Cartoon Central

You may think that you’re a dedicated fan of this blog: you comment on the front page, you comment in the forums, you wear your Comics Curmudgeon gear in public to the embarrassment of your spouse. But have you sent me an umbrella decorated with comic strips? No, of course you haven’t — unless you’re Sam Garst, that is.

Finally, I seem to remember watching cartoons as a kid, the old WWII era Bugs Bunny cartoons, always joking around that it was the milkman that the housewife was sleeping with. In other words, this can hardly be a new phenomenon. We just don’t have milkmen anymore, so instead the housewife calls the police.

Bush — Iraq Collection — Great collection of political cartoons.

The day wasn’t a complete loss. I still spent half the day on the phone with some good friends out of state who wished me well. Got a cute card, homemade chocolate chip cookies and a very, very nice waffle iron from my friend in Austin — it makes mini Mickey Mouse shaped waffles. Completely made my week!!! My parents bought me a super nice Zojirushi rice cooker. I must be getting old if I’m getting excited about kitchen appliances…

Another thing I’ve been working on, aside from driving in circles, looking like a madman, staring at granite blocks, is doing some cel shading. I taught myself how to use Macromedia Flash a few years ago, and I do all kinds of little animations now. Well, the scariest of all of my projects, and I’m not quite sure what to call it, has involved me filming myself jumping up and down, and tracing over the footage in Flash to make an animation of me doing what? Jumping up and down. It’s silly. However, there is a point to all of this.

According to this one and other articles I've read it has in part, SpongeBob SquarePants to thank for it. The popularity of SpongeBob Slurpees and a surge in gasoline sales have helped the convenience-store chain post a couple of it's best quarters in years.

Mary Worth has taught us that a few hours in the horror show that is a women’s shelter can cure alcoholism; now Mark Trail is here to illustrate that some clean, honest fun in a canoe is a sure-fire cure for sociopathy. Mark my words, Lady MacAscot here is going to love fishing so much that she’ll forget all about her plan to murder Boyd. Great Outdoors 1, Evil 0.

Joe Ranft, died yesterday. He was the head of Pixar’s story department, the voice of “Wheezy” in the Toy Story movies, “Heimlich” in “A Bug’s Life” and worked on many other animation projects before joining Pixar.

The new computer-animated film is from Vanguard, not really from Disney. The Mouse House has pretty much given up on top-quality feature animation in favor of lower-budget direct-to-video projects and distributing the higher-quality output of Pixar (so far, at least) and, now, Vanguard.

Bugs Bunny made his first featured appearance in a cartoon released on this date in 1940, A Wild Hare. Bugs was modeled on Groucho Marx with a carrot instead of a cigar — and with a Brooklyn accent.

Driving down by the beach, windows down; music blaring. Walking down the boardwalk. Getting an unexpected call from an old friend. Putting entirely too much trust in people you don’t know enough. Being spontaneous and going out and doing something I generally wouldn’t do. Skyline. Burger King. Taco Bell. Concerts. Being VIP at a club. Feeling like I accomplished something before going to bed. Feeling wanted. Laughing. Crying. Being completely and utterly stupid. MXC. Aqua Teen Hunger Force. Good movies, especially ones that bring a lot of eye contact and laughter.

Take the recent issue of Time Magazine that addresses the teaching of evolution versus intelligent design in schools. On first look, it would seem that the featured article gives the ID crowd a fair shake, but upon reading the article in its entirety, it lambastes Christians as dogmatic people who think science is the enemy of God. It reads about like my biographical account of Hillary Clinton would. If that doesn’t quite help you understand the perspective of the Left on this hot-button issue, just flip a couple pages back in that same issue and look at the political cartoons. Not only are two of the three blatantly leaning to the left, but one in particular ridicules proponents of ID, comparing their beliefs to that of such bogus concepts as alchemy, astrology, phrenology and magic.

Nick sez, “Pictures of the Dmobo M900, an official Mickey Mouse Flip Phone available in Hong Kong. It’s just as awesome as you’d expect. Particualry check out the ‘ears’ softkeys - a surprisingly good design solution to an always tricky problem.” Link Via Boingboing

Also, read some comics. Ultimate Spider-Man Annual? Yes! Thank You!

I have very recently got into Flash animation. I’ve already made a few animations. A very simple dress-up game, an animation of a stick man kicking another stick man, one of a stick man shooting another stick man, and a stick man going off a ramp on a skateboard and not doing very well. Currently I’m making a flash movie called Ben and Bog. More info on that soon.

Our very first glimpse of The Simpsons, these are short clips which aired on the Tracey Ullman Show 1987-1989, before and after ad breaks. Click the image to download. More will be added soon.

I have been watching the evil empire, Toonzone. Very Closely. And what I see, is the same liberal bullshit. My friends, Toonzone is and will continue for the forseeable future, an ajunt to Cartoon Network. You see, this site Toon Radio Advance- is not afraid of AOL Time Warner, Disney, Viacom west and east, or News Corp. Its not afraid of Sony, nor NBC Uni, nor WWE or MsNotNBC. Anybody in the industry that has something wrong, we will expose it. No matter how much power they have. And we will defend who needs defending.

Dave is just doing a heck of a job talking about, and reviewing, comics. This is great content–well written and full of information. If you love comics, don’t miss him.

Hi gang. I’ve got today’s update for you in the “Newspaper” section. I’ve added a page for “Downstown” by Tim Downs. This was a strip that ran from 1979 through 1985 as a Doonesbury competitor. I’ve added a great daily, as well as some pics of a compilation book. If you look at the book cover, you can see the definite Doonesbury influence (actually, I think the art looks more like Berke Breathed’s Bloom County). Sorry for the lack of info on the gallery page; I ran out of time and I wanted to get this update up on the site. I’ll add more info later. Go and check it out!

One item I largely can't get on-line are comic strips. There are exceptions - Dilbert broke through, in part, due to being one of the first internet-distributed comics - but this has never bothered me since 95% of the comics out there just aren't interesting. Reading them is largely a waste of time.

I also took him out to eat Fazoli’s for dinner tonight. It was kids eat for 99 cents day, too! We enjoyed pasta and each other’s company. Towards the end of dinner, he was making funny faces and noises. I guess it reminded him of Dory from “Finding Nemo” because he kept laughing and saying “Dory - Memo”. You know, the part where she thinks she can speak whale and says things in a deep, “whale-like” voice, like, “Weeee Need to Fiiiiind Hiiiiiis Soooonnnnnn!” It was too funny! The people around us were looking over, probably wondering what a near two year-old could possibly be doing to make me laugh so hard.

However, when Wizard manages to garner a fluff piece like this (bugmenot login: samcolt, password: 12345) out of the publicity it received by trying their level best to screw over HeroesCon, it’s pretty damned annoying. I especially like the part where the article says that WizardWorld shows are the only ones where the fans get to interact with pros.

Being childless as I am, I rarely partake of children’s shows. By “children’s shows,” I mean real children’s shows, like “Dora The Explorer,” “Higglytown Heroes” (though I dig the They Might Be Giants theme song), and the like. I watch supposed kid’s shows like “Spongebob Squarepants” all the time, because I love cartoons (especially cartoons with absolutely no point or moral message that exist solely as brain candy), but the hardcore kid shows almost always drive me insane. You can only take so many cutesy life lessons before you want to cleanse your ears with atomic cotton swabs.

Yesterday I treated myself to all three volumes of Aqua Teen Hunger Force on DVD. Expect to find me on my couch for the rest of the week, eyes bloodshot, bowl of cereal in hand, giggling like a schoolgirl.

And of course, culture in the form of classic Disney movies. Forget Monsters, Inc., and Toy Story and all those other new-age computer-animated flicks. I am talking Lady and the Tramp, and 101 Dalmations, and Pete's Dragon, and Mary Poppins. These were staples of my upbringing, and I memorized the music to each and every single one of them. Pete's Dragon was one of my personal favorites, being that it was the first movie to integrate animation with a regular movie with real actors. And then there is the tried and true Chitty Chitty Bang Bang.