Knowledge Waits is a feature where I just share some bit of comic book history that interests me.

My friend Bill M. mentioned one aspect of this whole deal to me and it sent me down a big ol' rabbit hole. Thanks, Bill!

The mid 1990s were a fascinating period. The record industry was flush with cash and were still spending an insane amount of money to promote songs. For instance, one of the biggest hits of the year was TLC's "Waterfalls," and their label, Arista Records/BMG, got them a MILLION DOLLAR music video!

With all of that cash, even some surprising projects would have a lot of money to spend and one of those projects was Saturday Morning: Cartoons' Greatest Hits, a cover album consisting of alternate rock musicians doing their versions of classic cartoon theme songs (and other songs from cartoons). This album fit into another key aspect of the mid-1990s, nostalgia for the cartoons that twentysomethings grew up on and a sort of kitschy approach to that nostalgia.

MCA Records produced an hour-long promotional video that they sold in stores consisting of music videos for the songs on the album. The video somehow starred Drew Barrymore as a young woman hanging out with her friends watching music videos and playing with toys from their childhood.

It's amazing.

Jimmy Fallon's future wife (Barymore's future production partner), Nancy Juvonen, is one of Drew's stoner friends in the video.

MCA also cut a deal with Marvel to produce a one-shot comic book tying into the album. Ralph Sall, the producer of the album (and a record producer who had worked with most of the musicians on the album - he also wrote the songs for the awesome film, Hamlet 2), wrote the comic book with Marvel's Mike Lackey.

The art was done by a veritable Who's Who of awesome Marvel and independent artists of the era, like Chris Bachalo, Tim Sale, Bill Sienkwiewicz (he did the cover), Bob Fingerman, Rick Geary, Kieron Dwyer, Mike Avon Oeming, Klaus Janson, Mike Zeck, the list goes on and on, as each artist seems to have done one or two pages apiece.

The plot is that a man named John Smith comes to visit Ralph from the future, where "The Suits" have made the future terribly boring, with the Fun Quotient non-existent, so Ralph must get a bunch of alternate musicians to record an album of cartoon song covers to save the day! Ralph agrees to help...

And so they visit Liz Phair to get her to do the Banana Splits theme song...

and Matthew Sweet to do the Scooby Doo theme song...

and the Ramones to do the Spider-Man cartoon theme song...

But as you can see, the Suits have traveled to the past to try to stop them!

In the end, they succeed, but Ralph's memory has to be wiped and thus he has to believe that he came up with the album on his own...

It's really a cute comic book, honestly.

And the finished album is a lot of fun.

Here's the track listings:

Liz Phair With Material Issue "The Tra La La Song (One Banana, Two Banana) "

Sponge "Go Speed Racer Go "

Mary Lou Lord With Semisonic "Sugar Sugar "

Matthew Sweet "Scooby-Doo, Where Are You? "

Juliana Hatfield And Tanya Donelly "Josie And The Pussycats "

Collective Soul "The Bugaloos "

Butthole Surfers "Underdog"

Helmet "Gigantor "

Ramones" Spider-Man "

Reverend Horton Heat "Jonny Quest / Stop That Pigeon "

Frente! "Open Up Your Heart And Let The Sun Shine In"

Violent Femmes "Eep Opp Ork Ah-Ah (Means I Love You) "

Dig "Fat Albert Theme"

Face To Face "I'm Popeye The Sailor Man "

Tripping Daisy "Friends / Sigmund And The Seamonsters "

Toadies "Goolie Get-Together "

Sublime "Hong Kong Phooey"

The Murmurs "H. R. Pufnstuf "

Wax "Happy, Happy, Joy, Joy'

You should get a copy! Make that MCA marketing pay off!

If anyone has any interesting comic book related story that you'd like to see me feature in a future Knowledge Waits, feel free to drop me a line at brianc@cbr.com!