36 Years Ago, A Superhero Show Based Its Heroes On Real-Life Political Activists & Became The Second-Longest Running 90s Cartoon
By Abigail Mahoney-Cloutier, ComicBook.com
“For any interested in living out childhood dreams of hanging out with Planeteers, the Foundation’s next big event is a “Concert For The Planet & Gala” on November 7th, 2026, in Atlanta, GA.”
One person involved in Environmental Justice in the early 1990s was TBS founder Ted Turner. In a move nearly unheard-of from TV network execs today, Turner was loud and public about political beliefs, including environmentalism, donating literal billions of dollars to various political, environmental and philanthropic causes over the course of his life. However, Turner was not content with mere donations to environmental causes.
Turner wanted to bring the plight of Earth’s environment to younger generations, and encourage them to take ownership of their own power to change the future. To this end, he enlisted the prolific and passionate media activist Barbara Pyle (who we will hear much more from later) to create a superhero cartoon that taught kids to fight for the planet— and from this idea would be born one of the most iconic, if outrageously campy, heroes of the last three decades.
Captain Planet and the Planeteers, premiering on September 15, 1990 on TBS Syndication, showed its potential for greatness immediately as, despite being a show with the clear and stated purpose of being a 20-minute PSA, it started off its first episode with some solid lore. Not limiting itself to the bounds of its own canon, Captain Planet reached back to real-world ancient mythology for the basis of its lore with Classical Greek personification of Earth, Gaia, here appearing as a beautiful and near-omniscient woman known as Mother Earth or the Spirit of Earth, and voiced by the legendary Whoopi Goldberg.