Mighty Max

Reviewed by Howard Andrew Jones

If you're thinking of Saturday morning sword and sorcery the Thundarr cartoon probably leaps foremost to mind, but once you're past the striking backgrounds and character design the series is hamstrung by stories and dialogue that are embarrassingly weak. The best straight sword and sorcery series could have been The Pirates of Darkwater, which started out strong but dropped in quality and was discontinued before it finished its run.

My favorite is neither of these shows, however, nor a handful of others you'd be more likely to name. Nope, my favorite cartoon sword and sorcery series is Mighty Max.

Mighty Max, you say? The one set in modern times, based on the toy? Indeed.

To those of you not in the know, for a brief time in the late 80s and early 90s Mighty Max was the testosterone answer to Polly Pocket--a tiny toy that came in its own tiny plastic adventure set. Polly Pocket even today comes with ponies and brushes and beauty parlors and such. Mighty Max came with a young guy with a red baseball cap and a lair stuffed with werewolves or mummies or alien beasties.

Information about both the Mighty Max show and the toys is fairly scant, but it seems safe to assume that the show came--like so many others--after the toys. It's easy to imagine a team of people sitting down with the products, their assignment to fashion a cartoon series based on what lay before them. Here's what they developed: Mighty Max is a thirteen-year-old destined to bear a cap that opens ancient portals which allow him to travel across the Earth. Joined by his companions Virgil--a wise and aged Lemurian fowl--and Norman, Max's bodyguard, Max journeys to trouble spots across the globe, fighting evildoers. Interesting as a premise, perhaps, but likely to be completely forgettable at best, and at worst shamefacedly stupid. What seems to have happened, however, is that the two men most often associated with the show as story editors and script writers--Gordon Bressack and Robert Hudnut--decided they would simply make Mighty Max the best show one possibly could write about a happenin' teen, his immortal bodyguard, and a Lemurian fowl. Of the forty episodes only one or two are clunkers and a substantial number are stirring adventures.

The writers ensure that Max really is both clever and brave, usually deducing the solution to the episode's problem based on information from Virgil and carrying out the solution with the aid of Norman. And Norman is who makes the show qualify as sword and sorcery, at least of a sort. He and Virgil have been safeguarding the Earth for generations--over the course of various episodes we learn that Norman has been known as Little John, Hercules, even Thor. Fearless, strong, and loyal, Norman is a fantastic swordsman who lives to fight. He and Virgil and Max face off against all sorts of baddies and monsters and mutants. Some episodes are pure sword and sorcery, such as the time the three must recruit four heroes from mythology and descend beneath the Earth to destroy an evil artifact, or another episode where they tangle with a cursed Viking sorcerer determined to bring on Ragnarok. The villains come in all shapes and sizes. There's an extra-planar entity collecting all the human souls it can lay its teeth on; there are alien invasions, hideous giant monsters, even vengeful gods of old. Bressack and Hudnut send the crew against more familiar horrors like vampires and zombies, but even here they surprise by twisting our expectations. Little bits of oddness are thrown into the mix, like an episode centered around an obscure piece of peculiarity, the Dogon of the Pacific's long knowledge of a star only recently visible through telescopes.

Some of the villains make more than one appearance, but the most frequent flyer is Skullmaster, a former ally of Virgil's who starts out the series imprisoned near the center of the Earth. Eventually he escapes, leading to the cataclysmic two-part series finale. Every episode with Skullmaster--voiced by the talented Tim Curry--is a delight, for Max must be in top form to best the ancient schemer and his sinister minions. Time and again Mighty Max stands up for his friends and the greater good, often sacrificing his own happiness and risking his life to see them to safety. Initially Max doesn't even want the responsibilities that come with being a hero, but over the course of the first season (there are only two seasons) comes to accept the role as his duty. (Yes--a show about a toy actually has story arcs--who would have figured?)

The series is not without flaws--in addition to a few bad episodes there is the animation itself, which is decent enough but not really noteworthy, especially when compared with benchmarks like the 1990s Batman: The Animated Series. Max's wisecracks sometimes wear thin. The show is saved by its writing and treatment of the characters themselves, who are well-voiced, honestly likeable, and display a refreshing camaraderie. The majority of episodes are witty, exciting, and occasionally touching, such as when Hanuman the Monkey King and three other heroes lay down their lives for Max and his friends. Honor, loyalty, responsibility, and friendship are frequent themes, and the show sometimes tackles social issues head-on, without soft-pedaling or drum pounding. One anonymous reviewer (on this site http://www.jumptheshark.com/m/mightymax.htm, brimming with praise for Mighty Max) singles out an episode where an unkillable spirit of violence has been unleashed from where it was long ago imprisoned by Virgil and Norman, in a tree deep in the north woods. When the three arrive to learn how the spirit escaped, they discover that loggers have razed the entire area. The reviewer correctly points out that "a lesser show would have spent the entire episode on the problem of deforestation, but Mighty Max only spent a second on why the spirit was released, and concentrated on real juicy stuff like Norman's obsession with destroying this invincible creature. And people were killed by that spirit. Norman was the only one who saw the bodies in a house, but Max thought he could stomach it because he sees that stuff in movies and TV. Virgil cautions that 'real violence has real consequences.' And this is from a children's show." Again, a lesser show would have hammered this point home, but the moment is disturbing rather than preachy.

Dialogue is routinely sharp and often funny, which is part of the show's charm. One of my favorite moments comes in an episode where Virgil is afraid Skullmaster has escaped with a sorcerous codex full of powerful secrets. "Not to worry, Virg," says Max, holding up a big clump of paper. "He's got the abridged edition. While he wasn't looking I tore out a whole bunch of pages." Cut to Skullmaster, far away, who has just discovered what's happened to the codex. He throws it down and curses Max with satisfying, scene-chewing fury only Tim Curry could deliver. To round out the sequence Virgil thanks Max for saving the world, but wonders if perhaps next time he could do so without mutilating an ancient Lemurian artifact?

Shakespeare it ain't, but it's great fun--probably one of the best-written cartoon series ever--and stands up to repeated viewing. Finding it is the trick, as the show is currently out of the rerun cycle and wasn't a big enough hit to warrant release on DVD sets. Fortunately in my former days I was compulsive enough to videotape anything that caught my fancy, and my kids have benefited. Both my boy and girl, who have never seen a Mighty Max toy or commercial, love the show. Bressack and Hudnut would be pleased.