The First Bad Man

I make no claim that this is a great cartoon or that there is anything special or noteworthy about it in any technical sense. I LOVE IT!!!! It's the first Tex Avery I can remember and therefore remains much beloved. SO SUE ME!!! Recommended.

...told as only Tex Avery could! One funny thing is that if you would have seen this in 1955, you would have assumed that Dallas had a subway system. Well, we finally got one (actually a light-rail system) in the 1990s. (Dallas did have a trolley system back then that has fortunately been revived recently!) Whether you are a Texan or not (but ESPECIALLY if you are!), search this cartoon out. You will be a big kick out of it! Just don't come to Dallas searching for those huge cliffs, desert landscapes, or that jail -- but luckily, Dallas has learned to take itself a little less seriously in the past couple of decades, and you will see other fun things!

I know my summary might be confusing, but this is a Tex Avery cartoon featuring the voice of cowboy singing star Tex Ritter. And, incidentally it's set in Texas!

The cartoon is narrated by Ritter and he tells how Texas was originally an old west caveman town...much like Bedrock! You see all sorts of Flintstone-like guys wearing leopard skins and sporting cowboy hats. And, there are tons of anachronisms as well as the world's first bandit doing what old west bandits do best.

While the animation is not good, mostly because studios were deliberately choosing to make simpler (and uglier) cartoons with low cel-counts, it's a very entertaining cartoon. Clever and kinda funny.

Love animation, it was a big part of my life as a child, particularly Disney, Looney Tunes and Tom and Jerry, and still love it whether it's film, television or cartoons.

Also have much admiration for Tex Avery, an animation genius whose best cartoons are animated masterpieces and some of the best cartoons ever made by anybody. 'The First Bad Man' is perhaps not the great man at his greatest but as far as his 50s cartoons go it's one of the best to me. It may not be among his most imaginative or refined on a technical level, budget was not as big as it was before, but it's still extremely entertaining and highly pleasurable cartoon in typical Tex Avery fashion.

However, much of the animation is very good indeed, often excellent in fact. Very rich in colour, the backgrounds have meticulously good detail when limitations don't kick in occasionally and the character designs are distinctively Avery in style and are fluid in movement. The music, courtesy of Scott Bradley, is typically lushly and cleverly orchestrated, with lively and energetic rhythms and fits very well indeed, even enhancing the action.

Can't fault Avery, whose unmistakable and unlike-any-other style is all over, nor the dynamic voice acting and the very engaging characters. The portrayal of Texas was very interesting.

Voice acting is very nicely done, it's not Mel Blanc, Daws Butler or Bill Thompson but all three were very high in demand as voice actors and couldn't be everywhere and they were also not the only voice actors around (there were a great many and many very talented ones).

In summary, great cartoon. 9/10 Bethany Cox

Tex Ritter narrates this Tex Avery cartoon about the first Texas bank robber, set during the days when cave men and dinosaurs roamed the Permian.

Ritter's narration slows down the pace of this typically gag-filled Avery cartoon. The jokes are all about the juxtaposition of contemporary attitudes about Texas and how cavemen look funny drawing twenty-shot handguns on each other. It's a typically funny Tex Avery cartoon.