Sunday, June 13, 2010

Doctor Brad!

Way back in 2007, Adult Swim aired the live action sci-fi comedy "Saul of the Mole men." Once the story wrapped up, the series faded into quiet obscurity, but it remains one of my favorite television shows in recent memory. A huge amount of loving imagination went into Saul's ridiculous subterranean odyssey, and we got to see all manner of weird characters. My personal favorite? DOCTOR BRAD!




The only member of his (un-named) species ever shown, Brad was the all-purpose medical worker of the Mole city and could shrink down to enter the bodies of his patients. He was more or less a bit character, but had a lot of amusing moments throughout.


Here, we see Saul hooked up to Brad's version of a heart rate monitor, a parasitic critter the keen-eyed may recognize as a plush toy of the dumbo octopus from "Finding Nemo." As for the hot chick, she's really a molewoman born horribly mutated. See how adorable this show's sensibilities were?



Series creator Craig Lewis posted this concept sketch of Brad to the official Saul website back when the show was airing, but mentioned that Brad's final design was "Inspired" by the monsters from Japanese superhero series "such as" Spectreman. How inspired?



Meet "ZUNO" (brain) one of Spectreman's one-shot foes. I was geeky enough to notice the second Brad stepped into his first scene, and I've never even seen Spectreman.

Scream Queen

An episode of Cartoon Network's "Batman: The Brave and the Bold" featured an original supervillain working under Scarecrow: "Scream Queen!" They don't show a whole lot of her, but she has a very creative design concept:





Her hood closes and transforms into a huge mouth, her human face disappearing as she unleashes her sonic wail. Wish I'd thought of that.