We Bare Bears

[mr3urious]

I find that a general rule of comic strip based cartoon series that the animated series is always superior for that exact reason. Single frame strips like Heathcliff and Dennis the Menace got some great expansion through their DIC produced shows, Garfield is always better animated, and Dilbert's animated version was vastly superior in every way.

Too bad Baby Blues wasn't the same way. There was way too much forced "edginess" and way too much of a focus on the dysfunctional family neighbors added just for the series because The WB's executives wanted to ride The Simpsons' coattails, and very little focus on the MacPhersons, especially Baby Zoe whom the strip is named after. I think it deserves a do-over, maybe in the current years with 9-year-old Zoe and her two siblings.

 

[Drtooth]

I just saw an example of another exception to the rule. Tales from the Far Side. By no means is it bad, or poorly done by any means, but it's just...off. It's a brilliant piece of animation if you take it for what it is. Somehow it feels like Courage the Cowardly Dog (specifically the early shorts and first season) without the family, but overall the humor of the special isn't any improvement over the one panel strip. In fact, with more context, the jokes have a different tone, less of funny and more of actually creepy. One segment features a drunk wolf watching footage of his mate on an old movie projector, gradually ending with his mate getting caught in a bear trap was just depressing. Probably the intent, but a miserable wolf dulling the pain sitting in a dark room watching old home movies to the tune of "I'll remember you" (or whatever it's called) is just disturbingly tear jerking and completely out of tone with the comic strip.

There's like a thing about aliens disguised as cowboys and a way to tell them apart that actually needed to work in animation (or a multi-panel strip)... that's it.

It's a beautiful film, sure, but completely unnecessary. Probably why there was only one of these and it fell into considerable obscurity.

 

[Oscarfan]

Wasn't there a For Better or Worse series? Or specials?

I remember Baby Blues was on Adult Swim at some point; I don't think I ever watched it though. I think I've seen one episode of that Mother Goose and Grimm series, which seemed fairly "meh."

 

[mr3urious]

Wasn't there a For Better or Worse series? Or specials?

There was. First was a Christmas special called The Bestest Present that first aired on HBO in 1985. Then there were six specials in 1992 produced for CTV. And finally, there was a 16-episode Teletoon series from 2000 in which three different storylines from three different eras of the strip were focused on, and Lynn Johnston herself introduced them.

 

[mr3urious]

I loved how slice-of-life yesterday's episode was, with the Bears unable to have a normal day even at home. Griz tries to befriend a couple of Frisbee players, PanPan gets his online social life destroyed by a mouse, and Ice uses his tech skills to soup up a bland name Roomba. And all three plots come together in the end.

 

[Drtooth]

That episode really seemed like it was the pilot, first episode written, or some sort of launch episode. It's like it introduced all the characters that we know already. But delightful none the less. The mouse screwing up Panda's facebook page, and losing "friends" as a result was a nice touch. Love how Ice Bear conquered the Vacuum Buddy at the end.

I'm glad I gave this thing a chance. It's really won me over in the premiere week.

 

[Drtooth]

Don't forget to check out the special web shorts.

http://www.cartoonnetwork.com/video/we-bare-bears/nom-nom-vs-hamster-episode.html

If you thought Nom Nom was a slimeball before, he's a complete jerkwad here.

 

[D'Snowth]

So let me get this straight: some weird webcomic I've never heard of before got an animated series deal?

Y'know, I've been wanting to adapt my VAMPIRE GIRL webcomic into a live-action short/special, when is that ever gonna happen? Oh, that's right, never, because people really have never heard of it before.

 

[Drtooth]

Web comics becoming anything more than web comics is a roughly one in a trillion shot. Mainly because there's so darn many of them and so darn many of those are just...awful. And it hurts the rep of good ones.

There are only 2 mainstream television American cartoons based on webcomics. Axe Cop and this Bears show. Axe Cop having the gimmick of being written by a small child and his older adult brother taking it seriously and illustrating the heck out of it. The end result was too cool to even consider being campy. It's frankly a lot less cheesy than some of the professionally written comics out there. Bears... I dunno how that came to be, but the show helped me ind the strip, and I hope that Boom or someone compiles these into book form. From what I've read, these comics are a heck of a lot better than most newspaper comics in the past 10 years.

Other than that, I see no difference between a weird webcomic getting a cartoon series and a weird indie comic getting one. TMNT was only a cartoon because a no name toy company wanted to produce toys of a very obscure (but with its share of fans) indie comic, and they needed a cartoon to advertise said toys. Still don't know how The Tick (which was published by a chain comic book store...how's that for low level indie comics?) managed to get made, but it did and became a cult classic. There were hundreds of black and white indie comics back in the 80's and early 90's before the indie bubble burst, some of them actually good. But only TMNT and The Tick managed to become hit cartoon shows. There was also Bucky O' Hare, but that never gained the popularity of the other two. A couple others got absorbed into the TMNT toy line up, one being Usagi Yojimbo that at least got a couple shots on TMNT animated series. Panda Kahn wasn't so lucky, but he got a toy in.

 

[mr3urious]

"Burrito" reminded me a lot of the SpongeBob episode "To Love a Patty" in that Griz falls in love with a giant burrito he ordered as part of a restaurant challenge and treats it like a person, only done better because his brothers call him out for his obsession and that he didn't have to eat the rotting food.

Spoiler

But what really made it so much better was the ending in that the giant burrito reminded Griz of the arm of the firefighter who rescued him when he was stuck up a tree as a cub. That "aww-inspiring" twist really won me over.

Also loved the photos on the Wall of Fame that showed the people who won the challenge looking like they're about to die. Yep, that's just like me after a trip to the buffet.