Nerding Day: The Mighty Hercules

After a long search, I believe I've done it; I've found the best cartoon. It's a stupid, horny, gay thirst trap from 1963 called The Mighty Hercules. Those people who are mad at Disney right now have no idea what they could be getting.

I don't watch many modern superhero cartoons, and now I know why. Heroes these days don't rush into battle with their entire ass out. It's a great battle strategy! If a man arrives from the sky to fight you, you're going to be pretty alarmed, but if that man flies in with his whole dick, balls, and ass flapping along in the breeze, you're done! That fight is already over. This man has exposed his butthole to so many birds. He is not afraid of you. This man is insane.

Please don't think the above VHS cover is an anomaly in the world of The Mighty Hercules. That's how Hercules always travels around in the show. He enters every episode ass out to save the day, and that's not even the sweatiest moment of the episode because every show begins with a theme song that specifically name checks our hero's beefy thighs.

You could insert the sound of heavy breathing between every single line of that theme song, and it would make perfect sense. The song captures the essence of the show spectacularly. You couldn't make it any hornier if you tried. The first episode opens with Hercules wrestling his best friend to try and win a special ring from his daddy!

For wrestling his best friend, Hercules wins a ring that will let him use his godlike powers on earth to become a hero of the people. His godlike powers seem to include strength and near invulnerability, BUT he doesn't have them if he isn't wearing the ring. You would think his one weakness would be that if you separate him from the ring, he's just a regular guy with a penchant for flashing people, but it's not. Hercules' kryptonite is that he is very, very dumb, like someone else is definitely tying his sandals for him because there's no way this big beefy himbo could do that on his own.

In one episode, a little boy satyr named Toot who hangs out with Hercules' sidekick Newton sometimes asks to play with the ring that imbues Hercules with his God-like power. It's a direct line to Zeus, king of the gods, and Hercules says, "I supposed it couldn't hurt if he held it in his hand." This is like saying, "Sure, you can see my gun, kid. Let me turn the safety off for you. See if you can fit the whole thing in your mouth. Toss it in the air and try to catch it, maybe? Go wild." He then lets the kid run off with it and is immediately attacked by a villain, of course! It's as if the excess of iron in his thighs has caused severe brain damage.

In another episode, Daedalus, Hercule's arch-nemesis, invites him to his lair and tells him to sit in a specific chair. "This chair, the one that looks kind of enchanted probably? This chair in the house of the Joker of my universe? Sure! I'll have a little seat-a-rooney-whoops, my memory was erased!" Hercules replies. Someone should be supervising Hercules! If Daedalus told Hercules to touch a hot stove, he would do it.

The only reason Hercules is able to defeat villains regularly is that every villain's main weapon, other than trickery, is an extremely fragile stick that doesn't work if broken, and they break all the time. There will be a powerful wand that can magically transform anyone into a monster, and the only thing that can defeat it is any amount of force, whether that be applied pressure or simply dropping it. Hercules once defeated Wilhelmina The Sea Witch by throwing an apple at her wand. It devastated her.

But don't worry, ladies, Wilhelmina is not the only female representation in The Mighty Hercules. There is a love interest of sorts-- Helena. Some online outlets refer to her as Hercules' girlfriend, but he is canonically not that into her for some reason? Several episodes revolve around the gorgeous Helena trying desperately to get Hercules' attention. (I feel you girl, we’ve all been there).

In one episode, she pretends to be drowning so Hercules will come to save her, and he's pissed when he finds out he flew all the way down from Olympus, showing his b-hole to so many birds, just for a wet and eager beautiful woman? Or, as he calls it, NO REASON. Then Helena accidentally wanders into the forbidden forest and is attacked by a monster. Hercules thinks she's faking it and refuses to rescue her at first because he's so annoyed.

In another episode, Wilhelmina tricks Helena into getting Hercules to drink what she thinks is a love potion but is actually a mind control potion. Then Wilhelmina tells the bottomless man to jump into a bottomless pit, forgetting that he can fly, so he just flies out of the pit when the potion

wears off. It's not the least anti-climactic episode of the show.

I kind of get why Hercules doesn't like Helena. She causes a lot of trouble for him. Even if you ignore the fact she's constantly getting kidnapped by his enemies, when she's trying to help him, she still seems to find some stupid way to get into trouble. She'll see the most precariously balanced rock on a cliff and decide it's the perfect place to stand and look out for Hercules' new nemesis, the rockslide monster.

One time Hercules left her alone with a box and said, "Don't open this box while I'm gone," and she immediately opened it. You might think it was a test of her loyalty or something, and you would be so wrong because it had an evil genie inside. To be fair, Hercules could have said, "don't open this box; it's where I keep my spare evil genie," and she might not have…no, she probably still would have opened it.

As you can see from the screenshots I've chosen, a big part of The Mighty Hercules was the intricate background detail. Most of the show takes place in either a forest or a light blue void. If they go to the trouble of drawing a background, they will reuse it multiple times. The bottomless pit Hercules was forced to jump down was in another episode as a regular well that his sword was thrown into.

Almost every episode ends with the same animation of Hercules yelling "Ooooolympiaaaa" and shooting into the sky to return to Mount Olympus. The only variation is that sometimes he carries the villain away with him if there was no time to wrap up that part of the show.

This resolution seems to happen the most with Wilhelmina because, as we all know, if a woman is being annoying, the solution is to simply pick her up and move her to another area. There is no criminal justice system in The Mighty Hercules. It's the only universe where, when trouble arises, you hope to look around and find a pantless man coming to your aid. Then you're safe until the villain manages to journey back to their starting point, and the process begins all over again.

So remember, if you're ever in trouble, look to the sky, then look away politely until The Mighty Hercules lands. Then make sure he's not looking up too, because if it rains, he will drown. Ooooolympiaaaaa!

You can follow Lydia on Twitter @YouKnowLydia

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