I feel like every generation of kids grows up with a handful of fever dream shows. These cartoons are always incredibly off the wall and just weird, for better or for worse. And it's usually for worse, as their quirkiness often takes precedence over the actual quality of their content. They seem interesting and entertaining for a few fleeting moments as they settle in, but once you get past that they become pretty unpalatable. They're like the animated equivalent of a caramel dipped onion. However, once in a great while, someone actually bothers to dip an apple into the pot of caramel. And wouldn't you know, they come out with a treat like Courage the Cowardly Dog.
Courage is a creation of artist John R. Dilworth, a 1985 graduate of New York’s School of Visual Arts. Dilworth spent years working as an art director at an advertising firm while producing films in his free time. In 1991 he went on to found the animation company Stretch Films. Following that, he produced Smart Talk with Raisin. This trippy MTV short featured a sweet dog named Hamilton and his owners, the cruel Malcolm and supportive Raisin. One of Dilworth’s later passion projects, The Chicken From Outer Space, took inspiration from the trio in Smart Talks with Raisin and went on to win an Academy Award in 1996. Executives at Cartoon Network caught wind of this work and were thoroughly impressed by it; they asked Dilworth to create an entire cartoon series from it. And with that, Courage the Cowardly Dog was born.
Hamilton is hideous, but in an adorable kind of way.
Malcolm is very hateable, in a hateable kind of way.
The show’s premise is pretty simple. Muriel and Eustace Bagge live in the middle of a town named Nowhere. They also live in the literal middle of nowhere, as there are no other houses, businesses, or signs of life for miles around their home. Years ago, Muriel found an abandoned puppy in an alleyway. Taking note of his situation, she named him Courage. Since then, Courage has been the object of Muriel's affection, the source of Eustace's ire and jealousy, and their protector from all sorts of supernatural, cosmic, and just downright bizarre threats. And Courage charges into all of these dilemmas with plenty of…… screaming. And hyperventilating. And fainting. And wailing. And panicking. Actually, he approaches most of everyday life this way. Very understandable and relatable.
This image is an excellent summary of the trio's main dynamic.
The creatures in Courage range from headless chickens to deranged barbers to a sentient foot infection. Some are downright malicious and sadistic while others are just very determined to do what they need to do and willing to mow down anyone or anything that stands in their way. The writers also toss in a handful of sympathetic villains, harmless supporting characters, and even allies for Courage. Yet they still fit right in, as they are all presented with a shroud of mystery, skepticism, or peculiarity. They're also all viewed through the lens of Courage’s paranoia and wild imagination. For example, one episode takes place entirely at a restaurant and features no supernatural events, villains, nor monsters. The true events of the episode are completely mundane. However, Courage spends the episode thinking that someone is going to get killed and their body ground up to make burgers. The show features an absolutely massive cast of characters that, despite the scope and variety, feels cohesive thanks to a very consistent tone.
Ren is overrated. The award for best animated Chihuahua goes to Shirley the medium.
I could give you ten thousand guesses and none of them would come even remotely close to the actual context of this scene.
Courage is undeniably a horror show, but it's lacquered with a layer of bright colors and comedic elements to keep it from being too traumatizing to kids. Noticed that I said too traumatizing, because even in its natural state, it still scared the crap out of many of its audience members back in the day. There were more than a few nights that young me was nervous to go to bed after having watched a particular episode of Courage that day.
As I previously mentioned, the show has a relatively bright color palette that sort of contrasts with its themes. However, the palette still works. Yes, it’s bright, but it’s not too saturated; this prevents it from downright clashing with the spooky themes. Additionally, the artists made great choices with the hues: They're a bit gross and unnerving, like many of the characters in the show. There are so many yellow hues and yellow tinges as well which really contribute to a decrepit, unnatural vibe; just look at Muriel and Eustace’s outfits, the living room, the kitchen…. The amount of yellow is sickening. Sickeningly good, that is.
And then of course Courage is a purple-ish pink, which is a roughly complementary color for all these yellows. Also, he sometimes breaks the show's saturation trend, as in some lightings his fur color is quite saturated. These two qualities really drive home how he is the only character who takes an active stand against all the supernatural shenanigans that occur. Of course Muriel and Eustace don’t want said events to happen, nor do they purposefully contribute to them, but if it weren’t for Courage, they would have been maimed six ways to Sunday by the end of the first season. Also, um, sometimes they do end up unintentionally bringing their misfortunes upon themselves. Especially Eustace. And technically there is one occasion where he does one hundred percent purposefully get such elements involved.
Even as a certified crazy cat lady, Katz is still terrifying to me.
My favorite part about this particular drawing is how the artists made no attempt to actually connect all of the extra eyeballs to Courage's face.
Continuing the theme of grossness, that is where Courage draws a lot of its comedy from. Courage’s cowardice is a continual source of laughs, as his freakouts often feature him melting, his eyeballs falling out, and other physical deformations. The writers are also all too happy to have him get punched, kicked, stomped, electrocuted, fried, and otherwise beat up by the show’s various antagonists. The animators, meanwhile, are delighted to depict him with black eyes, missing teeth, smashed teeth, welts, bruises, and broken bones from these events.
In most kids’ cartoons, this amount of injury would push them into the realm of “excessively disgusting and/or cruel” that gets a distinctly negative reaction from most audiences. Think Spongebob episodes like “The Splinter”, “Stuck in the Wringer”, or “A Pal for Gary”. With it being a horror-lite cartoon, however, Courage’s boundary is set further out than most of its contemporaries’. I feel like its animators and writers were also more mindful of said border. There is only episode that I feel really goes too far and becomes flat-out mean spirited: “Balls of Revenge”. And a lot of the cruelty in that episode can be attributed to the show’s other punching bag: Eustace.
Nobody ripped his intestines out. He just screamed so hard that they came out on their own.
While Courage is a literal underdog, Eustace is a character who you love to see get his just desserts. He is perpetually fed up with Courage and the fact that, somehow, his wife loves a protective and loving dog more than her miserable, lazy, and ungrateful husband. His punishments and consequences often come at the end of episodes, wrapping up plotlines with Courage and Muriel safely snuggling each other as he is wallowing in misery over a situation that he chose to ignore for too long or that he brought upon himself.
This dichotomy creates a great comedic foil between him and Courage: Courage, while seeming, well, cowardly, ultimately goes through tons of mental and physical anguish to save his family. Eustace, meanwhile, will initially come off as unafraid of or ignorant towards threats, make no attempt to protect his family once such threats escalate, and then scream and cry when things blow up in his face.
Being a cartoon from the late 90s/early 00s also means that Courage's creators were working during the advent of CGI in cartoons. Looking back, this early CGI almost always aged poorly. And that wasn't for a lack of trying on artists' and animators' parts. It's just that the technology was new. Artists were learning the ropes and developing new techniques AS they produced cartoons. They didn't yet know how to push software to its limits and maximize the utility of its features.
However, what ultimately became a weakness for most cartoons has remained a strength for Courage. It's a horror show. The more uncanny and weird and off the models look, the better. If a 3D model looks out of place, great! Courage is all about weird things coming to places where they shouldn't be. It has so many great examples of this, but I think one of the best and most iconic examples is King Ramses. Amongst a refrigerator full of sour milks, Courage’s CGI has aged like fine wine.
"Retuuuurn the slaaaaaaab......."
So if you happen to be reading this article around the time of its publishing (October 2024), I present you with a recommendation for a great spooky show to watch. Courage the Cowardly Dog is weird. It's wacky. It's crude. It's scary (sometimes). And here is where many of these kinds of shows stop. They are collages of quirky moments that are loosely tied together with thin strings and sequences of filler. But that's not Courage. All of its otherworldly elements are skillfully, lovingly, and thoughtfully sculpted together in the visage of a purple-ish pink dog who desperately needs a high dose Prozac prescription.
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Courage the Cowardly Dog is available to stream on Max, Prime Video, Apple TV, and Fandango at Home. It is rated TV - Y7.
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