Isn't that what wonderful childhood memories are made of? Looks like while I wasn't watching (the shows, or the business relationship), 4Kids' relationship with Fox was souring. Now they're breaking up for good. Fox will give part of the time back to the affiliates (you know, to air E/I shows, news or whatever), but Fox will keep two hours to air infomercials. A major network to air infomercials. Gotta love this new economy.

A quick fun post of two songs with similar aims. . .

First, the Galaxy Song from Monty Python.


Next, the Universe Song from Animaniacs.

It's been a long while since I talked about animation in depth. It's surprising, as it is one of my first loves, but developments over the years (and it frightening that I can use the word "years" in descriptions of my life on the internet and of my time writing here, even if in the latter it is more of a description of the length of time between posts) lead me to less actively seek out information, history and community from the resources that exist here on the internet. Part of the reason is that I can avoid controversies that almost inevitably spin out from something written by John Kricfalusi.

For those who haven't heard of him, John K. is a Canadian-born animator best (and for most people, only) known for creating Ren and Stimpy. He is also something of a bomb-throwing animation iconoclast, in much the same way that Christopher Hitchens is on every subject he writes about. He has opinions about what he feels is wrong with American animation, (summarized partly that it is all the fault of the cabal of writers and executives who conspire to keep the lowly animator subservient)  and he will gladly tell you in ways deftly designed to inflame the passions of his acolytes and to drive those who disagree into apoplectic fits. Again, much like Hitchens.

A spot on parody of this, and other animation-web lunacy was written by Bob Mackey for Something Awful. Page two contains a barely indistinguishable from reality parody of John K.

That said, I was honestly surprised and delighted by a bit of animation he did for the first episode of Class of 3000 (I'm reading it was just character design), which I'm not much of a fan of. Of course, Class of 3000 is unabashedly a kids-only show, and it wasn't hoping to suck me in as a fan.

And since I first posted about Disney and The Princess and the Frog (formerly: The Frog Princess), they've already stumbled out of the gate. The film has been preemptively declared racist, which has sent Disney scrambling to make changes and clarify matters.

Disney to return to animating movies with pencils and paper. This reverses a decision made for an incredibly stupid reason -- which was "Our movies weren't doing well. It must be because they weren't computer animated." It took them numerous failures with computer animated movies to reconsider that reasoning.

Of course, we have to figure if they figured out what they need to do. "It doesn't matter what the technology is. It matters what the story is."

What's actually cool in this, is the story is going to take place in New Orleans and the lead will be a black character.

I mentioned Courage the Cowardly Dog several posts/months back. In particular, the episode, Remembrance of Courage Past which was -- if I'm not mistaken -- the last episode of the show (paired with Perfect) , both shown and planned as such. In Remembrance, we learn through flashback the tragic story of how Courage came to be an orphaned dog, to be found and saved by Muriel. I mention it now, as for the time being, Cartoon Network has provided a direct link to the video.

For a network that has actually began to show contempt for the medium that it was created to celebrate, Cartoon Network has actually paid some small tributes to Joseph Barbera on his passing. and two commercials remarking on his passing (an Adult Swim version and a Cartoon Network/Boomerang version of the tribute). That said, with some occasional exceptions, the Boomerang network can be seen as the broadcast museum to the works of Hanna-Barbera.

Largely, I grew up after the H-B heyday, but of the so-called animation renaissance spurred on by the critical and commercial success of Who Framed Roger Rabbit, which helped revive the Disney Feature Animation unit, and encouraged Steven Spielberg and Warner Bros. into producing animation for television. (Remember when Tiny Toon Adventures got a primetime special on CBS for its premiere?) Disney got in to the act by expanding their daytime offerings into a two-hour block, calling it The Disney Afternoon. With Fox entering the scene, you had a small but active environment for animation, which of course helped spur the creation of Cartoon Network.(Ironically, a 24-hour animation network would eventually kill off afternoon cartoons on network TV, and drain the remaining audience for SatAm cartoons.)

Now, it may be giving too much credit to Joe Barbera and Bill Hanna to say he kept animation alive from the 60s-80s through their Saturday morning works (and the Flintstones in primetime), but if nothing else, they kept a lot of their colleagues in work, and inspired lots of kids at home, through those cartoons, as well as through those Tom and Jerry shorts from the 1940s onward. J.B. also was one of the helpful bridges to the history of the medium. He will be greatly missed in the animation community. I'm glad to see he will be missed by Cartoon Network, too.

This is as good an obit for Joseph Barbera as I have seen since learning thirty-seven seconds ago that he died today.

It has to be worth something that 72% of the cartoons I watch even today had Barbera's involvement in it somewhere.

Disney to cut 20% of its animation jobs.

I forget, has Disney released any self-produced (non-Pixar) animated film at all in 2006?

Let's face facts.

Charlie Brown and friends would never last more than an episode on television today. How can a kid today possibly relate to such a cast of well-adjusted, prepubescent children with freakishly small eyes and limbs. The characters arn't even rendered with sharp angles. The guys don't have gravity-defying hair. The women lack gravity-defying, well, womanly adornment. There's not a giant robot or a mutant alien or a pervert with a laser weapon among the cast. A deranged dog and a lack of parental oversight is a bit of a start, the Peanuts gang is really gonna need serious work to make them cool with todays kids.

Fortunately, the success of Loonatics Unleashed has given us a template as to how to modernize Charlie Brown and friends!

(If anybody knows to whom I should credit for that Charlie Brown reimaginations, drop me a line. I see they're signed by a "GNAW".)

UPDATE: Well, I found Gnaw.

For some reason, I put myself in a news exile (from both the simply inscrutible funny book and animation industries, and the completely illogical real life. . .), but I read on yendi's page that Bruce Timm is still being employed by Warners to adapt some DC comic arcs into DTV DVD releases. Like they do with "Elseworlds", these are not to be considered canon of the Bruce Timm animated DC Universe (which spans from 1992's Batman animated series, all the way to Justice League Unlimited which concluded this year).

Also, from various Teen Titan fan sites, when Robin joins The Batman this fall, he'll sport both the costume and the voice (Scott Menville) from the  2003 animated Teen Titans version. i'll probably still decline viewing it, as the most of the design feels too clunky for animation, and the plots generally more juvenile than in Teen Titans. (I may try to watch the Robin introduction ep. I may also try watching the Harley Quinn introduction ep, as that episode is written by kingofbreakfast aka Paul Dini, and he generally writes good eps. That, and he created Quinn for the original 1992 Batman series.)

Also, most people probably don't realize that comics based on the adaptations in the animated series are still published by DC Comics. Of course this helps confuse newcomers as the animated shows are themselves reinterpretations of comic book series, which are also on sale in shelves at the neighborhood comic book shelves. In fact, at any point, there's probably 16 different interpretations of each character or group of characters in each of their own story arcs which may or may not affect other story arcs in other comics. Anyway, the cartoon inspired ones tend to be self-contained, taking cues from the show if that show is still on the air. Now, the comic based on the Justice League & Justice League Unlimited TV series is titled simply Justice League Unlimited. The comic series based on the Teen Titans animated series is Teen Titans Go! ( after the Puffy AmiYumi sung theme song for the show).

For Teen Titans the animated series, one of the characters most anticipated for inclusion in the show couldn't be included (officially). Clearances couldn't be secured in time. (The only thing more complicated that superhero comic histories it appears are the licensing agreements governing each character's use. And this character's history is a doozy of one.) But for the comic Teen Titans Go!, Wonder Girl can finally make her grand debut.

And why I'm up this early in the morning -- it is 6:47am and it is already 80 degrees. This is going to be a horrible, horrible week.

And this is a test to see how it works from the YouTube end of things -- This is one of the most clever reinterpretations of the "Who's On First" bit by Abbott and Costello. It's more plausible as these were the names of actual bands (as opposed to having to believe someone was actually named "I Don't Give a Darn" on a baseball team)

-- Sigh, I guess YouTube won't be making placing LJ cuts easy, I edited the thing to make the video appear behind the cut.

Click Here to see video: Pulling a Malade Out of the Hat from Liquid TV

One of the great shows to be showcased on Cartoon Network's "Cartoon Cartoon" campaign was John Dilworth's Courage the Cowardly Dog. Courage began life as a one-shot short, The Chicken from Outer Space, where a meek little dog who is tormented and mistreated rises to protect his caretaker from a alien chicken. It was popular enough to spawn a 52 episode series, noteable for its almost gothic atmosphere, which contrasts diametrically with the sunny affections that caretaker Muriel shows for Courage. This is pretty much all that allows Courage to persevere against not only all the outside threats that attack him and his caretakers, but to persevere against his mistreatment by Eustice, (presumably) Muriel's husband.

The video clip linked to predates "Courage" by 5 years. It was a segment on MTV's Liquid Television titled "Smart Talk with Raisin - Pulling a Malade out of a Hat". In it we have character which are precursors to those of Courage. Raisin, the little girl hosting the show has the same general sunny temperment that we would see in Muriel, while Malcolm is the misanthrope who would be reincarnated as Eustice. He insults the poor dog Hamilton much the same way Eustice does Courage.

The title of this post comes from the first of the two shorts that aired as the last episode of Courage. "Remembrance of Courage Past" was paired up with an episode titled "Perfect", where a strict schoolteacher continually punishes Courage for not being perfect. That character makes her appearence in this short, thus seemingly deliberately bookending the saga of Courage.

Unlike recent series, this shows appears to have ended at the time by creator Dilworth's wish. The show was not placed on a long hiatus, with the last episodes snuck in under cover of night; nor was it stealthly cancelled as several recent Cartoon Network productions were. This a shame to think what the checkboard network has become.

ALSO: Interview with John Dilworth in Animation World Network from 1999 as Courage first premiered as a series.

Seeing a teenaged Mario Lopez wearing a pink tank top, hawaiian shorts and pink novelty sunglasses singing "Ba Ba Ba Ba Ba Bahran" caused me to believe I was suffering from an acid flashback. Having Dustin Diamond and Mark Paul Gosselaar, all in 80s (early 90s) glory had me shaking with nerves. I had never consumed LSD in my life.

I had left to shower believing that I had left the TV on Cartoon Network, so for a very brief moment, I thought I lost my mind. Then, I remembered this was the same network that has recently aired The Goonies, Honey I Shrunk the Kids, Snow Day, Ace Ventura: Pet Detective, and Small Soldiers, and has optioned to produce two shows which includes live action (not counting the Canadian produced Zixx), so it is certainly possible that the network has taken its train of stupid ideas to its logical conclusion and crashed it directly into TNBC. Then I saw the tag. "Saved by the Bell on Adult Swim starts April 17th." All in the varsity collegiate typeface.

Knowing this made me feel better.

Regular readers of this irregular journal may now be questioning the veracity of my claim of never having used LSD, as I have been regularly bashing Cartoon Network for airing things that even the most braindead fools would recognise as not being cartoons. As recently as 24 hours ago.

And if this was airing at any time on any other daypart of Cartoon Network, I would start organizing a massive protest in front of Turner headquarters in Atlanta, as well as considering simultanous protests at the Time Warner center in New York, and the Warner Bros. studio lot in Los Angeles. But in Adult Swim, it different. Not because they consider themselves a different network from Cartoon Network daytime. ("Saul of the Mole People" looks to commit the double sin of being live-action, and being Adult Swim filler crap like "Tom Goes to the Mayor" and "12 oz. Mouse".)

No, since Adult Swim first expanded to the 5-6:00am hour, they've had an hour of time to kill. As scheduled, they used to run 3 hours of programming, and then repeat it. The seventh hour was filler, which lately they filled with the lousiest junk they could find. Expanding the weeknight block to the 10:30-11:00pn half hour on the other end reduced the dead block to just 5:30-6:00am. And by lousy, I mean the worse of the worse. Currently, they're using that block to run an animated show called "Chuck Norris: Karate Kommandos". Think of Saturday Night Live trying to produce a parody of the worse star driven animated program possible. Karate Kommandos is worse than that! The opening of the show actually mentions Chuck Norris' name ten times The opening has an ethnic kid and they actually refer to him by his catchphrase "Too Much". Chuck Norris' team actually includes a Samurai and a Sumo Wrestles/Cook. The villians include "The Claw" who was apparently out of work after the cancellation of Inspector Gadget and henchmen who probably got fired from Cobra in the G.I. Joe series. This is how the show opens!

Chuck Norris!
Chuck Norris, man of action!
Chuck Norris stars in Chuck Norris: Karate Kommandos!
Chuck Norris, he's got nerves of steel and strength to match!

You actually get the feeling that the producers of the show was afraid the animation would be so bad, that people wouldn't recognise Chuck Norris without the repeated cues. The animation was pretty bad, even for 80s standards, though at least it seems they got Jack Kirby and Gil Kane to help make sure the people looked recognisable as people. The plots were nonsensical, and there was no continuity within the show itself. You couldn't parody this show -- it was that bad. Which is probably why it wound up on Adult Swim. This show, and the Mr. T cartoon, were the shows they used to prank people on April Fools Day (replacing the popular anime of the night).

Now with Adult Swim showing Saved by the Bell, in a normal title card, they state this is a *special two week run* starting April 17th (Actually, the 18th at midnight). Interestingly, this run overlaps with Cartoon Network's two week run (starting today) of showing movies in prime time. Yes, most of which are live action movies. Tonight they're showing "Roger Rabbit" once again, but tomorrow it's "Honey, I Shrunk the Kids" and Wednesday it is a documentary about the current executives running Cartoon Network. So, right now, I'm happy to assume that the Adult Swim team is mocking the regular network team by showing a show neither animated or suited for adults. (Saved by the Bell wasn't suited for viewing by anyone, despite going on seemingly forever.) This was a show aired on TBS, and many people complained that CN was turning into the TBS dumping ground. (The movies that CN aired in November, January and February had aired earlier on TBS.) I think even on the ToonZone message board, someone suggested that "Saved by the Bell" would be airing on the future "Children's Network".

Of course, it is equally as likely that an Adult Swim executive got wasted and just started laughing like a lunatic at the old show.

Updated at 4:48am -- Well, another bumper stated SBTB will air at midnight (I stated 5:30am originally), so I guess we'll still get to enjoy the suckatude of Chuck Norris at 5:30am, as well as seeing SBTB air twice each night.

I was watching the old MGM short "Red Hot Riding Hood" on the Turner network that shows cartoons 24 hours a day^*, and they ran this interesting factoid: the Hays Board rejected the original ending where the lustful wolf is forced into a shotgun marriage to the grandma of Red. The acceptable replacement ending? The wolf shoots himself in the head.

Illuminating, don't you think?

^*No, this network would not be the Cartoon Network. Cartoon Network doesn't show cartoons 24 hours a day. (Despite making an claim earlier to do so until the "end of time".)

In looking for screenshots for one of those posts I promise I'm going to write but never do, screenshots of the old Fleischer Superman cartoons, I discovered that those very cartoons are now in the public domain. You can download and watch the Fleischer Superman shorts without fear that Paramount, DC Comics or the MPAA will sue you.

I guess that also means I could also download those video and make my own screenshots, or buy DVDs of them and cap those to illustrate the phantom post.

Honestly, it amazes me that their Superman is better looking than all of the animated versions of Superman from the 60s, 70s and 80s.

I have thoughs about why.

Elsewhere: What's with that "S"?

Despite the error that appears in the very second sentence of the article, that isn't cleared up until the third electronic page of the piece, there's a reasonably good article in the Washington Post's Weekend section by Mark Jenkins (and online, of course) talking of the gaining popularity of anime and manga. Of course, by the time a paper like the WashPost hits on to a cultural phenomena rise, it's probably actually peaked months ago. I doubt it has, as I really don't see anything that's coming to supplant it.

The hook to the article is Katsucon, an anime convention that's happening in town this weekend. Katsucon is actually one of (I believe) three such conventions that are held in the region. Katsucon, after frequently being held in the somewhat underground city of Crystal City, is now in downtown proper. Anime USA occurs in November at Tysons Corner, and Otakon has summer in Baltimore.

Two things stick out with me. Good things are said for the Teen Titans series, which although is a good series that takes bits of inspiration from anime, that is all there is to it. It's an entirely American product, with the caveat that the majority of the animation is outsourced to Asia, like all non-Disney/Pixar/Dreamworks animated features. There's an attempt to imply a Japanese co-production on the level of say the new Astroboy or the second season of Big O. (Not that I should complain, since not enough good things can be said for Teen Titans. Especially as Cartoon Network has opted to end production on it, to free up money to purchase inappropiate live action movies to air...such as "Ace Ventura II" for Presidents' Day -- ok, I'll save that rant for a later post...)

Second, second is the idea that one reason the genra has become popular is how it isn't condescending. Characters aren't all virtue and all vice, which is something that has had a hard time breaking into American animation. One of the more absurd examples is that of the show Captain Planet, which misguidedly instructed in its series manual that the polluters are evil to the point of lunacy and that they pollute because they want the planet dead. That idiocy helped to make the show more harmful to its cause than anything else. But Captain Planet is in line with how animation producers viewed its audience back in the 70s and 80s, as simple minded. I think even kids can recognise when they're being condesended to.

Also, there's a note that manga is popular with young girls, a market that the comic book companies never really successfully marketed to. That's cute, but looking at DC and Marvel today, I think they just have trouble marketing to anyone who isn't already a comic collector. (Note: not reader -- They don't even try for casual reader, as they consistantly place barriers too high for all but the crazed.)

Well, after watching this show on Cartoon Network, I can only conclude that the network hates its viewers. It is a horrible adaption of whatever they intended to adapt to American television. Absolutely nothing is done well by this show. Not the writing. Not the dialog (This joke rings too true for this series: "You make a lot of jokes, but you're not the least bit funny."). Not the puppetry. (It would probably be too much to hope for the quality of puppetry from -- let's say "Beany and Cecil", but it's not even good enough to be "it's bad, but we can have fun with this" a la Trey Parker and Matt Stone's "Team America: World Police".) I suspect they try to use the epileptic camera work to hide the fact that the puppetry work is bad, but it just makes the whole thing look worse.

I look at this show, and ask why? I'd actually rather see "Loonatics Unleashed", "Danny Phantom", "The Batman" or a live action Chevy Chase movie appear here than see this mess of a show on Cartoon Network.

Watching Cartoon Network is beginning to feel like looking at somebody about to play Russian Roulette with a AK-47.

I watched a lot of cartoons, particularly the Warner Bros. shorts of the 40s and 50s that was popular with television syndication in the 80s. I watched enough of it as I could begin to identify the likely crew of director and animators for shorts that I've never seen before. My accuracy has gotten well enough as I could tell who directed what show and at roughly when it was produced. Well, Jaime Weinman does one better than me, and can identify which animator does which scene in each short. It's not hard to do if you realize that each animator has different strengths and quirks which can be identified with sufficient sluthing. Jaime plays cartoon forensics on "Show Biz Bugs" and (with the assist of Greg Duffell) "Hillbilly Hare".

All in all, his journal "Something Old, Nothing New" is an interesting page devoted to interesting commentary on old things that used to be popular. It was added to the 'blogroll' a few days ago, which prompted Blogspot to immediate crash, rendering the site inaccessible for a few days. (Yes, Blogspot went down to spite me...)