Sometimes TV shows drag their unfunny, uninteresting, yet highly rated feet across our living rooms for years. “Who let this happen?” we cry in vain. Other times, the powers that be get things right. That’s where “Brilliantly Canceled” comes in, looking at the shows that didn’t make it past their first season and saved us all a ton of grief.
It’s not every day that Brilliantly Canceled gets a number of reasonable theories as to why a show failed. Usually, we’re left to complaining about unfulfilled expectations and audience confusion. In the case of the Garbage Pail Kids cartoon series, which CBS canceled several days before its initial 10-episode [...]
This cartoon was used in "The Cartoon" episode of Seinfeld. You know the one where Elaine accidentally steals a Ziggy. Well, now the New Yorker is actually planning on running it but it needs a caption first. You can submit your best quip here until July 23rd. I hope the New Yorker intern who has to read the first run of submissions likes Seinfeld quotes: "I have a complaint. These pretzels are making me thirsty." Haha, got you, intern who probably has an MFA from Iowa. Watch the perfect Seinfeld scene below in which Elaine first shows Jerry and Kramer her cartoon because it is so, so perfect. [...]
In the 1970s and 1980s, Warner Bros. did not take great care with its animation legacy. The studio spit out a new, clumsily assembled “special” for every remotely notable occasion, with a lack of care and inventiveness that would have shamed Bob Hope. The programs were comprised of 75 percent recycled old cartoons, strung together with unfunny, ugly looking new animation that contained none of the craft and anarchic humor of the source material.
Not so with the The Looney Tunes 50th Anniversary Special. Produced in 1986 to mark the titular occasion (and loosely tied to a Museum of Modern Art retrospective), it too made heavy use of classic [...]
Almost 100 comic strip artists used their Sunday strips this week to commemorate the tenth anniversary of 9/11. They range from simple visual tributes to full narratives that find humor in the way we remember tragedy. The strips are collected here and definitely worth a look.
If anyone could prevent forest fires, it is almost certainly Black Dynamite. Adult Swim has posted the Black Dynamite pilot, and it's filled with the same amount of Cream Corn, throwing stars and borderline-uncomfortable blaxsploitation riffs brought to you by the original film. The animation, leaded by The Boondocks' Carl Jones, is gorgeous and as close to perfection you can get without without opting to make it live action. And when Black Dynamite still has a thick, luxurious mustache as a child? On another note, I'm going to have nightmares about That Frog Curtis for the rest of my life.
