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Hoggish Greedly
Hoggish Greedly is the alias for a fictional character named Brett Klasko, a villain in the animation series Captain Planet and the Planeteers.
Greedly is an obese man with a pig-like nose and ears and the mannerisms to go with them. Despite these pig-like appearances, Greedly is actually a normal human.
Greedly is a rather crude and careless pit of greed, going to whatever lengths are necessary to please himself, usually involving some illegal means of getting money. Greedly was the first to come to blows with Captain Planet, discovering his vulnerability to toxics, only to have his robot oil tanker (called the "Land Blaster") destroyed after Captain Planet's recovery.
While Greedly is greedy, exploitative and sometimes cruel, he is not devoid of human feelings. He shares close bonds with his family, and places their wellbeing above profit (although by and large, he sees no difference between the two). In the episode “Smog Hogs,” he marketed a massively polluting car whose prototype was a birthday gift for his son, Junior. However, when the smog caused Junior to collapse from respiratory distress, a shocked and desperate Greedly effectively surrendered to the Planeteers, begging them to undo the damage, sacrificing his profits for his son’s safety.
After all of his failed efforts at gaining money behind the Planeteers' backs, Greedly received word of his Grandpappy's death. Although Greedly thus inherited a fortune, his reaction revealed that he did care for his relative. Greedly eventually discovered that his Grandfather, Hoggish Greenly, formerly known as "Don Porkoloin" in his younger polluting days, faked his death to determine Greedly's nature (who by the way has a very strong physical resemblance to his grandson, to the verge of being an older version of him), revealing that he came to know the need to protect the environment and hoped that Hoggish would learn the same. At this point, Greenly seemed to have gentlemanly manners, a sharp contrast to his grandson. Consequently, Greenly/Porkoloin first "appeared" in an earlier episode in which Gaia told the Planeteers a story of five planeteers being chosen in the 1940s to stop Porkoloin - though the story was evidently made up in the end (and contradicted Gaia's earlier statements that she had been asleep at the time).
Greedly is also something of a gourmet, despite eating nearly anything and large quantities of it. His most famous meals have been his hunger for sea turtle eggs and the one occasion in which he killed and ate a horse just to see what it would taste like.
Greedly's sidekick is Rigger, a scrawny, pointy-faced coward. Though he loyally assists Greedly, Rigger is rather polite and often brings up the environmental damage that Greedly is causing. When Greedly used his Grandpappy's fortune, Rigger became somewhat environmentally aware, showing that his reasons for working with Greedly were deeper than a need for money. As Rigger once explained, despite his often disagreement with Greedly, he worked for Greedly as he felt no one else would hire him.
Rigger was later dropped from the show, taking a job with the more environmentally conscious Greenly, and replaced by Greedly's nephew, who became an honorary Planeteer, much to his uncle's shock.
Greedly was voiced by actor Ed Asner, and Rigger by John Ratzenberger.
Dr. Blight
Dr. Blight is a mad scientist who exploits the Earth in order to improve her own appearance and health. She frequently carries out various schemes in the name of scientific experimentation and profit. Her trademark is a part of her hair that is completely white, which covers a horrible scar on the left side of her face. She is often assisted by her evil supercomputer MAL, to whom she has an almost romantic attachment.
In "Hollywaste," it is revealed that she had a sister named Bambi Blight who was an environmentally-friendly actress.
Dr. Blight is voiced by Meg Ryan in Season One and by Mary Kay Bergman in later seasons. MAL is voiced by the late David Rappaport and later voiced by Tim Curry for the remainder of the series.
Duke Nukem
Duke Nukem is a supervillain from the Captain Planet and the Planeteers cartoon series. He wears a Hawaiian shirt along with shorts and sandals, over his irradiated body, which resembles dried nuclear waste. Nukem troubles the earth by spreading radioactivity. He first appeared in a season one episode entitled "Deadly Ransom". Though his origins are never fully revealed in the show, it is stated that he was a scientist and that his condition was a result of his own experiments (whether intentional or accidental is never clarified). He is once referred to by Kwame as "Doctor Duke Nukem".
Nukem is effectively a "living battery". He absorbs radiation to replenish his powers, and can fire beams of radioactive energy from his hands. He becomes weakened when his power reserve runs low. Nukem also likely has severe mutations to his internal organs, as he is capable of ingesting battery acid and toxic waste, which he consumes as food. Despite his nuclear abilities, Nukem can control his outputs, effectively shutting them off completely, allowing others to be near him without a radiation suit.
He is also rather strong, physically, with a thick skin and better resilience to injury than a normal human. He has taken severe injury without any damage--often resulting in Captain Planet being a lot tougher on him in fights than he would be with the other Eco-Villains, mainly out of necessity just to subdue Nukem.
Duke Nukem is accompanied by Leadsuit, a meek man who serves as his loyal assistant. While he is actually slender and wears glasses, Leadsuit's namesake lead suit is bulky and he looks rather large while wearing it. Nukem is impolite to him and usually calls him "Lead head". However, Leadsuit is effectively weak, often taking Nukem's verbal abuse and insults with little protest. Being called by his proper name by Nukem does give him great joy, however. His suit is also prone to being stolen by Captain Planet himself when he needs it to fight Nukem (leaving Leadsuit to complain about his suit being "stretched out"). He enters and leaves the suit through a door in the back. His real name is unknown. The multiplayer character of Envirosuit in TimeSplitters: Future Perfect appears to be a parody of Leadsuit.
In 'The Meltdown Syndrome' episode of the first season, after Nukem found out about a new nuclear powerplant which was already leaking radiation, he took over the plant and tried to cause a nuclear meltdown like the Chernobyl disaster. Captain Planet, however was able to stop the meltdown by throwing the contaminated pieces of the powerplant at the sun before they exploded.
While depicted as vastly intelligent in the DiC episodes, the Hanna Barbera episodes depicted him as increasingly stupid, possibly a sign of his condition degenerating.
He was voiced by Dean Stockwell and later voiced by Maurice LaMarche. Jeff Goldblum voiced him occasionally. Leadsuit was voiced by Frank Welker.
His skin is a rocky yellow substance much like that of The Thing, and his hands and feet are shaped like those of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. His powers are nearly identical to those of Batman villain Dr. Phosphorus. Additionally, his first name and his Hawaiian shirt may be an homage to the Raoul Duke character created by gonzo journalist Hunter S. Thompson.
Apogee Software, now know as 3D Realms, also has a character called Duke Nukem. This Duke was accidentally created with the same name, and the spelling of his name was changed to "Duke Nukum" to avoid copyright infringement when Apogee discovered the previously existing Captain Planet Duke. However, it was later discovered that "Duke Nukem" was not a copyrighted name, so Apogee reverted the spelling and registered the name1.
Looten Plunder
Looten Plunder is a villain in the animation series of Captain Planet and the Planeteers.
Plunder is a wealthy business man who scours the globe for means of profit, regardless of who or what is sacrificed in the process. He also sports business suits with patterns of rare or endangered animals. Because of this careless greed, Plunder has come into conflict with Captain Planet and the planeteers on numerous occasions.
Although Plunder is often present for all of his conflicts, he rarely takes an active part in the action as more than a commander. Plunder is a charismatic villain, letting others do his dirty work for him as he manages to talk governments into handing over money for something that would be harmful in the first place.
Though Plunder has hired many assassins and mercenaries in his time, he is almost always seen with his personal bodyguard, the mercenary Argos Bleak. Though Bleak typically serves as Plunder's shield and sword, he has been known to act on his own. For instance, in the episode “the Predator” when Bleak sells his services to a seaside resort as a shark exterminator, Plunder is absent and appears to have nothing to do with Bleak’s scheme. Looten Plunder's latest henchmen are the Pinehead Brothers Oakey and Dokey who are oversized lumberjacks.
Plunder has allied himself with other villains on numerous occasions, including the creation of Captain Pollution. During this period, Looten Plunder gained the power of deforestation. Plunder's was the only power not to be used for a purpose besides calling Captain Pollution other than that of Dr. Blight's.
Plunder could be considered the show's own version of Lex Luthor and Roland Daggett, a wealthy evil industrialist who often trades blows with a near-invulnerable superhero.
His name is an obvious play on the expression "loot and plunder".
He is quoted in the show's theme song ("You'll pay for this, Captain Planet!"). In fact, this quote is said directly after the lyric "bad guys who like to loot and plunder".
Looten Plunder was originally voiced by James Coburn and later voiced by Ed Gilbert. Argos Bleak is voiced by S. Scott Bullock while the Pinehead Brothers are voiced by Frank Welker.
Verminous Skumm
Verminous Skumm is a supervillain of the Captain Planet animated series which includes Captain Planet and the Planeteers and The New Adventures of Captain Planet.
Standing seven and half feet tall, Skumm has a face like a dirty rat and a body to suit it with a long tail. He is always shown wearing dirty, torn blue clothes and a red scarf around his head. He was born and raised in a sewer. Skumm hated humanity and declared war against mankind and the environment. In his first appearance ("Rain Of Terror"), he and an army of those like him start up an abandoned coal factory and burn excess coal to create a massive acid rain cloud to destroy a farming community.
On some occasions, Skumm would be accompanied by a humanoid rat who serves as his henchman.
He was also one of the five to gain a Pollution Ring from Dr. Blight, which formed Captain Pollution ("Mission To Save Earth" Parts I and II).
He would later steal nuclear weapons and hide them in various "hot spots" around the world in including South Africa, Israel, and Belfast (the now infamous "If It's Doomsday, This Must Be Belfast"), giving the detonators to each side in a war, to prove to Duke Nukem that humans were self-destructive. And if they didn't use them, he would use his own detonator. The Planeteers stopped him before the bombs could go off, however.
Skumm also created a toxic mutation spray called Rat Rot ("Skumm Lord"), which could mutate humans into rat creatures like himself (note that it is never stated if his followers are mutants like him, or Rat Rot victims). He also created the highly addictive designer drug Bliss ("Mind Pollution") and spread it throughout Washington, D.C. Linka's cousin, Boris, was one of the first Bliss addicts and eventually died from overdose (making Skumm a murderer). Shortly after, Skumm opened a seafood restaurant in San Francisco, selling highly poisonous food to the city's population ("The Big Clam-Up").
Skumm was also the villain in the episode "A Formula For Hate", in which he spreads misinformation and lies about the AIDS virus to ruin a young victim's life. This was thwarted by Captain Planet who told the real facts about AIDS.
In the Hanna-Barbera produced seasons however, Skumm would turn his focus away from his environmental war and focus more on stealing and selling artifacts to fund his operations, with environmental and monument defacement as a side project ("Nothing's Sacred"). He also had an interest in street gangs ("Talkin' Trash").
Skumm was voiced by Jeff Goldblum in his first appearance, and by Maurice LaMarche in subsequent episodes.
Sly Sludge
Sly Sludge is a fictional character and a eco-villian on Captain Planet and the Planeteers.
Sludge first appeared with Dr. Blight in "Polluting by Computer in 1990." Sludge made his last appearance on Captain Planet in 1995 in No Small Problem.
Sludge is a con-man who loves to pollute the earth with his garbage and get rich schemes. He overflows landfills with trash with no regard for the envirorment. He also has a wacky assistant named Ooze, who helps his boss carry out his plans.
In the two-part episode "A Mine is a Terrible Thing to Waste," he obtained a body builder named Tank Flusher the III to be Ooze's replacement until he decided to keep Ooze around. He was also in collaboration with Looten Plunder and Argos Bleak.
Sly Sludge is voiced by Martin Sheen in the first two season and by Jim Cummings in later seasons. Ooze is voiced by Cam Clarke while Tank Flusher the III is voiced by Frank Welker.
Zarm
Zarm is a supervillain from the Turner Broadcasting cartoon series Captain Planet and the Planeteers and The New Adventures of Captain Planet.
Prior to his first appearance in the series' first season episode "The Conqueror", he was a spirit of the Earth alongside Gaia and Captain Planet. At an uncertain time, he departed in search of other worlds to be their patron. However, he caused the civilization of at least one other planet to destroy themselves in nuclear holocaust. Later, he returned to Earth, and presented himself to the Planeteers as a visitor from a more advanced civilization. Under this pretence, he tempts the Planeteers with the ‘power of the iron fist,’ gauntlets that have the same powers as their rings, but work on a much grander scale – raising islands, causing hurricanes, etc. Ma-Ti refuses, choosing not to spurn Gaia’s gift in favor of great power, and this leads to Zarm’s exposure and defeat.
He returns subsequently, usually acting on schemes to engineer supremacist contests among individuals, communities, and the world. Most prominently, in the second-season “Summit to Save Earth,” he unites the other Eco-Villains under his leadership and conspires to sabotage the Earth Summit. Many of his schemes are also motivated by spite against Gaia and he endeavors to destroy her and the Planeteers.
Zarm is, in a manner of speaking, a war god (coincidentally, his name is a near-anagram of "Mars", the war god, and is one letter off and phonetically similar to "harm"). As he says himself, he lives by a creed of “might makes right.” He generally effects a martial appearance, with cape and emblazoned garb, though he often disguises himself to deceive humanity, either by changing his own form or possessing another’s. As a natural spirit, it appears that he embodies the principles of competition and natural selection, but without Gaia’s countering benevolence, he takes it to the extreme of fascism and Social Darwinism. He also seems to prefer industry and artifice to nature. Unlike Gaia and Captain Planet, his power is channeled through human beings and their machines, especially weapons. He sets people against each other, presenting them with a threat or a prize (power or riches) and then watches them fight for it. If the Planeteers did not foil these schemes, he would presumably continue to do so on increasing scales until only the ‘strongest’ were left and worthy of his patronage, or all of humankind was extinct.
Where most Captain Planet villains are devious businessmen or mad scientists, Zarm best fits the villain archetype of “Dark Lord” reminiscent of Emperor Palpatine or Voldemort. Unlike Eco-Villains Looten Plunder, Sly Sludge, Hoggish Greedly, Dr. Blight, Verminous Skumm, and Duke Nukem who are concerned with profits and self-gratification, Zarm is concerned with raw power over human beings and fundamental forces. Indeed, it is his ability to deal in the self-serving nature of people like Plunder and Greedly that bring them under his rule in “Summit to Save Earth.”
From his first appearance, he is seen making use of a spacecraft as his transportation. The vessel is small, and externally a plain faceted sphere. The interior is of a classically science-fiction design, containing consoles and screens. Tellingly, it also seems to contain a quantity of the same crystalline substance that dominates Gaia's home of Hope Island.
He is also one of the Eco-Villains (the other being Verminous Skumm) who does not have a regular sidekick. But his powers of manipulation (possibly coupled with psychic domination or possession) mean that he can readily get as many lackeys as his plots might require. Furthermore, sidekicks like Ooze, Rigger, MAL and Leadsuit often serve prominently as comic relief. Zarm and Skumm seem to dwell in a level of pure villainy that leaves no room for humour.
Zarm was voiced in his earliest appearances by rock star/environmental activist Sting. Later, he was voiced by David Warner in Season Three and by Malcolm McDowell in "The New Adventures of Captain Planet."
Captain Pollution
Toys
Hoggish Greedly received an action figure in the Captain Planet toy line released by Tiger Toys. He came packaged with a water squirting backpack/gun combination. His vehicle in the line was the Toxic Cannon, a large rolling vehicle which held a large water reservoir and fired a stream of water through the large cannon. Rigger never received a toy.
Dr. Blight received an action figure in the Captain Planet toy line released by Tiger Toys. She came packaged with a miniature of MAL. Her jump suit retained its colour, although her boots were a little bit darker than in the series.
Duke Nukem received a toy in the Captain Planet toy line released by Tiger Toys. He was made of glow-in-the-sun plastic. He was also one of only two figures in the line to have ball-jointed hips. Duke Nukem's only playset accessory was the Exploding Reactor, a multi-piece reactor toy that would "explode" when wound up and allowed to run down. Duke Nukem also saw a second toy, an entirely new sculpt that used his Hawaiian clothing instead of the blue jumpsuit. Lights ran through the right hand and eyes, with a tiny speaker in the chest to emit an "electrical charge" sound. It ran on 2 AAA batteries. This toy was a European exclusive, though a US release may have been planned- co-sells for the Exploding Reactor featured this toy.
Argos Bleak was made into a toy in the Captain Planet toy line released by Tiger Toys. The toy came with a helmet, missile launcher, and missile.
See also
References
- Hoggish Greedly page
- Dr. Blight page
- Duke Nukem page
- Looten Plunder page
- Verminous Skumm page
- Sly Sludge page
- Zarm page
Footnotes
