MiB the Series, *pic heavy*

[Monster-Man-08]

I'm sure there's a "non-anime cartoon monster" thread, but the MiB cartoon has such a wide array of nifty aliens it's better of with it's own thread. Since there are so many (even just counting the ones I found interesting) I'm going to cover them over several separate posts instead of just one giant one.
First off, the intro:

















A whole bevy of aliens flash by in a matter of seconds, including Mikey and the early, animatronic version of Edgar the Bug.
Season 4 replaces a few of them with Frank the Pug and the Worms:


Still in the intro, this alien line-up:

and this monstrous alien that confronts J and K:

Apart from Frank and the Worms, few of these aliens actually appear in any of the actual episodes, much less play a major part.

[ScutigeraColeoptrata]

I never saw much of this series, but what I saw I liked; in terms of story it was far more sophisticated than the films, and the alien designs were just gorgeous.

Gotta love the criminal light bulb.

[xolta]

The mib cartoon did have a whole bunch of cool designs. The guy behind extreme ghost buster and the 90's godzilla cartoon designed the aliens if I am right.

[Cheezbob325]

Am I the only one who noticed that Frank's ID contains "9U6." 9U6 = PUG

[scythemantis]

I always meant to review some of the aliens from this. The writing was amazing for the first season or two....eventually it got stupid, and they changed artists. The aliens got noticeably more boring.

[Monster-Man-08]

Yeah, quality definitely went down as the show continued. Lost a lot of the semi-serious tone, and the actual stories were pretty generic. Season 1 had K reconnect with his dad only to find he had to sever all ties with him again, while Season 4 had Worms as gladiators in ancient alien Rome.

Somethings I forgot to mention: All episode titles start with "The" and end with "Syndrome"(i.e. "The I Married an Alien Syndrome"). Only Season 1 is going to have clear screen caps.


Today, I'm covering Edgar's kin the Bugs, many of which are voiced by Vincent D'Onofrio. Not including the intro, "The Take No Prisoners Syndrome" gives us our first, Geen:


Despite being a ravenous convict, he helpfully corrects J on how to properly fire a certain alien weapon.

In "The Big Bad Bug Syndrome", the Bug Queen puts a hit on the MiB agent who killed Edgar, and three completely different-looking bugs attempt to take that offer. The reward, incidentally, is royal jelly.
Edwin (Edgar makes an appearance in a flashback using the same appearance):

Dung:


Moe:

Moe and Dung team up to kill Edwin, which is implied to cause a civil war among the Bugs.

In "The Mine, Mine, Mine Syndrome", the Bug Queen comes to Earth; not for revenge, but to establish a new colony. The Queen herself avoids the typical "slug for a butt" design and instead opts for a more grape-like method of storing eggs on her person:


All the eggs hatch into the same type of little bug:

The Queen has 2 unnamed attendants, one red and one green:






The Bugs make their final appearance in "The "J" is for James Syndrome", with yet more designs and apparent caste system. This one technically isn't a "real" bug, but instead appears in J's nightmares. Interestingly, 3 people in shadows fuse together to form it.

The first proper Bug we see is this one, called Drone (though I'm not sure if that's it's name or merely it's class).


Later we see bugs similar to Edwin and Geen. These are dubbed "Guardians," which may imply the earlier named Bugs were of that caste, too.

Finally, these portly insects, who are evidently chefs or perhaps just servants.

[dodoman1]

lol Ed and Geen

[The Leader]

*rimshot*

[scythemantis]

Dung was my favorite design, possibly one of my favorites in the show; you never see an alien arthropod with a goofy duck-billed puppy face. He had a dopey voice to match.

The squat, green bug serving the queen was another favorite.

Also, whereas other bugs throughout the series were accompanied by cockroaches once they arrived on Earth, I remember the bug queen being surrounded with large silverfish. You don't see silverfish animated too often.

[Monster-Man-08]

One of MiB's major villains is, ironically enough, one of it's founding members, Alpha. Alpha went corrupt upon finding the "Cosmic Integrator," a forbidden device used to fuse things together, and immediately saw that he could use it to make himself far more powerful by grafting alien parts onto his person.

In his first appearance ("The Alpha Syndrome"), Alpha attempts to steal a Sintillian's heart (they normally have two). The heart is nigh-immortal, and appears to have a will of it's own.

The Sintillian itself:

Alpha fails to capture either heart and is caught in an explosion, seemingly killing him.

Alpha's next appearance is technically "The Quick Clone Syndrome", though chronologically it makes more sense for it to be "The Heads You Lose Syndrome", as we'll see in a minute.
In the "The Heads You Lose Syndrome", Alpha is in need of 'replacement parts.'

At first he hires Jeebs to literally take limbs off unsuspecting aliens, but then finds out about a Symbiote species that has regenerative properties. This plan backfires as the Symbiote heals all the grafted alien parts, too.

Needless to say, Alpha has to go hunting for new alien body parts himself.

Sometime before "The Quick Clone Syndrome", Alpha cocoons himself in the sewers, presumably to undergo some kind of caterpillar-like metamorphosis.


The Alpha that emerges is quite bizarre:

He retains this body for the next couple of episodes he appears in, and occasionally exhibits a few strange features.
Within the folds of his back (or perhaps a cloak) is a curious second head:

He is able to spawn at least one mini-clone-thing:

And, while out in open space, grows a gas-mask of sorts and a pair of antennae to "speak" telepathically:


Alpha eventually falls into the ocean near Antarctica and suffers severe frostbite and once again goes off to claim more replacement parts. This time he takes them from several alien convicts in a small prison-ship that happens to be traveling near Earth as well as one very unfortunate ice fisherman.

Agent J causes this new body to essentially self-destruct, which reveals that Alpha's original human body was still relatively intact at it's core though severely weakened. MiB locks up Alpha while keeping him on all sorts of life-support systems.

As one would expect, Alpha eventually escapes (using nothing but parts from an electronic chess game) and fashions himself a new body, but this time he uses machinery (having noted how much alien parts have failed him and how machines had kept him alive while incarcerated).



Alpha is finally killed in this form thanks to a missile that would have destroyed the Earth.

[Cosbydaf]

Saw the first and last episode because of this thread. Alpha is a cool villain.

I don't understand Agent X though, particularly why he won't take some kind of disguise when seemingly every other alien can. He comes off like an idiot because of it.

EDIT: Ah, nevermind. Apparently he does take a human disguise sometimes but he doesn't in the last episode for...some reason.

[scythemantis]

You're reminding me how long ago I had planned to start doing articles on shows like these.

Like.....

The day I created bogleech.



I'd still want the very best quality shots though and downloading things/making screengrabs only really got easy in the past couple years.

[Monster-Man-08]

Evidently only Season 1 got a DVD release and all the other Season episodes I've seen on youtube come from the same source, so I'm not too sure if we'll ever see clearer shots.

[Monster-Man-08]

The first episode's plot revolves around the Skraaldians, who've put a hit on J for killing one of their own. In their natural form, Skraaldians are rather dopey-looking slugs.


Normally they wear armored, seemingly organic suits:

In the episode, though, they generally appear in human guise, and make spectacular entrances:

Their ship has an organic feel to it, too.

The worst offense to a Skraaldian is showing them your mucus. They turn you into soup as punishment.

-----

"The Inanimate Syndrome" pays homage to Who Goes There? and John Carpenter's film adaptation. The alien here only imitates inanimate objects (and has difficulty with words and numbers), but this poor sap directly quotes the novella's title:

And this is a rather obvious homage to one of the film alien's best known forms (the creature here is disguised as a mannequin head; the tarantula legs don't seem to match up with anything):

One of the more interesting forms the Inanimate takes is a huge section of the ventilation system:

The Inanimate in it's natural state:

[Monster-Man-08]

Buzzard is a bounty hunter that appears in a few episodes in Season 1. He first claims to be "Treblor", a cop for the Zombarian Retrieval Department searching for a ravenous criminal called Z-Ron, a statement that isn't exactly false. He later is hired to hunt down the same Symbiote Alpha would later attempt to capture.
Buzzard often wears a heavy cloak and breathing apparatus that slightly distorts his voice:


Buzzard's true form is this 'backward-legged' alien:


The floating robotic orb in the second pic is piloted by the little gray alien (Buzzard's employer) in the third (the second, cartoonish head belongs to the Symbiote, Troy):


Z-Ron, the alien "Treblor" was looking for at first, looks deceptively cute (well, cute for this series):

Though actually is a ravenous criminal: