Thundarr the Barbarian: Demon Dogs and Lords of Light
Thundarr the Barbarian (21 episodes; 1980-81)
Created by Steve Gerber (Howard the Duck; The Defenders).
The look of the main characters was designed by Alex Toth. After he was unavailable to continue working on the series, Jack “King” Kirby was brought in, at the recommendation of Gerber and Mark Evanier (who would later write a biography of Kirby). Kirby designed the look of most of the villains and supporting characters.
What is it?
What is it?? Lords of Light, it’s awesome, is what it is!
It’s an animated series that aired on ABC on Saturday mornings between 1980 and 1981. It aired in reruns on NBC in 1983.
Created in part by the legendary Jack Kirby and Alex Toth, it brought a Conan-style barbarian warrior to a distant, post-apocalyptic future, teamed him with a sorceress and a monstrous ally, and pitted the trio against all sorts of menaces that combined super-science and sorcery.
Noteworthy
The show is worth it just for the character designs by Toth and Kirby. Warriors, wizards, mutants and monsters all clash amid the crumbling remains of our own civilization.
The network insisted Gerber include a monstrous Wookie-like ally for Thundarr. Gerber reluctantly agreed, but needed a name for the character. When he and writer Martin Pasko went to dinner in the Westwood area of Los Angeles, Pasko looked up at the front gates of the UCLA campus and suggested the name “Ookla.”
As of 2026, there’s a new Thundarr comic book being published by Dynamite Entertainment, featuring various artists and written by Jason Aaron (Avengers; Conan).
Cartoon Network aired the show in the 1990s. The complete series was released on DVD and Blu-ray home video as recently as 2021.
Quick and Dirty Summary
The opening credits of each episode present us with an origin story for Thundarr’s world, but not so much for the character himself.
The world is our own, two thousand years in the future, after a “runaway planet” (likely a comet) tears our moon in half and brings down Earth’s civilization. We are left with a world of super-science, sorcery, and savagery.
Thundarr breaks free of the slave pens and somehow acquires the “fabulous Sunsword,” enabling him to go toe-to-toe with the mightiest monsters and evil beings. Teamed up with his allies, Ookla the Mok (a furry, savage beast, in the Chewbacca mold) and Princess Ariel (a sorceress who never reveals much of anything about her past), they travel across the wrecked remains of Earth, battling evil at every turn!
Fantasy/SF/Sword and Sorcery Elements
Because the show is set in the far future, after a massive, worldwide catastrophe, it is able to blend elements of science fiction (flying vehicles, lasers, and so on) with more traditional elements of fantasy and magic. The result is a particularly appealing type of Sword & Sorcery, in which the familiar tropes of the genre stand side-by-side with the ruins of contemporary settings and futuristic characters and weapons, in a sort of goulash of everything that’s cool.
There’s a proud tradition in Sword & Sorcery of that one really extra-cool weapon in a story, from the famous sword Excalibur (as in Excalibur and other films) to the Glaive (Krull) to the awesome, three-bladed rocket-sword we discussed previously (The Sword and the Sorcerer). Thundarr has just such a weapon: “the fabulous Sunsword.” We never learn exactly where he acquired it, but it’s a hilt that generates an energy blade, and is remarkably similar to the lightsaber of Star Wars. It also magnetically attaches to his wristband for easy transport when he’s not using it to hack giant rat-men to pieces.
Thundarr’s two companions are familiar Sword & Sorcery archetypes. Princess Ariel is able to cast all sorts of offensive and defensive spells, and Ookla is a mighty warrior who needs no weapons to wreak havoc on his enemies (or on helicopters, when he gets frustrated trying to fly one). All three heroes ride horses, though Ookla’s is alien in appearance and is called an “equort.”
Thundarr and company confront a wide variety of foes familiar to all sword and sorcery fans. There are mutated humanoid rats and lizards, giant monsters, werewolves, and a number of colorful wizards and sorcerers. There’s even an alien monster in the mold of The Thing! (Think Kurt Russell, not Ben Grimm.)
The intermingling of these fantasy elements with the technology of post-apocalyptic science fiction makes for an irresistible combination.
High Point
For me, the high point of the series is the premiere episode, “Secret of the Black Pearl,” in which Thundarr’s team clashes with the villain called Gemini.
One thing that perhaps held this show back a bit was its lack of an iconic recurring villain. Gemini had the potential to be that, and he did make a second appearance later in the series.
He is such a perfect Jack Kirby villain, and a perfect Thundarr foe. He wears a sort of combination space-suit and Medieval armor that would let him fit in at a New Gods or Eternals family reunion. Beneath his space helmet, his face is exposed. Normally, it’s a benign face; perhaps even jolly.
But when he’s angered, his entire head swivels around 180 degrees and a different visage is revealed: One with burning red eyes that fire energy beams! Gemini embodies the “super-science meets sorcery” idea arguably better than anyone else on the show. And nobody conveys such scorn for his opponent as Gemini, when he addresses Thundarr as, “BARBAAAARIAN!!”
Low Point
All of the episodes are written primarily for a younger audience. So, while the series is of very good quality compared to most of the shows that aired on Saturday mornings during that era, they still lack a bit in terms of stories. The potential is tremendous, but the show mostly fails to live up to the very heights it was clearly capable of reaching.
Standout Performance
Robert Ridgely, a “that guy” actor who appeared in nearly everything over the years, provided the voice of Thundarr, unleashing famous catchphrases such as “Demon Dogs!” “Lords of Light!” and of course, “Ariel–Ookla–RIDE!!”
With his supremely heroic voice, Ridgley also played the title character in the fantastic 1979 animated New Adventures of Flash Gordon series.
Nellie Bellflower voiced Princess Ariel, as well as a number of other female characters.
Overall Evaluation as a Movie and as Fantasy/SF/Sword & Sorcery
It’s not a movie, but Thundarr the Barbarian is as Sword & Sorcery as you can get. The genre comes in a number of sub-forms, and I’d call this one the “post-apocalyptic fantasy world” variety, where you’re as likely to encounter a giant, sorcery-animated Statue of Liberty as a werewolf or a rat-man.
For a Saturday morning cartoon, the writing is surprisingly intelligent and clever. It’s unfortunate they never gave us more backstory to the characters, but that was a common thing among TV shows and cartoons of that era: Minimal information to get us up to speed, and then off we go.
Unfortunately, we never did encounter those danged Demon Dogs!
Van Allen Plexico once edited an anthology of tales set in a Thundarr-style post-apocalyptic future of super-science and sorcery, called Blackthorn: Thunder on Mars. He is a member of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America (SFWA), a Grand Master of Pulp Literature (2025 class) and a multiple-award-winning author of more than two dozen novels and anthologies, ranging from space opera to Kaiju to crime fiction to superheroes to military SF. Find his works on Amazon and at www dot Plexico dot net.
I watched Thundarr a couple of years ago and found it bit repetitive. It was definitely one of the better cartoons of the era but as a adult I got tired of it fast. Still, I think kids would like it a lot.
There was also a fantasy cartoon called Pirates of Dark Water that came out later by Hanna Barbera. I rewatched it as a adult and enjoyed it but also decided to give away my dvd of it. Still, it may be worth your time.
Thundarr in retrospect feels like the last gasp of cartoons that were just fun for their own sake. A little while later, we got stuff like He-Man, with “in today’s episode we learned…” segments to justify themselves to moral scolds.
That’s a good point. I don’t think there were ever any toys officially made from this show. Imagine a Saturday morning cartoon like this with no toys— not even a breakfast cereal!
I did (and do) love the show, but one of the problems was that because it was a Saturday morning children’s TV show, he COULDN’T use his Sun Sword to hack apart rat creatures — at best, he could use it to chop down a tree to block their path, or maybe to hack apart the occasional robot.
If I ever were to run an RPG campaign, one of the strong contenders would be 1st edition Gamma World with an admixture of 1st edition AD&D to create something extremely Thundarr-inflected.
Agree that Thundarr was a highlight of my Saturday Morning Cartoon youth. Agree with others that it’s great in concept, but ultimately lacking when diving back into it. I always had higher expectations for it than it actually delivered (probably due to the awesome character design and world-building. Seems like a great springboard milieu for other stories though – be they RPG, video games, short stories, or eventually…AI-created animation.
Speaking of, looking forward to diving into your Blackthorn book, just ordered the kindle version from Amazon.
Glad to hear it! I look forward to your thoughts on it.
There’s more coming over the next year or so.
Loved this show when I watched it as a kid. While RPGing, I could never pass up a chance to voice, “Yes, Barbarian.” in my best Gemini voice when playing a wizard or “Lords of Light!” when playing a barbarian. I rewatched the first episode on Youtube a couple years ago, enjoyed it and I’ll leave it at that (although I’d love to play in a Gamma World-style RPG based on the world).
I loved the show despite the silliness, but we were living in a fantasy desert in those days, so the bar was low. The settings were probably the most interesting element for me.
I liked this a lot – in a backstory for a TTRPG I’m working on indeed things like this could have happened. That’s because this is “Science Fantasy” like Jack Vance’s “The Dying Earth” that inspired D&D, not just its “Magic” system but really the feel of the setting. Refer to “Mazarin the Magician” which sounds like a D&D adventure but was written 20 years before. The thing being in the far future explains most elements of a TTRPG “Draconic” world – all the monsters the result of genetic engineering with some aliens, the Abhumans (Demi-Humans) branches of mankind like HG Wells’s “The Time Machine” the endless ruins to explore buried remnants of civilization rising and falling many times – and the “Magic” is an ancient Level 4 tech from a period of ultratech. The “magic users” search for fragments but few have any idea what they are really doing thus Clarke’s 3rd law of Technology applies. In a way D&D could be “hard” science fiction with the speculation regulator pushed to the Nth degree then.
Even way back I knew things were wonky, for instance no way would the moon stay like that for more than a few days. I sheepishly asked in science class and the teacher was impressed. But it was a fun story. Not sure about a new comic book, most of these are bland, soulless cash grabs and as entertaining or warming to someone who liked the original as “The screamatorium” ride on the Simpsons. Might get the Blu-Ray set though if its been re-released.
Now if they let Lindsner do Kirby like he did Killraven and let HIM call the shots like he did that one shot …! THAT was one of the BEST stand alone comics I remember and a neat bridge from an Xer remembering wonky old comics older than he was by a few years that were junk not ‘priceless collectables’ and also the world of the 1970s (the dust on a Yes LP record jacket, the girl they found…) now in a world of memories and science fiction past the “In the year —-!” future history date. Haven’t checked out the comic, I’ve been again pretty disappointed by most, the Lindsner Killraven the exception.
Semi-relatedly, the YouTube Dungeons & Dragons channel has recently started releasing full episodes of the 1980s Dungeons & Dragons cartoon in chunks of 2 or 3 episodes, and I think they’re getting close to having the full series up there.
Loved this show so much and bought the DVD for my son…who also loved it. The prologue voice over was my old college roommate’s answering machine message…
I still remember the episode in the amusement park with the centipede creature…
My buddy in HS used to randomly shout out “Ariel, Ookla, ride!!”
And when I was in high school you didn’t really go around letting people know you were into this stuff. So the whole time, we were all watching it but didn’t say much about it, so when he started just yelling that, it was like a head nod.
Tim Snider of The Savage Afterworld provided an excellent Thundarr RPG sourcebook for use with Labyrinth Lord and Mutant Future here:
https://savageafterworld.blogspot.com/2015/02/the-world-of-thundarr-barbarian.html
Wonderful review. Has me wanting to buy the series. Settings are more deep than I recalled. Reminds me of Scooby Doo (the setting paintings were masterful even if the show was goofy).
Interesting timing for this article as Scientific Barbarian 6, a Mutant Crawl Classics supplement, has finally been released to the backers and soon to the public at large. Its primary articles are about playing in the universe of Thundarr and has write ups for a few of the wizards, many of the critters, and the three main characters.
I recently rewatched the series on Tubi and found it much less cringeworthy than other series from the era (when I was a wee tyke). But then Gamma World and Mutant Future have been my favorite roleplaying games since the mid 90’s and I attribute that to Thundarr and possibly Visionaries.