Why it’s embarrassing:
Um, he’s a cartoon mouse. Enough said? No? Okay, he’s from an animated English sitcom parody of the superhero and spy genres with absolutely no romantic subplots whatsoever. He’s in no way intended to be taken seriously. Also, the show hasn’t been broadcast in the states for about twenty years, so even if there are any similarly afflicted fangirls out there, I have found none to commiserate with here in California.
Why I can’t help myself:
This one might be cheating a little bit, because it’s more of a childhood crush than a current one, but it lasted from my earliest memories until I was about twelve, allowing it to cause me a lot more public embarrassment than any other crush to date, so there was no way it couldn’t be on this list.
Danger Mouse was my very first hero. I loved him before my female idols came into being, before Pocahontas and Mulan, before there was anything resembling a Katniss Everdeen. This was before Harry Potter, before I was introduced to Frodo Baggins and Luke Skywalker, long before I discovered Batman, Superman, and Spiderman.
You wouldn’t know it to talk to me or read this blog (I count two Batman references in two months and another one coming up this month), but I came into comic book geekery as an adult. There was no one around who knew how to guide me into the vast, complicated superhero universes as a child, no capes and masks featured in my childhood repertoire. But thanks to my dad’s passion for nearly all things British, I had Danger Mouse.
Um, he’s a cartoon mouse. Enough said? No? Okay, he’s from an animated English sitcom parody of the superhero and spy genres with absolutely no romantic subplots whatsoever. He’s in no way intended to be taken seriously. Also, the show hasn’t been broadcast in the states for about twenty years, so even if there are any similarly afflicted fangirls out there, I have found none to commiserate with here in California.
Why I can’t help myself:
This one might be cheating a little bit, because it’s more of a childhood crush than a current one, but it lasted from my earliest memories until I was about twelve, allowing it to cause me a lot more public embarrassment than any other crush to date, so there was no way it couldn’t be on this list.
Danger Mouse was my very first hero. I loved him before my female idols came into being, before Pocahontas and Mulan, before there was anything resembling a Katniss Everdeen. This was before Harry Potter, before I was introduced to Frodo Baggins and Luke Skywalker, long before I discovered Batman, Superman, and Spiderman.
You wouldn’t know it to talk to me or read this blog (I count two Batman references in two months and another one coming up this month), but I came into comic book geekery as an adult. There was no one around who knew how to guide me into the vast, complicated superhero universes as a child, no capes and masks featured in my childhood repertoire. But thanks to my dad’s passion for nearly all things British, I had Danger Mouse.
In retrospect, my future superhero geekery should have been obvious from the start. Danger Mouse is a parody superhero, but he’s still a superhero, a fearless white knight always ready to jump into his flying car to stop the bad guys’ latest nefarious schemes, and that was good enough for me.
It didn’t matter that he was trying to stop a talking toad from creating an army of sentient washing machines, or a building-leveling sound ray that harnesses the power of all the world’s bagpipes. He was still rushing to the rescue, saving the day through some combination of improbable strength and intelligence, and generally doing things other than singing some equivalent of “Some Day My Prince Will Come.”
Naturally, I wanted to be on his team, swapping daring rescues and dry wit, as his girlfriend, of course, because that’s just how things like that work, right?
Well, if you ask a fanfic-writing prepubescent girl, they certainly do. If there were any remaining concept art of The Haystack, my fanfic self-insert girlfriend/partner for Danger Mouse, I’m sure I’d feel compelled to upload it in the spirit of confession, so I’ll just be eternally grateful that it was all shredded years ago and offer this picture of I Am Better than Your Kids instead.
It didn’t matter that he was trying to stop a talking toad from creating an army of sentient washing machines, or a building-leveling sound ray that harnesses the power of all the world’s bagpipes. He was still rushing to the rescue, saving the day through some combination of improbable strength and intelligence, and generally doing things other than singing some equivalent of “Some Day My Prince Will Come.”
Naturally, I wanted to be on his team, swapping daring rescues and dry wit, as his girlfriend, of course, because that’s just how things like that work, right?
Well, if you ask a fanfic-writing prepubescent girl, they certainly do. If there were any remaining concept art of The Haystack, my fanfic self-insert girlfriend/partner for Danger Mouse, I’m sure I’d feel compelled to upload it in the spirit of confession, so I’ll just be eternally grateful that it was all shredded years ago and offer this picture of I Am Better than Your Kids instead.
Suffice it to say, The Haystack's effectiveness as a superhero centered around her collection of flying, remote-controlled tools and weapons, which doubled as hair clips and supported her enormous, haystack-shaped beehive of hair while not in use.
Forgive me, I was eight.
So, would I have been spared the embarrassment of a Danger Mouse fixation if I’d had DC and Marvel from the very beginning?
Possibly. That would certainly make it easy to explain away, but I’m not so sure. Danger Mouse does have the cute English accent going for him, something I’ve apparently been susceptible to since before I knew it was a thing.
But when it comes to loving a parody right alongside the serious characters that paved its way, here’s the real clincher:
Forgive me, I was eight.
So, would I have been spared the embarrassment of a Danger Mouse fixation if I’d had DC and Marvel from the very beginning?
Possibly. That would certainly make it easy to explain away, but I’m not so sure. Danger Mouse does have the cute English accent going for him, something I’ve apparently been susceptible to since before I knew it was a thing.
But when it comes to loving a parody right alongside the serious characters that paved its way, here’s the real clincher:
Sucker for the funny guy. Right here.
