After all is said and done, when Fanger finally gets his paradise, his vacation time from Phoomy Man has expired.
Though there were only about ten strips made of this special, Fanger had ultimately upstaged PM, where his popularity brought about several series and spin-offs with him in it.
It's Fanger!
It's Fanger! turned out in being an extremely short-lived series during my Fourth Grade year (1978-79). The monkey wrench had been my gross oversight when Fanger had been cast in Phoomy Man!, he primarily served as an Alice Kramden sidekick. Therefore, without anyone actually receiving the wisecracks, snide remarks and insults, Fanger had become nothing more than an obnoxious, wolfesque Oscar the Grouch.
Ironically, the off-persona was later transferred for the MadFanger characterization of the Grouse Fanger, in a later Howl-O-Ween Special.
Fortunately, my Fourth Grade teacher had given me another chance on November 1978, for revamping Fanger's
In Toon History, 1978 was more or less known as the year of the OmniToons, or Toons who could metamorph into anything. Inspired by an old cartoon show, Tom Terrific, Fanger swiftly entered into his wacky, unpredictable, second persona, enhanced by an extraordinary, morphing trait.
Tom Terrific was a Terrytoons' show by Gene Deitch, who could transform into anything at will, thanks to a magic funnel-shaped thinking cap. However, Fanger's trait went a little closer to Beetlejuice. For whenever Fanger made a pun, or a figure of speech, he'd undergo a literal transformation of the verbal expression. He also utilized the odd ability for foiling bad guys in fantastic tales.
Regrettably, despite the attitude adjustment, his brand of entertainment went over most of the audience's head. So once again Fanger had entered the limbo dimension of obscurity, as the UltraComix publication had also permanently ended its run.
Nonetheless, this version of Fanger would later resurface as the Second Fanger's personality, metamorphing power and all.
Fanger's Chronoventures/Chronotales
In 1980, the Seventies were long gone now, and so my Elementary days, as I had already been in the Fifth Grade at the end of 1979. About that time, I was noticed by a new publication, The Fifth Grade Express, which was keen on my Toon exploits and creative writing. It was this point in time which Fanger had unofficially entered into his Third Incarnate, which was a split-difference from his two former selves.
Intradimensional travel was now taking over interplanetary travel. Immediately, people were trading their tales of Buck Rogers for shows like Voyagers! and reruns of The Time Tunnel. Nineteen-Eighty now heralded the year of Time Travel, and Fanger had quickly evolved into the Time Travel genre. But unlike previous formulas in the Fangarian Evolution, these series were now a combination of written and illustrated works.
Fanger's Chronoventures (January-March 1980)
In Chronoventures, Fanger took a page out of Mission: MAGIC. Rather than relying on a machine for transversing through the Fourth Dimension, Fanger himself was a Time Warp. Meaning he possessed the remarkable ability of going through Time, allowing him access into Earth's History. Due to strict guidelines, Fanger's adventures were primarily focused on a more historical--rather than pure entertainment--basis, where Fanger was supposed to meet up with famous people like Shakespeare and Leonardo Da Vinci, helping them out of unusual jams.
One strange concept I had given Fanger was this: he had a Time Limit upon how long he could remain with different Time Eras. Fanger had later given a plausible explanation behind this. He had claimed Time itself behaves like a Cosmic stream of living matter. Just as the Human body's equipped with expelling foreign particles from its system, Time performs the same act. Except for the fact Time is intradimensional, it takes awhile for it to precisely locate the intruding element within Reality. Once it does, Time simply transfers it back to a point where the intruder's no longer a threat to its existence. Meaning the time limit serves as a warning to how long one can stay within a different point in Time.
Despite the intrigue and fascination with the series, Chronoventures failed in receiving a long-run. Due to our competition, Porter Pals, using old strips from the ITV series, Timeslip, Fanger was forced into another avenue of Time Travel and upon a much more entertaining note.
Fanger's Chronotales (March-May 1980)
Chronotales had brought Fanger a new-type of transdimensional time machine called The Chronovator (later The Chronolift). As with The Doctor's TARDIS, the Chronovator possessed a bigger interior while its outside resembled that of a Victorian elevator. Many people have inquired why did I select an ordinary device in concealing its true identity.
While in-between series, I was freelancing as a reporter, when I had been given a story to go out into Houston, where an interesting exhibit was being held. The exhibit had dealt which the most unusual Victorian inventions which had never been used. Among one of them
, I had come across an elegant-looking elevator. What made this one different than most of its kind was the floor indicator. Instead of the normal clock-like faces or light-up horizontal displays, this one had possessed a glass case with a column-rotary indicator on it.The owner had claimed this particular elevator had been designed for buildings over ten stories tall. But when British architectural regulations had forbidden any structure to be at least three stories high, the invention was immediately scrapped. Thinking about this, I had decided to use this marvelous apparatus for the image of Fanger's time machine.
The Chronovator proved in being the most fascinating item in Chronotales, since not only did it serve as a means of transport, it also was Fanger's Temporal home. It was also controlled by a Droopy-like android, and contained every type of room imaginable. Taking this new invention into account, the time limit concept was thrown out, as we learned why Fanger traveled through Time in the first place.
While making a momentary pit stop in 1980-Galveston, Texas, Fanger had unwittingly acquired two Companions: Rick Starling (a rock star) and Sara Lang (a race car driver). Apparently, while participating upon a charity scavenger hunt in Galveston, both of them had mistaken the Chronovator for an antique elevator. When Fanger accidentally takes off with them on-board, he explains he's an undercover agent for a group called the ChronoPatrol (later the ChronoAgency). The ChronoPatrol basically focuses on one major task: protecting the sacred flow of Time, by preserving the sanctity of the Past, Present and Future of Earth and the Universe.
Unconventionally, Chronotales only had one story, being seven episodes long, charting Fanger, Sara and Rick's attempts of thwarting a cyberdroid from the 98th Century known as Anachronos. As the name implies, Anachronos' goal is to severely hammering Mankind's development, by altering key moments with Earth's Timeline.
Although Chronotales was a better series than its former, it suddenly came to an abrupt end. This time the fault did not lie within the series, but focused squarely with the school newspaper itself.
The Fifth Grade Express had overlooked a majorly controversial story, and had printed it without the righteous consent of the Editor-in-Chief. Regrettably, the result force the school board to suspend the publication indefinitely until 1982.
The Fangarian Spin-Offs: Robonic Fanger and Super Fanger
Although The Fifth Grade Express had been suspended, Fanger didn't actually vanish from the Toon scene has he had done before with It's Fanger! In fact, I had been so completely seduced by the temporal fame Fanger had brought in with his two series, I had started putting the character into every conceived spin-off I could think of. And out of the endless stream of Fangerized concepts, the most strangest ones I had ever conjured up were Robonic Fanger and Super Fanger.
Robonic Fanger
When George Lucas had produced his hit with Star Wars, then The Empire Strikes Back, he had never envisioned the robot rage he had spawned with his droid characters, R2D2 and C3PO. Most low-budget films (or B-Movies) started cashing in on this fad by creating worlds which were either dominated by robots, or had man and machine locked into fevered battle. Ironically, Robonic Fanger not only came from this, but also a page from Fanger's last series, Chronotales.
As for the character, Robonic Fanger was similar to Dynomutt, Dog Wonder, whereas RF could transform into any kind of mechanical apparatus, while also extending his infinitely-long, telescopic appendages, and sometimes malfunction unexpectedly whenever he got really nervous. The setting, on the other hand, came directly from Anachronos, when in an episode of Chronotales had revealed in the 98th Century, machines had literally ruled Earth. Extracting his intriguing concept, RF lived in an electro-world called Robotropolis (no relation to Robotnik's mechanized city from where he protects everyone from the vile Sonic the Hedgehog),Dr. Monotron and his diabolical Cyberforce. Notwithstanding the basic adventurous genre, the spin-off degenerated into a Tom & Jerry format, where RF's constantly hounded by the Cyberforce. While Dr. M usually wondered why he even constructed these droids in the first place. While this was the more memorable Fangarian spin-offs to appear, the next Fangerization was an extension from Fanger's previous series.
Super Fanger
I've always considered Super Fanger as the full-circle point of the Fangarian Evolution, because as with The Great Fangdini, SF began through a contest. Except this one was a legitimate one by a popular comics company, rather than a phony scam several years ago.
Anthropomorphs (Funny Animals) have always been around since the Twenties and Thirties. The Eighties had instantly revived this generation, where everything practically centered around talking, personified animals. As a result, this had brought about major competition with DC, especially since Marvel had started publishing Hanna-Barbera Comics, and they were searching for new superhero anthropomorphs.
Li Chan had recalled me doing the Super Casper series in Orange You Nuts? and wondered why we couldn't do
the same for Fanger. Besides him having supernatural abilities, Fanger was an enigma to work with, since we wondered how could we genuinely make him super. Li had recalled watching many sentai (live-action Japanese programs; think Power Rangers) shows and we had formulated the following premise, inspired a bit from Chronotales:In the year 3180, Anachronos plagues Future Earth with a fiendishly-new, biogenetic alien cyborg race called Cybernaughts. With the Cybernaughts, Anachronos intends on hampering mankind's developments, as well as launching an all-assault upon Earth's Timeline. Fearing the worst, the ChronoAgency calls upon Fanger to foil this new, impenetrable threat. But this time, they endow the mystical wolf with special TechnoBands, when placed together, transform him into the ultrabeing, Super Fanger.
As the aforemention exposition indicates, we didn't quite have Fanger fall into the typical superhero mode. Fanger had never become SF whenever the Cybernaughts came to threaten such places as MegaHouston and NeutroYork. Due to certain restrictions, such as the TBs only having a power effect for fifteen minutes, Fanger only transformed into SF when the Cybernaught in question would activate its MonstrMetamorph. Thus, whenever the Cybernaught would transform into a typical, giant monster, Fanger would become Super Fanger.
Taking this into account, many wondered why Li and I didn't call SF, Ultra Fanger instead. One of the reasons UltraComix had gotten pulled was, we had discovered (at the time) the adjective was copyrighted by Toho, Inc. (Godzilla and Gamera), which is why after the Silver Age of Comics, you never heard of a superhero using the word in his or her name (with possibly the exception of Ultra Boy in Legion of the Super Heroes, but DC also had a deal with them I believe.). Another reason was we didn't want SF becoming compeltely campy, and we had thought applying a Japanese concept to an Americanized concept appeared original.
However, the real innovation came by the fact Super Fanger's costume didn't opt for the standard red/blue colors. One thing which had consistently bothered us was superbeings were always attempting on using stealth when dealing with villain. Naturally, one knew this was next to impossible, since the hero wore bright, shiny colors which could blind anyone. Therefore, Li and I had elected on having SF wearing special dark goggles and a black costume (sporting his red F-symbol). Thus, Super Fanger came into existence.
Regrettably, we didn't win the contest, but the company did return the sketches and the preliminary storyline back to us. Even though most publishers rarely send back submissions, because they normally end up becoming their property, the editors felt SF was too good to be languishing somewhere in a morgue. Let alone, someone finding it and altering it into something ridiculously worse.
The problem was at the time, I had been doing other projects, so Super Fanger was actually the first Fanger spin-off which never had a strip or series made. Yet, Fanger had once made references to the character. And in FANGARIUS, the Fourth Fanger discovered a Japanese series called Suppa Fanga, which had a similar premise.
Afterwards, Fanger had once again entered a temporal slumber, until he got revived again in an unlikely place, originally being a Companion to a famous character from an existing series.
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