Tag Archives: cartoons

February 14, 2015 · 5:27 pm

Allegro Non Troppo

Mussorgsky’s Night on Bald Mountain from Disney’s Fantasia

The old faun

In musical terms, Allegro Non Troppo means fast tempo, but not too fast. So, I recently discovered that Allegro Non Troppo is one of many rare and obscure old movies which I am passionate about that can be found in its entirety on YouTube. I will include the YouTube link at the end of this post, and I sincerely recommend that if you have never seen this movie, you watch the whole thing at least once. No matter how many cringes or winces or blushes it causes, this is a movie of many bizarre parts that you really need to take in as a whole. It ranges from the ridiculous to the sublime, the atrociously ugly to the lyrically beautiful, from the brilliant classical score being played by a mistreated band of old ladies with orchestral instruments to a gorilla running amok, from Debussy to Ravel, from an artist released from his cage to single-handedly draw the animation, to a satire rich with baudy humor making fun of no less a work of animation than Prisney’s… I mean Disney’s Fantasia. The dark elements are there. The light-hearted, lilting comedy is there. The fairy tale delicacy and technicolor dreaming is all there.

And why should this be important to me? Especially now that I am retired from a long and fruitful teaching career? Well, I have history with this movie. I saw it first in college. I was an English major, but I took every film as literature class I could fit into my silly schedule. As an undergrad, I was determined to be a cartoonist for a career. I took classes seriously and aced most of them, but I was at college to intellectually play around. I didn’t take the prescribed courses to be an English teacher. That had to wait for the more responsible me to come along in grad school for that. I saw both Fantasia and Allegro Non Troppo during one of the play-time years. Much as the old satyr in Claude Debussy’s Prélude à l’après-midi d’un faune, I was enamored with sensory experience. I took my first girlfriend to see Disney’s Fantasia, and she later turned down the opportunity to see Allegro Non Troppo with me. Good sense on her part, but the beginning of the end of our relationship. Just as Fantasia has the part in it where Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring describes evolution from the beginning of the Earth to the end of the dinosaurs, Allegro Non Troppo uses Ravel’s Bolero to describe the evolution of life on a weird planet from germs in a discarded Coke bottle to the inevitable coming of the malevolent monkey who is ultimately us. And, of course, the satire would not be complete without some off-set for Dukas’ The Sorcerer’s Apprentice. As near as I can figure it out, the apprentice, played by Mickey Mouse, becomes the snake from the Garden of Eden in Allegro Non Troppo. When the snake is unable to get Adam and Eve to eat the apple, he makes the mistake of eating the apple himself. He learns the hard way that, no matter how clever, even diabolically clever, you think you are, you are not really in control of anything in life. Every would-be wizard in the world has to understand that he is powerless without hard experience. And what a boring world full of naked people this would be if there were never any apprentices in it foolish enough to actually become wizards. Of course, I haven’t really talked about the most heart-twisting part of Allegro Non Troppo… the sad cat wandering the ruins of his former home, or the most laugh-aloud part with the super-tidy little lady-bee trying to eat a blossom, but being interrupted by a couple of picnickers.

But the thing is, this movie is a timely subject for me. Not only did I, just yesterday, rediscover it, but it still has the same meaning for me now as it did when I first saw it. Then I was an aspiring young artist who loved this movie because it approached ideas non-consecutively, just as I approached my learning years… rambling here and there, finding first a bitter-sweet something, and then a sad beauty behind everything in life. And it is where I am again now, in a poor-health enforced retirement… divorced from teacher’s schedules and time itself. Able to do as I please, and aspiring once again to commit great acts of art.

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Tagged as animation, art criticism, autobiography, cartoons, movie review, movies I love, old movies, philosophy

February 6, 2015 · 1:47 pm

Klowns

Over the past 50 years I have spent considerable time creating my own cartoons and cartoon characters. In general I have always been stuck on adventure cartoons. Milt Caniff’s Terry and the Pirates and Roy Crane’s Buzz Sawyer were always foremost in my goofy little cartoonist’s mind when I created. I made an entire universe of characters and space-opera plots for what started as Zebra Fleet and would turn into Aeroquest. I tried my hand at sword and sorcery fantasy with Hidden Kingdom. In more recent years I started journaling in cartoon form with Adventures in Fantastica, a story that involves my dream self, Mickey. and a number of people from my real life, past and present, re-cast as talking animals and other weird cartoon characters.

I can’t publish stuff directly out of this large and ever-growing pile of cartoons because it is a pen-and-ink rough draft and includes lots of personal information about family and friends… and former students. It is also x-rated at several points. It is actually about my life. But there are weird and wonderful story-arcs in it that could easily be converted. The section set in Clowntown in particular… (Klowntown if I write it in Fantastican Kambobbulated Language) is a good story about a Klown detective named Squiggy who is trying to catch a thief who stole the heart-tarts from the Queen of Hearts. I want to try making this into a cartoon strip that I intend to publish here on WordPress as a sort of web comic. Don;t know what web comics are? Here is one my son put me onto that you should give a look-see; Two Kinds

The Klowns in today’s Paffooney are Klowntown Kops. They reveal what the average beat-klown-kop looks like in Fantastica. They are pratfall and slapstick clowns that use rubber whack-bats and pie-whacker pies (like the Ray Brad-berry Sci-Fi Pie the Klown is holding, ready for pie-whacking bad guys.)

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Filed under cartoons, humor, Paffooney

Tagged as cartoon plans, cartooning, cartoons, clowns, humor, Paffoonies, pen and ink

January 24, 2015 · 2:33 pm

Expelling Evil (and his Grammar Nazis) Part One

Do you remember when Dr. Evil took over Mickey’s Library with his evil minions and Grammar Nazi’s? No? Well, the Action-Hero-Guy team charged with protecting the library didn’t either… until finally today one of the Barbies complained that Dr. Evil was totally monopolizing the X-Box. So now, incensed by Dr. Evil’s audacity… and unwillingness to share…the Captain Action Alliance of Action-Hero-Guys are taking action.

Here’s a link to help you remember what this is supposed to be about; https://catchafallingstarbook.wordpress.com/2014/08/22/dr-evil-invades-mickeys-library/

So, lead by Captain Carl P.M. Action, the heroes sneak inside the library door ready for action.

It did not take the heroes long to realize that they were not alone.

You know that given a choice, true action heroes always choose action like bopping someone on the head (assuming they are not allowed to kill them with big explosions and lots of blood, thus leading to an R-rating so the kids who are your target audience will officially have to stay away, yet come to your movie in record numbers).

It is fortunate Captain Carl was careful and did not cut off her gun hand with his wonderous Lightning Sword of Captain Action Power. That would’ve gotten him an R-rating. And he was also lucky that the Agent in Red did not try to shoot him in the brain by tipping the gun forward just a tad. (Of course, it is possible it was the Agent in Red who was lucky she did not think of that. It is probable that shooting Captain Carl in the brain will only make him mad. And it is hard to actually hit something that tiny anyway.)

So, now that she won’t tell him anything, how will Captain Carl defeat Dr. Evil and liberate the X-Box? Oh, no! No more X-Box Baseball ’04! How will I survive it? To find out what happens next, tune in next time at the same Batty time to the same Batty channel!

Oh, Nooooooooooo!

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Filed under action figures, humor, Paffooney

Tagged as action figures, cartoons, goofiness, humor, imprisoned X-Box, melodrama, photo Paffooney, satire

January 23, 2015 · 1:42 pm

Ralph Bakshi

I was a Disney kid. I grew up with Sleeping Beauty, Pinocchio, and Jungle Book. But then I grew up and went to college and all my Disney dreams were dashed. The world is not Disneyland. The world holds many wicked wonders, some beautiful, some dangerous, some downright deadly. In 1977 I saw a movie that changed my world That movie was Ralph Bakshi’s Wizards. I saw it in the college-town theater in Ames, Iowa. I scraped up enough money to see it three times in the week that it played there. It was the Fall Semester after having read the entire Lord of The Rings Trilogy a year ago that summer. If you don’t know what I’m talking about, then here it is from YouTube. You should take a look, if not watch it all;

Ralph Bakshi is the chief artist/animator behind some of the raunchiest, weirdest, and wildest cartoons of the 60’s, 70’s, and 80’s. You may have seen some of his work.

Fritz the Cat was groundbreaking in that it was actually an X-rated cartoon, something that a Disney kid could never have imagined until he had his goofy little cartoon brain got corrupted by the colorful collage of experience you get as a farm-boy in college. I never actually saw such a profane perversion of what a cartoon was supposed to be until they had a special free showing at the student union. I went with a couple of guys from the dorm house and was flabberghasted that we could watch such a thing and not be in jail the following day. I would’ve gone back a second time, but free student union movies only occurred one time a month and were never replayed again, ever.

And then came The Lord of the Rings. Bakshi was the first one to create a film version of the novels they said could never be filmed. It appeared in the theaters in college town and I was forced to see it five times in the two weeks it stayed in the theater. I never loved anything so much in animation before. It was better even than Pinocchio. I would in later years be devastated by the fact that the movie only covered one and a half of the three books. The rest of the story never got made.

After college there were other black-magical Bakshi films. I would later get to see Fire and Ice, American Pop, and Cool World. Ralph Bakshi, and one of his lead cartoonists, Mike Ploog, would rock my world until he finally stopped making animated films. I have actually seen all of his films now, and have copies of most of them.

This is a scene from the history of music cartoon, American Pop.

Here’s another scene from that movie.He called it a “moving painting in honor of American music.”

Cool World was a combination of live action and cartoons that was loosely modeled on Who Framed Roger Rabbit? It was a foofy story that made a half-decent excuse for wonderful artwork.

Fire and Ice was Dungeons and Dragons and Boris Vellejo brought to life.

Let me end with a couple of connections to Ralph and Mike that you should check out. Their artistry has a profound effect.

http://www.facebook.com/RalphBakshi http://www.facebook.com/pages/Mike-Ploog/103982309772668

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Filed under art criticism, artists I admire, humor

Tagged as American Pop, animation, art criticism, Art heroes, cartoons, Cool World, Fire and Ice, Fritz the Cat, goofiness, Lord of the Rings, Mike Ploog, Ralph Bakshi

January 13, 2015 · 1:09 pm

Krazy Kat

I told you before about a cartoonist from ancient ‘Toon Times named Fontaine Fox. He was a master, and I acknowledge him as one of my greatest inspirations. But he was not the original master mentor for my teenage ‘Toon Training. That honor goes to the inestimable George Herriman. He was the Krazy Kartoonist who died more than a decade before I was born, yet, through his Kreation, Krazy Kat, did more to warp my artistic bent into Krazy Kartooniana Mania than anybody else. I discovered him first. I found him through Komic books and the Kard Katalog at the local library. I own a copy of the book I pictured first in this post. It is the first Kartoon book I ever bought. I couldn’t post a picture of my actual book here because I have read it so often in the past forty years that the Kover has Kome off. It is now more of folder of loose pages than a book.

Krazy Kat is a newspaper Komic strip that ran all around the world from 1913 to 1944. Comics Journal would rate Krazy Kat as the greatest work of Komic art of the 20th Century. Art critics hailed it as serious art, and it fits snugly into the surrealist movement of Salvador Dali and others. It has been cited as a major influence on the work of other artists such as Will Eisner, Charles M. Schulz, Robert Crumb, Art Spiegelman, Bill Watterson, and Chris Ware.

The centerpiece of the strip is a love triangle. Krazy Kat the Kharacter is a feline who may be female or may be male but is definitely deeply in love with Ignatz Mouse. The Krazed rodent hopped up on seriously stinky fromage (cheese to us non-French speakers), is Konstantly throwing bricks at Krazy’s head… obviously out of serious disdain, however, Krazy sees it as a confession of love. Offisa Pup, the police watchdog, wants to jail the malevolent mouse for battery and protect the precious Kat, whom he obviously loves with an unrequited love. Explanations are superfluous in the weird world of Krazy Kat. How can I explain the charm, the humor, the good-natured violence of a strip such as this? There are echoes of it in Tom and Jerry animated cartoons, but nothing like it really exists anywhere else. Krazy has her own unique language, a language that you naturally learn to interpret as you read the strip. Ignatz exhibits psychotic frustrations that he takes out on the world around him in our name, that we might experience hubris at his expense. And what’s with that mysterious sack of “Tiger Tea” that Krazy carries about and keeps a Klosely guarded “sekrit”?

I honestly hope you will give Krazy Kat a thorough “look-see”. Because if you like Kartoons at all… and it doesn’t have to be the Krazy Kooky love of a seriously overdosed addict like me… you will fall desperately in love with this one. It is a world of its own, a superbly superfluous abstract anachronism. It is a surrealist’s dream of fun with puns and tons of buns… or something like that. Simply put… read it and don’t like it… I dare you!

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Tagged as art criticism, artists I adore, books, cartoons, classic cartoons, comic book, humor

December 29, 2014 · 4:17 pm

Toonerville, a Place I Once Lived In

There is a place so like the place where my heart and mind were born that I feel as if I have always lived there. That place is a cartoon panel that ran in newspapers throughout the country from 1913 to 1955 (a year before I was born in Mason City, Iowa). It was called Toonerville Folks and was centered around the famous Toonerville Trolley.

Fontaine Fox was born near Louisville Kentucky in 1884. Louisville, of course is one of the two cities that claims to be the inspiration for Toonerville. Apparently the old Brook Street Line Trolley in Louisville was always run-down, operating on balls of twine and bailing wire for repair parts. The people of Pelham, New York, however, point to a trolley ride Fox took in 1909 on Pelham’s rickety little trolley car with a highly enterprising and gossip-dealing old reprobate for a conductor. No matter which it was, Fox’s cartoon mastery took over and created Toonerville, where you find the famous trolley that “meets all trains”.

I didn’t learn of the comic strip’s existence until I was in college, but once I found it (yes, I am the type of idiot who researches old comics in university libraries), I couldn’t get enough of it. Characters like the Conductor, the Powerful (physically) Katrinka, and the terrible-tempered Mr. Bang can charm the neck hair off of any Midwestern farm-town boy who is too stupid to regret being born in the boring old rural Midwest.

I fancied myself to be just like the infamous Mickey (himself) McGuire. After all, we have the same first name… and I always lick any bully or boob who wants to put up a fight (at least in my daydreams).

So, this is my tribute to the cartoonist who probably did more to warp my personality and make me funny (well, at least easy to laugh at! ) than any other influence. All of the cartoons in this post can be credited to Fontaine Fox. And all the people in them can be blamed on Toonerville, the town I used to live in, though I never really knew it until far too late.

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Filed under art my Grandpa loved, artists I admire, cartoons, Toonerville

Tagged as art criticism, artwork, cartoons, Fontaine Fox, humor, Toonerville, Trolley

December 28, 2014 · 5:56 pm

The Next Little Project

All right, the time has come to figure out what to write next. I have another thirty-plus-year-old writing project that would make an absolutely, terrifically horrible novel that I want to try to tame. I have a cartoonized version created back when I was young and stupid… in about 1981, before the invention of the graphic novel. It is in full color. It was done before I learned how to draw. It is a book that will now go under the ridiculously alliterated title The Captain Came Calling.

The novel is set, like all of my hometown stories, in Norwall, Iowa… The fictionalized version of Rowan, the town I actually grew up in. It isn’t quite as dorky in real life as it appears in my cutsified illustration, but it is approaching it at glacial speeds.

The town’s portrayal will have to change as I attempt to update and clarify characters.

The people have to be switched about. Phyllis Murphy has to become Mary Murphy. The Pirates will have to switch from the 90’s Pirates to the 80’s Pirates, as the main character, Mary Phillips has to create a new Pirates’ Club that didn’t exist when I first wrote this bilge. I have to update and increase the plot, adding the back-story through the inclusion of the Captain’s Logbook… How else can I get mermaids and the voodoo priest into the story otherwise?

I also have to be a little bit more politically correct about the portrayal of the tiki-idol-men. South Seas’ Magic can’t be racist or misogynist. And then there’s the whole thing about Captain Dettbarn’s less-than-Iowegian morals that has to be dealt with. He’s basically a clown character, not a villain.

And the Captain is cursed with invisibility. That is no small thing to pull off in work of fantasy fiction in a Young Adult style. It has to be believable enough to make the audience accept it, even if it is a comedy caper of the lowest sort.

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Filed under cartoons, novel plans, NOVEL WRITING, Paffooney

Tagged as artwork, cartoons, colored pencil, drawing, new novel project, novel writing, Paffoonies, pen and ink, re-writing old garbage

December 6, 2014 · 3:25 pm

Goofy Me

The more I looked at the silly simpering grin on my old foolish face, the more I realized it needed a few things added. So I added a few of my dream babies. You know, those characters I have created in cartoons and novels who may have started with my own three kids, or kids I grew up with, or kids I taught over the years, but ended up with a large injection of my own mental DNA in their final, fictional selves. So here is a self portrait that I privately refer to by the title “Goofy Me”.

Man, is that ever goofy!

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Filed under artwork, cartoons, drawing, self portrait

Tagged as aliens, artwork, cartoons, Catch a Falling Star, characters, colored pencil, goofiness, paffooney, photo, self portrait, shameless self-promotion

December 2, 2014 · 8:37 pm

The Rest of my Classroom Gallery

Here’s what’s left in my camera from school white boards and lessons.

There you have it, the results of 31 years of doodling on the chalkboard (which became the dry erase board). And yes, I did tell them the cartoon fairy drew all the pictures. Especially when they were in my class for the second or third year when they asked, “Who does all the pictures on the board?” And yes, I started doing this back in dinosaur days in white chalk on a green blackboard, followed by colored chalk, which later became a gray marker-board for washable marker, and finally became dry erase white board. And I really bought my own chalk and markers too. Teachers do that, you know.

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Filed under artwork, cartoons, goofiness, humor, Paffooney, photos, teaching

Tagged as cartoons, chalk board drawings, goofiness, humor, Paffoonies, teaching, white board art

November 30, 2014 · 5:27 pm

Cartoon Board-Work

I admit it. I was a goofy teacher. Kids never knew for sure whether I was serious, joking, or halfway in-between. I worked for hours sometimes preparing the chalkboard, or later, white board, for the days lesson, putting key points and reminders up in cartoon form. I used characters, symbols, jokes, pokes, and silliness to get the idea across. Principals and others who evaluated my teaching always wondered why my classroom sounded so raucous and wild from outside the door with kids laughing, music playing, and sometimes desks being shuffled and shoved around the room. The perfect-classroom-is-a-quiet-classroom crowd always hated my teaching style. But the ones who came in and participated, got involved in paying attention and watching the kids interact with the content loved it. I am not bragging. My lesson plans were a mess filled with booby traps, explosions waiting to happen, un-intended consequences (also called teachable moments), and brainstorms that threatened at any moment to electrocute somebody with lightning. Teaching is a dangerous business. But the point is, there is an art to teaching that brings out the artist in you. I offer the following evidence;