In the Pleistocene days of the internet, one of the first sites to create original content for the Web was Icebox. People said showing cartoons on the World Wide Web was crazy and would never take off, and indeed, Icebox died in the First Great Internet Crash. But not before presenting several episodes of John Kricfalusi’s WEEKEND PUSSY HUNT, one of the earliest web cartoons. In fact, this was the second Flash web cartoon — the first being Kohn K’s The Goddamn George Liquor Program.

WPH starred George Liquor and an unfortunate pup named Dirty Dog–the animation was simple by today’s standards, although this was only 7 or 8 years ago. In fact, we remember watching this on an early iMac, and having the music keep playing after we closed out browser…a ghostly little sound that haunts us to this day. Back when Icebox was live there were also little interactive Flsh games including one in which you xcould make Dirty Dog puke and poop at will. As we recall, the poops that shot out of Dirty Dog’s butt would pile up, for a very amusing effect.

WPH was intended to run for 14 episodes in typical John K. fashion, the site went out of business with only 12 of them produced. You can see all 12 on Youtube, but here’s the first one to get you started. Don’t miss the film noir opening credits, either!

PS: the music for this was mostly from the Chappell library, according to message board posting. Ren and Stimpy was mostly from the APM music library. If you hunt around long enough on the internet, you can find collections of the best R&S cues. Not legal, of course, so we’re not advising it!

“As god is my witness…I thought turkeys could fly.”

Happy Thanksgiving!

Daniel Dociu is a Romanian-born video game concept artist whose work we ran across back when we were a Spectrum judge earlier this year. He’s currently Art Director at ArenaNet, most recently having worked on Guildwarsm according to his website. His work has a kind of Jawa explosion/rainy night in Hong Kong/ruined hydroponic tank feeling to it. Very SF. Very good. Many many more examples of his work at his site.

Via Boing Boing and everywhere else.

Over at Make Comics Forever!!, actor/cartooner Cameron Chesney talks about one of the most unusualy aspects of Scott McCloud’s MAKING COMICS: the section on facial expressions:

One aspect of the book, which I was amazed by, but also took odds with a little bit, was the section about Facial Expressions. I have for several years in New York City spent a great deal of time training to be an actor at various schools, with various teachers. A large part of this training centers around one’s ability to analyze a script and come up with an objective or action that drives the character forward through the play or story. One strong lesson that I have come away with, that I feel is certainly imperative to good acting, is to not predict an emotional state for the character before entering into a scene. “Here the character is sad�, “here the character is angry�. The reality of the situation carries many complexities which make it necessary to remain open only to the objective of the character. The danger being that if one puts too much thought into the emotional state of the character beforehand, one falls into the risk of simply “indicating� emotions, instead of expressing something more truthful that follows the character’s need to pursue a strong objective and the course of actions that follow.

More in link.

There’s a huge Tezuka exhibit going on in Australia, and we couldn’t be more jealous. Luckily it means lot of press coverage of Tezuka like this one. :
Tezuka, who died in 1989, devised many of manga’s most distinctive forms and images, including the big eyes and long narratives, in the 1950s. Familiar yet strange, European yet Asian, kitsch yet elegant, his work affords the viewer an insight into the perplexing formal mutations and weird narrative contortions that typify post-war Japanese culture, says Philip Brophy, Melbourne-based film-maker, artist and author, and curator of both shows.

“His manga combines seemingly cute characters with powerful post-nuclear sentiments. Already the most frequent comment from the exhibition is: ‘My god, I didn’t realise that a comic could do that’, while Japan has known that a comic could do that for years and years.”
Once you get past the Gosh! Wow! Comics can do things! There’s a lot of solid information on tezuka’s career, including a reference to the opening pages of TREASURE ISLAND, probably the single most important sequence in the history of comics, and I’m not joking.
[Link via Dirk]

Clive Owen is in the dark about SIN CITY 2!:

“I honestly don’t know what’s happening there because everybody’s talked about it. It’s been announced a few times that it’s happening but I have no idea what’s happening there. I mean I don’t know when they’re going to do it or who’s doing it. I have no idea.”

When asked what he knew of Sin City 2’s story, A Dame to Kill For:

“Oh, I know that but it’s just that’s been talked about and it’s floating out there as an idea but no one has ever talked to me about it. He (Robert Rodriguez) told me that that’s what he’s doing but I have no idea when or what’s happening with it.”

Ah, Clive, Clive, you poor, pretty fool. Don’t you know that your character in A DAME TO KILL FOR doesn’t even look like you??? If you read The Beat like all sensible people, you would know these things.

And Chris Ware is the culprit!:

The next cartoon issue of The New Yorker, dated Nov. 27 and on newsstands next week, will feature four different covers by Chris Ware. The magazine is calling it a narrative cover, with each image depicting a Thanksgiving scene, two set in 1942 and two today. The stories become intertwined in a fifth installment, a comic strip that will appear on the magazine’s Web site (newyorker.com).

What’s next a hologram variant by Sempé?

Scott McCloud delivers his entire slide show for the only time in NYC tonight at the Tisch School of the Arts at NYU:

Comics Legend Scott McCloud at NYU

Date and Time:
November 20, 2006
7:00pm – 9:00pm

Location:
19 West 4th Street, Room 101
The Interactive Telecommunications Program (ITP) at the Tisch School of the Arts at New York University and Publisher’s Weekly/Reed Business Information are proud to present: A lecture by legendary comics theorist, Scott McCloud on Monday, November 20th from 7:00pm – 9:00pm in Room 101 of 19 West 4th Street. Scott McCloud is a writer and artist best known for his books “Understanding Comics” and “Reinventing Comics.” Join us as he introduces his new book “Making Comics.” Seating is limited. Advance tickets are available from the reception desk at ITP, 721 Broadway, 4th floor, beginning Monday, November 13th.

The National, a comics show here in NYC, was like it always was: a very very old school show that includes low ceilings and lots of long boxes. Val Kilmer felt poorly and went home early so we didn’t get to get a picture with him. We ran into Richard Howell and chatted with him about Claypool Comics impending move to a webcomic model. DEADBEATS, which Howell writes and draws will be the only title actually making the move, but he expects to put out collections of the comic from time to time. He’s looking forwrad to the change, but also admitted that he isn’t quite in sync with today’s instant-access business model. “I remember when you got to look forward to things,” he said. “The Fantastic Four came out once a month!”

We snapped a couple of pics, too.

Legendary cartoonist Shary Flenniken, whose “Trots and Bonnie” was a highlight of NATIONAL LAMPOON. She’s still busy writing a novel and pursuing other projects.

Two people we never get to spend enough time with: Cully Hamner and Steve Leialoha. Steve hadn’t been to New York in 20 years!

Later on, we caught the end of the “Saturday Morning Cartoons” opening at MoCCA.

We also ran into Craig Yoe at the National, and he showed us a mockup of his upcoming book, Clean Cartoonists’s Dirty Drawings, and it was an eye-opener and no mistake. What was Ernie Bushmiller’s obsession with dogs sniffing each other’s butts? And man, did Carl Barks draw sexy girls. Anyway, Yoe is still looking for contributions, and we’ll steal his request from the TCJ board:

I am in the last stretch to finish my book “Clean Cartoonist’s Dirty Drawings” for Last Gasp Publishing. Last Gasp has just approved additional pages so I’m calling for more art by the artists I already have represented and especially welcome other artists whose work I may not have uncovered. The concept is to showcase sexy art by cartoonists who’s primary work was mainstream/wholesome.

The book will have rare slightly risque to decidedly raunchy art by Jack Kirby, Joe Shuster, Bob Kane, Charles Schulz, Dr. Suess, Mort Walker, Steve Ditko, Milton Caniff, Dan DeCarlo, Dave Berg, Hal Foster, Stan and Jan Bernstain, Rube Goldberg, Otto Soglow, Alex Raymond, Virgil Partch, Carl Barks, Ernie Bushmiller, etc. Some of the artists I would particuarly like help on are Matt Baker, Freddy Moore (and other animators), Dr. Suess, Al Williamson, Carl Barks, Kurt Schaffenberger and also more contemporary comic strip and comic book artists as I’m not so well versed on the recent schtuff. I need “men’s gag cartoons”, sketches, specialty artwork, etc. Black and white and color are welcome.

I need 300 dpi scans and will give a copies of the book and prominent credit in the same for your help. Please write first to tell me what you have, I’m open to any and all ideas. Thanks very much!

If you can help Yoe with this sterling project, contact him via his website.

Elayne has an excellent write up of last week’s panel on women in comics at the Jewish Museum:

Other topics touched on in the too-brief discussion portion were bizarre breasts, how male artistic preferences tend to be more confrontational, whether the panelists have a specific audience gender in mind when they work, and where the mainstream comics are for girls. That last question was posed by audience member Barbara Slate, who used to write Barbie for Marvel when Trina drew it (and fellow audience member Hildy Mesnick edited it). I didn’t get a chance to mention Spider-Man Loves Mary Jane, one of my favorite aimed-at-girls Marvel comics, but I was pretty content to soak up the atmosphere. The discussion ended with Leela Corman pleading with the museum world for this to be among the last “Women Comic Artists” panels – if curators actually took a little effort to gender-integrate their exhibitions, there wouldn’t, and shouldn’t, be a need for continued marginalization of women in this day and age.

The Beat wasn’t able to attend this, and from reading Elayne’s report we see we missed ANOTHER chance to meet Lily Renee, the legendary Fiction House artist. DARN IT ALL.

We actually caught up with panelist Trina Robbins over the weekend at the National, and she told us she current issue of the Comics Journal has an interview with Renee and a lengthy excerpt of one of her comics. Trina told us some of Renee’s life story as revealed in the interview, and it’s a corker. Be on the lookout!

We told you about that MIT Convergence Culture Consortium thing that took place over the weekend, and if you really want to delve in they have transcripts and what not, including that panel that DC’s Paul Levitz took part in. You can read a transcript here and here. It’s a little rough since it seems to have been typed as the talk was taking place, but it’s interesting reading. Levitz is one of the smarter people we’ve ever met — no lie — and his comments cover everything from James Fenimore Cooper to Wicked to the Batman TV Show to Tom Bombadil.

Paul: you do see it, and more as the geek logic permeates the culture. You see it in the alternate history stories. Our cultural ethos is leaking out. It says, you know this story so what happens if a piece of the story flips. If it feels right and is a living homage that departs and legitimately speculates then it is fine. But difficult to tell where the line is. Difficult to tell people; try to explain in business logic with studios. Ultimately not yet found a great objective language for it. You can forgive no Tom Bombadil but can’t put into a theory of what you can do or not.

Masi Oka has become a hero to geeks around the world. Once a mild-mannered effects guy at ILM now he’s starring in TV smash HEROES as Hiro, a nerd who gets superpowers. In an LA Times profile, Oka visits Kinokuniya Books and points out his favorite mange:

Playing a comic-book-obsessed character has left Heroes’ Masi Oka with less time for one of his hobbies: comic books.

“I don’t get to come here often,” Oka says, browsing aisles of manga, the Japanese comic-book form, in Kinokuniya, a store in Little Tokyo.

Oka, who plays geeky Japanese office worker Hiro Nakamura on Heroes (NBC, tonight, 9 ET/PT), gave a reporter a quick primer, pointing out romance and adventure stories in Japanese and English, with different comics aimed at children, teenage girls and boys, and adults. He prefers the Japanese-language imports and especially likes the work of Naoki Urasawa, whose comics include Monster.

“Hiro’s a fanboy. I’m a geek. I love my manga. But Hiro is more extreme,” says Oka, 31, whose character’s popularity is underscored by hundreds of fan comments on Hiro’s blog at nbc.com.

Added nerd tidbit: George Takei will show up as Hiro’s dad.

§ Aline Kominsky Crumb talks about her husband vi his self-portraits in the LA Times:

As a child, my husband, Robert, already felt like an alienated old man (top left). He longed for the past, never having actually known what he was nostalgic for. It was as if he were born in the wrong time. He never felt part of the contemporary culture. You can see the roots of his alienation already beginning.

§ Cartoonist Paul Rigby, who died last week, was evidently a HUGE deal native Australia, and retrospectives are still coming in:

ONLY two weeks before he died, Paul Rigby had been a star attraction at the 22nd Australian Cartoonists Association Stanley awards and conference in Ballarat, Victoria.

He had talked for just under two hours about cartooning and his life. He could have talked another two, but conference timetables don’t allow speakers to go on forever — even if they are cartooning superstars.

The ACA that night gave Rigby the “Uncle Dick” — more properly known as the Jim Russell award — for his contribution to cartooning. Russell drew the Potts for more than 60 years, and Uncle Dick was one of the characters in the comic. It’s the highest honour the oldest cartooning association in the world can bestow.

§A humor strip popular in Alaska is makings its way to the wider, warmer world:

Chad Carpenter, while clearly one of the most talented comic strip artists around, is admittedly not a great salesman. Although he’s been drawing his hilarious “Tundra” strip since 1991, up until this year, it appeared in fewer than a half-dozen newspapers, all in his native Alaska. Content and earning a comfortable living by selling Tundra books, calendars, T-shirts and other items, Carpenter never really had the desire to go out and sell his comic strip to the masses.

§ Cartooner Dylan Horrocks has been selected as one of a number of New Zealand creators to tour France explaining Kiwi cultures:

Meanwhile, novelist Chad Taylor (Shirker, Electric, Departure Lounge) was one of 12 Kiwi writers chosen to represent New Zealand at Les Belles Etrangeres. Les Belles Etrangères is a French literary festival, created in 1987 by the French Ministry of Culture and Communication, and organised by the Centre National du Livre (CNL, the French equivalent of NZ Book Council). The aim of the programme is to present foreign literature to French people. Along with cartoonist Dylan Horrocks and writers such as Elizabeth Knox, Alan Duff, Sia Figiel, Albert Wendt, Dame Fiona Kidman and James George, Taylor is currently travelling around France meeting locals and reading at schools, libraries and more.

¶Meanwhile, up in Canada, a Pakistan-born cartoonist who now works for the NY Times is among those having problems with the Canadian no-fly list:

cartoonist Shahid Mahmood of Toronto is among those Canadians who are now frightened to fly to the United States due to questions surrounding no-fly lists, and he encourages others to challenge the government’s plan to implement its own list by next year. Since he was denied a ticket for a flight from Vancouver to Victoria in 2004 because his name was flagged by Air Canada, Mahmood, an architect and freelance editorial cartoonist, has spent almost three years hounding government departments and the airline for answers.

§ The Onion explains the whole Bob Kane/Bill Finger mystery for those who came in late:

There’s little dispute, however, that Finger and his friend Kane worked together on conceptualizing Batman. It’s mostly a question of who contributed what. But whatever the case, Kane happily signed a deal claiming the character as his creation, then put Finger to work as his writer for a percentage of his page rate. In the years to come, Finger would provide most of the Batman scripts, fleshing out the mythos with artists like Jerry Robinson, creator of the Joker. Finger, who also co-created the original Green Lantern and contributed to the creation of or created whole-cloth such Batman staples as The Riddler, Catwoman, the Batcave, and Gotham City, died a despondent, forgotten man in 1974. Robinson, who went on to considerable success as an editorial and comic-strip cartoonist, founded the Bill Finger Award in 2005 to honor comic-book writers who never received popular recognition in a day when bylines were considered an indulgence, and business sense met with greater rewards than creativity.

OneRing.Net has a letter from director Peter Jackson where he explains that due to his not being able to work on THE HOBBIT until his lawsuit with New Line over the profits of FELLOWSHIP OF THE RING, New Line has told him they don’t want him to make THE HOBBIT…or a mysterious 2nd prequel to LotR.

Several years ago, Mark Ordesky told us that New Line have rights to make not just The Hobbit but a second “LOTR prequel”, covering the events leading up to those depicted in LOTR. Since then, we’ve always assumed that we would be asked to make The Hobbit and possibly this second film, back to back, as we did the original movies. We assumed that our lawsuit with the studio would come to a natural conclusion and we would then be free to discuss our ideas with the studio, get excited and jump on board. We’ve assumed that we would possibly get started on development and design next year, whilst filming The Lovely Bones. We even had a meeting planned with MGM executives to talk through our schedule.

However last week, Mark Ordesky called Ken and told him that New Line would no longer be requiring our services on the Hobbit and the LOTR ‘prequel’. This was a courtesy call to let us know that the studio was now actively looking to hire another filmmaker for both projects.

Second prequel? Ah, Finrod!

“Do you expect me to talk, Goldfinger?”

“No, Mr. Bond, I expect you to waddle over to that ice floe and guard your eggs fiercely.”:

A cadre of singing and dancing penguins beat out the monkey-suited international superspy James Bond at the B.O. this weekend, as Warner Bros. and Village Roadshow’s CG-animated “Happy Feet” skipped to No. 1 with $42.3 million thanks to a particularly strong Saturday run.

Bond’s No. 2 finish in Sony/MGM’s “Casino Royale” with $40.6 million — the second-best opening ever for a 007 pic — helped spur a particularly strong pre-Thanksgiving sesh as the holiday season took flight.

Screw those celebutantes. Angelina Jolie is the MODERN heroine. Off in some remote part of the Third World, she zips off in a speed boat, holding a baby, wearing a Lara Croft wife beater AND she has Brad Pitt for a sidekick. Where are they going? Bust up a spy ring? Prove that Maddox is THE ONE? Bring medicine to a remote village surrounded by Cold War bandits?

The sky is the limit.

We’ll actually be joining Brangelina, Maddox, Zohara and Shiloh on their latest exploit in a remote region of the globe, and may or may not have internet access for the next week or so. It depends on what the limeys call WiFi, and we’re not holding our breath.

If we can get on, fine. Posting will be light, but it’s the holiday, anyway. We have prepared some canned content for you, but it’s mostly pretty pictures and other things to keep you amused until we return. In the meantime, have a great Thanksgiving. Where we’re going, they don’t celebrate with a giant turkey, and for that we are truly thankful.

Violence broke out around the nation as crowds scrambled for the new Sony PlayStation 3 which has been released in limited quantities; a Massachusetts man was shot while waiting in line to buy one:

At 3:15 a.m., two armed robbers shot Michael Penkala, 21, of Webster, Mass., outside a Wal-Mart store in Putnam, Conn., as he waited in line to be one of the first to own the machine, the state police said. The robbers approached Mr. Penkala — along with 15 to 20 other shoppers — and demanded money. Mr. Penkala resisted, and one of the assailants unloaded a shotgun blast into his chest and shoulder, the authorities said

[snip]The robbers in Putnam were apparently taking advantage of a captive group likely to be carrying cash, as lines formed across Connecticut — and the country — outside stores in anticipation of the widely hyped release of the PlayStation. Sony, the market leader in video consoles, is selling the new model for $499 or $599, depending on the size of the hard drive.

The Associated Press reported several other robberies and attempted robberies around the country including in Sullivan, Ind., Allentown, Pa., and Englewood, Ohio.

In McLean, Va., the police fired pepper pellets to subdue a rowdy crowd of about 200 people outside a Circuit City store at Tysons Corner Center mall. One person complained of shortness of breath after the pellets were fired and was taken to the hospital, the authorities said.

Meanwhile, the Nintendo Wii launch has been a time of peace, love and understanding.

In sharp contrast to the PS3 launch yesterday, the Wii launch is going very smoothly so far. Lines started forming today all over the country and reports are coming in of 20-80 people deep. Everyone seems to be in good spirits and no one’s gotten mugged yet that I know of. The Wii seems to be pulling more people in a short amount of time as opposed to the PS3’s short lines and protracted camp outs. About 80-90% of the line waiters interviewed said they would be keeping their Wii’s or were buying them for presents rather than selling them on eBay for a profit.

So which strategy will win? The “Supplies are limited” scam, or the “actually in high demand” plan?