Letters to the Editor

Harvey Shame
Shame on you guys! Regarding your article, "Harvey Entertainment Takes Control" (Kenyon, 5.3):

It is hard to believe the editors of Animation World Magazine think the Golden Age of comics was in the 1950s and early 1960s. But, that is not why I am writing...

Harvey was NOT "founded in 1939 in New York City as a comic book company by brothers Alfred, Leon, and Robert Harvey," as your article states.

Harvey was founded in 1940 by Alfred Harvey as "Alfred Harvey Publications." The first comic published was Pocket Comics No. 1 in spring of 1941, the sister publication was Fun Parade No. 1, a collection of gag cartoons. (Do some research and find these books, and you will see who published them for yourself.) This by the way, was during the Golden Age of comics.

These however were not the first comics Alfred Harvey worked on. He entered the business in 1927 when he sold his first cartoons, and by the end of the 1930s was the Managing Editor for Victor Fox at Fox Feature Syndicate, one of the leading comic publishers of the time.

When Alfred Harvey enlisted in the US Army, in 1942, he brought his twin brother Leon Harvey into the business as a partner. I believe this is when "Harvey Features Syndicate" was formed, while the company through its publications became known as "Family Comics" at this time.

By the end of 1945 WWII had ended, and the company was expanding its successful line of comics which included Joe Palooka, Green Hornet and Speed comics. I believe this is when Robert Harvey became a partner, although my records don't confirm his involvement until 1949.

By 1946 the company had become known as "Harvey Publications" and the Harvey "H" became a fixture on the covers of the comics.

I find, it was not until 1948 the publications became known as "Harvey Comics." This is when I believe the first "Harvey Comics" logo appeared on the comic books.

I would like to clarify that I am not saying that the names of the companies changed (although some may have). There were at least a dozen "Harvey" corporations and partnerships coexisting at different times in Harvey history.

When Harvey stopped producing comics in the early 1980s it was because it had been devastated by lawsuits, period.

One other note of interest: "Harvey" was Alfred Harvey's middle name. Wiernikoff was the original family surname. Soon after changing his name, his parents followed suite, later his brother Leon, and finally Robert.

I also wanted to say that I love Animation World Magazine, but this article has really hit a sore spot.

I question if this misinformation came from the current Harvey management. The reason I question the Harvey management as the source is, the same misinformation appears on the Harvey Website, even though I have made repeated requests to the Harvey management to fix it. The Harvey site has been completely overhauled at least twice, without even a word of the historical misinformation being changed or fixed. Clearly disrespect by Harvey management, for the founder Alfred Harvey and his family.

No matter who and/or what the source, factual information should be checked and double checked. Otherwise it completely destroys the credibility of all other information.

I am hereby requesting a retraction to your article, which I believe to be damaging to my family.

Thank you,
Alan Harvey
http://www.sadsack.net

U.S. Animators Insulted!
From "Scandals, Smokescreens and a Golden Age?: Canadian Animation in the 21st Century" (Robinson, 5.5):

"Right wingers were not alone in their complaints; in the U.S., members of the Motion Picture Screen Cartoonists Union went out in full force this spring to complain about jobs being lost to Canadian companies because of generous tax subsidies. It's always interesting to hear complaints from people within a culture that has generally numbed and overtaken most of the world with its crass disposable culture which has thrived off cheap labour and exploitation. So a few American animators are out of work; welcome to the world the rest of us have been living in for decades."

To exult in the suffering of innocent people is wrong. Chris Robinson and the rest of you guys should be ashamed of yourselves.

Eric Lurio

More Growing Pains
"Growing Pains" by Martin Goodman (Goodman, 5.4) was a great article, and proved quite thought provoking. What specifically touched me was the sentence, "The best bet for a great animated adult feature just might be an action-adventure flick that would have contained minimal dialogue and wowser SPX if filmed live in the first place." I am a producer at Momentum Animation and I immediately thought, 'That is exactly what we do: action adventure with wowser SPX!' It seems we have the talent here at Momentum, we just need to keep searching for the right people to talk to. If you are interested in the style I am talking about you can download a trailer we made that was used in a music video. The link is http://www.momentumanimations.com/bardot.mpg

Thanks,
Tim Flora
Producer, Momentum Animation Studios
157 Eastern Rd, South Melbourne
Victoria 3205
Australia
tim@momentumanimations.com
www.momentumanimations.com

Lanier Proved Insightful
When I saw Chris Lanier's article, "The Aesthetics of Internet Animation," (Lanier, 5.5) featured (as well as his fine character on the cover), I realized that I never "shook his hand" so to speak after winning the same category in the World Wide Internet Animation Competition sponsored by Shockwave. I attended the ceremony in Hollywood but was never introduced to any of the other competitors except for the Ruth Truth group who won the grand prize. So here's to being a good sport and shaking hands, as well as praising Chris Lanier for his lovely work and insightful article on animation and the Web.

Also, keep up the good work AWN. I enjoy it very much.

Best,
Michael Stinson
Creator of Symbolman
http://www.symbolman.com

Maybe there's hope for imagination amongst all this technology after all. Continue the good work.

Rose Marie

After having read Chris Lanier's "The Aesthetics of Internet Animation" (Lanier, 5.5), I would like to offer the following:

There is a lot of truth in what Chris writes regarding style and crudeness as it relates to MUCH of what is going on out there. I feel part of the reason for this is that there are large numbers of people who have simply toyed around with the medium, or have been much too influenced by a lot of the crude garbage on TV (I won't mention actual titles but you know who they are), or lastly, and probably the most pertinent reason, is everyone is rushing to the Web as fast as they can get there, much like the gold rush of '49.

I myself am an animator and along with a fellow programmer we are working on two series of Flash animations intended for the Web upon their completion. However WE ARE NOT GOING TO SACRIFICE QUALITY because there is so much other cheap, amateurish stuff out there. We both have full time jobs by day, and we work together each night plugging away at these films. Each film is done at 24 fps just like Disney and all art is hand-drawn, scanned in and streamlined for vector based graphics. It is very time consuming but we want our work to stand out among animations as opposed to falling in the sea of mediocrity. John Kricfalusi, creator of Ren and Stimpy as well as other huge successes, was quoted as saying recently, "There is too much shit out there," regarding Internet animation. Well when all is said and done, my cohort and I don't intend to fall under that statement. Everyone should take pride in their films no matter how detailed or simple, and quit cranking out garbage just to watch things move with sound. While this does constitute a cartoon it does not justify itself as animation. If you look up the definition of the word you will see it means to give life, not just bandwidth.

Thanks for listening,
S.M. Casper