Post #1: A Blast From the Past – Courage the Cowardly Dog

When I was growing up, this show was one of the most popular cartoon shows that aired on cartoon network. The show was centered around the misadventures of the talking dog, Courage and his new family, Eustace and Muriel, who lived in the fictional town of “Nowhere” in Kansas. This show was innovative for its use of CGI, strange plot twists, and comedy horror elements. 

Think back to when you were growing up and watched a lot of cartoons. There weren’t a lot of cartoons that entered into the horror genre, were there? Courage the Cowardly Dog was best known for its horror elements. There were plenty of characters in the show that creeped out many viewers, like strange CGI talking ghosts, a chicken from outer space, or evil spiders. One of the most famous episodes was “King Ramses’ Curse.” This episode is widely regarded as the scariest episode. As a young kid, this character freaked me out, and I remember trying to avoid watching the episode. What was it about this character that was so scary to myself and to the rest of the viewers? Well, The character of King Ramses himself is very scary-looking, but the use of CGI is really what made him as scary as he was. The way the character appears, looks, moves, and even talks in CGI form really adds to the creep factor. It’s safe to say that the reason for many fans of this cartoon show to recognize this episode as the scariest episode is due to the use of CGI, and that if the character was just a regular cartoon, they wouldn’t find him as scary.

Even though there are lots of characters and things in the show that were meant to be scary, there are plenty of comedic moments to try and lighten up the mood. Even the infamous King Ramses had a comedic moment, just by the way he says the words, “oh, come on…” Even the character of Eustace helped to lighten the mood and add some comedy to certain moments with his crazy, angry, old man ramblings. Some of the plot twists in the show were strange and often very goofy, such as how Courage had to beat ‘Robot Randy’ in a dance-off to save Eustace and Muriel, or how a great sand whale (yes, a whale that jumps and swims in sand) just wants his accordion back so that he can play on stage with a group of other accordion playing whales. There was even a tornado that, instead of picking people up and throwing them a couple dozen yards, transforms Muriel back into being a toddler, and the only way to get Muriel back to her normal self was to fly a plane over the tornado, and drop her into the top of the tornado. Makes sense, right? Like I said, plenty of strange and bizarre plot twists that gave this show its identity.

Overall, this show was edgy, silly, and often pretty dark. It was really, as far as I know, the only cartoon of its kind. It was a cartoon that mixed comedy with horror, and used CGI to make some of the characters more scary.