Space Ghost Coast to Coast is an animated series that aired on the channel Cartoon Network initially during the night time channel, then issued for night programming block Adult Swim. It first appearance was in the United States in April 1994, was aimed at a wide audience of children, adolescents and adults, and was the series that inspired the creation of a block specializing in adult animation for Cartoon Network. The program is about a superhero, apparently withdrawn from his profession (fight against evil), who runs his own television show. His assistants are enemies of the previous series, for example, Moltar, who is a producer, and Zorak, who is a musician in the program.
The series was broadcast at night on Cartoon Network, before being moved from Friday to weekends. The development of other programs by Calle Williams eventually led to the creation of the adult block Adult Swim in September 2001 where the Phantom would end up, and where the TV-PG to TV-14 rating was changed. due to the increasing level of surrealism of the scripts. Now the replays are broadcasted through the exclusive online video service, Adult Swim Video. In February of 1995, the program was shown simultaneously in three different chains, Cartoon Network, Turner Broadcasting System and TNT, on the occasion of the special "The world premiere of cartoons", where the show What a wonderful story! and the pilots of which would be the future series of Hanna-Barbera and Cartoon Network in the 1990s as the laboratory of Dexter or Johnny Bravo. The Phantom interviewed the creators and directors of the new programs, while the Council of Evil was the judges of the clips shown. In the United Kingdom, the series was screened by the CNX network in its comedy block from 9:00 p.m. to 10:00 p.m., along with other Adult Swim cartoons. The program was airing in 1998 in Canada by Teletoon, but said he tried to stop a celebrity that decision, until finally began to be issued in September 2006.
In Latin America, the series was originally broadcast in 1997 during the nighttime of Cartoon Network Latin America, then released officially on December 4, 2005 in Adult Swim, and continued to be broadcast on Cartoon Network until the block cancellation on 7 March 2008 (December 1, 2007 in Argentina). The program came to be seen by the I.Sat channel, which premiered in April 2008, and remained aired until May 2010, being aired for the last time at 3:15 AM. That same year, Adult Swim was also canceled. In 2014, with the return of Adult Swim on the TBS Very Funny channel, it was back but only for Brazil. In 2015, it returned for all Latin America with the return of Adult Swim by I.Sat but this time, unlike the previous ones, seasons are broadcast in English subtitled, although the whole series was dubbed into Spanish.
Argument: The program is a parody of talk shows, in this case, it is one driven by the Space Ghost, one of the original characters of the Hanna-Barbera animated series, created and designed by the famous cartoonist Alex Toth in 1966. As explained in the premise of the previous series, Cartoon Planet, the masked vigilante received the proposal of a television station to have its own talk show. Although it is not clear if the Space Ghost abandoned his superhero profession, it is explained that the masked vigilante accepted the proposal and required the help of his former enemies Zorak and Moltar for the show. In addition to Zorak and Moltar, the program had as characters other enemies of the original series, such as Brak, Metalus, Black Widow and Tansit, as well as a new character Chad, the twin of the Phantom, more intelligent but somewhat evil. The program is transmitted from the study of the Phantom of Space on the Phantom Planet. The name of that study was Industries of the Phantom Planet.
Format: The show is a nocturnal interview program, in which famous world stars of cinema, sports, television, comedy, science, music, etc., are interviewed by the Space Ghost, the famous animated character.
Production of the program: Unlike other cable programs, the duration of each episode of the "Space Ghost from coast to coast" lasts only 15 minutes. To make the program longer, Cartoon Network put together two episodes for each block of programming.
Part of the surreal nature of the program is due to the sometimes strange or incoherent responses of the guests to the Phantom's questions and other events on the set. This is the result of the production process applied in the first episode of the series (which was not released). This episode was created by Mike Lazzo, who interspersed archived and original material with a promotional video unrelated to the program, which showed Denzel Washington being interviewed about the Oscars. From then on, the same process was applied to the other interviews to achieve that comic effect.
Characters: The Space Ghost: The presenter, conductor and animator of program. The famous superhero, in the past, fought against evil villains in outer space, along with his friends Jan and Jace and his space monkey Blip. Now, he has been given his own talk show on the Phantom Planet. In this company he is accompanied by his old archenemies of the original series, whom he freed from prison and put to work for him as punishment for his crimes. It still has all its superpowers, its power bands with which it shoots all kinds of lethal rays, its invisibilizing belt, dresses like in the original series, with its yellow cape, black hood and mask, and still it is transported in its ship intergalactic, the Ghost Cruiser.
Zorak, The musician of the program: A ruthless villain come from the planet Dókar, is a seven-foot tall green mantis-shaped creature with a vest. He hates the Phantom to death, and does not lose the slightest chance to make a fool of him or make fun of him in the middle of the program.
Moltar, The director of the program: He always speaks from the control room, and is a kind of man made of lava with an orange or gray suit and a red helmet with a metal respirator. It comes from the "volcano planet of Molten", and both he and Zorak are members of the Council of Death (Council of Evil in most episodes), a legion of outer space villains who came together to kill the Phantom in the original series.
Brak: Appears sporadically in the program, and was an evil space pirate with feline appearance in the original series. Now, however, his malignant personality has drastically changed, so that in the episodes in which he appears he does it to sing or shout: "Hello my name is Brak!". In an episode of the Cartoon Planet series, Brak, in response to a viewer's letter, reveals that his sudden stupidity was caused by the side effects of having been thrown into a cloud of cosmic dust by the Space Ghost in one of the episodes of the original series. As a consequence of this, he has become very stupid, to the point of having a totally childish mind. He led the 2005 Special Toon Cup for Cartoon Network Latin America.
