My first thoughts on setting about a review of this book were, "Who is going to buy it?" and, "Who is this review aimed at?" The cover picture may attract the average cartoon buff - it bears an intriguing drawing by Joanna Quinn from Body Beautiful showing Vince in a Tutu! (Vince is the sexist muscle man who taunts the film's heroine.) Yet what will the average reader make of the content? This is by no means a coffee-table book filled with lavish color. Rather it is a serious study of the medium of animation. The 21 essays collected here are erudite and scholarly and some may not have instant appeal. The visual material, while thought-provoking and relevant to the text, is all monochrome. But look closer and you may be pleasantly surprised.

The Society for Animation Studies was founded a decade ago by Harvey Deneroff in Hollywood, realizing the need for more in-depth critical research on animation. The essays that make up this book began life as visual demonstrations or papers presented at the annual conferences of the Society and now made available to a wider audience for the very first time.

Perseverance Pays Off
What were the criteria for choosing these particular papers out of the 250 or so written and presented over the last ten years? In this respect Jayne Pilling is a worthy choice as editor. She is a fountain of animation knowledge and has made what is probably the best possible selection of material on a wide range of topics with different critical approaches: theoretical, historical, cultural and political. Analyses of individual films give a new insight into many of our accepted values about classic cartoons and reveal some unknown and forgotten or neglected works. A number of the papers were impossible to put into book form being purely visual presentations and some needed extensive editing which was done with Pilling working closely with the authors of the original works.

Some of the titles are daunting. For example, "Animatophilia, Cultural Production and Corporate Interests" by Mark Langer. To my surprise, this is a serious study of Ren and Stimpy. On the other hand, the juxtaposition of the films of Walt Disney and Francis Bacon's Triptych in the Tate Gallery in Simon Pummell's essay is rather more obscure. However, look at a print of Bacon's work (even if you cannot get to the Tate to see the original) and Pummell's text becomes less demanding.

Perseverance will pay off and you will find many strange and unknown delights in these pages. An "Intimate Excursion" into the disturbing and macabre world of The Brothers Quay, by Steve Weiner, is full of dark desires. The essay discusses the oddly-titled This Unnameable Little Broom (1985), the Brothers' version of Epic of Gilgamesh. There is a malign presence about this work, the characters - grotesque and erotic puppets - are subjected to bizarre and perverse treatment by savage machines. Yet it enthralls in the same way that horrific episodes in fairy tales often do.