Anna Daniels
Silver Surfer might be the single most underrated Marvel cartoon of all time. Like the abysmal Avengers: United They Stand, it only ran for 13 episodes, and thanks to its premature cancelation, it’s often lumped in with that one in the minds of fans as an experiment in lesser-known characters that just didn’t take off. Fortunately, we’re here to let you in on a little secret: Silver Surfer rules, actually, and it’s well worth your time to go back and check it out. In fact, it was actually a hit, and was only canceled due to what the show runner called “legal differences” between Marvel and the show’s producers, Saban.
One of the common complaints about Marvel’s animation output is that unlike its Distinguished Competition, which built decades of shows around the Art Deco aesthetic that Bruce Timm designed for Batman: The Animated Series, the Marvel shows don’t really have a strong visual identity. Silver Surfer, however, pulled its visual cues straight from the cosmically charged pencil of Jack Kirby, the co-creator of the Marvel Universe, doing a pretty amazing job of capturing the art style that redefined comics in the ’60s. There’s even an interesting touch in how other characters are presented: Galactus, the Devourer of Worlds, is done as a towering CGI figure that, contrasted with the traditional animation for everyone else, makes him seem like this weird, unknowable force of nature that doesn’t belong on the scale of everything else, which is exactly what he’s supposed to be. It’s rare that a show can turn its limitations (in this case, bad late ’90s CGI) into something that makes it better, but Silver Surfer pulls it off.
Plus, it got to a side of the Marvel Universe that was rarely seen in cartoons for a decade in either direction, bringing in spacefaring weirdos like Beta Ray Bill, Drax, Nova, Eternity, and a somewhat obscure cosmic villain named Thanos, who was the show’s primary antagonist. Maybe that was one of the factors that led to the show ending. After all, Thanos? Who’d ever want to see more of that guy?
Written by: Looper
