| Let's get one thing straight: Space Ghost is not anime. It's nowhere
close to being anime. Space Ghost is a mid-1960's Hanna-Barbera TV cartoon.
It was part of the H-B film library that was purchased by Turner Broadcasting,
the library that was the genesis of the Cartoon Network on cable TV. But,
Space Ghost wasn't just yanked out of the library, dusted off and rebroadcast.
It was turned into something...different. |
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| Here are three of the people responsible for deconstructing Space Ghost
into Space Ghost Coast to Coast, something more like a "morning zoo" radio
show than a kiddie epic. From left to right, they are Pete Smith, producer
and writer; Clay Krocker, writer and voice of Zorak; and George Lowe, voice
of Space Ghost (taking over from the original voice, Gary Owens). |
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| Those artists join with the rest of the Ghost Planet crew to turn Space
Ghost into a talk show host who uses two captured villains as his lackeys.
They transformed the hero into a quirky 1990's kind of guy, boastful and
loaded with flaws. The writers jam the show with a massive number of obscure
jokes, and they get most of them on the air. "We don't normally tread into
the base and unattractive, but we made an exception for you, the public,"
Lowe said to cheers from the audience. |
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| The show uses a stupefying collection of stock footage from old Space
Ghost shows, laced with out-of-context interviews with celebrities such
as Apollo Smile. "We're doing it on a box of macaroni and $5.95," said
Smith. The stream-of-consciousness style confounds the old and delights
the young. The panel audience howled with delight at the showing of a working
version of an un-aired Space Ghost episode. And, the autograph line for
the Space Coast crew was one of the longest lines at the anime convention. |
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