Mighty Mouse: The New Adventures

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Mighty Mouse in Ralph Bakski's adaption

Mighty Mouse: The New Adventures (not to be confused with Filmation's The New Adventures of Mighty Mouse) was a revival of the classic Mighty Mouse cartoon, made by Bakshi-Hyde Ventures (a joint venture of animator Ralph Bakshi and producer John W. Hyde), it aired on CBS from 1987 to 1988 and was briefly rerun on Fox Kids in November of 1992. It gave Mighty Mouse a true identity (Mike Mouse, a worker at Pearl Pureheart's factory), a sidekick in the form of the orphan Scrappy Mouse, friends in the forms of Bruce Vein the Bat-Bat (a parody of Bruce Wayne/Batman), Bat-Bat's sidekick Tick the Bug Wonder, and the League of Super-Rodents, and new bad guys including Petey Pate, the Glove and the Cow.

The show was a huge springboard for many cartoonists and animators who would later become extremely famous, including John Kricfalusi (creator of The Ren and Stimpy Show), Bruce W. Timm (producer of Batman: The Animated Series), Jim Reardon (writer for Tiny Toon Adventures and director of many Simpsons episodes), Tom Minton (writer and producer for many Warner Bros. television cartoons, including Tiny Toons, Animaniacs, The Sylvester and Tweety Mysteries, Baby Looney Tunes and Duck Dodgers), Lynne Naylor (co-founder of Spümcø, character designer for Batman: The Animated Series and storyboard artist for The Powerpuff Girls and Cow and Chicken among other work), Rich Moore (animation director for The Simpsons and Futurama) and others.

The show only lasted 2 seasons, but it inspired a 10-issue Mighty Mouse comic book series published by Marvel Comics in 1990 and 1991. No plans have materialized to release the show on DVD.

1 Controversy
2 Episode list
- 2.1 Season 1 (1987-1988)
- 2.2 Season 2 (1988-1989)
3 Cast
4 External links

[edit] Controversy

The show faced controversy, as the jokes were aimed more at adults than at children. A viewer notified media watchdog Reverend Donald Wildmon that, in the episode "The Littlest Tramp", it looks like Mighty Mouse reaches into a pocket and snorts cocaine from his hand. Wildmon was disbelieving at first, but after investigating the episode and learning of producer Ralph Bakshi's background (e.g., directing the adult cartoon Fritz The Cat), alerted the media that this may have been intentional. Given the numerous other instances of risque humor and adult jokes in this series, a drug reference wouldn't be out of the question. Bakshi denies it to this day, maintaining that Mighty Mouse was merely smelling some crushed flowers and that the jet leading from his hand to his nose was merely a cartoon "smell line" moving super-fast from the mighty inhale. (Interestingly, when the controversy first broke, CBS executive George Dessart mentioned what Mighty Mouse inhaled as a "lucky chunk of cheese" in a press release.) Contrary to common belief, CBS continued to rerun the episode for at least some time, though it was eventually pulled from rotation.

The sequence of events in the actual episode is such: 1.) Big Murray, the episode's villain crushes Polly Pineblossom's [the titular "Littlest Tramp"] flower when she tries to sell it to him; 2.) Polly (who always refuses help from Mighty Mouse, saying "There are others less fortunate than I") sells Mighty Mouse the remains, which crumble into dust in his hand, and which he then stuffs in his pocket; 3.) Later in the episode, after rescuing a group of ants, he ends up at the ants' lodge meeting. After one of the ants tells that he became a lodge brother because he wanted to help the less fortunate, Mighty Mouse, thinking of Polly, pulls the crushed flower out of his pocket, saying "I know someone else like that," and then smelling the flower's remains as the scene crossfades into the next. The way in which Mighty Mouse snorts the dust up his nose looks very much like a cocaine gag, and series senior director John Kricfalusi has been known to have inserted adult gags into other episodes, as well as into his later The Ren and Stimpy Show. (However, he denied that it was a cocaine reference.) In addition, the gag stands alone as somewhat of a non-sequitur; it has no actual bearing on the rest of the episode.

[edit] Episode list

[edit] Season 1 (1987-1988)

Episode number	Name	Production code	Original airdate
1	"Night on Bald Pate" / "Mouse from Another House"	1A / 1B	September 19, 1987
2	"Me-Yowww!" / "Witch Tricks"	2A / 2B	September 26, 1987
3	"Night of the Bat-Bat" / "Scrap-Happy"	2A / 2B	October 3, 1987
4	"Catastrophe Cat" / "Scrappy's Field Day"	4A / 4B	October 10, 1987
5	"The First Deadly Cheese" / "The Bagmouse"	5A / 5B	October 17, 1987
6	"This Island Mouseville" / "Mighty's Musical Classics"	6A / 6B	October 24, 1987
7	"The Littlest Tramp" / "Puffy Goes Berserk"	7A / 7B	October 31, 1987
8	"The League of Super-Rodents" / "Scrappy's Playhouse"	8A / 8B	November 7, 1987
9	"All You Need is Glove" / "It's Scrappy's Birthday"	9A / 9B	November 14, 1987
10	"Aqua-Guppy" / "Animation Concerto"	10A / 10B	November 21, 1987
11	"The Ice Goose Cometh" / "Pirates with Dirty Faces"	11A / 11B	November 28, 1987
12	"Mighty's Benefit Plan" / "See You in the Funny Papers"	12A / 12B	December 5, 1987
13	"Heroes and Zeroes" / "Stress for Success"	13A / 13B	December 12, 1987

[edit] Season 2 (1988-1989)

Episode number	Name	Production code	Original airdate
14	"Day of the Mice" / "Still Oily After All These Years"	14A / 14B	September 17, 1988
15	"Mighty's Wedlock Whimsy" / "Anatomy of a Milquetoast"	15A / 15B	September 24, 1988
16	"Bat with a Golden Tongue" / "Mundane Voyage"	16A / 16B	October 1, 1988
17	"Snow White & the Motor City Dwarfs" / "Don't Touch that Dial"	17A / 17B	October 8, 1988
18	"Mouse and Supermouse" / "The Bride of Mighty Mouse"	18A / 18B	October 15, 1988
19	"A Star is Milked" / "Mighty's Tone Poem"	19A / 19B	October 22, 1988