The Big Guy and Rusty

[chas]

I'm very into animation (and superheroes). Thanks to a pal, I've just 'discovered' an old 1999 animated TV series (originally shown on Channel 5) of a Frank Miller work called The Big Guy and Rusty The Boy Robot. Its got to be the wackiest series since The Tick! Four disks hold two seasons of this work which was made through Dark Horse Entertainment. The writing is intelligent and fun, with episodes quite original and creative in the first disk episodes--those which I've seen so far. My pal says it was taken off the air suddenly, so if you get the collection, you'll see a few that apparantly were never shown on TV.

Its a comic, satirical take on Astro Boy meets Iron Man, with bizarre twists, but with characters you come to like (or hate) as appropriate. Two subplots are that Rusty looks up the the older hero Big Guy as his idol robot. But BG is not a robot at all; in a hoax perpetrated on the public by Quark Industries (Quark, like Stark), and the military (of course); its actually a battle suit secretly operated by a man, who poses as its "Chief Mechanic." The beautiful female scientist who discovers the secret agrees to keep it from her own Rusty, built subsequently to replace the stopgap Big Guy. Rusty doesn't realize that he's the first true Artificial Intelligence ever created, and they keep it that way,because a boy needs a father figure...

The second subplot is the romance between Big Guy's heroic pilot and the scientist, which develops very nicely. There are also lots of fun characters, like the boss scientist who is a total creep, and his pet intelligent talking female monkey (voiced by that nemesis from The Drew Carey Show), who is as nasty as he is. Typical dialogue for them is when the monkey-- on her master's shoulder when they are threatened by a villain--says "Let's split up, and at least one of us will survive..." (leaping off) "...and that would be me)."

Voices are well done by some names you will recognize from TV (F. Lee Ermy, Gabrielle Carteris), movies (M. Emmet Walsh) and later animation projects (Clancy Brown). The theme song has some of the most goofy and laughingly complex lyrics ever written, which includes several verses which tell the story in far too many words. The animation is good 90s style stuff. I highly recommend it, if you like this sort of thing.

Here's the heroic theme song, with a wrong word or two--it may give you the feel of the show:

Watch the skies; coming at you
A hero of metal hue
He lacks horns with disaster
For the Red and White and Blue

Then was born a boy robot
Miracle of science
Ready to battle large monsters
Supercharged and quick on the draw

Pretty darn good fighter he's
Helping The Big Guy--he's a big deal
Heart of gold and fists of steel
Clobbering evil menaces
With Rusty at his heels

And they're a mighty team
Boy robot lives his dream
To be a legend in history
The Big Guy and Rusty!