Carl represents a bold choice for a protagonist, but definitely has "Grandpa appeal" for Boomers and youngsters alike. © Disney/Pixar.

Pixar has taken another risk with its 10th feature, Up, but, judging by the domestic box office performance thus far ($146.8 million), the reigning king of animated features has another artistic and financial triumph.

Up, of course, features a geriatric protagonist mourning his deceased wife. On the surface, there's nothing much wrong with that. Director Pete Docter worked with writer/co-director Bob Peterson (with early story assistance from The Station Agent's Tom McCarthy) to model a grumpy old codger after Spencer Tracy (with a little Walter Matthau thrown in for good measure). As a result, Pixar's newest star, Carl Fredricksen by name, would be an unusual source of humor while appealing to children much in the way their grandpas would. This 78-year-old chap (voiced by Ed Asner) still has dreams and promises to fulfill when most men his age are wearing down, leading to a wild journey to South America in a house made airborne by 10,000 balloons. There is a young lad who accidentally joins the flight as well as a talking dog, but, make no mistake, Up belongs to Carl.

The risk lies in the fact that elderly animated characters have a very scant history as lead characters. Although senior citizens can be found as supporting players in many animated series and films, the stars are for the most part quite young, at the worst middle-aged. A 78-year-old graybeard is a rarity as a star. In fact, with only one notable exception, such has been the case for a very long time.

In animation's early days, a superannuated character was good for a laugh. Some the original stars of animation were not exactly spring chickens. Colonel Heeza Liar, created by J.R. Bray, entertained audiences from 1913-1924, an amazing eleven-year run of popularity (Note that the original run of Felix the Cat cartoons lasted only eight years). Suffice it to say that several decades of life had passed since the Colonel had been Private Heeza Liar. Newspaper cartoonist Sidney Smith adapted his comic strip character Old Doc Yak into a short but popular series that ran from 1913-1915. The character was visibly not a young Doc Yak. One ancient character who managed to survive into the 1940s was Paul Terry's Farmer Al Falfa; calling him a farm boy would be a huge mistake, considering his bald head and scruffy white beard.

Just prior to the advent of sound, elderly characters began to vanish from stardom. As animation techniques improved, it seemed that audiences liked their characters younger and peppier. When Walt Disney launched his Oswald the Lucky Rabbit series in 1927, producer Charles Mintz expressed deep dissatisfaction with the first cartoon (Poor Papa,1927), stating that the rabbit looked too old, among other things.(Interesting that the Up antagonist is named Charles Muntz.) The youth movement in animation was on, and for the most part remains in effect to this day. Older characters in today's cartoons tend to be sages, sensei, or sorcerers, but none of them are headliners. The last cartoon star that appeared close to collecting Social Security was Mr. Magoo, created at UPA studio by the legendary John Hubley in 1949. Behind the crotchety voice of Jim Backus, Magoo went on to become a theatrical star for 10 years before starring in the first animated Christmas special in 1962 and headlining his own prime-time TV series in 1964. Magoo also copped two Oscars (1954 and 1956), making him the "oldest" animated character to win such awards.

Martin Goodman.

There is, of course, a disconnect between chronological age and morphology in animated cartoons. Mickey Mouse may be approaching 71 years of age in chronological time, but a visual check reveals a young rodent in his prime. Minnie is the same "age," but clearly in no need of Botox. Cartoon characters tend not to age and any changes in appearance is squarely the result of artistic evolution over time. No one outside of obsessive-compulsive insomniacs would attempt to calculate how "old" Wally Gator or Quick Draw McGraw might be. Most characters, especially animal ones, seem to be of an indiscriminate, but younger age.

There is a wonderful piece written in 1972 by Umberto Eco (who typically has weightier things on his mind) titled "The Myth of the Superman." Eco notes that in Superman comic books, the notion of continuous, sequential time breaks down; Superman finishes an adventure in one issue and goes on to the next, seemingly with no passage of time evident from issue to issue. Superman appears to stay the same age, as do the other lead characters, suspending the progression through life towards aging and death. Readers accept this, just as they accept that Spider-Man can appear in six different comic book titles in the same month; the narrative overrides temporal reality, and belief is suspended. The same goes for animated characters: It matters little how old Wally Gator is; he does not exist in "realtime."