I'll Have...

Saturday Morning Cartoon

Dodging the dog tax collector...

Saturday Cartoons: Lions and Tigers and Beers, Oh My!

Next week, if I get up and to work on this blog early enough, I'll title this post by its proper name, Saturday Morning Cartoons.

Saturday Morning Cartoons: The Bugs Bunny/Road Runner Hour

Ah, that opening! Bugs and the gang, with theatrical Warner Bros. shorts from 1948-1969, repackaged for television. Wouldn't have been Saturday morning without Bugs Bunny! I loved those cartoons so much! Man, they was great! I never liked all the other "made for television" cartoons as much, especially the barely animated Hanna-Barbera stuff. I mean, come on, Top Cat? What was that? (actually, it was another of ABC's early 1960s prime time cartoons, joining The Flintstones and The Jetsons, not a Saturday morning staple, but you get my point. I just couldn't get into most of the stuff the networks tried to placate us kiddies with on Saturdays. The only show I like almost as much was The Pink Panther cartoons, also from theatrical shorts.

When The Pink Panther Show first aired in 1969, it consisted of one cartoon featuring Inspector Clouseau, sandwiched by two Pink Panther entries. The 30-minute show was then connected via bumper sequences featuring both the panther and Inspector together, as well announcer Marvin Miller acting as an off-camera narrator talking to the panther. Bumper sequences consisted of newly animated segments as well as recycled footage from existing cartoons (Reel Pink, Pink Outs, Pink Posies, Super Pink) with new incidental music and voice-over work from Miller.
Pink Panther shorts made after 1969 when The Pink Panther Show began airing were produced for both broadcast and film release, typically appearing on television first, and released to theatres by United Artists. A number of new series were created, including the very popular The Ant and the Aardvark, Tijuana Toads (a.k.a. Texas Toads), Hoot Kloot, Misterjaw, Roland and Rattfink, The Dogfather (a Godfather pastiche with a canine Corleone family), and two Tijuana Toads spinoffs: The Blue Racer and Crazylegs Crane.-The Pink Panther Show

But back to Bugs. We'll get to the pink cat another time.




Jerry Seinfeld famously "performed" the opening on an episode of Seinfeld.




ABC began re-running The Bugs Bunny Show on Saturday mornings in August 1962. The series was rerun in color beginning in 1965, and remained on ABC until September 1968. At this point, the series switched to CBS, where it was combined with The Road Runner Show (which had aired on CBS since 1966) to create The Bugs Bunny/Road Runner Hour.[5] The standard Bugs Bunny Show opening and the announcer's introduction of Bugs Bunny ("that Oscar winning rabbit!") were directly followed by the rabbit's saying, "...and also starring my fast feathered friend, the Road Runner", after which The Road Runner Show's theme was played. The Bugs Bunny/Road Runner Hour combined re-edited bridging sequences from both shows to link the seven cartoons featured in each episode. The bridging sequences would be edited further in later versions of the Bugs Bunny/Road Runner Hour.-The Bugs Bunny Show

On The Occasion Of The Royal Nuptials

Saturday Morning Cartoons: Happy Easter Weekend

Welcome to our new Saturday feature, Saturday Morning Cartoons! Each week we'll present an animation, and sometimes it will an example of an actual Saturday Morning Cartoon. Other times, it will just be a cartoon of some sort. Hopefully articles about the cartoons and their history, as well as the history of the Saturday Morning phenomenon itself, will be presented along with the videos of cartoons.

Today's debut finds us with Snoopy, Charlie Brown and the "Peanuts" gang as they await the arrival of Easter, and most importantly, of the Easter Beagle (originally aired on the CBS television network as the 12th Peanuts special on April 9, 1974)...

To God...

The Two Gods

Sunday Funnies: Calvin (and Hobbes) The Great

Hundreds of comic strips have been published in newspapers. The majority are terrible, and almost all the rest are mediocre. There have been maybe four or five good comic strips in the history of the world. So saying that Calvin and Hobbes is the best comic strip ever doesn't really hold a lot of weight.-Why Bill Watterson is our hero

I don't know about the four or five in the above assessment. I think I can list more great comic strips than that (though many would be before my time, at least when they were being drawn by the original artists). Let's see, there's..

Li'l Abner

Blondie

Pogo

Dennis the Menace

Gasoline Alley

Dick Tracy

Little Orphan Annie

Peanuts


Nancy

Krazy Kat

B.C.

Well, you get the idea. Still, Calvin and Hobbes was a great comic strip. Was it the "best" ever? I don't know. It's too subjective. But is was one of the best ever published in daily newspapers. It ran only ten years (a fraction of a second in comic strip terms, where most strips run for decades, often even after the creator of the strip has passed away) from 1985-1995. Why did Bill Watterson quit? He said he'd done all he could in the comic strip medium (which sounds like BS to me, but what do I know; Jackie Gleason said something similar to explain why he quit after the first season of The Honeymooners, but he went on to do more Honeymooners sketches  the very next year as part of the next season's 1956-57 separate variety show) . 


On his ending of the strip, Watterson wrote a message for newspaper editors:

Dear Reader:

I will be stopping Calvin and Hobbes at the end of the year. This was not a recent or an easy decision, and I leave with some sadness. My interests have shifted, however, and I believe I've done what I can do within the constraints of daily deadlines and small panels. I am eager to work at a more thoughtful pace, with fewer artistic compromises. I have not yet decided on future projects, but my relationship with Universal Press Syndicate will continue.

That so many newspapers would carry Calvin and Hobbes is an honor I'll long be proud of, and I've greatly appreciated your support and indulgence over the last decade. Drawing this comic strip has been a privilege and a pleasure, and I thank you for giving me the opportunity.

Sincerely,
Bill Watterson

Imagine if Charles Schultz had pulled that in 1960 (the tenth anniversary of Peanuts). We would never had had all those great strips throughout the rest of his career and the real development and coming into the spotlight of a character like Snoopy. Al Capp was no quitter either, with Li'l Abner running for over 40 years!

Bill Watterson was acknowledged by the National Cartoonists Society twice (in 1986 and 1988) with the awarding of the Reuben Award (named after Rube Goldberg). To see all of the winners since 1946 go here: REUBEN AWARD WINNERS.

click image to enlarge


25 Great Calvin and Hobbes Strips

h/t to The Commentator (and T.C., when we hat tip, we actually give a link back, unlike some bloggers we know; SE don't get no respect!)

Seeing the Light

Although William Donohue's Catholic League has the following statement:

The miraculous rescue of all 33 Chilean miners is difficult to understand from a purely secular perspective. In this day and age of militant atheism, coupled with relentless assaults on Roman Catholicism, it is refreshing to read about the central role that Catholicism played in helping these courageous men survive, and of their enormous gratitude to God. -NO ATHEISTS IN [CHILEAN] MINES

One miner said "We always knew that we would be rescued, we never lost faith." Does such belief have an effect on the outcome. Not hope I'm talking about here, I mean feeling positive (knowing) that the outcome will be a good one. Let me give you an example from my own life. I know that Bret "Ginx" Alan will someday come to his senses, and I'm never going to lose faith that he'll eventually see the light.

In the meantime, I still puzzle over things like the Chilean miner ordeal. Why are we always grateful to God for getting us out of a mess, when as an all-powerful being, he could have prevented us getting into it in the first place?

Plan B

Cyanide and Happiness

The Goodness of God

Statistics Can Kill You

How 9/11 happened

Another comic by yours truly that nobody asked for! ( Click to make it bigger.)

This September 11, let's mourn the victims of US imperialism--which includes those killed at the World Trade Center.

A Hitler Reference?

Embracing my inner starving artist

I've always wanted to be a cartoonist. Enjoy! (click to make it bigger)

The Many Faces of Authoritarians

The Word Is Atheist

Ground Zeros

Cordoba House

I was listening to a neocon right-wing radio host yesterday blathering on and on about the so-called "Ground Zero Mosque", stating that no one would be objecting if it wasn't at ground zero, but, say, a couple of miles away. Well, it's a few blocks away at least, though that didn't stop the loon from continuing his ranting.


Here's Mark Levin "interviewing" Debra Burlingame, a far-right radical neocon pro "war on terror" statist.



"Conservatives" are supposed to be in favor of property rights, but notice how Burlingame advocates using the statist "landmark preservation" gambit to attempt to stop the building of the Islamic center. Levin the Statist then agrees with Burlingame on New York Mayor Bloomberg's statement "Governments don't tell people how to pray" when she says "He's wrong, in Muslim and Arab countries they tell them every day of the week how to pray and much, much more..." which may be true, but what's that got to do with the United States? I thought Muslims attacked us because they "hate us for our freedoms", so isn't allowing this Islamic center in that spirit of American freedom and values? Unless the "conservative" plan is for America to become more like those Arab countries so they won't attack us anymore because we're no longer free. Hell yes, that must be it! That explains a lot, including the PATRIOT act and "much, much more".

I wonder exactly how far from Ground Zero a Muslim building has to be before it no longer insults the memory of 9/11? And can Muslims in Islamic dress visit the site without it being an affront? Or must they too stay at least a few miles away in order to avoid being the subject of "protests".

Of course, it's entirely unacceptable that America, like, be the beacon of religious freedom she has been for the past two hundred years. I always thought religious freedom was over-rated, anyway.

The opposition to this mosque/community center arises mainly (surprise, surprise) from the Right. In the American exceptionalist mindset the average Republican pundit possesses, it is inconceivable that America should actually allow alternate views and religions to rise up in her land! After all, those Muslims spread their religion! And...they blew up our towers!-Teenage Politics: "Ground Zero Mosque"

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Unprepared

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