The 2010 SPX Animation Showcase features indepedently made animation created in a variety of styles and techniques. “These films let people know independent animation is as sophisticated as its big-budget brothers,” says Showcase committee co-chair Paul Nadjmabadi. “Every year at SPX we see that pool of talent in comics that hasn’t been recognized yet, that one-off that someone did that’s the most amazing thing you’ve seen all year. We want to bring that to animation.”

Animations screening in the showcase include traditional and abstract storytelling in a variety of styles including stop-motion, clay-mation, hand-drawn, and computer animation. Selections include:
Good %^&$ing Morning                  Nick Arcidy
Suck It Up                                     Rebecca Boensch
Building Blocks                                Vanessa Chan
Bleach and Glitter                   Vanessa Chan
Head Garden                                    Lilli Carre                 
The Discovery                                   Rodgers Dameron
The Magician                                    Dustin Maassen                 
Wonders of Nature: Our National Parks Yosemite                   Clasrissa Maralone
Hocas Croakus                                   Mark McDonald
One of a Kind                                    Dixie Pizani
The Melting Pot                   Shani Vargo
Krawll                                                 Matthew Wade
Birdy                                                    Agnieszka Woznicka
Deadline                                     Bang Yaoliu
 
More information on animators and films is available via the SPX Animation Showcase Web site at www.spxpo.com/animation.

While folks like Mark Millar, Mike Mignola, and Robert Kirkman have been deservedly marked by the success of their creations in Hollywood, one hard-working studio of writers has a pretty significant run of hits behind them — without getting too much in the way of recognition.

We’re talking about the Man of Action Studios — Joe Casey, Joe Kelly, Duncan Rouleau, and Steven T. Seagle. Not only did they create the biggest boy-oriented action franchise of the last ten years in Ben 10, but they turned right around and duplicated that success with Generator Rex, which since its debut has been ranked as #1 in its time slot with kids ages 2-11. Meanwhile, these four gentlemen have also managed to build up an impressive library of intriguing, thought-provoking comics from Kafka to I Kill Giants to Officer Downe to Metal Men to…dozens of other things. They all have solid bibliographies anyone would be proud of.

And they are all nice guys, to boot.

So when we got an announcement of Man of Action’s participation as Supervising Producers on the first season of the new Spider-Man series, set for a 2012 debut on Disney XD, we were happy. Happy because Spidey has been given over to some people who know what they are doing, so Disney is poised to get a new boy-oriented hit at long, long last. And happy because some good folks who do good work are continuing to get more work.

While we’ve been looking at the whole Hollywood-Comics connection critically over the last few days, Man of Action is doing it the right way — not making a lot of unnecessary noise or being assholes. Just turning out the best comics and TV shows they can. .

Or at least that’s what the poster says.

Click for the full size version so you can see the single sinister spot of moisture on Yogi’s nose—mucus? phlegm? or…something else???—and the light glinting off his vampire fangs. Brrrrrr.

“Good things come in bears.”

How much did the people who sat around coming up with this slogan get paid?

STOP! Before you answer, you must watch this sketch, “AD-MEN”, by our own Todd Alcott, and starring James Urbaniak.

Okay, NOW how much do you think these copywriters should be paid? Rubies? Or DIAMONDS????

Wait, there is also a horror trailer!

We’ll be sleeping with the lights on and a plate full of Quaaludes nearby after viewing that

Finally, just to cleanse the palate, here is another horror film starring Yogi Bear, this time directed by John K.

It is coming to save us all.

The Hulk Hands Theory (short version) from nunub on Vimeo.

A rotoscoped version of an episode of Big Bang Theory involving Hulk Hands seems like the perfect collection of items to kick off the first week of summer 2010, right? It’s by French animator Nunub (aka Micaël Reynaud). The music is by Fikret Kızılok. Found at Cartoon Brew

My first “Complaints” post drew a bit of private praise, especially from those who welcomed a return to more pointed commentary. To which I say, I’d love to do more of it but I was literally up until dawn writing that first one (I’m ssslllooowww) and this one will take just as long. Especially since this time I”m taking on everyone’s FAVORITE SUBJECTS: Race and gender. It’s a good thing comics never talk about religion or we’d be here all night and day! And if I can predict one thing with dead certainty it’s this: Gene PHillips will show up in the comments.

¶ Ground zero for recent discussions poor, poor DC Senior Story EditorIan Sattler who hit an instant five-way bingo with this classic, when asked at a panel about recent incidents in the DCU that saw minority characters getting bumped off and replaced with whites:

“It’s so hard for me to be on the other side because it’s not our intention. There is a reason behind it all. We don’t see it that way and strive very hard to have a diverse DCU. I mean, we have green, pink, and blue characters. We have the Great Ten out there and I have counter statistics, but I won’t get into that. It’s not how we perceived it. We get the same thing about how we treat our female characters.”

This has been pilloried from dusk til dawn on sites from Racialicious to Scans_Daily. When Fangirls Attack had an epic round-up of reactions which ranged from lulz to flamethrowers. David Brothers at 4th Letters has been reacting to this and the reaction ever since with a series of posts here, here and here. Oh and a special appearance in the Beat comments here.

Nut graph:

John Stewart is the only Green Lantern to not show up on any covers. Hal, Kyle, Guy, Alan, all of those guys get covers. Hey, pop quiz! Does the JLA have a Luke Cage? No? Well… name a black supporting character in a DC Comic on the level of a Sam Wilson! Steel? Now name another. Or hey, name one on the level of a Robbie Robertson. Just Lucious Fox? Really? Whatever happened to Ron Troupe? Remember him? Married to Lois Lane’s sister, had a kid with her? Oh, right. Lucy Lane is back and superpowered. Ron and the baby are a footnote and a question mark.

DC Comics isn’t a racist company and it isn’t run by racists. This does not, however, mean that they cannot do and say stupid things that are racist. Killing Ryan Choi is not, in and of itself, racist. Ditching Ron Troupe and marginalizing John Stewart is not racist. Replacing Jason Rusch with a more boring version of Firestorm isn’t racist. These are perfectly valid story choices that, in a better world, would have taken place in stories that were worth reading.

His mentioning of John Stewart is particularly interesting. Stewart is a supporting Lantern, and sometime lead character in the DCU since his debut in…oh look, it’s Green Lantern/Green Arrow!

Given this issue’s proximity to the bludgeon used to pummel Sattler into baby seal meat, and remembering that this came out in a time of post Civil Rights Era readjustment in America, it’s not too hard to guess that Denny O’Neil and Neal Adams created John Stewart to be a Strong Black Character from the git go, in a DC Universe that wasn’t too big on minority supporting characters at the time. Since then (and I’m no Mark Waid, so I’m just going by the Wikipedia page) he’s bounced around in various roles, including a starring run in Mosiac, and is currently doing whatever it is people do during Brightest Day. So kind of on the d-lo for now, even as Green Lantern gears up for a Major Media Push ahead of the movie, starring Ryan Reynolds. Which makes sense, because Green Lantern (Ryan Reynolds) is a white dude, not a black dude, so why confuse people who don’t know the character’s history.

However, John Stewart’s great moment in the sun came during the Justice League Cartoon era (2001-2004), when he WAS Green Lantern.

The line-up of characters on the show was specifically set-up to reflect more diversity than just a bunch of white guys and a green guy. (Heck there are two girls, something unheard of these days.) This cartoon wasn’t really aimed just at kids, despite airing on the Cartoon Network, but I can tell you right now that diversity is Really, Really Important in kids cartoons, because then sociologists and educators and all can say “Look, this cartoon promotes diversity! It is good for the children!” and big corporations like to hear that and feel good about themselves.

Sometimes it doesn’t go well.

Oh sometimes it goes very very bad. I found this in a post by Joe Singleton, which has all kinds of gruesome observations:

The first thing I notice is, they’re all male. Second thing….three out of four of them are bare-legged and the fourth is shirtless. Of course . . . We all know that ethnic minority types wear less clothing than wholesome WASP types, right? Ugh!

Of course, Super Friends had the worst minority characters of all times, but it also had the worst CHARACTERS of all times — if we could only return to this ideal of equality for all, maybe things would go better.

Cut to the present. With all the bad feelings about racial diversity in the DCU flying around — much of it directed at Geoff Johns, rightly or wrongly, Johns has taken to the Source Blog to reveal that all sorts of opportunity for minority characters in the DCU. To make up for all the newly demoted non-white characters, the New Aqualad is in fact, African-American.

Despite having “Aqua” in his name, he also hates to swim and lives in the desert, because that’s what you call CONFLICT.
Now, what I noticed about all this was New Aqualad’s dual purpose origin:

At the same time, as previously announced, the YOUNG JUSTICE cartoon series is just around the corner featuring Robin, Kid Flash, Superboy, Miss Martian, Artemis and the all-new Aqualad who will be appearing very briefly in BRIGHTEST DAY #4, but really comes into his own in BRIGHTEST DAY #10 before hitting the small screen this fall.

That’s right, New Aqualad was created for a KID’S CARTOON.

Here we have the basic Justice League cartoon line-up just trimmed down a bit — there’s super lad, revenge lad, fast lad, mythological lass and black lad, but Green Alien and Alien Lass have been combined into Green Lass.

I have no idea which came first — the cartoon or Brightest Day — but in this case, diversity was good for everyone, including the children. Luckily, new Aqualad isn’t being Black Vulcanized and will appear in actual comic books with dramatic covers by David FInch.

Johns has also been raising excitement online with teasers of a screen test that shows that for hispanic teen Jamie Reyes, aka the new Blue Beetle is also being kicked around for a possible TV treatment:

I feel very fortunate to have been a part of Blue Beetle’s introduction way back in INFINITE CRISIS. I’ve said it before, but thanks to the BLUE BEETLE series launched by Keith Giffen and John Rogers with a great design by Cully Hamner, Jaime Reyes rocks. Great character, great story, great look. He’s already appeared in animation, had action figures and right now he’s on my computer in live-action glory. I have an early special effects test that has been floating around of what his armored scarab-suit could look like. This isn’t final. This isn’t greenlit. It’s only a test that was done. We still have a long way to go to see if we can get this off the ground and a lot of people to jump on board…but check out some stills:

In a previous post Johns talked a bit about all the synergy going on:

Our goals with the DC Entertainment are to not only bring you BATMAN and SUPERMAN, but also introduce new characters in the comics and film, tv and animation simultaneously with our partners at Warner Brothers – in this case, the talented crew who’s heading up the YOUNG JUSTICE animated series, including Greg Weissman (who actually wrote CAPTAIN ATOM back in the day!).

While TV appearances seem to be the impetus for some of the diversification, don’t get your hopes up. Minority characters don’t fare very well on TV either.:

Veteran Producer Suzanne de Passe, a former president of Motown Television, offered up her thoughts on the disparity. Noting that it was not that long ago that the broadcast networks had such shows as “Fresh Prince of Bel Air,” “The Cosby Show” and “Living Single,” she laid the blame on media consolidation.

“I have witnessed what consolidation of content and distribution in entertainment and media has done to significantly slow down and diminish opportunity for minority professionals rather than accelerate and increase it,” she said. The networks that used to make shows aimed at blacks “now only offer a minority cast member here and there and a long list of contributions to minority charities under the catch-all word, `diversity,’ ” she testified.

That whole link is worth reading for anyone whose been following this topic since it gives some idea of how all this is handled when there is actual money at stake. It also contained this classic correction:

An earlier version of this post said the stars of NBC’s “Undercovers” are African-American. Actually, neither are American. Boris Kodjoe was born in Austria and Gugu Mbatha-Raw is from England.

In a way this correction explains the whole reason we even need diversity. Gugu and Boris. What were you expecting? English people and Austrian people don’t always look like we expect them to look. It’s a surprise element. Keeps us on our toes. Conflict.

This whole thing made me think about Doug Funnie. You know, from Doug, that cartoon that ran back in the 90s. I was editing some Doug comics back in the day and had occasion to meet with the creator, Jim Jinkins, who was a very nice fellow, to explain the show to me. One of the things he’d done on purpose in Doug, he felt, was remove race altogether by making the kids purple, blue, orange…whatever. I remember thinking that the show was really about suburban white kids who happened to be blue, purple, whatever, but it was a nice thought. If there’s one thing Doug wasn’t, it was multicultural.

This blogger agrees, although he’s a bit harder on the show than I am, probably because I worked on the licensing:

However, Doug tried to make a statement. If you look at it, every supporting character around Doug is some wacky shade except, of course, for Doug Funnie, who is a regular white kid. The main character is white in world full of colorful yet ancillary characters. What does that tell our children? It tells them only the white race is deserving of a spotlight. Only the white race is worthy of being the star of the show. All other skin tones must remain in the background. No, only Caucasians are worthy… and hyper intelligent dogs, of course. Also, take a notice of the coupling on Doug. Every parent is coupled with someone of the same color (or very close proximity) and they produce children of the same color. So, in the TV series Doug, races never mix, the colors never blend. With that logic, Doug would never get with Patty simply because they’re not a matching set.

“…we have green, pink, and blue characters.” Maybe the DCU is set in Bluffington and we never noticed before.

Whoa look at the time! I’m looking at the bingo card, and I still haven’t even gotten to the bonus square:

We get the same thing about how we treat our female characters.

Okay, the complaining will have to continue tomorrow.

Our overseas studio recently sent us some of the original layout and animation drawings from the production of the fourth season of The Venture Bros., and our kind-hearted animatic editor, Thomas Bayne, immediately got the bright idea to sell/auction some of them off to raise money for the Gulf Coast. He also managed to dig up some of the great Stephen DeStefano’s storyboard and design originals from previous seasons, and a few pieces of original art from the in-house production of The Venture Bros. pilot…just to spice things up.

This is a rare opportunity to own a piece of the show and help out a great and urgent cause–because all proceeds go to charity. So, if you love The Venture Bros., have some money to spare, and you hate when pelicans have oil all over them, please click on the image above and go place your bids! Also, be sure to keep checking back, because we keep finding more stuff.

So it’s a good cause and a rare opportunity to own a piece of one of the all-time cult cartoons. So, go Team Venture! Clean that pelican!

“The Ruined Cast” / Dash Shaw – demo teaser from Howard Gertler on Vimeo.

Dash Shaw and Frank Santoro have been working on this teaser for THE RUINED CAST, a new Shaw animation project which includes the Shavian staple of a family in crisis near a body of water, and looks very mind trippy. The final product will be a full length animated feature to be directed by Shaw and produced by Howard Gertler and John Cameron Mitchell. Warning: NSFW if your W does not like male frontal.

INDIEwire has more:

“The story revolves around a new technology that allows people to wear other people’s boides,” Shaw told indieWIRE earlier this month. “The body they wear also affects the person who is wearing it, and this is wrapped around a family story.” Shaw said that the setting is a “trophy city in the future.” Not just figuratively, but literally. The city is encased in a trophy that is akin to a gated community. “The people who live there think of it as an idyllic place,” Shaw added.

§ We did not properly note Top Shelf’s Brett Warnock’s report on Stumptown and TCAF , but he did say that Becky Dreistadt does not get mentioned enough and he is totally right. Becky Dreistadt.

§ A Toronto newspaper columnist ate dinner with Jim Rugg and Matt Kindt and wrote about them eating food — oh, and about their books, too.

§ Comic strip artists wistfully imagine a world where the iPad has rescued the comic strip.

§ Brooks Barnes in the NY Times has a large article on Warner’s attempts to beef up the Looney Tunes brand, with regard to their plan to make new Looney Tunes cartoons. The story is full of interesting Bunny factoids, and also takes lots of time to trash Loonatics, as must be done in order for the healing to begin:

Improving the quality will not be difficult. “The bar had gone so low that we could only go up,” said Sam Register, who took over as executive vice president of creative affairs at Warner Brothers Animation two years ago, referring to previous efforts to reimagine Looney Tunes for a new generation.

Warner has a reputation, both with fans and inside the industry, for ham-fisted campaigns to breathe new life into the franchise. Steven Spielberg sparked things up in the early 1990s with “Tiny Toons Adventures,” a series in which new characters interacted with the originals. But a 2002 effort, “Baby Looney Tunes,” was a dud for the former WB network and later for the Cartoon Network.

Most satisfyingly, the pieces notes that Cartoon Network programming head Sam Register keeps art from Loonatics — the extremely painful attempt to give the Looney Tunes characters futuristic makeovers — as a reminder of “what not to do”, and also a mention that Looney Tunes merch sales have been sliding for about eight years, although they still weigh in at a healthy $1 billion a year. I said, I said, $1 billion, son.

The crew at Cartoon Brew chews over this story at length and a few folks suggest that the best way to rebuild the brand is not by making new, crappy cartoons, but by making the old classics more available.

Despite the general mistrust of contemporary efforts, this CGI version of Wile E. Coyote won some approval since it does look very cool.

Jeff Smith himself recently told a crowd that he would have preferred the film to be hand-drawn except that nobody was willing to put up the money if it wasn’t CG. It’s a pathetic state of affairs when a cartoon creator, who understands his work best, is denied the technique of his choice because of unfounded beliefs about the financial performance of one particular animation technique over the other.

Looking at this, it’s obvious that Lost is MADE for an animated spin-off…who will be the first to draw the model sheets for LOST BABIES?

Speaking of Lost, shooting of the final episode officially wrapped this weekend, making Damon Lindelof sad. Lindelof and Carlton Cuse — the two show runners known colloquially as “Darlton” — have vowed to never talk about the finale after the show airs — they will take the secret of Libby to their grave. Maybe. But that doesn’t mean they can’t yap to Wired magazine before the finale, in this impressive package of coverage.

For those wondering what is going on, ever reliable Vulture rounded up The Latest Internet Lost Theories — warning, SPOILERS.

We seem to recall that Kyle Baker worked on one Looney Tunes resurrection. Perhaps he can be called back into duty.