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One cast, two sides: how a handful of voices played both M.A.S.K. and V.E.N.O.M.

cartoon

The cartoon has a lot of characters and a surprisingly small English-language cast, and the doubling crosses the front line between the heroes and the villains more than once.

The quickest way to see it is to look at two brothers. Miles Mayhem leads V.E.N.O.M. and has a twin, Maximus, who also works for V.E.N.O.M. Miles is voiced by Brendan McKane. Maximus is voiced by Doug Stone, who also voices Matt Trakker, the hero who founded the team and the man Miles is at war with. The cast list therefore says that the hero shares a voice with the villain’s brother, while the villain shares a voice with the hero’s systems commander.

Who played what

The credits below come from Wikipedia’s article on the series, and the voice actors for the characters we cover appear in both that article and the Matt-Trakker.com fan site. That is as close to two independent sources as we have [1].

Doug Stone is the busiest. He voices Matt Trakker, Hondo MacLean, Dusty Hayes, Bruce Sato and Boris Bushkin on the heroes’ side, and Nash Gorey, Bruno Sheppard and Maximus Mayhem on the V.E.N.O.M. side, so a single actor covers eight roles and both armies.

Brendan McKane voices Miles Mayhem and Floyd Malloy for V.E.N.O.M., and Alex Sector, Jacques LaFleur and Nevada Rushmore for the heroes. Graeme McKenna voices T-Bob, Brad Turner, Julio Lopez and Calhoun Burns, all of them agents or associates of the team. Mark Halloran covers Sly Rax and Cliff Dagger for V.E.N.O.M., Buddie Hawks and Ace Riker on the heroes’ side, and Duane Kennedy. Sharon Noble is the team computer, Gloria Baker plays for the heroes, and Vanessa Warfield for V.E.N.O.M. Brian George plays Ali Bombay and Lester Sludge. Brennan Thicke voices Scott Trakker, Matt’s son, in the cartoon.

What the doubling does

A cast this small has to double, and the interesting part is where the doubles fall. Stone voices Matt Trakker, whom the cartoon sets against V.E.N.O.M., and also Maximus Mayhem, one of V.E.N.O.M.’s own, along with two other V.E.N.O.M. agents, Nash Gorey and Bruno Sheppard. McKane voices Miles Mayhem, the villain Trakker is opposed to, and Alex Sector, who serves as systems commander aboard Trakker’s Rhino. Sharon Noble is the team computer and Gloria Baker, who drives for the team, and also Vanessa Warfield for V.E.N.O.M.

In other words the show’s central pair of men, who in at least one telling founded the team together before a rift between them, are voiced by two actors who each also play someone on the opposite side [2]. Nothing we found says this was deliberate. The likelier reason is a small cast covering a large roster, but we are guessing. It hardly hurts the show, since the voices are distinct enough that a child would not notice and an adult has to look it up, and it gives the cast list a different shape from the one the toy line’s red and purple packaging suggests.

The racing season of 1986 brought in many of the newer characters, among them Boris, Nevada, Ali, Lester and Maximus, and the roster for those parts leans on the same few actors. Boris Bushkin and Nevada Rushmore, on the heroes’ side, go to Stone and McKane. Ali Bombay and Lester Sludge, on opposite sides, share Brian George.

The widest range on the sheet

Graeme McKenna’s four parts are all on one side, but they could hardly be more different. T-Bob is the team’s robot sidekick, and sources disagree on whether Scott Trakker built him. Brad Turner is the hill climber and helicopter pilot, Julio Lopez the team’s physician and cryptography expert, and Calhoun Burns a driver whose codename is Cowboy in Wikipedia and Stonewall in MASKFORCE and a collector guide. Mark Halloran’s range runs from Sly Rax, a mercenary in one source and a con artist in another, to Buddie Hawks, one of whose codenames is Clutch. Those disagreements are on the character pages, and none of them is one an actor could settle for us.

Names and spellings

Sources disagree on a few of the names that matter here. Hondo’s surname is MacLean in Wikipedia, MacClean in a collector guide and McLean in a fan wiki. Jacques LaFleur is Jaques in one guide. Cliff Dagger is spelled “Cliff Danger” in the 2026 retail listing for the Armored Assault Vehicle, though comicbook.com and Wikipedia both have Dagger. We use the spellings from the character pages and show the alternatives there.

The music

The cartoon’s main theme was composed by Shuki Levy and Haim Saban. Wikipedia credits the pair as series composers, and so does the Agents of M.A.S.K. article on the show’s music, which also covers the main theme. Who wrote the lyrics and who sang them we could not verify, and the V.E.N.O.M. theme’s composer is not named in the sources we read [3].

What we cannot tell you

Wikipedia lists a large body of credited writers, among them Jina Bacarr, Mel Gilden, Jeffrey Scott, S. S. Wilson and, for the second season, Ray Dryden and Jack Olesker, and names Terrence McDonnell and Gary Warne as story editors on the first season and Jack Olesker on the second. It does not say who wrote which episode, and the fan wiki credits only a minority of the episodes. Our episode pages carry those writer credits only where a source gave one. The same goes for directing: Bruno Bianchi and Bernard Deyries are named for the first season and Michael Maliani for the second, but no source we read credits an individual episode.

The voices are the best-documented part of the production.

Notes

  1. Voice credits: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M.A.S.K._(TV_series) and https://www.matt-trakker.com/information. We could not check against on-screen credits; MASKFORCE has per-actor pages that we have not yet read.
  2. Sources disagree about the shared history of Trakker and Mayhem. Our character pages print the competing accounts. Which characters belong to which season is from Wikipedia’s character list, with thinner corroboration for the racing-era entries.
  3. Agents of M.A.S.K., The Music of M.A.S.K., 2012.

Sources