Can Drift Marlo: Space Jock save Skippy the Space Chimp and the Secret Vacuum Tubes of Project Beat Buttnik? Adventure awaits... IN SPACE!
Pulled from an amazing, comprehensive site of children's space book art, Dreams of Space.
Say, it's Chicken Little from Disney's 1943 short, Chicken Little. It obviously has less to do with the end of the world and more with Nazism (or generally, as in the fable, manipulation and hysteria).
Foxy Loxy, while shown to be reading a book labeled "Psychology" to facilitate the spread of fear and chaos, actually recites passages from Mein Kampf. I presume the original story ends happily for the chickens, but in accordance with the symbolism, the cartoon ends with rows of wishbones and a happily engorged Foxy. "Don't believe everything you read, brudder."
Incidentally, try image searching Chicken Little these days and you come up with thousands of pictures of this poor dope:
Welcome to a special 4th of July edition of Armageddon Wednesday, in which we discuss the tiny little firecracker with the power to blow up the Earth, the Illudium PU-36 Explosive Space Modulator, not to be confused with the now defunct Uranium PU-36 Explosive Space Modulator, or the completely nonexistent Illudium Q-36 Explosive Space Modulator. Now, it's important that on this day of celebration we do not inadvertently destroy the planet, so please, do not light off an Illudium PU-36. If you are having trouble differentiating between the Illudium and your average firecracker, look for the following directions - "Place on flat surface, light wick, and get 35 million miles away." Simply place the Modulator in your pocket, and light yourself a sparkler. We'll all be much happier.
On this Zombie Monday we celebrate the fact that Rob Zombie's animated feature film, The Haunted World of El Superbeasto, is somewhere in post-post-production. The most exciting aspect for me is that the character of Dr. Satan, shown above, is voiced by none other than Paul Giamatti. I can't seem to figure out when this is going to be released, but Zombie seems to suggest in the wiki article that they may get slapped with the horrible NC-17 rating, so that would definitely hinder it's distribution.
Speaking of the horrible NC-17 rating, I just watched This Film Is Not Yet Rated, a pretty decent documentary about how the MPAA delegates the entire film rating system to a handful of anonymous "average adults," anonymous so as to avoid outside influence, never mind the fact that they are influenced internally by the studios themselves. No child psychiatrists allowed, as designated by the former duce, Jack Valenti. Anyway, this is why you'll see five hundred people killed in an R movie but any overt and frequent references to sex will ramp it up to NC-17. Violence speaks to the key demographic and somehow doesn't offend conservative Christian values anymore. There's basically no checks and balances, no citing precedent. Fascism at its best.
IRONICALLY, after going through quite a bit of hassle to procure beer from the Flying Dog Brewery, I just found several varieties at the party store down the street. It was sitting on a shelf that, because of it's placement across from the cooler, no one ever looks at. The stuff could have been there the entire time for all I knew, but they told me they just got it in last week. So there's a bit of clunky synchronicity for you.
This one is a bit messy. My "smooth" bristol completely betrayed me. When the panel lines started bleeding all over I knew I was in for it.
With all the talk of zombies and armageddon lately, I thought it would be nice to have a utopian interlude. I pulled this Westinghouse ad from the amazing Paleo-Future blog, a daily chronicle of the future that never happened. Elektro is awesome! He sells appliances and sings and smokes! I don't know about Sparko though. Rags the robotic dog from Woody Allen's Sleeper is a much more pleasing artificial companion.
Interestingly, I just bought Dylan's album Bringing It All Back Home, and was just listening to "Gates of Eden" while writing this, which seems to be about paradise lost, kinda. I guess we can't help but return to zombies and armageddon, eventually.
Why? Why not? Here's a still of Bert the Turtle from the educational film Duck and Cover, produced in 1950. I haven't seen it for a while, so I don't know if the monkey with the firecracker is supposed to represent nuclear holocaust or what, but it's a damn fine allusion.
"That way, colliding particles of hydrogen won't bonk you on the head."
It's another Zombie Monday! Here we have a pic of Donald with Bombie the Zombie from Carl Barks' "Voodoo Hoodoo," published in Donald Duck Four Color 238, 1949. Poor Bombie doesn't mean any harm. He just wants to go home. Originally, Barks drew Bombie with wide, pupil-less eyes, but the editors at Dell thought it was too creepy for kids. Consequently he looks like a drunken bum.
Note the no-longer current use of the term "dreamboat." Or it could be that Donald's all a-twitter when it comes to the undead.
Just thought I'd take this time to point out that my local post office also happens to be my local fallout shelter. I'm not sure anyone but me has really taken the time to acknowledge that. Are all the old granite-walled post offices designated as such? If so, rest assured that after the bombs fall postal workers will rule the world! Imagine, a whole planet of people ruining my mail. The whistling alone would be deafening.
Hooray! It's Zombie Monday! In honor of Zombie Monday, I thought I would post the film poster for Ed Wood's Plan 9, which I happen to love. Plan 9, of course, "deals with the resurrection of the dead. Long distance electrodes shot into the pineal and pituitary gland of the recently dead." Ah, bliss.
Will next week begin with another Zombie Monday? We shall see...
I've saved this for a while but really needed to post it. Hell, I may post it on both of my blogs. More info at Cartoon Brew.
I officially can't wait for the day that a scenario presents itself to me where someone shouts, "What's happening?" and my sincere response is "Birds are everywhere!"
Mark Trail post #4? I can't remember.
I haven't yet blog-dropped Amid Amidi's Cartoon Modern, a companion piece to his book, Cartoon Modern, and a great source for post-golden-era animation design analysis. The pic above is from a storyboard for a UPA-produced Old Gold commercial with a Rube Goldberg type situation going on. It really stood out to me, the stark white/black relationships, the pastel/chalk textures, and the toy bunny cheerfully transporting cigarettes.
Come! See! Read!
A comic strip o' mine
Updated every Friday!
