We had previously intended for this to be about the second season of the Disney+ animated series X-Men '97 as part of a continued exploration on animation nostalgia — what if it were simply a tool rather than a goal? — but as is sometimes the case, life had other ideas.

The iconic Tim Curry passed earlier this week, and we were gutted. What a legend! What an absolute professional, both in the animated space and elsewhere. But then, as if that wasn't enough, Peter Cullen left this mortal coil behind too. How could we possibly say nothing? Would we even be an animation newsletter if we did?

So, with apologies to X-Men '97, we have quickly pivoted to what is a more timely and meaningful celebration and tribute to some of the best to ever do it.

Both smashing and toxic

by Rollin Bishop

My earliest memory of Tim Curry, as best as I can remember, is probably Home Alone 2: Lost in New York. He plays a slimy hotel concierge with an extremely particular sort of pronunciation. But it's not my most lasting childhood memory of the late actor, who passed away earlier this week at the age of 80. That particular pedestal belongs in equal measure to Nickelodeon's The Wild Thornberrys and FernGully: The Last Rainforest.

If you're reading this, you're likely already aware that Curry was once upon a time a prolific voice actor for animation before his much-publicized stroke in 2012. In fact, '90s and early '00s cartoons are absolutely littered with his voice, frequently as some kind of villain. There's a good chance that, if you're of a certain age, scrolling through his IMDb will cause at least one instance of, "Wait, he was in that?"

But it's the villainous FernGully toxic pollution cloud(?) Hexxus, literally oozing with sensuality and dark charm, as well as the affable, bumbling Nigel Thornberry from The Wild Thornberrys that will forever live in my heart. The two are so clearly both undeniably Curry, despite the wide gap in each character's overall intent. A performance as both that's so utterly disarming and warm. For Hexxus, all the better to manipulate and then perhaps murder you, while Nigel might instead invite you in for a bit of tea while chatting incessantly and without decorum about how delicious capybara is.

There is a common perception that prolific actors will sometimes dip their toes into animation for easy paychecks without really bothering to put in the work. There are much worse offenders out there, but the modern reference point would be the Mario movies and, perhaps more specifically, Chris Pratt's work in them.

Curry's work, however, shows that a seasoned professional can also bring all of the weight and expertise of their abilities that have been honed elsewhere to bear. Even if the subject is the goofy naturalist documentarian father of a young girl that can speak with animals. Maybe especially if.

Anime's own Don LaFontaine

by Toussaint Egan

This Thursday, August 27th, Peter Cullen passed away. The Canadian voice actor, best known for his iconic performance as Optimus Prime of the Transformers multimedia franchise, was 85 years old. In a week of similar high-profile deaths, Cullen's was yet another bitter yet reminder of the mortality of those artists and performers whose work has touched the lives of so many others. A world without Peter Cullen is like, well, a world without Kevin Conroy. Unthinkable, and yet all too real and inevitable.

Amid the outpourings of condolences, obituaries, and remembrances yesterday, a common throughline began to emerge across my social media timeline. Apart from his breakthrough role as the leader of the Autobots, Cullen had a prolific career as an announcer for film trailers and television commercials, the most prominent of the latter being his work for the afternoon animation block Toonami. For a generation of fans, Cullen wasn't only the strong yet soft-spoken Optimus Prime, but effectively the Don LaFontaine of anime; conveying a sense of gravitas and importance to a medium too often at the time derided or ignored by mainstream media. If you watched anime in the late '90s or early 2000s, it was no doubt accompanied by Cullen's booming bass voice.

Of the dozens of promos that Cullen produced for Toonami between 1999 and 2008 (of which Aftermath has collected in its own dedicated remembrance of him), there's two in particular that stick out in my mind as particularly formative to me as a young anime fan. The first being "Advanced Robotics," the 2001 music video in which Cullen narrated the advent of a mechanized apocalypse set to visuals from The Big O, Gundam Wing, Dragon Ball Z: The World's Strongest, and more. The second was his narration for the extended promo of The Big O during its initial broadcast. Having come up as a fan of Batman: The Animated Series, the idea of an animated neo-noir mystery thriller with giant fighting robots naturally piqued my interest, but it was Cullen's booming pronouncement that "Good guys still wear black" that continues to ring in my mind to this day.

Rest easy, sir.