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After posting Ub Iwerk’s “Skeletons in the Closet” and the Warner Brothers cartoon “Pigs is Pigs“, I guess there’s no avoiding Mickey Mouse’s memorable meeting with “The Mad Doctor” from 1933. In an attempt to avoid any “Imperial Entanglements” with Dizzney, I’ve selected a mere 90 seconds.
http://youtu.be/kkW3XQKBy1M
The 1937 cartoon “Pigs is Pigs” is disturbing in a way that the previously posted “Spooks” isn’t. As nightmarish as the prospect is of being turned into a skeleton, by a skeleton, it’s totally unreal. In contrast, eating oneself to death is an all-too-real possibility for millions of people.
The pig in “Pigs is Pigs” isn’t Porky, but he appears to make an appearance as the running piggy in the middle. Why does Mama Pig have a German accent?
The recent announcement of the eternally embracing skeleton couple brought to mind the 1929 Disney cartoon, “The Skeleton Dance”. But I’d better not post it, because Disney is notoriously intolerant. So I’ll do the next best thing.
“The Skeleton Dance” was animated by Mickey Mouse co-creator Ub Iwerks, who later briefly had his own cartoon studio. Iwerks created Flip the Frog, and while Flip was a forgettable character some of his cartoons are worth watching. “Spooks” from 1932 is one of them.
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Producer/writer Mark Evanier has announced the release of his upcoming book Kirby: King of Comics, a biography of comic book artist Jack Kirby. Jack created or co-created the X-Men, the Fantastic Four, the Hulk, Captain America, and many other characters. The book should be out before the end of the year.
More good news is that Evanier will once again be writing, producing and voice directing a series of Garfield the Cat cartoons. And he’s losing lots of weight, thanks to successful gastric bypass surgery. The video above about Jack Kirby shows Evanier before the surgery. With so much going on in his life, Mark had a lot to lose by not losing!
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I’ve posted a bunch of video samples from wacky Azumanga Daioh. Here’s another one. Mr. Tadakichi is little Chiyo-chan’s dog, and Miss Sakaki has a totally bizarre fantasy about Chiyo-chan’s father, who she imagines is a freakish creature.
I’ve previously highlighted the Spider-Man reprint comics that are found in certain Sunday newspapers. They disappeared from my paper for a few weeks, but they’ve been back for the past four weeks.
Almost all of the art in these stories, now over 40 years old, was done by Steve Ditko. I don’t know about you, but I consider these figure drawings to be compelling and unique. Superb representations of the human form in space and motion, accentuated and made abstract by the best super-hero costume ever designed.
