DC relaunched a Looney Tunes comic book in the mid-90 that gave up on the Barksian adventures and instead tried to replicate the cartoons’ wacky sensibility. After 15-plus years it’s still going strong, but after a couple of issues I started getting that same déjà vu feeling I experienced when watching Tiny Toons or the less creative Disney direct-to-video sequels: favorite moments shuffled, repackaged and quoted – which were better the first time around.

All of which is a roundabout way of getting to the subject at hand: Cartoon Network’s re-introduction of Bugs and company in The Looney Tunes Show.

Lord knows I had my reservations about the entire affair. Trying to do something with these characters outside of the short cartoon format where they were at their best has always been risky; with one or two exceptions (like say, Taz-mania), the less said about efforts like Loonatics Unleashed, Space Jam or Looney Tunes: Back in Action, the better.

But in brief, my personal reaction to the first episode… The Looney Tunes show works. I like this show – a lot, as a matter of fact.

It’s Friday, October 12 and the Javits Center is beginning to burst at the seams. Banes abound, Lokis lurk and there are Doctors by the dozens. David Tennants and Matt Smiths predominate, although a Peter Davison Doctor shows up at Peter Davison’s session. Speaking of which, You Can’t Make this Stuff Up Department: Davison’s daughter Georgia is married to Tennant; they met when she played the title role in the Dr. Who episode… “The Doctor’s Daughter.” (Yeah, I can’t believe it either but it’s true.)

 

 

Fathers and sons – both onscreen and off – figure in Studio Ghibli’s Tales from Earthsea.  Onscreen, a teenage prince kills his royal dad and makes off with the man’s sword; offscreen, Goro Miyazaki, the son of Japan’s best-known animation director takes over a project his dad initiated but never found the time to direct. Wish fulfillment or mere coincidence? Does a sword equal a man’s career? You be the judge…

 

There they are, lined up left to right – the dream team, the creative powerhouse behind DreamWorks’ latest, ‘let’s leave out the snark this time’ animated feature Rise of the Guardians. They’re bookended on one side by executive producer Guillermo del Toro and on the other by William Joyce, the creative genius/illustrator whose Guardians of Childhood book series serve as the movie’s foundation.

It’s a neat trick for a small Irish studio to snag an Oscar nomination for Best Animated Feature and go head to head with Pixar, Disney, Henry Selick and Wes Anderson, not to mention beat out Hayao Miyazaki’s Ponyo for a slot.

It’s even more impressive when it’s the first time you’ve directed anything longer than a few commercials or TV segments. But that’s what Tomm Moore of Ireland’s Cartoon Saloon has done with Secret of the Kells - and on a budget that’s probably less than what any of the other films spent promoting themselves.

The New York Museum of Comic and Cartoon Art’s Education program rolls on, ably overseen by the museum’s Senior VP of Education, Danny Fingeroth. Fingeroth’s impressive credits include a lengthy stint as group editor of Marvel’s Spider-Man books, college-level comics instructor and author, co-author and editor of various books and magazines on the subject of writing for comics. As part of his job Fingeroth rounds up pros at the level of Peter Kuper, Larry Hama, Paul Levitz and J.M. DeMatteis to share their knowledge and experience with aspiring comics creators.

As befitting the second ‘C' in MoCCA, cartoon courses are part of the curriculum too, like last year’s storyboarding class taught by Stephen DeStefano, or this past March’s “Animation Writing: How to Write Scripts that will Make You a Key Member of the Creative Team,” led by David Steven Cohen.

Want to do something nice for kids in Bed-Stuy Brooklyn and Sierra Leone Africa at the same time – and come away with a beautiful piece of art for your troubles? It’ll cost you a few well-worth-it bucks…

Blue Sky’s David LaMattina and Chad Walker are the creators of Brownstones to Red Dirt, a documentary centering on a pen pal program linking kids an ocean apart who have the odds stacked against them: at-risk Brooklyn sixth graders and African war orphans. You can learn more about the film at http://www.brownstonestoreddirt.com/

 

 

On a rainy October Monday we media types, invited by the Disney folks, gathered at a midtown NYC arts center. The lure: a peek at the studio’s two big holiday events: Tron Legacy and Tangled, their CGI-animated de/reconstruction of the Rapunzel story.

Garlands of wheat-blonde hair twined around the handrails leading down to the basement auditorium to create an appropriate ambience for the main event of the evening (no, not the free buffet): a surprise, full-length screening of Tangled in its not-yet-fully-animated, not-yet 3D-rendered form.

I’ll go out on a bit of a limb here and call Tangled Disney’s liveliest animated feature in a long time and their best fairy tale updating ever.

New York’s Society of Illustrators has great shows focusing on great artists and genres – all of which I read about but never get around to seeing; dammit Joe, get thee ass to East 63^rd Street just off Lex and check the place out. (www.societyillustrators.org)

What finally lured me through the doors of the Society’s classy little townhouse: their March 10^th show of animated commercials and music videos. Can I say ‘cutting-edge,’ or has that cliché passed its sell-through date? I’ll say it anyway; the stuff screened had a very high “wow, that was amazing” quotient.