C.M.Croker Dies.

R.I.P. Clay Martin Croker, Adult Swim animator and voice actor

By Sam Barsanti@sambarsanti

Sep 18, 2016  1:59 PM

As reported by various sources, including rapper MC Chris and Adult Swim creative director Jason DeMarco, longtime Adult Swim animator and voice actor C. Martin Croker has died. Croker was best known for playing both Zorak and Moltar on Cartoon Network’s talk show spoof Space Ghost Coast To Coast—the series that essentially established the template for what would become Adult Swim. Details haven’t been released, but the tone of DeMarco and MC Chris’ posts suggest that Croker’s death was “sudden.” He was 54.iew image on Twitter

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RIP C. Martin Croker

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Croker reportedly worked animating promos for TNT in the early ‘90s, and he transitioned over to Cartoon Network a few years later to work on its big rebranding. Around this time, Cartoon Network had also enlisted producer Mike Lazzo to create a cartoon show for adults, which ended up being a total reimagining of ‘60s-era Hanna-Barbera action series Space Ghost called Space Ghost Coast To Coast. The series placed intergalactic superhero Space Ghost in a talk show setting, with the animated character conducting weird and intentionally hostile interviews with real-life celebrities who never quite seemed to be aware of what kind of show they had agreed to appear on.

Croker was the animation director on Coast To Coast, and it was reportedly his idea to add longtime Space Ghost foes Zorak and Moltar to the show, with Zorak as the bandleader and Moltar as the director and editor. Croker voiced both characters for the entirety of the series, with the two of them constantly antagonizing Space Ghost and openly expressing their intense hatred for him. Often, the interplay between Space Ghost, Zorak, and Moltar was more involved and crucial to the show than anything the actual guest said, with celebrities left awkwardly looking from side to side while the animated characters had absurd adventures that didn’t involve them at all (and which they couldn’t see, since the animated stuff was produced later and wasn’t real).

Over the years, Croker reprised his role as Zorak on The Brak Show and Cartoon Planet, and he played the mad scientist Dr. Weird on Adult Swim super-hit Aqua Teen Hunger Force. He also provided the voice of Moltar when the character “hosted” Cartoon Network’s Toonami block and cameoed in a few other Adult Swim productions.

These days, its virtually impossibly to (legally) get all of the episodes of Space Ghost Coast To Coast, but the show lives on thanks to YouTube clips ripped from Adult Swim broadcasts and the old DVDs.

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AVAM "The Big Hope Show"

I went to the American Visionary Arts Museum yesterday to see the "Big Hope Show". Always fun.

ABOUT THE EXHIBITION

The Big Hope Show opens on the eve of the American Visionary Art Museum's 20th anniversary celebration and is an original and unabashedly idealistic, art exhibition that champions the radiant and transformative power of hope. Over twenty-five visionary artists, among them many "super survivors" of enormous personal traumas, exhibit soulful creations reflecting their personal transcendence, and, often, a heightened or newfound creativity and sense of humor.

In playful tribute to this national museum's much-in-need-of-hope, beloved hometown of Baltimore City, Maryland, Bobby Adams will share never-before-seen photos, scrapbooks and assemblages as he documented his mid-century Baltimore upbringing and multi-decade immersion in filmmaker John Waters' band of inclusive renegades, the "Dreamlanders."

A hopeful look as to what constitutes community policing at its best is spotlighted in a video tribute to Kevin Briggs, the California trooper who so caringly connected with would-be suicide jumpers on the Golden Gate Bridge, and successfully helped save upwards of 200 lives. The Big Hope Show also addresses justice at its worse, with a visceral depiction of the life and artistry of the late Herman Wallace, an innocent Louisiana man who spent more than four decades in a solitary confinement cell measuring just 6' x 9'. Jackie Sumell powerfully conveys Wallace's experience with the remarkably humane and hopeful installation of Herman's House.

In another public first, The Big Hope Show unveils the fiercely blissful art of psychedelic rock pioneer and Flaming Lips frontman Wayne Coyne, who survived a harrowing robbery attempt while working as a fry cook at a Long John Silvers restaurant. Coyne's near-death trauma somehow catapulted him to explode with new talents and wildly unbridled creative endeavors. At AVAM, Coyne will provide visitors a peek into what really fuels his hope and happiness with a feel-good, visitor immersive, art installation titled, King's Mouth, and more.

Also in this exhibition: colored pencil master, Margaret Munz-Losch displays her life-sized, mind-boggling, intricate work Early Bird, cancer survivor, artist and performer Chris Roberts-Antieau shares her most elaborately embroidered fabric story pieces to date, and Nancy Josephson takes center stage with her 10-ft tall, beaded Bird Goddess sculpture. Film-documentarian Lisa Revson artfully observes the "why" behind a strangely hopeful societal phenomena in her installation, The Lost Earring Project: A Ritual of Hope, that asks: "why do so many of us keep holding onto the single mates to long lost earrings?"