Project Type: Top Five

We’ve covered the top ancient tabletop games and now we’ve reached tabletop games’ modern era. The 1930s may not have introduced a lot of tabletop games, but the decade did see some tabletop game giants.

Let’s set some ground rules before we get started.

1: Cultural relevance plays as much of a factor as overall quality. A game might make the list that doesn’t hold up to others of its type, but you can’t escape or ignore the game.

2: Only one game from a franchise makes the list. We’ll save our Fifty Shades of Monopoly for another list.

3: Longevity plays a role, too. A game doesn’t have to fly off the shelves today, but it had to have some widespread appeal for a decent time period.

5) Wahoo (1930)
Originating in the Appalachian hills, Wahoo took the cross and circle game mechanics of Pachisi and converted the playing pieces to marbles. While Parker Brothers sold a variant of Wahoo, marketing it for decades as Aggravation, Wahoo maintains a cult following as many people create custom-made boards.

Many of these home-made boards feature a Native-American theme. I don’t know if this is an attempt to give the game American roots, a play on the word Wahoo’s origins, a rebranding of an Indian board game to an American Indian theme, or a mixture of all three. Whatever the reason for this theme Wahoo earns a place on this list as it sees plenty of play.

4) Battleship (Early 1930s)
We had a sneaky addition to the games prior to the 1930s and now we get another sneaky inclusion to this list. Battleship started as a pencil and paper guessing game in the 1930s, but Milton Bradley – they were culprits for The Game of Life’s shifty inclusion in the last list – released the plastic board game we know today in 1967.

Still, the core game mechanics didn’t change much between the 1930s and 1967. Folks have been sinking battleships and referencing the game in movies and TV ever since. Battleship has seen its share of video games, spinoffs, and even its own sci-fi movie in 2012 starring Rihanna.

3) Sorry! (1934)
Sorry! is another board game based on the ancient Indian cross and circle game of Pachisi. But unlike Wahoo – which also made this list – Sorry! trades the roll mechanic for a deck of cards.

The most significant addition to the original Pachisi gameplay is the ability to move backwards on the board. This allows players to move from their starting position and move backwards toward their safe area.

But I have to admit that this one’s a possible sneaky add to this list. The earliest additions of the game Sorry! can be traced back to England in 1929. The product first moved to Canada in 1933, and then Parker Brothers bought the rights, mass-marketing the product to the United States in 1934.

Still, there isn’t much difference between the two dates, and Sorry! gained its popularity in the 30s, a popularity that has continued to this day as Sorry! has seen several incarnations and is one of the bestselling tabletop games of all time.

2) Scrabble (1938)
What’s in a name? Alfred Mosher Butts based Scrabble on a game he created earlier in the 1930s Lexiko. Lexiko didn’t sell well, but Scrabble (originally released in 1938) has dominated all word-based games. On a different note, I wonder if Alfred had the nickname “Big Al,” that way he’d be Big Al Butts.

Anyway, Scrabble – like Lexiko – wasn’t an instant success. It took James Brunot purchasing a copy and then modifying the rules before a board game company would even look at the game. And still no board game company – including the two giants Milton Bradley and Parker Brothers – wanted anything to do with the game. Brunot had to produce the game by himself for years.

Fourteen years after its initial release, Scrabble hit the big time when Jack Straus, the president of Macy’s, played the game on vacation. Straus placed a huge order of the game in early 1952, and Brunot couldn’t meet the production demand.

Brunot had to sell the manufacturing rights to Selchow and Righter – another one of the manufacturers who originally passed on the game – to keep up with the production and to say “I told you so” and “Neener-neener-neener, you should’ve bought my game.”

The rest is history. Numerous game shows, video games, and cultural references have kept Scrabble at the forefront of the American lexicon.

1) Monopoly (1933)
I’m sure most of you saw this one coming. How can we possibly have a list of the best tabletop games of the 1930s and not include the juggernaut that is Monopoly?

Monopoly is based on The Landlord’s Game by Elizabeth (Lizzie) J. Magie Phillips. She self-published her game as a means to illustrate the negative aspects of concentrating land in private monopolies. Her game didn’t sell well, but that wasn’t the point. She wanted folks to see the dangers of land grabbing and showcase its consequences. Though the game has changed immensely, you can see Phillips’ original goal through people going bankrupt and that there can only be one winner.

Getting back to Monopoly as we know it today, Charles Darrow gets credit for creating the game, even though the game’s concepts take more than a little bit from The Landlord’s Game, and players in the Midwest and East Coast during the 1930s and 1940s contributed to the game’s design and evolution. You could say it was a collaborative effort.

Today, Monopoly is everywhere. It doesn’t matter if you’re looking for an easy merchandise tie-in, playing the McDonald’s game or a prisoner of war during World War II using the game box to hide maps, compasses, and real money. You can’t escape the pull of the ever present Monopoly. It deserves its place atop our list.

Did we get the list right? Let us know which games you’d include in this Top Five or suggest ideas for new Top Fives.

Check out the other lists from this series:

Top 5 Games prior to the 1930s
Top 5 Games from the 1940s-50s
Top 5 Games from the early 1960s
Top 5 Games from the late 1960s
Top 5 Games from the early 1970s
Top 5 Games from the late 1970s
Top 5 Games from 1980-1981
Top 5 Games from 1982-1983
Top 5 Games from 1984-1985
Top 5 Games from 1986-1987
Top 5 Games from 1988-1989
Top 5 Games from 1990-1991

Cartoons have given us some of the best portrayals of super heroes. Until recently, the only way to get a good look at a guy or gal with super speed was to animate them. There are so many animated TV shows based on comic books, but which one’s the best?

JK Geekly will give you the skinny on these shows in a bit, but let’s cover some ground rules.

1: As with our best live-action TV shows based on comics, cultural relevance plays a role as does overall quality.

2: Some of these shows’ animation doesn’t stack up to even its contemporaries, but they’re outstanding just the same.

3: We’ll have to stick with one show from a franchise because we wouldn’t want a list of nothing but Batman and Spider-man.

5) Teen Titans (2003-2006)
Be honest. When you read Teen Titans, you sang the theme song.

This fusion of Japanese anime and western comics exploded on the scene in 2003 with its light hearted style and self-referential humor. But not every episode was zany. An Easter Egg on the season 3 DVD revealed that the Japanese version to the theme song meant that the following episode would be silly, while the English version to the theme song meant the show would be serious.

And if you caught a serious episode, you had the chance of meeting Deathstroke. Even though he’s the main foil in the first two seasons of Arrow, Deathstroke got his start in the Teen Titans comic book. The creators wanted to see how Robin would react to an even darker Batman—one who would kill. Teen Titans might not have reached that depth, but it isn’t all fluff and you see some great characters – like Raven, Cyborg, and Beast Boy from The Doom Patrol – who don’t always get the credit they deserve.

You know that a show’s popular when it gets rebooted. Teen Titans got its reboot a few years after the original ended with a straight-up comedy version of the show Teen Titans Go!

4) Spider-man (1994-1998)
You might think that the Spider-man cartoon of the nineties is a strange addition to this list, but it edges out the classic sixties and eighties versions because of its importance as Marvel Studios first and only cartoon production.

The animation wasn’t the best, and Spider-man suffered from heavy censorship. Spidey couldn’t even through a punch. But no other Spider-man cartoon has spanned the full spectrum of the character like this series, and since it was Marvel Studios first production attempt, the studio used it as a proving ground.

Spider-man had crossovers with all other Marvel properties that had cartoons at the time – The X-Men, The Hulk, Iron Man, and Fantastic Four – and the Marvel Studio gained first-hand knowledge on how to develop several characters, leading to the writing and creative juices behind the Avengers movies.

3) X-Men (1992-1997)
Like the Spider-man series before it on this list, X-Men didn’t have the best animation even for its day, but that didn’t matter.

If you caught the interview between past X-Men creators on a Pizza Hut VHS, you’d find out why Stan Lee thought X-Men was so unique. “You had youngsters, oldsters, men, women, black, and white (on the same team).” The characters drove this series, and you couldn’t have a show based on a comic steeped in tolerance without having a diverse group of characters. The X-Men had this diversity.

In fact, the first episode of X-Men gave significant air time to three X-Women: Jubilee, Storm, and Rogue. That’s odd due to Wolverine’s status as Marvel’s most popular character at the time. But the characters were so rich that no one cared.

X-Men broke a lot of rules. They killed off a character in the first episode – well, it looked like they killed off a character – and this shocked parents enough that it led to the heavy censorship of the nineties Spider-man.

X-Men didn’t shy away from the comic’s epic tales either. Days of Future Past and the Phoenix Saga made appearances. It was X-Men’s willingness to commit to the source material that has led to familiar tales on both the small and big screens.

2) Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (1987-1996)
Sure, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (also known as TMNT) was a little known Eastman comic before it became a cartoon, but the cartoon brought relevance to the comic.

All the other entries on this list had a successful comic to its name before it hit the screen. These totally tubular teen turtles are only famous because of their Saturday morning cartoon that became so popular, it moved more plastic than an eighties cosmetic surgeon.

Seriously, if you had one of the turtles (action figures), you had to have the other three plus Casey Jones, April O’Neal, Shredder, and a few Foot Soldiers. Unless you played like my neighborhood and you had a B.Y.O.F.S. (bring your own Foot Soldier) policy.

This show differed from its comic in several ways. In the comic, the turtles didn’t have colorful headbands to tell them apart, they were foul mouthed, and while they were fond of pizza, the pizzas didn’t have vibrant toppings like chocolate ice cream and anchovies.

The ensuing live action movie may have pulled a lot more from the original source material, but the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles cartoon of the eighties and nineties makes this list as most people hear “He’s a radical rat,” “Turtle power,” and “Cowabunga!” whenever they think of TMNT.

1) Batman: The Animated Series (1992-1995)
Was there any doubt? Batman: TAS tops our list because of its beautiful visuals, on-point voice acting, and superb writing.

It doesn’t matter that Christian Bale and Ben Affleck have worn or will wear the suit. Kevin Conroy is Batman to generations of fans. Mark Hamill was finally able to shed his Luke Skywalker clothes only to put on Joker garb, and the character Harley Quinn (who got her start in Batman: TAS) became a constant fixture in DC Comics long after the show ended.

Batman: TAS also inspired a Superman: The Animated Series, built interest for the Justice League series (which Conroy reprised his role as Batman), and even had a cartoon that jumped the storyline decades into the future with Batman Beyond. Conroy played Bruce Wayne yet again in Batman Beyond, and we considered that show – since it’s highly underrated – for inclusion on this list, but according to rule three, we can only have one show from a franchise. So, we had to stick with the original.

And when you think of Batman: TAS’s opening sequence, the word that comes to mind is original. That opening, featuring Danny Elfman’s music from Tim Burton’s Batman, marked the first time that any TV show or movie began without the title on the screen. You just see Batman in silhouette atop a skyscraper. Lightning flashes and you see full frontal Batman for a second, and then he’s back in the shadows. The perfect beginning to a perfect Batman.

Did we get the list right? Let us know which shows you’d include in this Top Five or suggest ideas for new Top Fives.

We all love to see our favorite super heroes – and other comic book characters – don spandex and burst on our small screens in weekly installments. Regardless of whether you share my spandex fetish or not, without TV we’d have to wait years between a super hero’s exploits, so it’s a joy to see so many shows based on popular comic books today. But which live-action TV shows based on comics are the best of all time?

JK Geekly will break down these shows in a bit, but we’ll set a few ground rules first.

1: Cultural relevance plays as much of a factor as overall quality. This could mean that the show inspired another show, directly led to another show or has even been parodied.

2: Some of these shows haven’t aged well, so the quality of the show’s effects will be graded on a scale.

3: Only one show from a franchise makes the list. Sorry, Superman. Lois and Clark, The Adventures of Superman, and Smallville can’t all make the cut.

4: Longevity plays a large role, too. A show doesn’t necessarily have to last a long time, but a series with only one season doesn’t cut the mustard.

5) The Walking Dead (2010-Present)
Who doesn’t like a good zombie apocalypse? Viewers of the AMC phenomenon sure do. When this show first aired, fans couldn’t get enough of the deep characters and the moral dilemmas they faced while trying to survive.

Despite not having many likeable characters – there was strong support for Rick’s wife Lori to die – this ragtag group struck a chord with viewers, and it remains a ratings giant that should continue for the foreseeable future. It will accomplish this feat, even though anachronisms abound:

a) How could a new model Kia exist in a world that stopped producing them ten years ago?
b) How many people died from zombie attacks while keeping every lawn manicured?
c) It’s nice to see that women still shave their arm pits, even though they don’t know where they’re getting their next meal.
d) Don’t get me started with the physics behind a helicopter landing on the roof of a building and there’s no strain on the roof, but you add 100 pounds of zombie and TIMBER.

But who cares about reality? The Walking Dead does a nice job of capturing the tenor of the Image comic on the small screen and deserves a spot on our list. It also spawned a talk show, The Talking Dead that airs afterward and raises awareness of its host Chris Hardwick (who also hosts Comedy Central’s @midnight). And that’s a great thing.

4) Arrow (2012-Present)
Arrow tells two stories at once. One is set in the present while the other ventures into the titular Ollie’s past. The two storylines converge in satisfying ways – for the most part – and ask questions about what it means to be human and a hero.

While these morality tales can be heavy-headed or preachy, they work for a comic book character that dispensed his philosophies to anyone who’d listen. Let’s face it. Green Arrow/Green Lantern got preachy at times, but it was one of the best comics of the silver age, and Arrow captures that magic.

The sledding hasn’t always been smooth. It took Arrow mid-way through its first season to find the right balance between the flashback story and the one told in real-time, and the third season has had some hiccups, too. But Arrow is the harbinger of a new and improved DC Comics TV Universe.

Despite being the most junior member on this list, Arrow has already had a spin-off show The Flash, and introduced cast members of the upcoming Suicide Squad movie. That’s not bad, considering that most comic fans viewed Green Arrow as a tertiary character.

3) The Incredible Hulk (1978-1982)
The Incredible Hulk of the seventies, eighties, and nineties was the only successful live-action Marvel hero TV show or movie during its time. That’s odd to say when you consider that the two Hulk films of the new millennium tanked, and we’ve had three Hulks in nine years since. But Bill Bixby and Lou Ferrigno teamed up to be David Banner/The Hulk for the TV show, and then reprised their roles for multiple made-for-TV movies that stretched into the early nineties.

The effects were cheesy to downright horrific – Ferrigno’s makeup in particular was ghastly the first few episodes – but The Incredible Hulk absolutely nailed the characters like no other show on this list. When the theme song is “The Lonely Man,” you know you’re dealing with an isolated character, and the heart-wrenching music matched Banner’s feeble attempts at human contact. You felt his pain as the new-age Jekyll and Hyde.

This show has been parodied many times, and the movies of the 2000s borrowed somewhat from it. Banner’s father from the 2003 Hulk movie was named David as a tip of the hat to Bixby’s character, but the second movie made a stronger attempt to capture the tenor of the TV series. Unfortunately, neither film could ground the character like Bixby.

The Incredible Hulk gets our nod as the third best live-action TV show based on comics because of its acting performances and no other show on this list can hold a candle to its guest stars. Both Stan Lee and Jack Kirby (co-creators of most of the Marvel universe) made appearances.

2) Smallville (2001-2011)
When you ask the Superman of a generation Christopher Reeve to green light your Superman project, you stand a good chance of making the Man of Steel for a younger generation. Smallville did and in turn handled the Superman mythos with style and grace.

Smallville gave the then WB (CW today) its greatest debut for a series at 8.4 million viewers. It chronicled a young Clark Kent on his journey of becoming Superman and showed him struggle between personal desire and obligation. Something few live-action Superman stories have done. In fact, the character was so well-grounded; you’d believe a man could fly. Just not in this show. Smallville had a strict “No tights, no flight” policy.

But even though it didn’t show Superman flying about, Smallville weaved elements of the greater DC Comics Universe into its storylines, providing the blueprint for shows that came after it like The Flash and Arrow. And speaking of Arrow, it should come as no surprise that the CW chose the Green Arrow as their first main character for rebuilding the DC Comics TV Universe. Oliver Queen was in Smallville.

Smallville has garnered countless awards (including Emmys), but it almost didn’t happen. When the series was first pitched to the WB, the creators wanted to show what happened to Bruce Wayne after his parents were murdered. The WB thought that was a terrible idea and chose Smallville over Gotham.

1) Batman (1966-1968)
Okay. This one’s graded on a sliding scale in terms of its special effects, make-up, and writing. The Batman TV show of the sixties was a product of its time. It didn’t even have that long of a lifespan, but it “biffed,” “bammed,” and “boomed” its way into viewers hearts at the same bat-time, same bat-channel.

Batman’s greatest charm is Adam West’s delivery. Halfway between earnest and sardonic, West’s portrayal of the Caped Crusader remains an E. Nigma wrapped up in a Riddler, and West has used this delivery to great effect in other shows: Family Guy, and The Boondocks to name a couple.

Every generation takes something different from Batman. You may suffer from nostalgia. The show can be considered surrealist pop art. It’s been accused of being art by means of camp. Or you could think of West as one sarcastic SOB and love it when he Batusis. The creators of Bob’s Burgers loved Batman’s puns so much that they use similar tortured puns for the show’s burger of the day.

It may sound like Batman hasn’t had that much of an impact on other comic-based TV shows, but there isn’t a live-action TV show or movie based on a comic book that doesn’t use the Batman scale to determine whether or not an idea is too silly. Too bad they went the other way with the Batman and Robin movie.

And Batman has affected change in comics. When the producer of Batman saw the comic that would inspire him to make the series, the issue in question was eight or nine year old and had The Riddler on the cover. That comic just happened to be the last appearance of The Riddler at the time before Batman reintroduced The Riddler as a major part of the Dark Knight’s Rogues Gallery.

Did we get the list right? Let us know which shows you’d include in this Top Five or suggest ideas for new Top Fives.