Silver Surfer In Animation - A Retrospective
Curiously absent from the 70’s cartoon, The Silver Surfer would have to wait until 1994 to return to animation with in the Marvel Action Hour, a syndicated show which featured both Iron Man and The Fantastic Four. Given the enormous success of both Spider-Man and X-Men in both the ratings and the quality of the show, it made sense to get more of their characters on TV. For reasons that still escape me, the quality of the show is simply dreadful. From looking at screen captures of the show, you wouldn’t believe that this was made in the 1990’s – it literally looks like something from the mid 70’s. Even The Incredible Hulk and Spider-Man And His Amazing Friends from the mid 80’s look far more polished than this, and the 80’s weren’t renowned for their high quality production values. Everything the show touched simply crumbled. The character designs lack any kind of spark to them. The animation is jilted and lifeless. The casting of the leads is pretty good, but when you compare it to how much better the same voices were in season two, you could tell they were simply uninspired with the lines they were given. I think Tom Tataranowicz, the supervising producer of season two said it best when I interviewed him. I personally thought very little of the 1st Season. The stories seemed poorly conceived, weakly executed and lacked any strong artistic vision that I could discern. Basically, I think that it may have been the end result of the wrong people being put in charge for the wrong reasons, making the wrong decisions on many production and creative fronts and having no real love or respect for the subject matter. It was clear from the first few episodes that the people in charge had absolutely no idea how to craft and entertaining story or develop and interesting character. Worse still is that the majority of the stories were based upon comic books from the characters’ illustrious history. I’m not sure how they managed to butcher the stories so badly but they were constantly successful in ruining them. I remember actually being impressed with how badly they managed to ruin the characters they were translating when I created my website for them years later. It must be difficult to create a show that has absolutely no redeeming factors at all. Even as an 8 year old, I thought Fantastic Four was utterly crap. I managed to make it to the end of the season but the kids in school I talked to the show about couldn’t hack it – I vividly remember my best friend at the time saying he was never ever going to watch the show after The Mole Man episode. The lad was yearning for X-Men to come back and rejoiced the day it did! 
The show was dismal and not even the presence of mighty Galactus could save it. The show did a terrible job with it’s villains but it’s guest stars were even worse (looking at you, Namor). The Silver Surfer was simply a calamity. A horrendous surfer announced his entrance and his design was simple… hell, I don’t know a word good enough to describe how bad it actually is. I don’t feel the term ghastly does it justice. Nor does grisly. I’d say what I really think of it, but people complain about my potty mouth too much already. It’s such a simple design – your basic body shop with white eyes. Yet, this model has little blue curls all over it, in an attempt to make it shiny. When I was screen grabbing it from the DVD they released to cash in on the movie, I literally thought my eyes were going to bleed. When The Thing grabs The Surfer’s board and wallops him with it, everything moved so slowly and looked so crude I genuinely believe pre-schoolers could’ve animated it better. The episode in question is really dumb. It is again based upon the famous Galactus trilogy but they do such a terrible job with all the characters. You don’t really see why The Surfer decides to betray his master and Galactus’ defeat is perhaps the most anticlimactic conclusion I can recall. If there’s ever been as bad a translation of two characters from a comic to a cartoon that’s worse than this, I pray I never have to witness. For those of you who think you’ve outsmarted me by saying Ant-Man from Avengers: United They Stand, I call fowl – Ant Man has been a lame character since his creation whilst Galactus and The Silver Surfer were entertaining characters before Ron Friedman got his hands on them. Casting wise, Robin Sachs wasn’t memorable in his role as The Silver Surfer. As with the leads, he never had any decent lines to work with, so one can’t really blame him for sounding like he wasn’t trying – neither was anyone else. The Surfer would be forced to appear on the show once again in the season finale as whatever passes for this show’s version of Dr. Doom attempts to steal his power cosmic, severally weakening him in the process. The Surfer originally returned to Earth to warn Alicia that Galactus was coming and that he seeks The Fantastic Four’s help in defeating him one final time. Presumably his shiny self forgot that the last time Galactus invaded, they all just sat on top of their roof and watched him assemble his device that he planned to use to eat their planet. Upon arriving at Galactus’ ship, the 5 dumb asses realise they’ve been duped and it’s actually Dr. Doom, not the devourer of worlds. He then steals The Surfer’s powers and goes about declaring himself master of the world. (1980’s solo Spider-Man’s version of Dr. Doom was presumably rolling in his grave) They eventually trick Dr. Doom into meeting Galactus who is known too impressed that his former herald has had his powers stolen by a pitiful Earthling. I don’t know why he decided to give the Surfer his powers back as it wasn’t quite explained why he no longer hated Norin for betraying him the last time they visited Earth, but hell, the season was over now, good riddance! Much better things came in season two, including Doom, Galactus and in the show’s finale, The Silver Surfer made his return. Again tricked by Dr. Doom and having his powers stolen, Doom declares himself unquestioned master of the world only this time, doesn’t look like an imbecile when he does it. 
The Surfer himself is much more bitter in this appearance. As someone who is used to roaming the cosmos, being forced to stay on a planet full of selfish beings such as ourselves overcomes the noble Surfer and people like Dr. Doom don’t really help our cause. His design is much better too. I could’ve done without the heavy use of black but at least it animated well. The best ever animation voice for the Surfer is used in this episode with the late Edward Albert being cast in the role. He doesn’t really do a whole lot in the episode as it’s more about Doom using his newfound powers to bring chaos to all around him and demonstrating Reed’s frustration at being unable to defeat the dreaded Doctor. He eventually learns that there is good to humanity and sets about to try and find more. One could accuse the Surfer of being a little ignorant here – he complains about all that is bad about humans yet does nothing to help them with his great power. Entertaining episode certainly, but there was a lot more top it than a simple guest spot from he who roams of the cosmos.
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