Drawn Characters – Geekout 4

I’ve now found a very interesting one in my page-a-day calendar! All three of the prompts deal with drawn characters. For today, I need to list: Six Recurring Animated Female Characters on 1990s Television, Six Characters from the Mario Bros. Game Franchise, and Two Dark Horse Publications.

These are just fun! I’ve got good choices for all of them! And I think my category guesses are correct; general, gaming, and comics are the categories this time.

Six Recurring Animated Female Characters on 1990s Television

Now here’s a prompt that my wife exclaimed about when I revealed this page. Considering we both watched quite a few 1990s cartoons, we’ve got quite a few choices!

Barbara Gordon – Batman: The Animated Series

Starting off strong (even speaking literally!) Who wouldn’t have chosen Batgirl? She has always been one of my favorite characters from the Batman franchise, so she was a must include for this list. Through her incarnations, she’s had some changes, but I do enjoy this TV series.

Jean Grey – X-Men

Staying on that strong note is Jean Grey, a mutant of impressive powers. I’d fault this version of the character for her goofy outfit, but that’s just kind of what was worn for this era of the X-Men. It’s definitely nostalgia more than anything else that I like about that era. The colors were crazy. Oh, did I mention that she’s also Phoenix? Yeah… Badass..

Dee Dee – Dexter’s Laboratory

One of the greatest agents of chaos to ever exist, Dexter’s wonderful sister, Dee Dee is a source of endless strife in Dexter’s Lab. Oh how she manages to foil so many of his plans. My favorite of those was when he made her smart, but she was smarter than he was then. Haha!

Bulma – Dragon Ball Z

This brilliant dragon ball hunter may not have been one of the primary combatants of the series, but she was terrifying in her own right (no Chi-chi of course). Bulma was often the person that we could relate to, since she was almost sane. Almost. Her common sense, technical expertise, and tenacity made her an always valuable member of the team!

Harley Quinn – Batman: The Animated Series

Didn’t think I was going to skip this one after bringing up this TV series, did you? Harleen Frances Quinzel was introduced in the 1990s in this series to be exact! Her current portrayal and relationship you may have seen in a recent movie seems quite different from what existed in this series. She may love “Mistah J”, but in this series her relationship with him almost seems abusive.

While I hate discussing a female character based more on her connection to a male character than herself, this one is a bit of an exception. Since I chose Harley Quinn specifically, I’d say that the Joker created her, so that relationship is extremely important. She’s also got an interesting relationship with Poison Ivy, so that’s a thing.

Angelica – Rugrats

And for the show about a bunch of babies, the young, bullying child is a great choice. She’s in an interesting role in that show considering how strange their whole dynamic is in general. I guess when you’re applying wisdom and intelligence to a bunch of babies, you get some weirdness.

Six Characters from the Mario Bros. Game Franchise

Wario

“I’m-a Wario, I’m-a gonna win!” I shouted, crossing the finish line seconds ahead of my nearest opponent! He’s about as “American” as you can get. He’s greedy. He’s overweight. He pushes people around. And he’s such a good driver…

Toad

This topic reminded me of a time I was playing a game of Telestrations, and I was supposed to draw the word “Toad”. I didn’t draw the animal, since I’d have no way to avoid the frog/toad debate in a cruddy marker-drawn picture. Being the nerd that I am, I drew our mushroom-headed friend, Toad with some question blocks and a pipe for added clarity. My drawing was guessed correctly, and the next person, also being a video game nerd, chose to take the same route, drawing a picture very similar to mine. The guess? “Video Game Character”. That could have gone better.

Toad is really interesting though. Considering how many there are, I guess I’ll have chosen the one from Mario Kart, since that game is a blast. Sometimes literally!

Daisy

As the games shifted away from the main titles and more into all of the spinoffs, Daisy became much more prominent. I’m really glad that she was added to the games, because these games would have a broad appeal and were somewhat lacking in interesting female characters. If I’m remembering correctly, she’s athletic and quite capable (despite her initial appearance being as a captured princess).

Bowser

Hooray for the villains! Although, I may like him best in Mario RPG, which casts him in a very different light! Always kidnapping, scheming, and causing problems. I enjoy how he causes problems in the Mario Party games as well. As is there way, Nintendo finds ways to make the villains fun (even the monstrous ones).

Peach

Thank you Mario! But our princess is in another castle! Well that’s frustrating. Perhaps next time I should figure out which castle looks best defended and go there first…

I remember there being some strange things about her name. I don’t think she really had one at first, or maybe it came from a manual or something. Was this always her name in Japan? Was it something else at first? Either way, she definitely had a name when Mario Kart came around, and I think that name was just “Peach”. Did she sign her name as “Peach” in the note on the cake in Mario 64? Either way, great character.

If you played the game released as Super Mario Bros. 2 in the US, she was just awesome. Love that she wasn’t a “damsel in distress” in that one. She was a playable hero right alongside Mario, Luigi, and Toad! And in some ways better than they were!

Birdo

Now here’s one with some extra weirdness if you dig more deeply. Being a recurring boss-like character in Super Mario Bros. 2, this egg-spitting, bow-wearing creature was more of a nuisance than anything else. It took a real mistake to get hurt by her/him. If memory serves, Birdo is actually male, but wears the bow? Not sure where the eggs are coming from then… Either way, Birdo came back and was featured in more stuff, which is very cool. The games could always use more non-humanoid characters.

Two Dark Horse Publications

Clearly there are none of these on my bookshelf! Why would there be? And I definitely can’t just turn my head and see plenty of Dark Horse logos! No way!

Star Wars: The Old Republic – Comics

If you read the previous ones of these, you may have noticed that I like Star Wars and specifically The Old Republic, having played the single player and MMO games. I don’t think Dark Horse is still the ones publishing these, but they did for a time. That whole Disney acquisition of Star Wars changed many things.

Serenity – Comics

While I agree that restarting Firefly would likely make the series worse than it is, I am glad it received a movie to help wrap things up. Getting canceled before a season completes tends to leave much unanswered (as plenty still is). There are some comics that do as the movie did, helping to tie up additional lose ends and add bits to the story.

I’m happy where Firefly/Serenity is today. Although I really wish I could see what the show could have been!

Wrap Up

And no one will ever guess how I chose those two Dark Horse publications…. And if you’re paying careful attention, you’d notice additional Dark Horse publications I didn’t mention…