1985-1989 SYNDICATED
BLUNDERCATS
Cracked #228, July 1987
w: Mike Carlin
a: Steve Ditko
When I meet professionals, I like to bring up their most embarrassing work. Not necessarily their worst work, just not the most prestigious venue. I don't know why, it's a habit of mine. If it could harm their careers, I wouldn't do that, someone could do the same to me. But if it's just subpar work not representative of their careers, it's the equivalent of finding a picture of them in high school when they had bad acne or were president of the D & D club, and they usually have a sense of humor about it.
I've worked with Mike Carlin on and off over the years, usually as a writer on a DC project with him as an executive. I was a student at School of Visual Arts when he was a guest speaker as an editor at Marvel. I mentioned to him I know of him years before that at from Crazy, where he did a feature called Dirk McGurk, and his response was “I'm sorry. I think I owe you money.”
Steve Ditko was co-creator of Spider-Man, and even though he acknowledged he should have been better compensated for it, continued to do work like this as if it were equal, justifying work-for-hire and creator equity at the same time in his incoherent independent work.
As far as I know, this is the only movie or TV parody either of them did for humor magazines.
Thundercats was one of those after-school daily cartoons prominent in the eighties that existed to sell toys, similar to He-Man and the Masters of the Universe. The ThunderCats, led by Lion-O, were Cheetera, Panthra, WilyKit, WilyKat, and Snarf. Their quest after waking from suspended animation was to acquire the Eye of Thundera from the sorceror Mumm-Ra, and keep Slithe and the Mutants of Plun-Darr from ruling Third Earth.
