The Mighty Heroes

The release of the animated film Teen Titans Go! To the Movies made me nostalgic for the superhero cartoons I loved as a kid: Underdog, Crusader Rabbit, Courageous Cat, and Tom Terrific. Of course there was Spider-Man and Marvel also had five-minute cartoons that ran at the end of half-hour shows that featured The Hulk, Iron Man, Thor, Sub-Mariner and Captain America. I remember some of the theme songs: "When Captain American throws his mighty shield..."

There was another cartoon that I barely remembered, and in those years before the Internet it was an incomplete memory. All I could remember is that one of the group was a baby, and one was a rope. Now I can just Google and voila! I see that it was called The Mighty Heroes, and it was created by Ralph Bakshi, of all people, for Terrytoons. Twenty episodes were made from 1966-67.

There are a few episodes on YouTube and I took a look. Seeing them at my age is a bit different than when I was five, but they have a certain charm. The simple premise is that they are a group of five superheroes: Strong Man, Rope Man, Tornado Man, Diaper Man, and Cuckoo Man. Each episode, which is about seven minutes long, has a super villain wreaking havoc. The citizens send up fireworks to summon the Mighty Heroes, who rush to the rescue. The first act has them stumbling and screwing up and apologizing to each other. After the commercial break they get their act together and defeat the villain.

Kids still love cartoons, as I learned when I taught sixth grade, but there's a whole new world of them I'm unfamiliar with. The cartoons of my youth were pretty crudely drawn (Tom Terrific was just line drawings) and had very simple stories. They made no attempt at logic--all the Mighty Heroes can fly, though none of them have wings (Cuckoo Man has to flap his arms). I don't know if there's an origin episode, but I do wonder how a baby has a magic bottle and speaks like a gangster. Rope Man is a sailor who has an English accent.

There's something really strange about re-discovering an almost completely forgotten memory. I've carried this palimpsest for many years, wondering what it was, and now that I have fully restored it some of the wonder of it is gone. But it does scratch and itch in the brain.

Diaper Man, indeed! When will we get the big screen version?