Category: Cartooning

Silver Surfing Safari

It’s amazing that both Spider-Man and the Fantastic Four are major motion pictures in release at the same time, just as they were cartoons on TV at the same time 40 years ago. Stan Lee believed in the mainstream acceptance of this material, but it sure seemed unlikely it would ever materialize.

Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer seems to be doing all right at the box office. I haven’t seen it yet, and there’s no need for you to rush out either, because you can watch the 1967 cartoon version of the story.

It’s funny how the movie title makes no mention of Galactus, and the cartoon title from 40 years ago makes no mention of the Silver Surfer. This was on TV only a year after the original Fantastic Four comic books were out, featuring these bizarre, but now classic, Jack Kirby characters. Hey, the Surfer is wearing BVD briefs!
[flv:http://www.dograt.com/Video/JUN07/FantasticFour.flv 400 300]

The recording has a few seconds missing where the DVR jumped between time slots. The animation in this cartoon sure is minimal! Many of the still frames reveal some rather amateurish drawing, including the video preview frame above, but at least the show is colorful. Still, the quality is quite a comedown from the days of Jonny Quest, featured previously.

The Phantom Artist

Just up the road from my town lives cartoonist Paul Ryan. His steady gig is drawing The Phantom comic strip. The Phantom is considered by many cartooning buffs to be the first super hero character. The Boston Globe had a feature article about Ryan this past Sunday. [Link] Ryan’s Web site is Second Star Graphics. [Link]

I see some striking parallels between Ryan’s childhood and my own, but our lives now are quite different, with Ryan living a life that I once coveted. What kept me from it is revealed in this paragraph.

A few years later, Ryan learned that a company in Connecticut was offering opportunities to amateur comic artists. By then, he was pushing 30 and had a low-paying job.

The company in Connecticut was undoubtedly the now-defunct Charlton Comics. At 30 I just didn’t have the stomach to live with such uncertainty. I’d already had my gigs in radio announcing and newspaper graphics, and both were low-paying jobs. I admire Ryan for having the talent and determination to make a living drawing pictures.

Popeye’s Alien Abduction

There was a major Sci-Fi craze during the 1950’s, helped along by the UFO sightings that began after WW2. Another 50’s fad, a brief one, was 3-D movies. The 1953 cartoon “Popeye, The Ace of Space” was released in 3-D. Keep that in mind while watching the video.

 

This cartoon contains a couple scenes of “alien experimentation” that upset me greatly as a child, despite Popeye escaping unharmed (thanks to spinach, of course). Scanning through some of the later Popeye cartoons released by Paramount, it seems that someone at the Famous studio had a real sadistic streak that crossed the line from cartoon mayhem into something darker and more disturbing.

Eye-Popping Popeye

As mentioned previously, I was big into Popeye cartoons as a kid. This sentiment was mostly based on the black and white cartoons produced by the Fleischer brothers, Max and Dave, and not the color cartoons done by Famous, after Paramount took over the studio. But I watched those too, and last night my FiOS TV DVR caught one that I haven’t seen in 40 years.

It’s “Peep in the Deep,” from 1946. Watch and see how the cartoonists set up a particular gag and got away with what they did, still earning a “G” rating by today’s standards. I got a real cheap thrill out of this one as a kid.

Even as a little kid I was bugged by the logical lapses in underwater cartoons. For example the air hoses go nowhere (I knew about SCUBA gear from Sea Hunt), and Popeye blows smoke from his pipe, etc.

America at a Crossroads

PBS has a series called America at a Crossroads, hosted by Robert MacNeil. [Link] One of the shows is Frontline’s Gangs of Iraq, which I’ve watched online and recommend highly.

Tonight, one of the local PBS stations re-ran Operation Homecoming: Writing the Wartime, a collection of stories told by soldiers who have been fighting in Iraq. A variety of storytelling techniques are used in the show, including one that is best described as a video comic book. Not quite a comic book, and not quite a cartoon, this packs a lot of punch, don’t you think? Here it is. The drawings were done by an artist named Christopher Koelle. [Link]
[flv:http://www.dograt.com/Video/JUN07/AmericaCrossroads.flv 400 300]

Eric’s Anime Pick — Paniponi Dash

Paniponi Dash! is a little of this, and a little of that, with some obvious inspiration from Azumanga Daioh. The video includes the DVD menu (because the music is fun), then the lead-in with the opening credits, the closing credits, and a trademark false preview that has nothing whatsoever to do with the next episode.
[flv:http://www.dograt.com/Video/JUN07/PaniponiDash.flv 425 240]