Some of us were talking about our favorite comics over on Facebook the other day, thanks to my friend and Fellow Word Whore blogger James A. Moore, and although “Spartakus” was an animated series, not a comic book, the show came to my mind. Did you ever see it?

“Ever since the time of the Great Cataclysm, the Arkadians have lived deep in the center of the Earth. They believed they were the only survivors of this great devastation. Their civilization thrived under the power of their sun, the Tehra…until it began to fail. In desperation, the children of Arkadia broke the law and entered the forbidden Archives, searching for a solution. What they discovered gave them hope. Anxiously, they used their special powers and created a messenger to the people above. They named her Arkana…”

OMG we used to LOVE this animated series. One local channel showed it once a week at the terrible hour of 5:30 AM (this was before DVR, folks) and we would watch it, try to remember to tape it…at first we had less than no idea what we’d wandered into. It’s a French animated series, created by Nina Wolmark and as we came in at the middle (somewhere anyway) of the 52 episodes and some of the episodes made next to no sense – there’s one where the Pirates of the Seas sing their interminable theme song twice,  I kid you not! But we fell in love with the Spartakus of the title, who apparently was an escaped gladiator, and the woman Arkana…the two children from our world, Matt and Rebecca (I’m not sure we ever did figure out how they came to be involved)…the ship Tehrig, which seemed to be sort of mechanical being…the “Triggies” robots….and Bic and Bac, who were a pair of happy little animals with their own song, vaguely anteaterish…

Being a writer, I probably filled in a lot of unexplained plot twists and turns for myself, especially in the romantic aspects…

SPOILER: all the journeying between worlds or levels eventually did end and the mysteries were resolved and there was a Happily Even After for the people who created Arcana and of course for her and the dashing, capable Spartakus…Wikipedia says as recently as 2010 there were plans to make a live action version of the film but that the effort fell apart over rights issues. Bummer! I’d love to watch it again, with the ability to fast forward through the Pirates (sorry, guys, but your theme song was bad enough heard once in an episode LOL.  You can find them singing in all their glory on youtube if you feel the need to see/hear it). I do realize a lot of the material is out there on youtube but I’d like a nice boxed set, you know? Well, I can dream….

It’s even better in French!