Forgotten Firsts
Often, a first isn't really the first. It's simply the first that people remember. Steamboat Willie isn't the first sound cartoon, but it's the one that made a difference, so it's the one that enters the history books. If a first isn't very good, it tends to be forgotten. That's the case with Captain Power and the Soldiers of the Future , the first TV series to include computer animated characters. It ran only 22 episodes in syndication in 1987-88. I wrote the article below as production on the series was ending. It's ironically fitting that the article appeared in the first and only issue of Cartoon Quarterly , edited by John Cawley and Jim Korkis and published by Gladstone in the fall of 1988. The magazine had a fannish slant, but the roster of writers is one that readers of the blogosphere will recognize. Besides Cawley , Korkis and myself, the authors included Leonard Maltin , Jerry Beck , Floyd Norman , Will Finn , Scott Shaw! and Mark Kau...