"What is Mars?"
or, Giant mice in leather = popular animated series. Who knew?"
Humans have always been fascinated by the planet Mars. No other celestial wanderer has so captured our imagination as that familiar red speck in the sky. Throughout the centuries, we've populated it with wide varieties of extraterrestrial life in our fiction and fantasies. Usually, they tended to be very malicious "we're coming to take over your planet, enslave your race, defile your women, etc." little green men types. The sort that would just as soon zap you with a Martian death ray as look at you. Not exactly anybody we wanted to meet up with. But there's an intrinsic desire in the human animal to seek out other intelligent life, even if it is a little on the hostile side. So a lot of hopes were quashed when the recent Pathfinder exploration (not to mention the earlier Vikings) of the red planet failed to turn up any signs of life on Mars.
But imagine, if you will, that the reason we didn't find anyone there waiting on us isn't because Mars has never had any life. Picture a Mars from several years back, one with several diverse humanoid cultures, all slightly more advanced than our own kind. A Mars with green, growing plants, and many species of plants and animals. A Mars that isn't just alive but thriving.
So why didn't we find all this life there when we sent our robotic explorers? Why is Mars so desolate today? It's simple. Because virtually all life on Mars was wiped out by a race of planet-plundering aliens, ones ruthless in their tactics and never-ending in their greed.
And now, they're already making a move on Earth.
With most of the human race totally unaware of their stealthy invasion, who can keep us from suffering the same fate as these Martians? Who will alert us to the danger? Who will save us?
Would you believe three mice?
This is the back-story of "Biker Mice from Mars", a moderately successful animated series created by animation veteran Rick Ungar that ran from 1995 through 1997. There were three seasons and sixty-five episodes in all. While the series was not astoundingly successful (due to a number of factors), those who watched it were treated to something very special indeed. "Biker Mice" wasn't just another kiddie adventure cartoon show with a "moral of the day." This was a series that was not only action-packed, but also smart, sly, and, unlike so much American animation these days, genuinely funny. While the primary audience may have been children, the show could be read on many levels by people of many different ages. Episodes often contained references to older rock songs that the typical eight-year old has never heard of, or jokingly commented on modern television (for example, when asked to explain why he had never been paid for a job in his life, one character gave his reason as "working for Fox"). Girls as well as boys were attracted to the show--a large amount of the hardcore fans are female. The writing was strong, the characters were engaging, animation quality was high, and, like I said, it was truly funny. Many modern cartoons try to be funny, but fall flat (see Disney's "Hercules" for one example; try "The Mask" for another).
Okay, so what's the show about, exactly? Well, it centers on Throttle, Vinnie, and Modo, a trio of Biker Mice from--obviously--Mars, who barely escaped the destruction of their home planet and the decimation of their people by the Plutarkians, a race of smelly, fish-like aliens who ruined their own planet and, instead of taking measures to conserve their own resources, simply go around stealing them from other worlds, often killing off the entire planet's population in the process. The three of them are shot down on Earth by a Plutarkian ship while trying to return to Mars, and end up landing in the city of Chicago, Illinois. There, they meet a human mechanic named Charley, who quickly becomes their friend and ally. After they tell her about what happened to Mars, and about the Plutarkians, she tells them that the same thing is happening in Chicago. The Biker Mice quickly investigate, and discover that one of the city's leading citizens, Lawrence Limburger, is actually a Plutarkian in disguise, who is buying up Chicago (or just stealing it) and sending the land back to Plutark. So they decide that, as long as they're stuck on Earth, they'll try to put a kibosh on Limburger's scheme to destroy the Windy City--and why not? It's fun!
Throughout the course of the series, Throttle, Modo, and Vinnie go head to head not only with Limburger and his goons, but also with a plethora of supervillains he hires to take out the Biker Mice. Time and time again, our heroes triumph (although it's close on several occasions). They go back in time (twice!), to Plutark, back to Mars, to Antarctica, stop a nuclear reactor from melting down, fight an android version of Vinnie, stop a large-scale Plutarkian invasion, and destroy Limburger's skyscraper over fifty times before the last credits roll. Not a bad resume at all.