“Trixie, calling the Mach 5, come in, Speed!”
Speed Racer probably used about 90% of its animation over and over again and that’s disregarding the fact that half the times the figures didn’t even move, but c’mon — when you have the Mach V around you can skimp on the balance. Was there ever a cooler dude than Racer X? Have I ever felt more satisfied than when I watch it with my niece and she says “That’s Speed’s brother,” when the masked Rex comes on the screen? I’m a good uncle though, and do my best to always warn her never to hide in the trunk of a car like Sprydle and Chim Chim did in, well, every single episode. And yes I admit it; I’d marry Trixie in a second. After all, that’s probably where my love of that tomboy look came from in the first place.
One of the things I really dig about Speed Racer, aside from that cool tracking shot of Speed and the Mach 5 in the credits that the movies would go crazy over 25 or so years later, is that apparently no one ever registers for the races. You can show up at the last minute in a canoe with wheels and the announcer will nonchalantly say, “Driving the number 4 Red Canoe, Slick Oiler!”
“Courtesy of your friendly neighborhood Spider-Man...”
I admit that I am a huge geek, but Spider-Man means a lot to me. The TV show was probably as absentmindedly put together and re-used as many shots as Speed did, but they sure did have the voice of J. Jonah Jameson cast perfectly. Parker! For you youngsters I'm talking about the '60s incarnation of the show, the one with the cool theme ("Action is his reward! Look out, here comes the Spider-Man"). Those identical shots of the web slinger making his way throughout the city were probably used three times in every episode, but the Mysterio story, where Peter Parker is convinced that he's going mad, did provide some psychedelic fun.
When I first got to college, I was delighted to find out that the school’s library had copies of every issue of the Spider-Man comic ever put out. So while everyone was drinking coffee and meeting women, I was sneaking off to hold Spider-Man Number 1. I’d read a couple every day in between classes and got as far as about #200. For my money, the first #100 or so are as artful as any novel written in the 20th century. Okay, everyone is saying, “My, what a dork you are,” but the cool thing was that Spider-Man was, too. Spider-Man is an epic tribute to every brainy geek romantic who ever breathed.
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