3 Best TV Shows Similar to Marvel's Moon Girl and Devil Dinosaur

After several attempts at relaunches and reimaginings, last year’s Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem finally hit on a formula that justified bringing those heroes on the half-shell back yet again. Ditching the cluttered live-action CGI of Platinum Dunes’ previous Turtles’ films in favor of a fresh and fluid animation style, the film shifted focus from “ninja” to “teenage.” The green guys could still fight—and did—but the story was more interested in the adolescent longing for peer connection. Add a propulsive soundtrack and a real sense of place, and they got a refreshing delight. It only makes sense that Paramount would want to move the approach from the big screen to the little one with Tales of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. Unfortunately, budgets are a thing. Moving to 12 episodes (the first six provided for critics) on streaming means fewer dollars and further to stretch them. Thus, while Leonardo (Nicolas Cantu), Donatello (Micah Abbey), Michelangelo (Shamon Brown Jr.), Raphael (Brady Noon), and April (Ayo Edebiri) return with their original voices, several are either changed or don’t return at all. For instance, Jackie Chan no longer voices Splinter. His replacement, James Sie, communicates only in a gibberish language called “vermin”. To be fair, it is a fun/funny solution to the usual “different guy trying for the same voice for the cartoon series” problem. Robot 02 would just like a little hug. Honest. (Paramount+) The other mutants—the antagonists turned protagonists of the film—simply don’t appear. That’s not especially surprising. It’s hard to imagine getting the likes of Paul Rudd, Giancarlo Esposito, Post Malone, and Seth Rogen to ALL commit to a 12-episode order and have any money left over. That said, Rose Byrne contributes a brief but amusing cameo as Leatherhead. There is a chance the rest, or some portion, might return in the back half of the season. Regardless, their prominence ranges from significantly curtailed to entirely eliminated. Continue Reading →

The host of a podcast I regularly listen to consistently refers to a “toxic impulse.” I’m not sure I agree, but I found myself thinking about that turn of phrase often while screening all ten episodes of Batman: Caped Crusader. Created by Timm and produced by a plethora of eye-catching names, including J.J. Abrams, Matt Reeves, and Ed Brubaker, Caped Crusader unfolds in an art deco Gotham City from some alternate universe of 1930s/40s America. It is early in the pointy-eared vigilante’s career, not necessarily Year One, but close. Not everyone in Gotham believes in the Batman’s (Hamish Linklater) existence. He hasn’t found a working relationship with the police department, and most of his wonderfully complex and scary villains do not yet exist. In the daylight, Bruce Wayne (Linklater again, natch) moves through high society, dropping all kinds of money on various charities. Along the way, he flirts (but nothing more) with enough women to make Warren Beatty in his prime ask Brucie for advice and disappears at the oddest times. Eric Morgan Stuart always manages to get perfectly framed by windows. (Prime Video) Does all of that feel familiar? Like 1992 familiar? Like Batman: The Animated Series familiar? Well, it will also look familiar to fans of that series. While Batman: Caped Crusader admirably brings more diversity—racial and body type-wise, most noticeably—to the cast, the aesthetics match those of The Animated Series original look very closely. It sounds like TAS, thanks to Frederik Wiedmann’s score. There’s nothing as big in it as the moment from Danny Elfman’s Main Credits Theme when the building explodes and the percussion kicks in, for sure. However, Wiedmann creates themes and motifs that immediately call to mind the quieter aspects of that theme and Shirley Walker’s in-episode compositions. Continue Reading →

As the saying goes, only '90s kids will remember the severe cultural impact X-Men: The Animated Series had on a particular strain of latchkey millennials. For many, the show, which ran from 1992-97 on the Fox Kids programming block, was the arguable apex of the Marvel superhero team's on-screen representations. It was thrilling, exciting, and for the time, surprisingly mature in its handling of the sociopolitical issues that spawned the comics in the first place -- racism, xenophobia, homophobia. It carried an element of serialized storytelling that was rare for kids' TV and took its characters and their respective issues seriously. Plus, that theme song just slammed. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tQjdm8BdJO4 Disney+, in its infinite wisdom, knows how to keep the franchise going while they anxiously figure out how to incorporate the X-Men into the Marvel Cinematic Universe (Deadpool & Wolverine should give us a portent, however grim) -- and to keep the '90s kids satiated with a heaping helping of nostalgia while we wait. So goes X-Men '97, a straightforward continuation of The Animated Series that updates its "too sophisticated for kids" remit all the way to the present day and lands on something interesting, if far from perfect, in the process. Picking up months after the original series' finale, X-Men '97 shows a world reeling from the death of Charles Xavier in the final episode of the animated series: Mutants are mistrusted more than ever, and a growing fifth column of right-wing human militants called the Friends of Humanity are gathering up mutants and taking them down with stolen Sentinel technology. Naturally, it's up to the X-Men to stop them -- if they can pull themselves together and work as a team. Scott Summers (Ray Chase) is the next natural choice for leader, but he's torn between his duty to his fellow X-Men and his desire to start a family with Jean Grey (Jennifer Hale), a move that has ol' Wolverine (Cal Dodd) itching with jealousy. Continue Reading →