Cartoons

Oh boy!

Homage! Mike Henderson mashes up some well known cartoon characters and the classic X-MEN #141 storyline for a piece he calls...Days of Future Pixar. There's a lot of other tasty stuff at Henderson's blog if you poke around a bit.

Despite all logic and evidence to the contrary, former California governor Arnold Schwarzenegger is serious about his new cartoon show, based on a joke nickname for his political career. The Governator, developed by Stan Lee and Andy Heyward, has a trailer, above, and a lot of wish fulfillment for Ahnuld.

This was probably the most buzzed about trailer after GREEN LANTERN at WonderCon. The new Thundercats cartoon is coming to the Cartoon Network "soon." Producers Michael Jelenic (Batman: The Brave and the Bold) and Ethan Spaulding (Avatar: The Last Airbender), art director Dan Norton and voice actor Larry Kenney took part in a panel. Kenney -- who voiced Lion-O in the original but is playing Claudus in the new one -- stole the show with some bawdy comments.

Ahnold is back. As a cartoon based on his "Governator" persona. And it took no less than Stan Lee to figure out how to do it, EW explains:

Continuing Thor's conquest of all media, Marvel is releasing a new animated Thor & Loki: Blood Brothers series, based on the Robert Rodi and Esad Ribic mini, that explains why they don't get along. The series will be available for download on iTunes, XBox and PlayStation starting 3/28 for $2.99 in HiDef and $1.99 in standard. The trailer debuted on Wired and producer Ruwan Jayatilleke talked about the story:

Someone made a Lego version of the song "Do What You Wanna Do" from the "Elementary School Musical" episode of South Park. In this episode, the boys find that the whole school has gone crazy for musicals because of a cute boy named Briden, and resist attempts to break into song every time there is an emotional moment. It turns out Bridon doesn't even want to sing all the time and the episode ends with all the roles reversed.

A little catch-up here on a potentially groundbreaking legal story that we don't have time to completely break out, but basically early Betty Boop cartoons are now in the public domain, despite Fleischer Studios still owning the trademark and licensing out contemporary versions of Betty Boop (which you see all over the place on purses, Ts and so on.)

Disney's plans for their TRON resurrection include big plans for it to be a tentpole for their boy-friendly offerings; although TRON LEGACY didn't quite slay as much as hoped at the box office, that never stoped the Disney Army from following a plan. TRON UPRISING the cartoon starts airing on XD in fall 2012 and it has some good folks attached: director Charlie Bean and painted Alberto Mielgo. Definitely looks like something folks can watch late at night while they come down from being party people, which is of course exactly the audience Disney planned it for.

Whatever you thought of the hosts, the win in the Best Animated Short Film for Shaun Tan -- which we correctly predicted -- was a nice win for a very talented artist. Although the Australian Tan is more of an illustrator than a cartoonist, his best known work, THE ARRIVAL, is certainly an example of graphic storytelling -- so if he isn't exactly on our team, he's pretty darned close.

As we point out every year, picking the big categories at the Oscars is easy -- sentiment and other awards and past voting practices make for a formula that is easy to call, even when it changes over Awards season -- see: THE KING'S SPEECH. So to truly ace your Oscar picks and win the big prize, you've got to master the obscure categories like Best Documentary Short and Best Animated Short. We don't handicap the first caegory -- although you can't go wrong picking anything about horrible genocide topics like AIDS, Rwanda, the Holocaust and so on.

Because you can't get enough surreal cartooniness today,. here's the first episode of CAT SH*T ONE, an anime version of the war in the MIddle East starring violent bunnies and camels. It's based on the manga series by Motofumi Kobayashi, which was set in the VIetnam War, but there's plenty of guerilla war to go around for reboots. Sadly, the kitty kat Viet Cong in the original are replaced by camel terrorists here.