NBC COMICS
(Also known as Telecomics)
Telecomics, the forerunner of NBC Comics, is generally regarded (along with Crusader Rabbit) as one of the first cartoon series produced for television. The 1949 syndicated fifteen-minute program was just as it's title suggested: comic-strip panel drawings filmed sequentially, with an occasional animated effect. Under it's original title, the series consisted of four three-minute serialized stories - Brother Goose, Joey and Jug, Rick Rack Secret Agent, and Su Lah.
NBC optioned the property in 1950, repackaging the program and renaming
it NBC Comics. Sponsored by Standard Brands, the series made broadcast history as the first made-for-TV
network cartoon program. Crusader Rabbit, which was commissioned by NBC two
years earlier, was actually turned down by the network and ended up running in
syndication on the NBC owned stations.
NBC added four new characters to the series when they picked it up. The new
adventures were: Danny March. March was the orphaned son of a Yale man who was raised by
his unprincipled uncle to be one of the toughest kids in Metro City. Danny
turned to detective work when he was unable to become a police officer
because of his short stature. Building a reputation as a tenacious private
eye, he is hired by the Mayor as his personal detective to stop crime in
Metro City. Kid Champion. The story of Eddie Hale, a musician who was urged by his
former boxing champ father to become a boxer. When Eddie mistakenly believes
that he killed a gas station attendant during a holdup, he teams up with a
hard-luck fight manager, Lucky Skinner, changes his identity to Kid Champion
and refuses to talk about his past to anyone. Johnny and Mr. Do-Right. The exploits of a young boy and his dog Space
Barton. Horace "Space" Barton, Jr., an all-American college football
star, was the son of pilot who enlists in the Army Air Corps during
WWII and is chosen to test the first U.S. jet plane. He then blasts off to Mars,
with his brother Jackie as a stowaway, in a rocketship
built by Professor Dinehart, an astronomer. The adventures have them engaged in
a civil war on the red planet, pitted against a faction led by a deranged
Earth scientist who had preceded him to Mars.
The series was a Vallee Video Production and ran on NBC-TV
from September 18, 1950 through March 30, 1951. Voices included Bob Bruce, Pat
McGeeham, Howard McNear, and Lurene
Tuttle. The individual adventures were
not titled, and after their network run they again entered syndication as
Telecomics. It faded from TV screens in the early 1960's, due mainly to the
onslaught of the Hanna-Barbera led color cartoons and the fact that the
Telecomics had been filmed in black and white.
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