan the Adventurer came out at the exact same time (just in the mornings, while Batman was in the afternoon), and there was just no comparison. So this is possibly the last great "hurrah" for Sunbow, and a relic of the '80s which had the misfortune of coming out in the '90's.

EDIT #1: Actually, after doing some research, I show Sunbow produced "The Tick", which is very much a '90's classic (coming out on the Fox Kids Block in '94 - if it came out on Fox in the '90's, it was cool). So "The Tick" is the last good thing that Sunbow created. In my humble opinion.

Yeah, I thought that BTAS was exceptional even back in the 90's when it first aired, and it was really exciting to watch it rewrite the rulebook on how to do an action cartoon as it was airing. You kids today who didn't grow up on stuff from the 70's and 80's just really have no conception of what a sea change that series was for action animation in America. And get off my lawn, you rotten kids! If I catch ya I'll beat ya with my cane and false teeth!

Ahem. Anyway, I think Conan the Adventurer looks and feels a lot like the other action stuff I recall from the time and other BTAS contemporaries like the 90's Marvel X-Men series. They were playing the old game by the old rules, and that is even more abundantly obvious today. I never watched Conan the Adventurer at the time, but I can't imagine I'd have been all that impressed with it even then.

Looking over the output of Sunbow, I'd flip your assessment and say that G.I. Joe and The Tick were the exceptions in being genuinely enjoyable shows that have endured the test of time (and I suppose I must also include The Transformers in there, despite my antipathy for G1). It's not that The Tick was the "last" good thing they created as much as it was one of the ONLY really good things they created. The rest was good "for its time," but "its time" has long passed.

[Ioz]

I enjoyed the series a lot, but the DVD release itself is very dissappointing. Shout! didn't put any TLC into it. Zaranyzerak has a good youtube review of all the issues with the set.