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Michael Bell as young Lex Luthor


It's interesting how Michael Bell played young Lex Luthor in History Of Doom. 10 years later, he would play adult Lex Luthor on CBS's 1988 Superman cartoon series.

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Animation voicework was a pretty limited world, in that era. The studios would have used even fewer artists if the union hadn't instituted rules about how many separate voices an actor could do in a single show (episode). Ruby-Spears, who produced the 80s Superman cartoon, were an offshoot of Hanna-Barbera (Joe Ruby and Ken Spears were writers and producers and were responsible for Scooby Doo). So, they used a lot of the same actors. They did the same with Thundarr, which included Henry Corden, who took over as Fred Flintstone, from Alan Reed. Robert Ridgely, who was Thundarr, had also worked for Filmation, on Flash Gordon and Tarzan.

Fortunately, Ah keep mah feathers numbered for just such an emergency!

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And a lot of these same people worked for Sunbow Productions. Bell on Transformers, G.I. Joe, Spider-Man And His Amazing Friends, and the 1982 Incredible Hulk cartoon. Ridgley also worked on the Hulk. So, this small group of people worked across multiple studios.


Then, in the 1990's, the focus shifted to Canada with the Ocean Group recording a lot of shows. In the early 2000's, it became a small group of people dubbing anime imports, like Tom Wyner, Peter Spellos, Richard Epcar, and Michael McConnohie. Then it shifted towards those people who dubbed the 4Kids shows. Today, the voice over work is sort of fragmented. It's a mixture of the remaining 1970's and 80's actors working on things like Pixar pictures. I checked the end credits for Inside Out and noticed Gregg Berger and Mona Marshall from Transformers. Probably the only remaining dedicated dubbing group are the people who work for Funimation imports.


Of course, growing up in the 70's and 80's, I'm mostly familiar with the classic Hanna Barbera and Sunbow group.


I had the unique pleasure of meeting Michael Bell at BotCon 2001. John Stephenson, who recently died, and Gregg Berger were also there. Stephenson was one of those who played on the Super Friends Hour with the Wonder Twins episodes but didn't get on screen credit. For some weird reason, there was only a short list that sometimes didn't even credit Casey Kasem for Robin.

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