Verb

Verb
Background information
Shows	Schoolhouse Rock!
Video games	Schoolhouse Rock!: Grammar Rock
Animators	Phil Kimmelman and Associates
Designer	Tom Yohe
Voice	Zachary Sanders Wesley Hodges (in PC game)
Inspiration	Shaft and other blaxploitation films
Character information
Other names	Verb Man (in PC game)
Occupation	Superhero
Likes	baseball
Dislikes	rain
Powers and abilities	flight, super strength, verb vision

Verb, the first animated black superhero, appears in the Schoolhouse Rock! song "Verb: That's What's Happening."

Description

Verb is the lead character in the in-universe movie Verb: The Movie. He can "take a noun and bend it" and according to the song, doesn't know his own power. He also has an affinity for baseball, as seen when he turns the noun "bat" into the verb "batting" and when he hits a home run in a baseball game near the end of the song.

His super powers include flight, super strength and "verb vision" that turns nouns into verbs (the latter two demonstrated in the Grammar Rock PC game.)

He is notable for being a bit inexperienced as a superhero; for example, he uses his cape to cover himself up when it's raining instead of letting himself get wet like most seasoned heroes would do, and crying when he fails in the PC game.

Gallery

Verb on the cover of the Golden Book Video Grammar Rock VHS

Sailor Verb

Trivia

• In the Grammar Rock PC game, his sunglasses come off at a certain point.
  • In addition, in the cartoon itself, when he's hit on the head by a baseball, his glasses lower for a split second so you can see his eyes.

Verb without his sunglasses

• Verb was the first black male superhero character in a Saturday morning cartoon.
• His costume's colors are an inverted version of Superman's. Furthermore, he uses Superman's catchphrase "Up, up, and away!" in the Grammar Rock PC game. The three-note tune when he enters is also borrowed from John Williams' Superman theme.
• Verb resembles the original comic book design of the Falcon.

v - e - d

Media Schoolhouse Rock! • Schoolhouse Rock Live! • Schoolhouse Rock! 50th Anniversary Singalong Songs Schoolhouse Rocky Multiplication: My Hero, Zero • Elementary, My Dear • Three is a Magic Number • The Four-Legged Zoo • Ready or Not, Here I Come • I Got Six • Lucky Seven Sampson • Figure Eight • Naughty Number Nine • The Good Eleven • Little Twelvetoes Grammar: Unpack Your Adjectives • Lolly, Lolly, Lolly, Get Your Adverbs Here • Conjunction Junction • Interjections! • Rufus Xavier Sarsaparilla • Verb: That's What's Happening • A Noun is a Person, Place or Thing • Busy Prepositions • The Tale of Mr. Morton America: No More Kings • Fireworks • The Shot Heard 'Round the World • The Preamble • Elbow Room • The Great American Melting Pot • Mother Necessity • Sufferin' Till Suffrage • I'm Just a Bill • Three Ring Government • I'm Gonna Send Your Vote to College • Presidential Minute Science: The Body Machine • Do the Circulation • Electricity, Electricity • The Energy Blues • Interplanet Janet • Telegraph Line • Them Not-So-Dry Bones • A Victim of Gravity • The Weather Show Money: Dollars and Sense • $7.50 Once a Week • Where the Money Goes • Tax Man Max • Walkin' on Wall Street • This for That • Tyrannosaurus Debt • The Check's in the Mail Earth: Report from the North Pole • The Little Things We Do • The Trash Can Band • You Oughta Be Saving Water • The Rainforest • Save the Ocean • Fat Cat Blue: The Clean Rivers Song • A Tiny Urban Zoo • Solar Power to the People • Windy and the Windmills • Don't Be a Carbon Sasquatch • The Three R's Scooter Computer and Mr. Chips Theme • Hardware • Software • Number Cruncher Characters Schoolhouse Rocky • Lucky Seven Sampson • Bill • Interplanet Janet