And so we reach closing arguments. Do we vote Yea or Nay on whether the toon justice system really works? It’s far from perfect. As Super Snooper appropriately observed in his first cartoon, “Leave us face it. The good guys don’t always win.” We’ve seen villains regularly beat the rap, and heroes sent up the river. Even when a baddie is incarcerated, he always lives to threaten the populace another day, or hastens his freedom through an escape. The trial process has repeatedly proved a travesty, and its rules of conduct generally resemble pure chaos. But, on the other hand, would toons have it any other way? Placing oneself into their mindset, the intricate workings of the system must seem...
Fitness vs. Fatness (Part 2) Last week, we commenced a survey of the early years of animation’s love affair with the budding fad of exercise and fitness programs, mostly promoting the healthy values of such endeavors, despite several of its participating characters coming out of such experiences as a total wreck. By the mid 1930’s, a counter-side began to rise in several animation quarters, resulting in a short flurry of several cartoons finding their humor in onscreen exhibitions of the results of massive calorie ingestion and voracious appetites. This week’s fare will thus present the flip-side of the immortal question, “To eat or not to eat”, allowing the principal characters to obtain their fill, and hopefully audiences to obtain an...
And so we reach closing arguments. Do we vote Yea or Nay on whether the toon justice system really works? It’s far from perfect. As Super Snooper appropriately observed in his first cartoon, “Leave us face it. The good guys don’t always win.” We’ve seen villains regularly beat the rap, and heroes sent up the river. Even when a baddie is incarcerated, he always lives to threaten the populace another day, or hastens his freedom through an escape. The trial process has repeatedly proved a travesty, and its rules of conduct generally resemble pure chaos. But, on the other hand, would toons have it any other way? Placing oneself into their mindset, the intricate workings of the system must seem...
Fitness vs. Fatness (Part 2) Last week, we commenced a survey of the early years of animation’s love affair with the budding fad of exercise and fitness programs, mostly promoting the healthy values of such endeavors, despite several of its participating characters coming out of such experiences as a total wreck. By the mid 1930’s, a counter-side began to rise in several animation quarters, resulting in a short flurry of several cartoons finding their humor in onscreen exhibitions of the results of massive calorie ingestion and voracious appetites. This week’s fare will thus present the flip-side of the immortal question, “To eat or not to eat”, allowing the principal characters to obtain their fill, and hopefully audiences to obtain an...
