Contrary to a popular adage, life is not a journey; it is rather a series of them. Some may be concurrent, some may overlap and still others are entirely disparate from one another. Destinations may be pre-planned or accidental, reached or abandoned. These sojourns have one thread in common, however: they serve to explain who we are, how we grow and what moves us through the course of our lives. This month's column begins the story of one journey among many in my life, and I tell it because I suspect that most of you have kept me company on this same path -- one that we tread to this day. We begin in Boston, Massachusetts.

Walt Disney, the original voice of Mickey Mouse. © Walt Disney. All rights reserved.

A Meager Beginning
The state of American animation in 1956: Walt Disney was the undisputed king of the medium, the only figure in the field worthy of attention or scrutiny; his cartoons and films were incomparable in the eyes of critics and the public alike. No one then sought to interview Charles M. Jones, Fred Avery, Robert Clampett or Isadore Freling, and few outside the industry knew them by their now-familiar nicknames. A production company known as UPA had created somewhat of a sensation, but mostly among art critics and graphic designers. Independent animation in America was virtually nonexistent, and most of its potential proponents animated singing beer cans and cereal-munching critters at the behest of advertising agencies. The theatrical short lay supine on its Technicolor deathbed. Television had little to offer save cartoons recycled from decades past; they floated across the tiny screen like scratchy, black-and-gray ghosts -- and so they were. Those that did not feature Popeye were often incomprehensibly strange, as if they were alien relics discovered within a cathode tomb. This was the world I was born into and it held little promise as a starting point for my journey. Still, what was seemingly fated would come to pass.

Mickey and Pluto find a surprise guest in Disney's classic cartoon, Mickey and the Seal. © Walt Disney. All rights reserved.

The first cartoon I can reliably remember seeing was Fleischer's 1935 Color Classic Song of the Birds, broadcast on some long-forgotten local kiddie show. With my four year-old sensibility, I was drawn deeply into this maudlin tale of a boy who shoots down a baby bird as it first takes wing. The event is witnessed by the avian community, that conduct a melancholy funeral while the boy breaks down in remorse. It is needless to add that the baby bird, merely stunned, chirps back to life at cartoon's end; I had already dissolved into tears and had to be consoled by my mother. She reminded me of the happy ending and gently reassured me that, "It was only a cartoon." It was only a cartoon. Those words, spoken to me for the first time that day, never took hold and never would. These little films, so different from the westerns, game shows and early sitcoms I also saw on TV, seemed to resonate and merge with some emerging component of my nascent personality. For the rest of my life I would respond to animation with deep, visceral feelings that live-action movies, theatre or television could not summon.

Walt Disney's 17th animated classic, 101 Dalmatians. © Walt Disney. All rights reserved.

Now We're Getting Somewhere
I sought out cartoons at every chance. I crawled out of bed in the early morning hours to switch on the TV set since cartoons were typically the first things broadcast once the test pattern and national anthem had left the screen. I acquired friends: Pow Wow the Indian Boy, Spunky and Tadpole, Tom Terrific and Felix the (wonderful, wonderful!) Cat. Early Saturday mornings brought Bugs, Daffy, Porky...and at that time, even Coal Black. My parents took note and began to supply me with brightly colored comic books featuring many of these friends, and when I saw the characters on those pages, I believed that some artist at a "comic book factory" had arbitrarily colored them that way. Not until my first trip to a drive-in theater did I realize that most cartoons were made in color. My cartoon universe expanded: Hanna-Barbera spilled dozens of new characters into my living room and I delightedly watched them tear around a circus ring with the Kellogg's rooster in tow. I was awestruck upon seeing my first episode of the Fleischer Superman series: The Mummy Strikes. I cowered under the bedcovers that night at the memory of the giant mummy slowly coming to life, scowling at Superman through baleful blank orbs. I had never seen a cartoon with such vivid styling or primordial power, and the images stayed with me for days thereafter.