The Comic Strip is an American animated series which features four rotating cartoon segments. The 90-minute series ran in first-run syndication during the 1987 season and was also seen on RPN-9 in the Philippines, and on Rai 2 in Italy.
Despite the show title, the segments have no history in newspaper comic strips.
This was the last TV series produced by Rankin/Bass Productions, and distributed by Lorimar-Telepictures.
Video The Comic Strip (TV series)
Segments
The four segments offered were:
- The Mini-Monsters: Normal human siblings Sherman (Seth Green) and Melissa find themselves in for a surprise when they are sent to summer camp for one year. Camp Mini-Mon turns out to be run by an organ playing shadowy camp director (Peter Newman), and attended by monster kids who are offspring of usually famous monsters, a witch and Merlin. They are Dracky (Dracula's son), Franky (Frankenstein's son), Wolfie (The Wolf Man's son), Gill (the son of The Creature from the Black Lagoon), Mummo (The Mummy's son), Blanko (the Invisible Man's son), Klutz (who may or may not be Godzilla's son), Winifred (a.k.a. Jinx), a witch's daughter (Maggie Wheeler), and Melvin (the son of the wizard Merlin) accompanied by Cawfield, the talking crow (Earl Hammond).
- Street Frogs: Depicting the typical teen-aged hijinks of a gang of street-smart frogs named Big Max, Spider, Moose The Loose, "Honey Love" Loretta and Dr. Slick. Each episode contains a musical number. Apart from Rankin-Bass regular Bob McFadden, this segment featured an African-American cast including Ron Taylor.
- Karate Kat: Starring a crime-fighting cat. Similar to Hong Kong Phooey and long before SWAT Kats: The Radical Squadron, this show takes place in a world inhabited by anthropomorphic cats.
- TigerSharks: About a group of powered up human/marine hybrids who became involved in underwater adventures. Each episode consisted of two parts.
Typically, two segments, each running about 10 minutes, were shown on each broadcast.
Maps The Comic Strip (TV series)
Video releases
VHS releases of certain episodes of The Comic Strip were made available in 1987. These VHS tapes each featured three installments of one particular cartoon. For example, the video "Adventures at Camp Mini-Mon" contained three episodes: "Camp Mini-Mon The First Day", "The Belly Ache" and "Alien."
To date, there have been no DVD or digital releases of this series worldwide.
External links
- The Comic Strip Opening & Closing on YouTube
- TigerSharks Episode 1 on YouTube
- TigerSharks Episode 2 on YouTube
- The Comic Strip (TV series) on IMDb
- The Comic Strip (TV series) at the Big Cartoon DataBase
- The Comic Strip at TV.com
Source of the article : Wikipedia