I love the ancient-cartoon style vids! e.g. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KJzWGkgFcTU

Ho ho! Ghost of Stephen Foster trumps all other modern recreations of the Fleischer style. Still, Tom Neely’s darn good at this. I used to enjoy his Bulbo cartoons. Considering this is “just” Flash animation, he nails the style pretty well.

Some group did a video with Popeye and Olive and Bluto and Wimpy and Swee’Pea in it, in black and white. It looks good at first, but the animation is sort of thin, and mostly seems to be taken straight from old cartoons, and the events in the cartoon (which seem to miss each time) are too loosely paced to gain any effect from following one another. In short, it was a nice try, but one that failed.

This one here is a nice antidote to the Popeye one, and I’m glad to see it. The Squirrel Nut Zippers one that those Simpsons animators did — well, that’s really the gold standard for all endeavors of this sort, and I’ve raved about it at length elsewhere.

Hmmm…that guy looks suspiciously like Mitt Romney with a mustache.

Also reminiscent of this Maakies cartoon, kinda sorta:

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-5845366512823584796

And if Ms. Shattuck were to take the Murray Bubble Boy test?

Well….

I like to think it would blow the smug sosci-grifter’s mind.

Seriously.

Well I be damned. Did not know The Muffs were A) Still alive; B) Still together; C) Gigging.

It’s 1991 again!

The Muffs remind me a bit of my childhood watching Merry Melodies cartoons and lots of mice from the 1930s and being fascinated in a weird way by the incredible craft of the animators as well as the crazy story lines they produced. Of course, as a child, I didn’t have a true appreciation of what were my parents’ “TV” experiences (the Depression Era 5 cent movie). The story lines, such as they were, are totally manic and some,like this modernized cartoon were a bit disturbing too because they were totally off the wall. They were wonderfully crafted and detailed in contrast to the perennially crappy 1970s cartoons of the Scooby-Doo era. True rubbish those were. What I like about these new cartoons is the nice combination of the old rendering, which was “crazy” with some great music. Good shit.

Cartoons have, of course, have now wildly changed because of a combination of technology and the culture-sphere. And to a considerable extent have now also become video games. I hope the original 1930s cartoon persists if only for its political value. In fact, the novelty value would be great in this election.