Great Adventure Cartoons

Probably the single greatest adventure cartoon. Full of imagination, thrills, and quite a bit of scary stuff. Great theme song, too!

Wonderful designs by Alex Toth and a great mix of villains. The earlier episodes are the best, but the multi-part Council of Doom epic is a nice closure.

Epic series, captures the scope of the Justice League from the comics.

Outstanding series of cartoons from the Fleischer Brothers. Lavishly animated and featuring some great stories. A very believable Superman.

The series that really captured the Dark Knight Detective and set the tone for every series that followed. A nice mix of original stories and adaptations of classic tales.

A little stiff in the animation, and some dodgy voicework, but the stories are great and capture the flavor of the comics.

Nice homage to the Silver Age Batman tales, with a cast of guest stars. Fun for the kids and good stories for the older crowd.

Translated version of Gatchaman. Features excellent voicework and a great theme song. Many people's introduction to anime.

The finest Japanese adventure series. It would spawn two sequel series, 3 American translations, and the live action sentai (Power Ranger) shows.

Excellent adaptation of the classic comic strip. The first season is a serial adapting the original stories, minus violence against humans (more or less). The second season hurt by a cute dragon and weak stories. You have to forgive the stock footage.

Animated version of the classic tv show. The original cast (minus Walter Koenig) provide the voices and the stories are on par with the live action series. Somewhat static, in terms of the animation.

Decent adaptation of the classic jungle hero. Lots of lost civilizations and the like. Filmation used rotoscoping (animation over live footage) to give a bit more motion to the character.

Filmation's Zorro followed Tarzan. A decent version, if somehwat repetitive. The swordplay looks good, even if it is the same sequence of moves. There is a Spanish lesson with each episode.

The series swipes heavily from Star Wars and the Green Lantern comics, but is mostly good. Three heroes, pulled from different eras of history and given super power. Some of the villains are weak, but Morpheus, a villainous Sentinel, makes up for them.

A new series, mixing new episodes of Tarzan with other cartoons and the live action Jason of Star Command. Freedom Force is the best of the cartoons, featuring legendary heroes, such as Sinbad, Merlin, Hercules, Isis, and Super Samurai. other cartoons were Web Woman, Manta & Moray, and Super Stretch & Microwoman.

A mix of 2 cartoons, Hero High and Shazam. Hero High was meant to be an Archie show, but Filmation couldn't secure the rights, so they altered the characters. These are played for laughs. Shazam was an excellent adaptation of Captain Marvel, with the classic villains and the whole Marvel Family (even Freckles).

The first of the Superfriends shows, with designs by Alex Toth. It lacks real villains, but makes up for it with intriguing stories, most with moral and ecological themes. Introduces Green Arrow and Plastic Man to animation.

The best of the Superfriends cartoons, featuring the Legion of Doom, collecting the world's worst villains.

This one is a bit up and down, but makes good use of Darkseid and features an episode which tells Batman's origin quite effectively. Cyborg, from the Teen Titans, was added for diversity and seems a bit out of place. Nice episode with the Royal Flush Gang.

Filmation's pairing of their Superman cartoon with Batman. The Batman cartoons are livelier than Superman and feature actual fights, which raised ire with watchdog groups. This is why adventure cartoons became much blander in the 70s.

Sci-fi series from Cambria, makers of Clutch Cargo. Very imaginative, if mostly devoid of real motion. Alex Toth did much of the design work, along with Doug Wildey (Jonny Quest). The stories are serialized and quite good, but the synchro-vox technique of superimposing human mouths onto the cartoons is distracting.

English version of Space Battleship Yamato. An epic tale of a journey through space to save the Earth from radiation poisoning.

Unites 3 different Japanese series into one great epic. Plenty of action and a bit of romance. One of the key components of the anime boom.

Another adaptation of a Japanese show and the other key component of the anime boom. Paved the way for the live action Power Rangers in America.

Finally, a decent adaptation of Spider-Man, with a real budget. Makes excellent use of the villains from the comics, while updating things a bit.

Captures the feel of Marvel's Avengers and comes closer to competing with the quality of the Warner produced DC character cartoons.

Exciting series featuring a post-apocalyptic world, with wizards and barbarians. Steals a bit from Planet of the Apes but has excellent design work from Jack Kirby and Gil Kane, plus scripts from Steve Gerber.