So, I graduated last month. Yeah, crazy, I know. I graduated from college with a BA in writing and while many of my friends have been looking for jobs, preparing for grad school, or, you know, writing things, I’ve been doing no such thing. What have I been doing, you might ask? I’ve been watching cartoons. Yup, three weeks out of college and this is what I’m doing with my life.
To be fair, I’ve been planning a wedding between episodes of the Justice League, but even when I’m doing that I’m watching cartoons. I sit in the living room and stuff invitations while watching Batman: The Brave and the Bold. I put on an episode of Wolverine and the X-men just to see how it is while making lists of books that I’ve borrowed. I sort out my clothes for packing while watching episode after episode of the Justice League. I think I’m addicted.
You’ll notice a pattern, I assume, with the cartoons that I’ve been watching. They are all superhero cartoons. Mostly DC right now, but I have a long history with Marvel cartoons as well. I’m a Marvel girl. I’ll take Captain America over Batman any day. GASP! Yes, I said it, I like the Captain better than Batman. Once you’ve gotten over that shock, we’ll continue. Take your time, I can wait. You ready? Alright then. I have a thing for superhero cartoons. Why? Not entirely sure. I wasn’t into superheroes growing up, I didn’t really read comic books until recently and I have very little experience with most characters in either universe to the point where my fiance has to explain his excitement over the revelation of the next marvel/x-men characters to come into play. I’m learning, slowly. I would like to experience the comics eventually, but there is something about the cartoons that really captures me.
You might be saying to yourself, “Aren’t you a little old for cartoons, Farkas? You’re 22, after all. Shouldn’t you be watching big kid shows?” I should, but I’m not. I’ve found that this is a thing I do when I graduate something. I try to go back. This is a little different from my last graduation experience. This time I have something to look forward to. However, there is still that urge to go back and relive a piece of my childhood. This is not that piece. Actually, I didn’t really watch cartoons as much as other kids. We didn’t have cable so we got Arthur and Dragon Tales and Saturday morning cartoons which we often missed because of soccer. This is something I’m catching up on.
To those who know us, it will not be surprising that this is one of Logan and my favorite date night activities. We enjoy watching cartoons together. Possibly the only show we’ve finished together in the two years we’ve known each other is Avengers: Earth’s Mightiest Heroes. We’ve also started two versions of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. I’ve actually refrained from starting cartoons because I want to watch them with him. We are geeks, no doubt about that. He will occasionally tease me with the sequel to a particularly bad Avengers animated movie that happens to be on Netflix. I refuse to subject myself to it, but that is a rant for a different time.
The Justice League has been my latest conquest on Netflix. It’s actually my second trip into the DC universe, the first being Young Justice. Seems a little backwards, doesn’t it? Well, I guess it is. Young Justice is a relatively recent show that was cancelled for dumb reasons. Some say it’s because too many girls watched it, some say they weren’t selling enough action figures. Whatever the reason, it was a rather sad day and I’m not sure what to do with it now. The first season is on Netflix and the second I found pretty easily on the internet, but I only got half way through. This is a thing I am learning about myself, I can’t handing political twisting. I hate it when you take a hero and try and make them out to be some awful person for doing what’s right and trick everyone into believing not only that, but also that the bad guys are actually the good ones when they are so clearly sinister. Seriously. How many times have these heroes saved the earth? Anyway, that’s pretty much the entire second half of Young Justice and on top of that, since it was cancelled as far as I can tell, it doesn’t have a solid ending, which I’m not sure I could take.
So that was my first taste of the DC universe and I kind of liked it. So what else could I watch? I didn’t really know anything about the other heroes besides Batman, of course, and I couldn’t watch the Animated Series because I’m saving that for marriage. Why? Because he has the DVDs. So where is the logical place to start? The Justice League, naturally, where all the big DC heroes come to party. And by party, I mostly mean angst. Except Flash. He’s just there for the party. Moving on. I have rather been enjoying my time with the DC universe, though I would like to see more of it outside the seven we see in the first run of the Justice League.
This brings us to Batman; The Brave and the Bold. While this version of the DC universe is very modernly for kids, I have found that I kind of enjoy it too. I get excited when I recognize characters in the universe, like Jaime as the Blue Beetle. This is one of the reasons I love comic book universes, I think. You have these characters that float around and appear in everything and when you’re watching something in that universe, chances are one of your favorites will pop in, even if only for a little while. That moment of recognition gives me a happy feeling inside. It’s like Captain America appearing for that one moment in Thor 2. That little reminder that this isn’t an isolated world, That they have friends out there. I like universes that I can know.
Speaking of live action comic book movies, you might still be wondering, why cartoons? Why not the live action movies or the comics themselves? Or the live action TV shows, for that matter. They make those now. While I have thought of watching Arrow, and might take a look at Flash when it comes out and probably will watch the Marvel series on Netflix when they start showing up, there is just something special about Cartoons. I have a few theories on the subject; proximity, childishness, and suspension of disbelief.
Comic books are a halfway between visual and literary mediums. They are something I’ve been fascinated with since high school when I took a workshop on the subject. I wrote a paper my sophomore year of college arguing that they are a legitimate form of literature. So here’s how they link up with cartoons. They are a drawn visual art form, and cartoons are a drawn visual art form. Crazy, huh? But really, it’s like bring a book to life, only better, because they look the same. As has been seen in the Marvel movies recently, sometimes comic book costumes don’t translate into reality very well. Changes have to be made and while I believe they are for the better for that medium, the cartoon allows you to experience living, breathing superheros they way they were meant to be.
This leads directly into suspension of disbelief. They can do amazing things with special effects nowadays. They can make Iron Man fly and Flash run at light speed and Hulk smash with ease. But there’s always that niggling feeling in the back of my mind that says, this is a trick, this is unnatural. And of course in the moment of the movie you don’t think of that. You’re too pumped from watching Hulk whip Loki around like a rag doll to care, but it’s there. That sense that they used computers to make this happen, or wires or foam cutouts or something. But with the cartoon you believe that Wonder Woman is flying, just because it’s a cartoon and anything can happen. It’s entering a world that isn’t ours; instead of bringing the superheroes out here where we are, we go in to them. They can do absolutely anything and I’ll say, yeah, okay, I believe that. Wonder Woman has like a thousand feet of rope and is using it to pull a spaceship away from an asteroid, sure, why not? Hawkeye never runs out of arrows, duh, he’s Hawkeye. Anything is more believable in cartoon form.
This brings us to childishness. Actually, the older cartoons were a bit more adult than I remember them being. It’s subtle, but I’ve caught a sex joke or two in there. Anyway, I’m basically a kid. My husband-to-be has commented on how getting me to eat vegetables is like cooking for a five-year-old, which is basically what he’ll be doing. I’m excitable, I like fluffy things, I sometimes talk in a high-pitched child’s voice just because I can, I practically become a four-year-old when I’m sleepy and whine about having to go to bed, even though I’m falling asleep on the couch. I giggle, I dance in public, I run down the halls with my arms out like an airplane and I like cartoons. I am a child. Sure, sometimes I can be twenty-two. Occasionally I want to watch the sadistic BBC show that exists solely to cause me emotional pain, but sometimes it’s nice to return to the simple things. The show where good wins over evil, if not in the next half hour, by the end of the next episode. Are the characters perfect? No, but the grow and we grow with them and that’s what I love about cartoons. They lead by example that sometimes the little things matter most, that everyone needs a little faith, that when you’re wrong you say you’re sorry and you move forward. Superheros are great for this. They show what people are capable of, how they handle responsibility and power without abusing it, and how we as average humans should respond to people in need. They’re flawed, sure, but they do their best and win or lose, that’s enough. It’s that simplicity that I love most about cartoons.
So there you have it, I’m a BA with a cartoon addiction. It may sound a little weird to admit that this is what I’m doing with my life post graduation, but after the senior year I had, I think I’ve earned some good, mind-numbing down time with a good show. So I’ll enjoy my superheroes battling aliens from outer space and super villains with random unexplained powers and glowy crystals as I snuggle my cats. This seems like the best plan for wasting time before my wedding.
Down The Rabbit Hole 