Le Fantôme de l'espace

This was the BEST time to be a kid, as a 10 year old, Space Ghost was my hero. No more Cowboys or Army, I made a set of Space Ghost Energy Bands. The shows on Saturday morning were the coolest, especially Hanna Barbera, and I remember we would all watch until lunch and then go out and BE our favorites. Sometimes we would even get together to watch at someone's house that had a COLOR TV, since (a lot of people forget that) not everyone had one yet. Gary Owens' voice was perfect for this larger than life character, who had his own spaceship, the Phantom Cruiser. I recently purchased the complete series of 20 episodes and cannot wait to watch them all. I think the reason this show was/is so popular is because it has the Jonny Quest factor...Action, Adventure, and Fantastic music. I remember being on the edge of my seat back then, and I noticed now that the action is still just as good and probably even better than today's shows. Great in 1966, still phenomenal 40+ years later.

It's been forty three years since I first heard that Space Ghost was coming this September on CBS. And golly, I just couldn't wait. It was the Summer of 1966. I just turned 12 and Summer vacation was really swell. But after seeing the trailers for the coming Fall line up for Super Saturday, I found myself looking forward to September,even if it meant the return to school.

While the new line up looked pretty good, new cartoons and all, the one series that stood out above the rest was SPACE GHOST.

SPACE GHOST was even better than we expected. Along with the adventures of Space Ghost as he stood guard over the galaxy from any evil doers who would ever dare cross path with the Space Ghost and his loyal crew, Jan, Jayce and their monkey, Blip, this program also took a distant step into the past with Dino Boy, a boy who got lost in a prehistoric world that was full of danger and exciting adventures, along with a caveman named Ugh, who befriended Dino Boy. Together, the two faced this dangerous world, armed with Dino Boy's cunning, Ugh's brute strength and a mutual affection between the two that would carry them through both good times and bad.

Metallus, Brak, Cyclo and the rest of all those intergalactic bad guys have always had it out for our intergalactic super hero. Unfortunately, these bad guys had an Allie that would succeed where they had all failed, namely the PTA, who felt that for any cartoon to be this good, there had to be something wrong.

Well it was decided that Space Ghost was too darned violent so the PTA wielded their forces and when they were done, Space Ghost was little more than a shell of what he was in earlier episodes.

Before he had a talk show he was the guardian of the spaceways; the intergalactic crime fighter, Space Ghost. Hanna-Barbera had been looking for something to counteract the popular Filmation Batman cartoons. They turned to Alex Toth, the master of the H-B hero shows, who came up with Space Ghost. They really lucked out with Gary Owens, popular DJ and Laugh-In regular. They also got Tim "Jonny Quest" Matheson.

Space Ghost was brilliantly designed and executed, although the shorter stories limited character development. We never got to see what SG looked like under the hood (I have seen a model sheet with his real face) or where Jan and Jayce came from. Still the villains were inventive and the plots exciting. The pinnacle was the multi-part tale of SG's battle with the Council of Doom, a conglomeration of SG's nastiest enemies. He even traveled through time to meet up with Dino Boy, Mightor, and Shazaan.

I still find the "Coast to Coast" show funny, but this is the real Space Ghost, the one that inspired Steve Rude and Mike Baron's classic Nexus comic. The Dude even created the ultimate Space Ghost comic. Now, when will see this on dvd?

I have argued again and again and again that kids are smarter than what people say they are and can remove fiction from reality and what they watch doesn't effect their personality.

And the Space Ghost comes along and I LOVED watching the reruns when I was a little kid and then I grew up to love comic books when I started reading and that stayed with me my entire life and....sometimes I wonder if Space Ghost is the reason.

That's what it is...it was made back in the day when kids cartoons were full of Adventure...and I ate stuff like that up. I was an addict...

And maybe because of that I have multiple degrees and still have a Kindle (password protected) filled with Adventure novels and comic books and nothing of any real substance.

So that is what it is. Adventure. Pure Adventure in outer space.

I was a little boy once and cartoons like this were made for me. It's what the spirits of all little boys are made of. It's what makes us want to swing from ropes, climb trees, and battle our friends in our backyards...or the woods a few blocks away that everyone used as a dump and it was really more of a patch of trees than real woods but...Chicago. In Chicago a patch of trees are "the woods" and that is where the adventure takes place and Cartoons like Space Ghost inspired them.

When I was a kid, this was the coolest 'hero cartoon' I'd ever seen, and I remembered it that way for many years.

The space ships, the power bands, the cool white costume ... what a great setup and hero it all made.

I'm kind of sad I saw a couple of the original episodes recently on the cartoon network. From an adult standpoint it doesn't hold up as well as other childhood favorites like The Flintstones. Of course, The Flintstones was written for both adult and child audiences, and I'm sure that why it holds up so well.

Still, kids that like hero cartoons will probably still get into Space Ghost, Jace and Jan, and Blip.

Spaaaaaaaaace Ghooooooooooooost!!!! Hooray!