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Post by codystarbuck on Aug 1, 2017 16:24:20 GMT -5
Any fans of this series?
For the younger folks, MTV presented a showcase of cutting edge animation from a variety of voices and sources. Liquid Television gave us things like the sci-fi action and adventure (without dialogue) of Aeon Flux (which didn't make much more sense than the Charlize Theron movie), the anarchic hijinks of Beavis & Butt-Head, the simple figures of Stick Figure Theater, the saga of biker babe Winter Steel, the adventures of Charles Burns' Dogboy, Bill Plympton's Plymptoons, the old school pulp adventures of The Specialists, the Art School Girls of Doom, Brad Dharma, Psychic Detective and more.
I tuned in for many, especially Aeon Flux, though Stick Figure Theater was one of my favorites. Dogboy got me to read Burns' work. The Specialists reminded me of the 60s and 70s ITV adventure shows, like The Avengers and The Champions, with its team of globe-trotting troubleshooters. I would have liked a whole series of those.
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Crimebuster
CCF Podcast Guru
Making comics!
Posts: 3,923 
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Post by Crimebuster on Aug 1, 2017 20:13:17 GMT -5
I loved it at the time. Aeon Flux was a particular favorite.
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Post by LovesGilKane on Aug 2, 2017 0:42:34 GMT -5
loved 'most' of this show, in fact i watched the 1st episode in the company of a 'comics luminary'. Winter and Aeon Flux were my faves, though the faux-fetishism of Aon bothered me until the show received its own series later, with dialogue.
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shaxper
CCF Site Custodian
Posts: 22,450
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Post by shaxper on Aug 2, 2017 11:21:45 GMT -5
I think the only feature I didn't love was Beavis and Butthead. They didn't get funny until they had their own series.
Great showcase for emerging talent. Wish we had a mainstream show like this today.
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Post by codystarbuck on Aug 2, 2017 12:20:58 GMT -5
Thing is, for all of the big segments, the ones I really loved were the little things. Psycho-grams (the ones with the narration over old postcards) was brilliantly demented and they had a wonderful animated music video for They Might Be Giants' "Istanbul (Not Constantinople)."
On the subject of Mike Judge, he also had a couple of other cartoons on there:
and the one that spawned Office Space:
After seeing the final episode of the first season, with the complete Aeon Flux, I still couldn't figure out what the hell was supposed to be going on, other than she is looking for someone, others are developing a disease, and the blond guy cures it. Then, I picked up an issue of the extremely short-lived and much missed magazine Wild Cartoon Kingdom (from the folks at Film Threat magazine), which had an interview with Peter Chung, which gave the plot, with names and everything. I sat there reading it, thinking, "How are you supposed to get any of that out of what is in the cartoon?"
The half-hour series, with dialogue, did add a new dimension, though some of it came off as pretentious as the worst of the Matrix films. At least with the shorter, dialogue-less pieces, you were spared the pseudo-philosophy. Not that every episode was like that; just the odd one. The fetishism in the series was off the charts; but, then again, MTV catered to that over the bulk of their heyday. You could pretty much find at a minimum one, if not a half dozen videos that fed just about any fetish out there.
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Post by Jesse on Aug 2, 2017 16:14:13 GMT -5
I remember enjoying this as well as The Maxx animated series.
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Post by codystarbuck on Aug 2, 2017 19:14:26 GMT -5
I remember enjoying this as well as The Maxx animated series. Yeah, I remember being surprised that The Maxx turned out to be so good. I had been reading the comics; but, it was very much a series you had to go back over, when later issues came out, to get a better handle on it. The animated series was relatively coherent and engaging, without just being weird for weird's sake. |
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Post by BigPapaJoe on Aug 2, 2017 23:52:44 GMT -5
After seeing the final episode of the first season, with the complete Aeon Flux, I still couldn't figure out what the hell was supposed to be going on, other than she is looking for someone, others are developing a disease, and the blond guy cures it. Then, I picked up an issue of the extremely short-lived and much missed magazine Wild Cartoon Kingdom (from the folks at Film Threat magazine), which had an interview with Peter Chung, which gave the plot, with names and everything. I sat there reading it, thinking, "How are you supposed to get any of that out of what is in the cartoon?" The half-hour series, with dialogue, did add a new dimension, though some of it came off as pretentious as the worst of the Matrix films. At least with the shorter, dialogue-less pieces, you were spared the pseudo-philosophy. Not that every episode was like that; just the odd one. The fetishism in the series was off the charts; but, then again, MTV catered to that over the bulk of their heyday. You could pretty much find at a minimum one, if not a half dozen videos that fed just about any fetish out there. I remember watching Liquid Television and Aeon Flux in the 90's starting when I was around 10 years old. I didn't understand what was going on, but I have memories of staying up late and discovering "cartoons" on, so I tuned in. Aeon Flux looked like an action cartoon so I became interested even though I didn't understand a lot of what was on the screen. It's been years and years since I've watched the show. I should sit down and revisit it. I do recall each episode essentially being an alternate universe where Aeon dies at the end or something really odd occurs in it's conclusion. The 90's where an interesting time. |
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Post by codystarbuck on Aug 3, 2017 8:42:04 GMT -5
After seeing the final episode of the first season, with the complete Aeon Flux, I still couldn't figure out what the hell was supposed to be going on, other than she is looking for someone, others are developing a disease, and the blond guy cures it. Then, I picked up an issue of the extremely short-lived and much missed magazine Wild Cartoon Kingdom (from the folks at Film Threat magazine), which had an interview with Peter Chung, which gave the plot, with names and everything. I sat there reading it, thinking, "How are you supposed to get any of that out of what is in the cartoon?" The half-hour series, with dialogue, did add a new dimension, though some of it came off as pretentious as the worst of the Matrix films. At least with the shorter, dialogue-less pieces, you were spared the pseudo-philosophy. Not that every episode was like that; just the odd one. The fetishism in the series was off the charts; but, then again, MTV catered to that over the bulk of their heyday. You could pretty much find at a minimum one, if not a half dozen videos that fed just about any fetish out there. I remember watching Liquid Television and Aeon Flux in the 90's starting when I was around 10 years old. I didn't understand what was going on, but I have memories of staying up late and discovering "cartoons" on, so I tuned in. Aeon Flux looked like an action cartoon so I became interested even though I didn't understand a lot of what was on the screen. It's been years and years since I've watched the show. I should sit down and revisit it. I do recall each episode essentially being an alternate universe where Aeon dies at the end or something really odd occurs in it's conclusion. The 90's where an interesting time. In the first season serial, she dies at the very end (the last episode strings together each installment and adds the conclusion). In the second season, she dies in each installment. Aeon Flux wasn't in the third season, because they were doing the half-hour Aeon Flux series. In that one, she usually survives, and there is some kind of twist ending to the episode. Most involve her rivalry/romance with Trevor Goodchild. One episode, where she and a companion have to get past a series of defenses to get into a facility, was used for a scene in the live action movie; one of the few things from the cartoon to actually make it in. |
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