For those who remember MTV when it used to have
music, this is from that era that we miss. Back in the days of 120 Minutes, Amp, The Grind, Yo! MTV Raps, and Headbanger's Ball to name a few.
Back then they had a little show called
Liquid Television. It would come on late at night and featured... well, why don't I let Wikipedia put it into words.
"Liquid Television is an Emmy Award winning 1990s animation showcase that appeared on MTV. The first season of Liquid Television also aired on BBC Two in co-production with MTV. Ultimately, MTV commissioned three seasons of the show, which was produced by Colossal Pictures. It has served as the launching point for several high-profile original cartoons including: Beavis and Butt-head, Æon Flux, Cartoon Sushi, and The Head. The bulk of Liquid Television's material was created by independent animators and artists specially for the show, and some previously produced segments were compiled from festivals such as Spike and Mike's Sick and Twisted Festival of Animation. Mark Mothersbaugh composed the show's theme music. It was broadcast in New Zealand on TV3 and in Australia on SBS.
There were also a large number of animation pieces adapted from the work of Art Spiegelman's comic compilation, RAW. RAW featured underground cartoonists such as Mark Beyer, Richard Sala, and Peter Bagge. In particular, Dog-Boy by Charles Burns was based on the artist's series from RAW.
Selected segments from the series, including the first appearances of Æon Flux, were released on two VHS tapes in the late 1990s as The Best of Liquid Television parts one and two. These tapes are long out-of-print . A collection volume, titled Wet Shorts (The Best of Liquid Television), comprising the two VHS tapes, was available on DVD but this too is out-of-print."
So, anyway. This show was great, lots of odd and original animation(plenty of crap on there too but you take the good with the bad) and from this show came two of my favorite animated series of all time,
Æon Flux and
The Maxx.
The Maxx was nothing like I had seen before. Dark stories with characters that have flaws and mysteries. An art style almost perfectly mimicking the comic book by
Sam Keith. A soundtrack of dark jazz and so on.
These things had not really been exposed to me when I encountered them here, so I quickly fell in love with it all, the dramatic way a comic in motion can tell a story no movie or book can. The story with metaphors and creatures and worlds not our own.
If you fancy yourself any kind of animation, it would be hard to be disipointed by this lovely animated series.
Its a bit hard to find these days, it was only released on VHS and has been out of print for some time now. But if you go to
Amazon or
eBay, it can be found.
I was lucky enough to buy it when it was still in print, and keep it in a safe place. Seek it out, Watch it.
P.S. The comic is also very very good and has been released in 6 book collections. Most defiantly worth having.
The Maxx
Sunday, January 25, 2009 at 1:21AM 
