by on

Ralph Bakshi (1972)

To watch Fritz the Cat in its entirety, click on the link below:

https://archive.org/details/fritz-the-cat-1972-hq

Fritz the Cat is a 1972 American adult animated black comedy film written and directed by Ralph Bakshi in his directorial debut. Based on the comic strip by Robert Crumb and starring Skip Hinnant, the film focuses on Fritz, a glib, womanizing, and fraudulent cat in an anthropomorphic animal version of New York City during the mid-to-late 1960s. Fritz decides on a whim to drop out of college, interacts with inner city African American crows, unintentionally starts a race riot, and becomes a leftist revolutionary. The film is a satire focusing on American college life of the era, race relations, the free love movement and serves as a criticism of the countercultural political revolution and dishonest political activists.

Original trailer

The film had a troubled production history, as Crumb, who is politically left-wing, had disagreements with the filmmakers over the film’s political content, which he saw as being critical of the political left. Produced on a budget of $700,000, the film was intended by Bakshi to broaden the animation market. At that time period, animation was seen predominantly as a children’s medium. Bakshi envisioned animation as being a medium that could tell more dramatic or satirical storylines with larger scopes, dealing with more mature and diverse themes that would resonate with adults. Bakshi also wanted to establish an independent alternative to the films produced by Walt Disney Animation Studios, which dominated the animation market due to a lack of independent competition.

The intention of featuring profanity, sex, and drug use provoked criticism from more conservative members of the animation industry, who accused Bakshi of attempting to produce a pornographic animated film, as the concept of adult animation was not widely understood at the time. The Motion Picture Association of America gave the film an X rating, making it the first American animated film to receive the rating, which was then predominantly associated with more arthouse films. The film was highly successful and also earned significant critical acclaim for its satire, social commentary, and animation innovations. The film’s use of satire and mature themes is seen as paving the way for future animated works for adults, including The Simpsons, South Park and Family Guy. A sequel, The Nine Lives of Fritz the Cat (1974), was produced without Crumb’s or Bakshi’s involvement.

by on

Les Elton (1932)

It would be impossible to describe in words Monkey Doodle. It’s one of those things you have to see to believe. This oddest of oddities features unique designs and bizarre, detailed animation. The Thunderbean version of this film was restored using 4 prints from 4 different sources.

By the age of 17 Les Elton was billed as a “Comedy Cartoonist” doing popular lightning sketches on the vaudeville circuit. He eventually drew for both the Philadelphia Record, Public Ledger, and the St. Louis Globe Democrat. He also developed his own comic strip. In 1916 he joined the Bray animation studio where he primarily illustrated comic strips based on animated cartoons produced by the studio. Elton left Bray Studios in 1917.

In 1917 he patented a way to combine live action and animation. His 1931 animated cartoon Monkey Doodle featuring “Simon the Monk” was produced by former Bray staffer Jaques Kopfstein with the help of his stepson and animator Robert Bentley. The Eltons then went to California, where in 1935 Les produced another animated cartoon The Hobo Hero.

by on

Hobo Moon (2023)

NĂŠht MĂŠre
Lightning rips through the black midnight sky
 Revealing the moons mad, chaotic grin.
 Children awake in their beds
 Screaming for their mothers to come in.
 Rain taps upon the window
 Like some lunatic who begs to be let in.
 Thundering gods battle over earth
 As the devil begins to grin.

by on

Bruno Bozzetto (1974)

Just like we exploit earth by extracting its petrol, so do mosquitos behave over the human body by sucking our blood. An animated, allegorical film which portrays the activities of a group of mosquitos who build their city around a man’s vital fluids.

Hungry mosquitos, in search of a meal, find that fruit, flowers and other such fare doesn’t satisfy. One enterprising bug hits the jackpot – a human! However, the victim vigorously resists joining the food chain, causing a number of winged casualties. The little buggers wait until the man falls asleep, then set up a number of enterprises: cafes, bars, filling stations, all serving blood. Things are going well, but then the mosquito Cosa Nostra moves in, and ramp production into high gear.

“Synthesis is the most important goal for an artist. It’s a marvellous and yet difficult goal to achieve.”

Bruno Bozzetto

A 60-years career behind, Bruno Bozzetto is esteemed as one of the most eclectic and influential Cartoonists of yesterday and of today. His minimalist style focuses on the content more than the aesthetics to talk about universal themes with an educational approach and through a scratching irony that make his films suitable for a young adult audience.

From the 1960s up to today he has made over three hundreds films that earned him 130 acknowledgments among which the remarkable Winsor McCay Award, 5 Silver Ribbon Awards, an Honorary degree, 15 Awards to the Career, an Oscar Nomination for Grasshoppers, and a Berlin Golden Bear Award for Mr Tao.

Today Bruno keeps working in the industry by creating new subjects, by animating and sketching on his own, but also cooperating to wider projects through Bozzetto&Co Studio of Production. He also takes part to films festivals, events and masterclasses in Italy and worldwide.

Several exhibitions have been set up through the years, the most prestigious of which is “Animation, Maestro!”, wanted by Diane Disney Miller in 2013, at the Walt Disney Family Museum of San Francisco. The Bozzetto crew believes that an original artwork-based exhibition is the best way to show the magic of animation through original sketches, storyboards and especially cels.

To learn more about Bruno Bozzetto or to see more of his work, please visit his website: https://www.bozzetto.com

by on

Gary K. Wolf & Richard Williams (1988)

“I’m not bad, I’m just drawn that way.”

-Jessica Rabbit

Jessica Rabbit is a fictional character in Who Censored Roger Rabbit? and its film adaptation Who Framed Roger Rabbit? She is depicted as Roger’s human toon wife. Jessica is renowned as one of the best-known sex symbols in animation.

Author Gary K. Wolf based Jessica primarily on the cartoon character Red from Tex Avery’s Red Hot Riding Hood. The film version of the character was inspired by various actresses. Richard Williams explained, “I tried to make her like Rita Hayworth; we took her hair from Veronica Lake, and Zemeckis kept saying, ‘What about the look Lauren Bacall had?'” He described that combination as an “ultimate male fantasy, drawn by a cartoonist.”

The song Why Don’t You Do Right? is an American blues and jazz-influenced pop song written by “Kansas Joe” McCoy and Herb Morand in 1936. Both men are given composer credits on the original 78 record label, although Morand’s name is misspelled. A minor key twelve-bar blues with a few chord substitutions, it is considered a classic “woman’s blues” song and has become a standard.

In 1936, the Harlem Hamfats recorded Why Don’t You Do Right? Band member McCoy later rewrote the song, refining the composition and lyrics. The new tune was recorded by Lil Green in 1941, with guitar by William “Big Bill” Broonzy. The recording was an early jazz and blues hit.

The song has its roots in blues music and originally dealt with a marijuana smoker reminiscing about lost financial opportunities. As it was rewritten, it takes on the perspective of the female partner, who chastises her man for his irresponsible ways: “Why don’t you do right, like some other men do? Get out of here and get me some money too.”

One of the best-known versions of the song was recorded by Peggy Lee and Benny Goodman on July 27, 1942, in New York. Featured in the 1943 film, Stage Door Canteen, it sold over one million copies and brought her to nationwide attention.

Lee often stated that Green’s recording was influential to her music. In a 1971 interview she said, “I had the record, and I used to play it over and over in my dressing room, which was next to Benny Goodman. Finally he said, ‘I think you really like that song.’ I said, ‘Oh, I love it.’ He said, ‘Would you like to sing it?'” Lee said yes, so Goodman had an arrangement made of it for Lee to sing.

In 1988 Why Don’t You Do Right? was sung by Jessica Rabbit in a very provocative way.

by on

John Branch (2021)

John Branch

John Branch is a cartoonist and illustrator living in Houston, Texas. A North Carolina native,  he was the editorial cartoonist for the San Antonio Express-News from 1981 until 2015.

    Currently drawing for the Rivard Report, John’s work is distributed nationally by King Features/North America Syndicate and has appeared in The New York Times, Washington Post, USA Today, Dallas Morning News,  Newsweek and many other publications. He is a member and former officer of the  Association of American Editorial Cartoonists and hosted the 2008 AAEC annual convention.

    John graduated from the University of North Carolina in 1976. He worked at The Daily Tar Heel and Chapel Hill Newspaper before moving to Texas.

To learn more about John Branch and to see more of his work, visit: https://branchtoon.com/

by on

Felix Colgrave (2020)

A little story about the backyard critters you might see in Tasmania, and the things they might be doing. https://www.patreon.com/felixcolgrave/

Felix Colgrave is an Australian director, animator, cartoonist, filmmaker, artist, and musician. Distribution of Colgrave’s work has, to date, been focused on YouTube where his channel has 1.38 million subscribers. Colgrave mainly uses Adobe After Effects for his animations.

by on

Marc Hansen (2017-2019)

*Just a reminder to please vote today!

Here it is, fatheads…

I first found this comic book series as a child rummaging through the magazine rack of a gas station where I used to buy candy and soda down the road from the house I grew up in. Little did I know at the time that I had discovered a great source of inspiration that would help fuel my creativity as I grew into an artist and cartoonist myself.

Marc Hansen is a cartoonist and creator of Ralph Snart Adventures, Weird Melvin, and Doctor Gorpon. Hansen has done most of his work for NOW Comics, but has also done work for Marvel, Disney, Malibu Graphics, and Kitchen Sink Press.

Ralph Snart Adventures was published from 1986-1993 by now defunct NOW Comics, and was the longest running comic in the entire NOW catalog, selling an average of 50,000 copies a month during that nine year period. Over two million comics were published, and it was the first indy comic to receive the Comics Code.

Today, Marc Hansen publishes Ralph Snart Adventures as an ebook on a sporadic basis. Current issues are available on his webstore. Keep up with Ralph Snart on Twitter and Facebook.

The pages above are just excerpts from the Frump Trilogy. If you want to read the trilogy in its entirety or to learn more about Marc Hansen and his creations or to purchase comics online please visit: https://marchansenstuff.com/.

by on

Nick Anderson (2020)

*Just a reminder to please vote today!

The Pulitzer-winning cartoonist Nick Anderson has described Donald Trump as an “adolescent wannabe authoritarian”, after the US president’s re-election campaign failed to pull one of Anderson’s cartoons mocking Trump’s inaccurate suggestion that injecting disinfectant could protect against Covid-19.

Anderson put his cartoon The Trump Cult up for sale. The illustration shows Trump with supporters in Maga hats, serving them a drink that has been labeled “Kool-Aid”, then “Chloroquine” and finally “Clorox”, a US bleach brand. The cartoon is a reference to the 1978 Jonestown massacre, where more than 900 people died after drinking cyanide-laced punch at the order of cult leader Jim Jones, and to Trump’s widely denounced idea of injecting bleach to protect against coronavirus. Trump has also been taking the anti-malaria drug hydroxychloroquine as a protection against Covid-19, despite a study showing it has been linked to increased deaths in patients.

But Anderson’s illustration was pulled from sale following a trademark infringement claim made by Trump’s campaign organisation, Donald J Trump for President Inc. Writing on the Daily Kos, Anderson said that he believed the claim was made due to his depiction of Maga hats, and described the situation as “absurd”.

“We live in a strange time when the POTUS can falsely accuse someone of murder with impunity, while at the same time bully a private business into removing content it doesn’t like,” Anderson added.

The Comic Book Legal Defense Fund (CBLDF) and other free speech organisations subsequently got involved, sending a group letter that accused Trump’s campaign of having “misused reporting mechanisms to suppress protected political expression in the form of parody, critique, and satire”, and arguing that the work and those who publish it are protected by the first amendment.

Anderson’s cartoon was reinstated on social media, saying that it strives “to respect IP rights and freedom of speech, but we sometimes make mistakes, as we did here 
 We’re sorry for any inconvenience this has caused.”

In a statement, Anderson praised social media for recognizing the error, but said there were some “troubling issues” raised by the affair, including that the cartoon was removed less than 24 hours after he posted it, before he had received a single order.

“I doubt anyone had even seen it yet on the site,” he said. “This reveals that the Trump campaign has a system in place, trawling for material they find objectionable. If it happened to me so quickly, it likely has happened to others. How much other content has been removed this way on sites?”

He added: “It must be pointed out: the president of the United States is a hypocrite who complains about the ‘violation’ of his free speech, then tries to actively suppress the free speech of others. These are actions of an adolescent wannabe-authoritarian.”

Trump criticized social media for “completely stifling FREE SPEECH”, after the social media platform put a warning label on two of his posts spreading lies about mail-in voting.

CBLDF executive director Charles Brownstein said the organisation was “sensitive to the issues companies face in balancing competing rights owner issues, and were alarmed to see the president’s re-election campaign exploiting those issues to suppress protected speech”.

“We’re pleased that social media has done the right thing in this case,” he said. “We hope that they will continue to assert the First Amendment rights they and their sellers are guaranteed by rejecting any similar censorship attempts.”

by on

Christian Monggaard (2019)

From Fritz the Cat to Mr. Natural – meet the cult cartoonist Robert Crumb, whose artistic world is full of anti-heroes and demons from modern America and his own subconscious. In this rare interview, Crumb talks frankly about refusing to adhere to political correctness, and about his never-ending urge to unravel the layers of delusion in the world – as he says: “I’m still digging.”

“I was so alienated when I was young, that drawing was like my only connection to society. That was the only thing that I could see was going to save me from a really dismal fate of God knows what.” Crumb describes his social skills as a young man as being “completely nil.” At the same time, he was driven by his “fucked-up ego,” and he had to balance those two sides. Drawing became a way for him to deal with reality, and in the 1950s, where “being a comic-book artist was the lowest level of commercial art,” he pushed toward a more personal use of the medium: “At a certain point I decided I don’t want to be America’s best-loved hippie cartoonist. I don’t want that role. So I’ll just be honest about who I am, and the weirdness, and take my chances.” Consequently, Crumb alienated a lot of people with his often provocative content: “It was just too disturbing for most people, too weird.”

Crumb has an urge to question things and is acutely aware that he’s going to get hell for what he’s doing – even lose friends – but he is willing to take the heat for it. He feels that he plays with images, emphasising the word “play.” Nowadays, he argues, there’s a tendency to take everything at face value – including his artwork: “The artwork I did that used those images and expressed those kinds of feelings, I stand by it. I still think that that’s something that needed to be said and needed to be done. It probably hurts some people’s feelings to see those images, but still, I had to put it out there.”

Putting down anything that stands in the way of political correctness, he feels, becomes extreme and suppressive: “I can even lead to censorial policies in the government and stuff like that. They don’t realise that they’re playing into the hands of some very bad people.”

Robert Crumb is an American cartoonist. Crumb, a counterculture comic book artist and social satirist, has enjoyed cult status for his underground comic strips, full of anti-heroes. Among these is a wide range of popular characters including Fritz the Cat and Mr. Natural. Much of his work has also appeared in Weirdo magazine (1981-1993), which he founded himself, and which was one of the most prominent publications of the alternative comics era. Crumb has received several accolades for his work, including his induction into the comic book industry’s Will Eisner Comic Book Hall of Fame in 1991 and the AngoulĂȘme Grand Prix in 1999. Crumb was also among the artists honoured in the exhibition ‘Masters of American Comics’ at the Jewish Museum in New York (2006-2007). In 2012 a retrospective of Crumb’s work was exhibited at the MusĂ©e d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris. He has frequently collaborated with cartoonist Aline Kominsky-Crumb, with whom he is married, and the couple have made a joint comic strip based on their life together through four decades. A collection of the comics, ‘Drawn Together’, was published in 2012.

Robert Crumb was interviewed by Christian Monggaard in connection with the Louisiana Literature festival at the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art in HumlebĂŠk, Denmark in August 2019.

by on

Felix Colgrave (2014)

A film made by Felix Colgrave with elephants in it, and a bunch of other things too. This was his third year film at RMIT University, Bachelor of Animation and Interactive Media, and the winner of Best Australian Film at MIAF 2014.

Felix Colgrave is an Australian director, animator, cartoonist, filmmaker, artist, and musician. Distribution of Colgrave’s work has, to date, been focused on YouTube where his channel has 1.38 million subscribers. Colgrave mainly uses Adobe After Effects for his animations.