Animated Christmas Specials

Okay, so I know it has been months since I have posted anything here, but I'm back because I have something to discuss. It is no secret that I am a huge fan of Christmas time, and some of my favorite parts of this season are the holiday specials featuring beloved cartoon characters. There's the Garfield Christmas, Charlie Brown Christmas, even Christmas in Pac-Land. However, one of the staples of the holiday season is the retelling of Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol.

I love adaptations of A Christmas Carol. I love seeing how cartoon shows shove the contructs of their universes into the formula of the Dickens story. Some of them are awesome. Mickey's Christmas Carol and The Muppet Christmas Carol are among the best adaptations of the story. Then there are ones like The Jetsons Christmas Carol, The Flintstones Christmas Carol, and the mother of them all Mr. Magoo's Christmas Carol.

Now, I know there are animation historians who will argue with me on this, but Mr. Magoo's Christmas Carol stinks. There is a lot to be said for Magoo. It was the first animated Christmas special. But being the first doesn't always mean being great by today's standards. It also has some funny moments. But there is one thing about the Magoo Christmas Carol that has me yelling at the TV screen every year: the major conceit of the Mr. Magoo Christmas Carol is that Mr. Magoo is in a stage production of A Christmas Carol, and what we are watching is tantamount to a recording of a live production.

I'm going to let that sink in for a moment.

Animation is a medium that is so limitless, its only boundaries are that of the artists' imaginations. Theatre is a medium that is so limiTED that one of its major tenants is "the willing suspension of disbelief." Why would you take a cartoon version of A Christmas Carol, and give it the same restrictions that a stage production would have?! Why would...? You could just... Why not...?

Breathe. Breathe. Breathe.

Why not just bind all cartoons with the limitations of the stage. Tweety Todd: the Deamon Birdie of Tweet Street. What about A Huckleberry Hamlet? "Ta be er not ta be, y'all. That's a dang good question." Or maybe Scooby Doo meets the cast of Rent. "Reasons of ru-uh-uh-uh-uh-uh-uv! Reasons of ru-uh-uh-uh-uh-uh-uv!"

Stupid. Magoo's Christmas Carol is really the only one that makes me angry, yet every year I watch it. Oh well. It's over now and I have the rest of Christmas to find solace in Yogi's First Christmas.

CG

The Return

So I am back from my hiatus and raring to go. I start off with a return to the Duckiverse, which I left you with before my departure. Remember when I had such nice things to say about Kaboom Studios and their new Darkwing Duck Comics? Well, for all the nice things I had to say about the Darkwing Duck Comics, the new Ducktales Comics are awful.

First of all, the artwork is terrible. I don't know much about comics or comic artists. I don't know how hard it is to put a comic together. So that should mean that I shouldn't look at a comic and go, "We'll hell I could have made that." The continuity of character design is off, not only from the usual design of the character, but from panel to panel in cases. Also the backgrounds look like they were made in Microsoft Paint by a fifth grader. And that's insulting to fifth graders.

And the comedy is just lackluster at best. The thing about the Ducktales TV show, and Darkwing Duck, and hell even the old Duck comics, is that they weren't thought of as "for kids." They were funny, well written pieces, that kids happen to also enjoy. But the writing was sharp and original. Making cheap jokes and convoluted stories just because the comic is supposed to be a "kid's comic," is not true to the spirit at all.

I don't know maybe the thing will pick up, but for right now, I am thoroughly disappointed, and I'll stick to my Darwking Ducks for now, thank you, Kaboom Studios.

CG

Hiatus

The Cartoon Guru is taking a summer hiatus to work on other things. I'll be back on August 1, once again posting inane stuff about cartoons.

See you soon.

CG

Duck Man Part 5 - Voice Actor Vridays Edition

For today's Voice Actor Vriday, we salute one of my very favorite voice actors of all time Paul Frees. There is no chance that you have never heard Paul Frees' voice. In a career of over 40 years, Frees worked on more than 250 projects providing voices for some of the most memorable characters of all time. As film historian Hal Erickson says, "The voice of actor Paul Frees was not so much ubiquitous as inescapable. It was literally impossible during the 1960's and most of the 1970's to turn on the TV on any given night and not hear the ineluctable Mr. Frees." You would remember him as from characters as widely diverse as Bullwinkle and Rocky's nemesis Boris Badenov to the Little Green Sprout on the Jolly Green Giant commercials. Visitors to Disneyland know him as a third of the pirates on Pirates of the Caribbean, the narrator on Adventures Through Inner Space, and most notably as the ominous Ghost Host on the Haunted Mansion.

Not only was Frees is one of the most gifted voice actors of all time, he also had quite an interesting life outside of his acting career. Many of those stories are chronicled in the book Welcome...Foolish Mortals. While the book is a little light on entertainment value, it certainly packs in a lot of info.


While Frees deserves to be saluted on a Voice Actors Vriday for numerous reasons, he is here today because he has a connection to the Duckiverse. Frees provided the voice of my second favorite Duckiverse Denizen--second only to Darkwing Duck--Professor Ludwig von Drake.

Until Darkwing came along in the early nineties, von Drake was my favorite cartoon character as a kid. I remember watching reruns of the Wonderful World of Disney, and every time it was a von Drake episode, I would record it. I loved the character of this daffy philosopher/scientist/world traveler. Von Drake always seems to know a little bit about everything, but also is easily distracted or mistaken, kind of an Il Dottore for those who know their Commedia. (If you don't think a Commedia dell'Arte in the Duckiverse post is coming soon, you don't know me very well.)

Von Drake--oh, who am I kidding, Ludwig--appeared first in Walt Disney's Wonderful World of Color in 1961 performing the Spectrum Song, but would eventually go on to be a popular character and often host of the show.



He became so popular that he moved into the Donald Duck Comics, where it was discovered that he was an uncle of Donald's. According To Don Rosa, he married a sister of Scrooge McDuck's. Ludwig even went on to have his own--very short lived--comic book. Recently, Ludwig has received a resurgence having made many appearances on Disney's House of Mouse and Mickey Mouse Clubhouse, where his voice is now performed--as many of Frees' characters are--by brilliant voice actor Corey Burton, who is due his own Voice Actor Vriday soon.

So we wrap up this week-long introduction to the Duckiverse by saluting Paul Frees an Ludwig von Drake, two of it's most funny and charming citizens. Now that I have this intro out here I look forward to more discussions of Duckburg, St. Canard, and and the crazy characters of Disney's Duckiverse.

Duck Man Part 4 - When there's trouble you call DW!

Okay, today is a post I have been saving for some time. This is the post about my favorite Duckiverse character and my favorite animated TV series of all time: Darkwing Duck. What can I say about Darkwing Duck, one of the wittiest, smartest written cartoon shows of all time. As I rewatch episodes as an adult, I constantly find myself asking the question, “This show was supposed to be for kids?” The comedy is so sharp and the storytelling so great that much of it must have been lost on me as a kid. Although I loved it even then. The broad characters and imaginative storylines kept me engrossed then. The obscure references and fast-pace dialogue keeps me laughing now.

For those that don’t know, Darkwing Duck was a show that came on Saturday mornings and as a part of the famed weekday afternoon programming block known as The Disney Afternoon. The show was created by brilliant animation writer and director Tad Stones, and stared one of my favorite voice actors Jim Cummings as the title character. While the show did feature crossover characters like Gizmo Duck and Launchpad McQuack, Tad Stones is adamant that the show was not a spin off. It was a totally separate show in the same universe.

The show is at the same time parody of and an homage to campy comic book characters from the sixties and seventies as well as the fabulous radio dramas of the forties and fifties. Darkwing’s famous catchphrase, “I am the terror that flaps in the night; I am the winged scourge that pecks at your nightmares; I am Darkwing Duck,” is a play on the catchphrases of characters like The Shadow’s “Who knows what evil lurks I the hearts of men? The Shadow knows.” And so entrenched in comic book conventions was the show, that Tad Stones would often say in story meetings when discussing episodes, “Pitch me the comic book cover.”

The thing that appeals to me is that Darkwing is a “super hero” who isn’t terribly good at it, but has made this his calling in life, so is really passionate about it. He also has kind of a snarky, sarcastic sense of humor about him. He will never go after a bad guy without a quippy one liner. He such an endearing and funny anti-hero.

It doesn’t get much funnier or more original in the Duckiverse for me than Darkwing Duck. And it holds up too. So much so in fact that I now carry around literally every episode on my phone. I can watch DW and his cohorts anywhere anytime.

And just to bring it full circle, Boom Studios began running a Darkwing Duck comic book last year, which began as a four part run, but then was so popular it became an ongoing series. Ian Brill who writes the comic does Darkwing’s fans proud in my opinion. He’s captured the sense of humor and style very well. And just like with the TV series, though it is considered to be “for kids,” it’s definitely got an edge to it that I think adults can appreciate. Really great, great stuff.

I can’t really think an ending that segues nicely into a DW catchphrase, so I’ll just end with:

Let’s get dangerous.

CG

Duck Man Part 3 - Television Animation

Today let’s talk about the animated series that take place in the Duckiverse. First is the DuckTales, which chronicles the adventures of Scrooge McDuck, popular character from the comics, as he is put in charge of his great-nephews Huey, Dewey, and Louie after their Uncle Donald joins the Navy.

For some reason, though Scrooge is the richest duck in the world, he is constantly going on adventures to gain even more riches. What a prophetic vision of capitalism of the 2000s. The riches usually come in the form of ancient or historical and sometimes mystical treasures. It’s kind of like Indiana Jones with tail feathers.

There is a lot of great comedy in the show and it’s a really fun spin on the adventure story genre, which has always been one of my favorites. The show saw the addition of new characters like Fenton Crackshell/Gizmo Duck and Launchpad McQuack, it also saw the return of some of the favorite Barks characters like Gladstone Gander, Gyro Gearloose, and the nephews. Although, the kids have way less supervision than they probably should in dangerous old mines or Egyptian tombs.

The show is tons of fun, and one that holds up in my book. The jokes are great and silly, and the storytelling pretty impressive for a kid’s show. It even spun off it's own feature length theatrically released movie: DuckTales The Movie - Treasure of the Lost Lamp.

The second animated series, I will discuss in tomorrow’s post. There's just to much to say about it for just one post.

CG

Duck Man Part 2 - Barks and Rosa

Two names we could not continue this discussion without mentioning are Carl Barks and Don Rosa, two names synonymous with the Disney Ducks. Barks is the Father of the Duckiverse. He began as an in-betweener at the Disney Studio in 1935, whose unit was responsible for cartoon shorts starring Disney's latest popular character Donald Duck and worked on several cartoons for the studio before he quit to work as a comic artist. In 1943, Barks would be asked back to work on a new comic book line starring Donald Duck. The first story was called The Victory Garden, and would be the first of over five hundred stories that Barks would create over the course of three decades. Barks would give Donald his Uncle Scrooge, his nephews, Magica De Spell, Flintheart Glomgold, Gyro Gearloose, and dozens more. The universe that Barks created would later go on to be the inspiration for the animated TV series Ducktales. While he worked for many years annonymously, as most did at Disney, after the 1960's word had gotten out that the man that fans referred to as "the Good Duck Artist" was in fact Carl Barks. Barks never officially retired, but his out put slowed down throughout the nineties, and he passed away in 2000 at the age of 99. But his legacy lives on through his wonderful and funny duck characters.

Ode to the Disney Ducks

They ride tall ships to the far away,
and see the long ago.
They walk where fabled people trod,

and Yetis trod the snow.

They meet the folks who live on stars,
and find them much like us,
With food and love and happiness
the things they most discuss.

The world is full of clans and cults
abuzz as angry bees,
And Junior Woodchucks snapping jeers
at Littlest Chickadees.

The ducks show us that part of life
is to forgive a slight.
That black eyes given in revenge
keep hatred burning bright.

So when our walks in sun or shade
pass graveyards filled by wars,
It's nice to stop and read of ducks
whose battles leave no scars.

To read of ducks who parody
our vain attempts at glory,
They don't exist, but somehow leave
us glad we bought their story.

-Carl Barks 1999

Don Rosa began work on the duck characters in the mid 1980's. Rosa, was actually not a trained artists, but rather actually has a degree in civil engineering which brought about his signature drawing style of the ducks. Rosa had been of fan of Barks and the Donald duck comics since he was a kid and was quite excited to work on the Scrooge McDuck stories. Rosa would go on to create elaborate adventures for Scrooge, partnering him with other characters from Carl Barks' Duckiverse. His most famous storyline is probably The Life and Times of Scrooge McDuck. The stories that Rosa created would later serve as inspiration for the Ducktales TV series as well as Darkwing Duck.

Though not quite household names in the world of comic book fandom, Carl Barks and Don Rosa are the Godfathers of the Disney Duckiverse, whose characters and stories have entertained million over the years.