A Petition to Bring Back Coyote vs. ACME

Yes, people actually want this film. I found where somebody wants 10,000 signatures to release it. As of today, there are 9,656 signers, so they're about there.

The man in charge of the petition, Steven Byrd, stated:

This petition is deeply personal to me. Months after a tragedy struck my family, I found solace in being a part of the film "Coyote vs Acme". Although I was just a background actor, I was part of scenes that would have made my mom, dad, and son incredibly proud. My mom was an ardent fan of John Cena, my son loved wrestling as did my dad; this movie held immense emotional value for us.

I am very sorry for this personal tragedy Mr. Byrd has experienced, whatever it may be. However, it is highly probable that the film must be unreleasable. As a "background actor", he most likely has not seen it in full. 

He updated on the 14th saying that Warners is going to "sell Coyote vs. Acme to another distributor!!" Who, Wownow Productions? What does this mean?

Some Norman McLaren

I just yesterday discovered the amazing world of experimental animation, so now I'm hyped. I was really looking for Oskar Fischinger, but I stumbled upon Norman McLaren, who I'd heard about before, and always wanted to see. I had what sci-fi fans called Sense of Wonder; I guess that's how UPA felt when they saw his work in the Fifties. I wish I could make one!

I feel like showing off the two weirdest, Loops and Dots.

As you all probably know, he made these by drawing ink on rolls of film, and by this scratching these synthesizer-ish sounds would play. I really like it, being a big fan of electronic music.

I still can't believe these were made in the Forties.

They're For Kids...Who Cares?

Carl Barks and Tarzan legend Burne Hogarth at the 1982 San Diego Comic-Con. Surprised so many legends could fit in one room!

"A little nonsense now and then is cherished by the wisest men." 

-Willy Wonka

Fans of cartoons and comics unfortunately have the tendency to overdefend their interests, usually claiming they were not "made for kids", and so they really aren't immature reading about them, or caring about them. But first, a quick personal story:

I was ten when The Dark Knight Rises came out. By then I had been introduced to the Caped Crusader through the video game LEGO Batman, which concurrently introduced me to comicbookdom (I have not been cured). I remember staring at that flaming poster with anticipation (I later saw it from Redbox the next year). After being spoiled by the crime/thriller straight-believable interpretation of Christopher Nolan, I decided, at that tender age, that superheroes were better that way. I even rejected the term "superhero" as too goofy; I liked "vigilante" better.

Others have this mentality. I remember a review of Rob Liefeld's Youngblood saying it felt like it was written for 12-year-olds. uUh, did he know the audience? 12-year-olds! Yes! (Critics have blasted Liefeld's work for being too "unrealistic"--as if comic books are "realistic". They were never meant to be, and i like them that way. Also but I am a superfan of his out-of-this-world extreme drawing. Sue me.)

Another example is the term "sequential art", coined by the inimitable Will Eisner. Presumably "comic book" sounds too childish, so they invented this tortured word. 

I changed later as I got older, oddly enough. Now I've noticed that I like superheroes better gimmicky and silly. Unfortunately, "serious superherodom" opens up some uncomfortable questions about the genre, but that will be discussed some other time. I am not putting down the Nolanverse, since I am a big fan, but with movies you have a certain degree of fantasy an audience simply will not swallow. 

One odd variant of this is the type that prefers one type to another. This is in Mike Barrier's case. He ha always resented the hatred of comic books within literary academia. But with all respect to him, I resent his contempt of superhero comics. For example, when speaking of his 2016 trip to Comic-Con, he speaks of Pogo fans: "Everyone on the panel loved Kelly's work, but with an adult sort of love that would probably baffle devotees of, say, Harley Quinn." And when referring to the 2012 release of The Avengers:

I think all superheroes—and thus all superhero comic books and movies—are inherently frivolous. Whether they're frivolous in an enjoyable way, or simply shallow and childish, is up to the people writing and drawing the comic books or making the movies. Shallow and childish wins almost all the time, with the occasional remarkable exception like Bird's Incredibles.

He only makes a debarment for the aforementioned Will Eisner, who is, of course, one of comicdom's greatest geniuses. But this is like saying Westerns are only good when they're directed by John Ford, or noir when directed by John Huston, and everyone else just sucks. Eisner--and Ford, and Huston--are sui generis.

However, Barrier is crazy about Carl Barks and Walt Kelly, which he touts as "superior" to that flashy Stan Lee stuff he flippantly attributes the junkyard too.

It is attitudes like that that feed the hating machine. Why be such a purist? Since I draw animal comic characters, I may now be more partial to those--Kelly especially. But I still love the superhero stuff. I don't have the time I used to too to keep up with them like I did a decade ago, but I still am a fan, and they are still influential on my artistic thinking.

But there's a deeper question they should be asking: Who cares? 

So what if we like something for kids? We live in an age far better for the grown-men-who-like-childish-things crowd, myself with them. But we lie to ourselves needlessly. Even if they are for children, or look like it, or seem like it, it's much better than watching smut, like porn or splatter. We are much better off happy.

No Coyote vs. ACME, But a Road Runner Book

Special thanks to reader Jonathan Avery Wilson for pointing this out to me.

I had predicted a big bomb to fall on a live-action-animated film called Coyote vs. ACME. But it looks like the movie's never happening! 

According to Deadline, there has been a $30,000,000 writedown on a movie that costed $70,000,000 to make. It apparently scored well with test audiences, but they apparently thought it wasn't profitable enough to release.

"So long, screwy! See you in St. Louie!"

In a similar news story, according to a user on The Internet Animation Database, a book called 75 Years of the Road Runner and Wile E. Coyote is supposed to come out in September. It supposedly is a big bunch of lists, like ACME products, mini bios, etc... (All this and more is already in Looney Tunes: The Ultimate Visual Guide). I assume it's supposed rto be--or was--a tie-in the this movie. Will it be published?

Either way, I'm not too interested. I am more into collecting animation books that are either memoirs were written with the cooperation of the participants, not giant coffeetables that have less depth than an article on the Looney Tunes Wiki.

Speaking of that, it is not on the Wiki or anywhere. I can't find it anywhere on the internet. Is it fake? Either way I'm not buying it. 

It's the Cat by Mark Kausler

In 2004 Mark Kausler--the best modern-day animator--made his own cartoon, It's the Cat. It was originally on Cartoon Brew when they used to host 2D-animated indie shorts. Kausler made it because, according to him, he wanted to tribute animation from the 20s and 30s, in the Nolan/Iwerks tradition. He conceived it during a lull on Beauty and the Beast. Though cartoons were "cartoony" when he made this, they were not fully-animated, so this makes this more a treat; he did it all straight-ahead, while two inkers traced every drawing.

What's strange is that there was a sequel, called Some Other Cat, that had been "inked" already, but it must've cancelled production at some point.

Sadly, the film cannot be seen anywhere, as hard as I've tried to find it. But a pencil test version is available. It's probably the closest thing to Golden Age since the Golden Age. Considering that it has no dialogue or story to speak of, and it's only four minutes, it's 100% better than the garbage pretending it's "animated"--so called. You could probably just take one still drawing and it beats Adventure Time any day. And that's just the pencil test! 

Here are some snapshots:

And here is the actual film, albeit pencil:

The website is still active.

My First Carl Barks

I decided to become a cartoonist last year, so I started reading some old "animal" comic strips and books for study and enjoyment. I've already tried out Walt Kelly and George Herriman (the latter is funnier than the former, but I love former's characters better).

For my birthday I got one of the billion volumes of reprints of Carl Bark's Disney comic books from Fantagraphics. I had asked for Vol. 24: The Golden Nugget Boat at random, not knowing why there was no Volume One. Unfortunately, this was made up of the Sixties stuff, which is apparently The Good Duck Artist's low point of creativity.

I was a little confused with the stories, even though I liked them. First of all, they weren't in character. Donald was kind of a blank; no tantrums or anything. Huey, Dewey, and Louie weren't sadistic and were kind-of sidekicks. The stories were more of the Silver Age Superman variety than cartoony frolics. Were they all like this?

I had some problems with Fantagraphics handling of some of this, as I discussed in the last post. Overall, though, I enjoyed it, and hope to collect more. I also hope to learn from it!

My Problems With Fantagraphics

If you are a cartoon fan, you have probably encountered Fantagraphics Books, which reprint old comic strips, as well as old Disney comic books. Unfortunately, their collections are badly flawed, and I wish somebody else would handle them. 

Strike One: Overall Unprofessionality 

The main offender here is the Pogo series. The flap for Vol. 1 says it is "the best damn comic strip of all time." Then the "Swamp Talk" commentaries by R.C. Harvey cites literally Google and Wikipedia as the extent of his research. I am not kidding.

I am 21-years-old and a non-collegiate and I could do better...and have done better.

Strike Two: Unusual Schedules

They started the Pogo series in 2011, with one-a-year with twelve volumes. Volume Nine will be released next year. I can not find a reason why they have published these so sporadically. As for The Complete Carl Barks Library, they started with Christmas on Bear Mountain, Scrooge McDuck's first appearance, but as Vol. 5. To this day, there has been no Vols. 1-4. I can find no explanation for this.

For some reason, Barks (and Don Rosa, presumably) have their stories printed out of order in the collections. Again, there is no explanation for this, since there was never any continuity in the stories, all being ten-pagers.

Strike Three (You're Out!): Overpoliticized Commentaries

The current trend of today's America is to add politics to everything because the internet has created a brood of moralistic crusaders, blue-nosing their ideas into entertainment. Unfortunately, Presentism is applied too, so somehow the the past had Twentieth Century social axes to grind. For example, The George Herriman Library Vol. 2 has an essay arguing that he somehow applied CRT ideas in his strips--which is odd, considering that he had no political affiliations other than being "a pacifist" and never voted once in his life. Even though Herriman was a man of color masquerading as White, there is no sort of underlying racial commentary underneath that is definite, most especially not a hundred years ago. His only playtime with politics was his numerous jabs at Prohibition. His racial references are the typical stereotyping for African-Americans common then.

Additionally, Krazy and Ignatz were not black and white, as the Sundays reveal:

In the Carl Barks series, it made some claim that Uncle Scrooge somehow showed the evils of capitalism, or something, implying he would approve of Occupy Wall Street. (Apparently, "Carl Barks" translates to "Karl Marx".) Racial undertones are also implied by the contributors.

Maybe these contributors need to stop reading comics and get some fresh air, because in their boredom they have discovered the important allegories of Gyro Gearloose.

If you think I am only targeting the Far Left, I would be just as frustrated if it were Rush Limbaugh or Alex Jones forcing their ideologies on the past. It is stupid, one-sided, and irritating. Yes, people like Walt Kelly would parody politics, but at least it was the concerns and controversies of his day, not what people talk about now.

I have considered writing to Fantagraphics to request they stop this, but if they cared how people felt, they wouldn't be feeding me this bullcrap! I have also not bought their collection of Floyd Gottfriedson's Mickey Mouse comic strip (animals are my thing), and who knows what abuses are within its two covers.

A New, 2D-Animated Looney Tunes Movie Revealed

On October 26th Animation Magazine dropped the news that a full-length, traditionally animated Looney Tunes movie is coming out in late 2024. It is hilariously titled The Day the Earth Blew Up: A Looney Tunes Movie. It is directed and produced by Pete Browngardt, of Looney Tunes Cartoons fame, and will come out in late 2024. Yes, it is theatrical. 

"According to the distributors, the movie unfolds a rich Porky & Daffy story that fans have never seen before: In this buddy-comedy of epic proportions, our heroes race to save the world, delivering all the laugh-out-loud gags and vibrant visuals that have made the Looney Tunes so iconic, but on a scope and scale yet to be experienced."

I am intrigued, unlike how I feel about the supposed Coyote vs. ACME. I was never a fan of Looney Tunes Cartoons, though. It felt like a bad modern cartoon pretending to be a good old one. This may have to do with Browngardt being behind two of the worst animated abominations ever conceived, Uncle Grandpa and Secret Mountain Fort Awesome. But the fact that a full-length, fully-animated Warner cartoon is coming to theaters is miraculous. Save me a seat!