Rickey the Wicked

Rickey the Wicked is an American animated television series created by Brad Bird and produced by Amblin Entertainment and Warner Bros. Animation. The series chronicles the adventures of a teenage witch named Rickey and his friends in the fictional village of Darkville as they go against evil while Rickey himself becomes a master sorcerer witch.

The series was originally envisioned by Bird in the late 1980s initially created to be a Disney series for it's Saturday morning block. However, after meeting Jean MacCurdy, he later considered on making the show for Warner Bros. and being aired on Fox as a primetime show. A television film titled Rickey in Archeland which serves as the pilot episode, aired on Fox on October 20, 1991.

The show later premiered on Fox on February 8, 1992 and finished its run in 2002, with a total of ten seasons and 209 episodes. Rickey the Wicked was praised by critics and received high ratings during its original run, becoming popular among both younger and older audiences. It has since became the flagship show for Warner Bros. Animation and even was the inspiration of various other shows like Disney's Mirica. The series also spawned a feature film, Rickey the Wicked Witch of the City (2002) which became a box office success while serving as the series finale along with an upcoming computer-animated sequel Rickey the Wicked: Alaxesis (2023).

A revival was announced in 2020 and is scheduled to be released on HBO Max in 2024 as well as simulcasting on Cartoon Network.

Synopsis
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Setting
Rickey the Wicked is set in the fictional town Darkville, full of mortals where the Diablo family moved there after their original home gets attacks by the evil Glorgon clan.

Characters
Rickey Diablo (Rickey the Wicked) (voiced by Candi Milo) - Rickey is a 16 year old teenager who is a witch but disguises himself as a human to fit into the regular Human population of Darkville after moving their with his family from Adelaide for survival reasons. As a running gag, Rickey routinely mispronounces words such as "brain" calling it "brian" instead. Throughout the series while balancing his teenage life as well as witch life, Rickey often gets himself into trouble.

Wade Diablo (voiced by Charlie Adler) - Wade is the 45 year old witch who is the father of Rickey. He is clumsy and often gets himself hurt during his daily life.

Merril Diablo (voiced by B.J. Ward) - Merril is the 43 year old female witch who is the mother of Rickey. She is shown to be uptight but humorous as she initially goes against the idea of Rickey becoming a legendary Witchress.

Beck Diablo (voiced by Tony Jay in the original series and Fred Tatasciore in the revival) - Beck is the 75 year old witch who is the grandfather of Rickey and his regarded my most witches as a legend. During the beginning of the series, he was initially regarded as an villain but has since regulated into a heroic role. Beck owns the legendary spell book dubbed the Tilear, where he uses spells from this to train Rickey.

Grandma Diablo (voiced by June Foray) - The 70 year old grandma witch to Rickey. She is a former master sorcerer of the universe while also having a few tricks up her sleeve. A running gag in the series is her short term memory where she randomly attacks Wade thinking he is a stranger or a robber.

Becky Williams (voiced by Desirée Goyette) - a 17 year old teenager whose a cheerleader at Rickey's high school. She is shown to have feelings for Rickey too but hides them in order to preserve her popularity.

Din (voiced by Jim Cummings)

Wendy Diablo (voiced by Ashley Johnson)

Noah Wilcox (voiced by Scott Menville)

Cerberus (voiced by Frank Welker)

Animation
In order to complete the first season's 20 episodes, Warner Bros. Animation outsourced the series to several different overseas animation houses: Spectrum Animation, Sunrise, Studio Junio and Tokyo Movie Shinsha in Japan, Dong Yang Animation, Koko Enterprises Ltd. and AKOM in South Korea, Jade Animation in Hong Kong, Blue Pencil in Spain and Network of Animation (NOA) in Canada. TMS also animated the first season's opening theme sequence. AKOM was eventually fired due to its inconsistent animation in many episodes such as "Witch Fever" and "Oh, Great Master."

Rickey the Teenager
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Rickey and Randy
It is a cross-over comic book based on a cancelled possible television episode crossover between Rickey the Wicked and Randy Rabbit released in 4 parts throughout 1997, yet it is considered non-canon according to Brad Bird.

Rickey: The Race to Haerezan
Warner Bros. announced in February 2016 that Paul Dini, Alan Burnett and artist Ty Templeton would be leading a new miniseries, Rickey: The Race to Haerezan, to be first published in April 2016, based on the series and following shortly after its conclusion, with Rickey still mastering being a true sorcerer while the Haerezan's attack Rickey's city.

Novels
There was also a short-lived series of tie-in novels, adapted from episodes of the series by fantasy author Robin Hobb. To achieve novel-length, Hobb combined several related episodes into a single storyline in each novel. The novels included:


 * Cats from the Past ("Date with Magic", "The Diablo Legacy" two-parter)
 * Rise of the Witches ("Gnivel" two-parter, "The Dark Truth" two-parter)
 * Fire versus Magic ("Night of the Dead", "Day of the Figther")
 * Witch of the City (Rickey the Wicked Witch of the City)

Production
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Syndication
The series has been syndicated to local broadcast stations in nearly all markets throughout the United States since September 1997. It started to air on Cartoon Network from 1997 as well as on Toonami briefly throughout the 90's and early 2000's. From April 1, 2000 to September 10, 2008, Boomerang reran the series on its Boomeraction block and again April 9, 2010 to January 2, 2016. Skyscore additionally aired the series from October 11, 2008 to February 13, 2010 before it moved back to Boomerang.

It also aired on The CW through it's Vortexx block albeit heavy editing to retain a TV-Y7-FV rating and included taking out some dialogue as well as removing blood and even various scenes to appeal to it's morning audience.

Fandom
The series has continued to become Warner Bros.'s most popular animated series and tied with SpongeBob Squarepants to be one of the most popular cartoons of all time while being often defined as "Warner Bros.'s flagship series" outstripping various other series by them such as Randy Rabbit and Animaniacs.

By the time the third season of the series came out, measures were made strongly to make sure various videogames won't be stolen as well as piracy of the new episodes. Rickey the Wicked is considered one of the few four-quadrant, multi-generation spanning franchises that exist today, despite Bird's original marketing of the series to tweens and teens.

Many fan fiction and fan art works about Rickey have been made. Jennifer Conn used Beck Diablo's teaching methods as examples of what to avoid and what to emulate in clinical teaching, and Joyce Fields wrote that the series illustrate four of the five main topics in a typical first-year sociology class: "sociological concepts including culture, society, and socialisation; stratification and social inequality; social institutions; and social theory".

Fan conventions have been another way that the fandom has congregated. Various conventions such as Diablocemeber (which is held annually every December) are made where fans flock to them. They have featured prominent members of the fandom such as Ricardo Hernandez, owner of Oglath.net (Phoenix Rising, 2007); Melissa Anelli, current webmaster of The Leaky Witch (Phoenix Rising, 2007; Witchycon, 2009/2011/2012); Sue Upton, former Senior Editor of the Leaky Witch (Prophecy, 2007); Heidi Tandy, founder of Fiction Alley (Prophecy, 2007), Paul and Rickey Dollaz of the witch rap group Harry and the Potters (along with several other more well-known Witch Rock bands such as The Remus Lupins, The Parselmouths, Ministry of Magic, and The Whomping Willows), (Prophecy, 2007; Leakycon, 2009/2011/2012), Andrew Slack, founder of The Rickey Diablo Alliance, and StarKid, the cast of the fan made musicals "A Very Diablo Musical", "A Very Diablo Sequel", and "A Very Diablo Senior Year".

Still, the conventions try to attract the fandom with other fun-filled Duablo-centric activities, often more interactive, such as witch chess, water Quidditch, a showing of the series, or local cultural immersions. Live podcasts are often recorded during these events, and live Witcxh Rock shows have become a fairly large part of recent conventions. Members of the Rickey the Wicked cast have been brought in for the conferences; actors such as Jim Cummings (Cerberus) and Ashley Johnson (Wendy Diablo), along with several others, have appeared to give live Q&A sessions and keynote presentations about the series.

In addition to fandom-specific programming, LeakyCon 2011 and 2012 have hosted LitDays (as well as incorporating the many fandoms Rickey the Wicked fans have branched into since the ending of the series). LitDays are full of programming with authors, agents, and editors. A few key examples are John Green, author of the award-winning young adult novels The Fault in Our Stars and Looking for Alaska; Scott Westerfeld, author of the Uglies series and Leviathan; and David Levithan, author of Nick & Norah's Infinite Playlist and The Lover's Dictionary.

These conventions are now incorporating the recently opened theme park The Wizarding World of Harry Potter[79] into their itinerary, built inside Universal's Island of Adventure in Orlando, Florida. At the Harry Potter fan conventions Infinitus 2010, LeakyCon 2011, and Ascendio 2012, special events were held at the theme park dedicated to the series. These are after-hours events for convention attendees who purchased tickets to experience and explore the park by themselves. The event included talks given by creators of the park, free food and butterbeer, and live wizard rock shows inside the park.

Cultural impact and legacy
Rickey the Wicked has been consistently ranked as one of the greatest animated television shows ever made. It has been critically acclaimed for its sophistication, mature tone, dark humor, complex story, voice acting, orchestrated soundtrack, artistic ambition, and action sequences. In 1993, Entertainment Weekly ranked the series as one of the top television series of the year. Rickey the Wicked was listed as the 28th best animated show in IGN's "Top 100 Animated Series", and was also listed as the 10th greatest animated show in Wizard magazine's "Top 100 Greatest Animated shows" list.

Rickey the Wicked’s popularity is reflected through a variety of data through online interactions which show the popularity of the media. In 2001, it was reported that the official website of Rickey the Wicked recorded 5.9 million hits per day and included 700,000+ registered fans. The term "Rickey the Wicked" ranked 3rd in 1999 and 1st in 2000 by Lycos' web search engine. For 2001, "Rickey Diablo" was the most popular search on Lycos and "Rickey the Wicked" was fifth on Yahoo!, and "Teirka" was the third most popular search term in 2002.

In 2005, media historian Hal Erickson wrote that "Rickey the Wicked may be the closest thing on American television to an animated kids soap opera — though this particular genre is an old and usually geared towards older audiences." Hal Erickson also called Rickey "a series that all and everyone can watch no matter what age group".

In 2016, Ford Motor Company released two commercials featuring characters from the series, the first advertising the Ford Fusion and the second for the Ford Focus.

Influence
ABC's hit animated series Demons, was reportedly based on Rickey the Wicked according to show creator Donny Jones. Jones stated "Rickey the Wicked is the best series and lasted me during my late high school to college years." Additionally, due to the success of Rickey the Wicked, many crew members went on to design and produce Metropolis for Warner Bros. Feature Animation.

The dramatized and more serious yet episodic writing and art style of Rickey the Wicked was defined as being the more serious version of children's shows like Alaina Gleen. Since this, the show's popularity can be compared as being universal and four-quadrant gearing towards older audiences.

The series' episodic format are employed in the Rickey videogame series and even features the cast from the series reprising their roles except Tony Jay (due to his death in 2005) and Desirée Goyette. Furthermore, the videogames were written by Brad Bird as well.

Actor, Finn Wolfhard, explained that his performance in 2019 as Ico in the film of the same name was inspired by the characterization of Rickey Diablo in the series, giving him a brave heart but goofy while explaining that this translates into his videogame counterpart.

Rickey the Wicked Witch of the City
Main article: Rickey the Wicked Witch of the City

In 2002, a feature film, titled Rickey the Wicked Witch of the City was released with the movie featuring Rickey and his friends on a quest to find his real, biological mother and stop his dad from taking over the world. The film was produced by Silver Pictures and Village Roadshow Pictures in association with Warner Bros. Animation. It ended up being a box office success grossing $243.2 million against it's $60 million budget.

Rickey the Wicked: Alaxesis
Main article: Rickey the Wicked: Alaxesis

In 2019, it was announced by Warner Bros. that along with the revival being released in 2024, a sequel to Rickey the Wicked Witch of the City would be released in 2023, with both using stylized CGI rather than the traditional animation used in the original film.

Music
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Soundtracks
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United Kingdom
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United States
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Chinese dubbed
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Spanish dubbed
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Region 1
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Region 2
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Region 3
In Hong Kong, the show was packaged into four different DVD volume sets just as it was done in Region 1. Volumes 1 and 2 were both released on February 21, 2005, while Volume 3 was released July 14, 2005, and Volume 4 was released February 24, 2006.

Region 4

In Australia, Volume 1 was released on October 12, 2005. Volumes and the box set are available at websites like eBay.com, Amazon.com and Quicksales.com. All four volumes are available on the Australian iTunes Store, and were released individually on DVD on November 2, 2016, by Village Roadshow.

Blu-ray
During the series' 25th anniversary panel at the New York Comic Con on October 8, 2017, it was announced that the complete series would be released on Blu-ray later in 2018 (due to the financial success of the Rickey the Wicked Witch of the City Blu-ray release in 2017). The Blu-ray release came out in fall 2018 as it included remastered video as well as the option to watch it in remastered widescreen which is what it was originally animated. The numbered, limited-edition box sets also included a code for a free digital SD and HD copy of the complete series, three collectible Funko Pocket Pops of Rickey Diablo, seven exclusive lenticular cards of original animation artwork, as well as Blu-ray copies of the original 60 minute pilot episode Rickey and the Power Stoneland and the feature film Rickey the Wicked Witch of the City.

Streaming
The series previously streamed on Netflix starting in October 9, 2016 and was removed on January 9, 2018 moving to Hulu until it began to stream on HBO Max on May 27, 2020 at launch.

Video games
Several video games based on the animated continuity were released during the 16-bit game-machine era. Konami developed a game for the Super Nintendo Entertainment System (SNES), while Sega released versions of the game for the Sega Genesis/Mega Drive, Mega-CD and Game Gear. The SNES, Genesis/Mega Drive and Game Gear versions were side-scrolling action games, while the Mega-CD version featured a 3-D driving adventure. All of the games had art true to the series, while Sega's versions featured art elements directly from the show's creators. The CD version has over 20 minutes of original animated footage comparable to the most well-crafted episodes, with the principal voice actors reprising their roles.

There was also a game made for the Game Boy based on the series and created around the same time. Developed and published by Konami, this game was distinctive upon the fact that it still used the earlier Rickey the Wicked vs Beck moniker in the early episodes of the series.

Though not directly related, the Rickey video game series features the series' cast returning to their roles, including Candi Milo as Rickey Diablo and Ashley Johnson as Wendy Diablo, along with B.J. Ward as Merril Diablo. However, due to Tony Jay's death, Beck Diablo was voiced by Fred Tatasciore, who later officially joined the franchise being cast in the upcoming Alaxesis as well as the revival. Additionally, the games were written by Brad Bird. As an easter egg, the original concept costumes of the characters were included as downloadable skins in the games.