some discworld designs

just another long rambling post trying to explain why I, a Bakugou fan, would treasonously want him to lose his quirk

this is something I had originally intended to post about later down the line, after we actually know for sure whether or not Bakugou is going to lose his quirk. but seeing as parts of this post (see: point #5) also indirectly address some issues that people had with the latest chapter (283) as well, I decided I might as well jump the gun.

this is a topic I’ve gotten a lot of asks about, and so I’ve tried to gather all of those various arguments into one single post with my own comments and rebuttals. however, the purpose of this post isn’t really to convince anyone or change anyone’s mind. it’s pretty much just an explanation of why I am so sold on the idea. I think it’s a little defensive at times, and I definitely feel like one of the side effects of getting asks like this...

...is that I feel compelled to explain that yes, as the veritable mountain of Bakuessays on this blog can attest to, I am in fact a Bakugou fan, and have not been standing here this whole time just waiting for the perfect moment to rip off my disguise revealing my secret “#1 Deku Stan!! BAKUGOU CAN SUCK IT” shirt underneath while cackling nefariously. like. just so we’re clear on that here.

I know I’ve said this repeatedly, but it’s precisely because I’m such an adamant fan of Bakugou that I’m excited over the story potential of him possibly becoming quirkless. as for why I keep bringing it up, honestly it’s mostly just because I keep getting the asks, lol. and so my options are basically to either say “ah you know what, you’ve convinced me,” or to keep trying to explain my reasoning at the risk of making everyone increasingly mad and/or bored.

anyway, so there are five arguments which I want to address, and they are as follows:

it’s repetitive/boring/we’ve already had the plotline of a prodigy student losing their quirk.

it cheapens Bakugou’s character development by directly “forcing” him to learn something, instead of him arriving at the conclusion on his own.

losing his quirk would put him on the back-burner, story-wise, and exclude him from further fights and story development.

Bakugou doesn’t need to learn anything more/there isn’t anything important Bakugou could learn by losing his quirk that he couldn’t learn in some other manner.

losing his quirk would mean him falling hopelessly behind Deku, and playing second fiddle to him when he should be Deku’s equal. it would render his whole story and all of his development meaningless.

before I get started, please be advised that this is a very long post. like, tragically long. idk I did my best to rein it in but it just got ramblier and ramblier sob anyways so here’s a cut.

okay!

1. it’s repetitive/boring/we’ve already had the plotline of a prodigy student losing their quirk.

have you ever heard people pose the argument that all of the good stories have already been told? the idea is basically that there’s no such thing as a truly original story anymore, because humankind has been telling stories for thousands of years and we’ve exhausted any and all original ideas by this point. the problem with this, though, is that it assumes that (1) stories must always be 100% completely original in order to be good, and (2) if the basic building blocks of two stories are the same, then those stories must basically be identical. which is very much not the case. classic story structures are classic for a reason. the best stories are based around themes and conflicts and story beats which have been reimagined in a million different ways, and which work precisely because they’re familiar, and because they still resonate with people each and every time. and each and every time, it’s still a different story, because even if the ideas and themes and even some of the emotions are the same, the people are different, and no two people’s stories will ever be exactly the same.

all of which is to say that firstly, just because someone has already lost their quirk doesn’t mean it’s not an interesting enough concept to explore again. but more importantly, Bakugou and Mirio are not the same person. Bakugou is a completely different character than Mirio, with a completely different personality and history, and completely different relationships with the other principal characters. in other words it is absolutely not the same story at all. Bakugou won’t react the same way as Mirio. he’s not a character who can be faded into the background like Mirio unfortunately was. and most importantly, he’s a character whose own personal history with the formerly quirkless main character makes this an extremely personal and compelling character arc which would hit in a vastly different way than Mirio’s. I don’t think it’s repetitive at all, any more than “the heroes fight the villains” is a repetitive plotline. basically this argument, which is subjective to begin with, just doesn’t hold any water to me, I’m sorry.

2. it cheapens Bakugou’s character development by directly “forcing” him to learn something instead of him arriving at the conclusion on his own.

okay there are two counterarguments that I want to make here. the first is that this has always been Bakugou’s character development process since day one. he has never simply just arrived at a zenlike conclusion on his own through stern self-reflection or anything like that. his entire story has been him learning and growing from one humbling experience after another. examples:

he stops bullying Deku after Deku saves his life.

he undergoes a huge shift in attitude after Deku beats him in their training fight on the second day of school. he eats a healthy serving of humble pie and listens to the constructive criticisms that Momo, Aizawa and the rest pile onto him afterwards, and the result is that he becomes less cocky and starts taking his training much more seriously.

he wins-but-loses to Todoroki in the school festival and it serves as a reminder that simply winning isn’t everything. being the best is meaningless if it’s handed to you. as a result his determination is fueled even more.

he is LITERALLY FORCED POINT-BLANK to work together with Deku in order to pass his final exam. he is dragged kicking and screaming. I can’t stress enough how completely unwilling he was to learn this lesson otherwise lmao. it’s abundantly clear that he would never have done this on his own had the lesson not been almost literally beaten into his own head.

his experience at Kamino -- being targeted because he was perceived as villainous, and feeling responsible for All Might’s retirement afterwards -- is perhaps the best example of how Katsuki takes a terrible experience and uses it to grow leaps and bounds as a person. he develops a new awareness of how his actions can potentially be perceived by others (a vital lesson if he ever hopes to make it to the top). and he’s profoundly humbled (I keep using that word, so I just want to pause a sec to clarify that I mean it not in a “humiliated and crushed” way, but in a “freedom from pride and arrogance” way; in other words this is ultimately a positive thing, even if it comes about in an unpleasant way) by the experience, enough so that he finally lets his walls of pride crumble enough to have his weirdly violent heart-to-heart with Deku. and as a result the two of them grow closer, and All Might sets him down the path of Win To Save and Save To Win. something which I feel compelled to note that he still had ABSOLUTELY NO CLUE ABOUT beforehand. this is another thing that literally had to be spelled out for him before he could grasp it. it’s very hard for me to conceive a way of somehow spinning this particular development, which is by far the most important in his arc to date, as being something he just “learned on his own.”

and I forgot to mention it, but him failing the provisional license exam also directly contributed to the character development mentioned above! that was what finally tipped him over the edge. even though he was reeling from everything that had happened at Kamino, he still had too much pride to actually open up to anyone about it until this second “loss” of sorts finally convinced him that he really was doing something terribly wrong, and pushed him to talk to Deku about it.

and that brings us to where we’re at currently! there are a few other things I didn’t mention, like Jeanist lecturing him on the meaning behind choosing a hero name, and his internship with Endeavor teaching him... something. tbd lol. but anyways my point here is that Bakugou has always been a character who learns chiefly through his mistakes and painful experiences. it’s extremely rare for him to just arrive at some new tidbit of enlightenment all on his own, and if it does, it often still originally stems from a past -- often painful -- experience. that’s just how he is. his stubbornness is one of my favorite things about him, but it’s also always hindered his growth to some extent, and has made it harder for him to change his viewpoint all on his own, even though he is to his credit very open to change once something finally does sink in. he’s someone who’s always trying to be better. it’s just that a lot of times he needs to be nudged and pushed in the right direction, particularly on those few occasions where the thing he has to learn is something that runs counter to his current viewpoint to such a degree that he’s resistant to learning it (see, again, working together with Deku in the final exam).

and that finally brings me to my second counterargument to this point, which is that I very strongly feel that having to learn something “directly” in this very blunt manner does not make it cheap. that actually comes off as a bit insulting to all of Bakugou’s previous character development if I’m being honest. his development isn’t cheapened just because something was harder for him to learn. he’s not less of a good person just because he had a harder struggle to learn those things, and needed help and guidance, and made mistakes along the way. I feel very strongly that people shouldn’t be judged on how they grow, or their reasons for that growth. that to me feels like gatekeeping the concept of being a good person. “Bakugou isn’t as good of a character because he only started saving others and caring about people after he got kidnapped.” like, come on. people grow through their experiences! that’s literally where all growth stems from, even growth that on the surface appears to be self-fueled and motivated. every single action, every single motivation, happens because at some point or other, that person experienced something that led to them thinking and feeling that way, and deciding to do that thing. we are the sum total of our experiences, I believe is how the saying goes. and that goes double for characters in a story, because watching them go through those experiences is how we the audience discover who these characters are.

anyway so this argument is also a miss from where I stand. if it takes losing his quirk for Bakugou to have an epiphany about true strength, and what truly makes a hero on the inside, then goddammit, good for him. that’s nothing to be ashamed of. in the end that’s still his hard-earned growth, and he’s not any lesser for having learned it through adversity instead of just stumbling upon the answer somewhere along the way.

3. losing his quirk would put him on the back-burner, story-wise, and exclude him from further fights and story development.

hard disagree here as well. losing his quirk would be the single biggest thing that ever happened to Bakugou. a development like that would almost demand we focus on it. perhaps not right away (just like we didn’t immediately focus on him right after Kamino), but it would be inevitable. in fact, I’d argue that Bakugou losing his quirk is one of the only ways to guarantee that the story puts his character development back at the forefront again at some point, and doesn’t just drop the plotline entirely in an “eh, good enough” manner. it’s a development that basically makes his character development the focus of the plot, instead of us only ever getting little side anecdote scenes of “slowly becoming less of an asshole” for the rest of the series. it’s character development on hard mode, to be sure, but the fact of the matter is that Bakugou is not the main character, and so his personal character journey is only going to make it back to the forefront of the story if and when something significant enough occurs so as to make it worthy of being a focus.

as for the other half of this argument, the thing to understand here is that “Kacchan loses his quirk” is NOT the beginning, middle, and end of that storyline all in one. it absolutely won’t be “welp too bad, guess you can’t be a hero after all” and that’s that. “Kacchan loses his quirk” is only the first act of a story arc that continues with “Kacchan struggles with the aftermath of losing his quirk”, and concludes with “Kacchan regains his quirk and reemerges stronger than ever.” how that will ultimately play out, I don’t know! Vestiges; Eri; OFA; the quirk-restoring bullets which the villains also had at some point unless I’m misremembering things; whatever! the key thing here is that I have faith that it will play out. every single argument you see here is in the context of me believing that the endgame here is not a loss for him, but a win. it’s actually the win, because if all goes well, he comes back stronger than ever because he’s finally done away with the one remaining thing that was holding him back -- that lingering unnecessary fear, insecurity, and pride that’s still at the root of so many of his actions even now.

which brings me to my next point.

4. Bakugou doesn’t need to learn anything more/there isn’t anything important Bakugou could learn by losing his quirk that he couldn’t learn in some other manner.

you’ve no doubt guessed it, but I once again disagree here lol. he definitely still has more to learn. Bakugou’s character development thus far has been extraordinary, but all the same, I still want more for him. I don’t think this is the best he’s capable of. his ceiling is much, much higher, and to say that this is as good as he gets is to underestimate him imo.

here’s an incomplete list of things that Bakugou, at present, is still clearly struggling with, numbered alphabetically so that I can explain afterwards how losing his quirk would address each one.

a.) he still obsessively compares his progress to Deku’s at every turn. we got a little bit of insight into his thought processes just recently in chapter 275, and it was extremely revealing. his rivalry with Deku has been a good thing thus far, but this is primarily because up until this point he has been able to keep pace with Deku. so much of his confidence and self-worth seems to hinge on this one specific thing which is notably outside his control, and that’s troubling to me. but more on that further down in a bit.

b.) he’s still incapable of admitting that he cares about people (which is endearing to be fair, but nonetheless indicates that he still views caring as a weakness, and is uncomfortable acknowledging or expressing it).

c.) he has not yet sorted out the problem of coming off as hostile, vulgar, and aggressive even when a situation necessitates him to be more cooperative. to put it plainly, he’s incapable of dialing back his personality even the slightest degree and as a result gets edited out of interviews and has his friends constantly scrambling to apologize and/or interpret for him. I know that a lot of people -- myself included -- actually adore this feral side of him and even consider it one of his most endearing traits, but still, the fact of the matter is that it’s not a good thing that he’s entirely incapable of even the slightest bit of emotional regulation. at some point he’s going to have to sort his shit out at least a little bit; even Endeavor and Mirko are capable of reining it in when it comes to dealing with the public at large and with the press. if he wants to reach the top ranks he still has a lot of growing to do here.

d.) he still thinks of his own worth purely in terms of physical strength. this is a big one. Katsuki has always defined his own world in terms of strength and weakness. “strong” is good; “weak” is bad. people who win are strong. people with quirks are strong. he has a good quirk so he’s strong. Deku doesn’t have a quirk so he shouldn’t be strong (which becomes a paradox and a source of great fear and confusion to him when he realizes on a deep subconscious level that Deku somehow is strong in spite of lacking a quirk). All Might is the best hero because he’s strong and never loses. he’s going to be even better than All Might, and he’ll do it by being strong and never losing.

except that these ideas are all limited, and limiting. physical strength is not the only kind of strength. All Might wasn’t the number one hero and the Symbol of Peace only because he was strong. Katsuki isn’t strong only because he has a good quirk. but he’s still stuck on this idea regardless, and everything he does, everything he is is defined by this idea. even now, with everything he’s learned, he’s still stuck in this limited perspective. and the very obvious problem with that is that it places him in a precarious emotional position where if he ever actually loses, or something happens to strip that physical strength of his away, his entire core of self-worth stands to fall apart as a result. he’s put all his eggs in that basket. and it’s the source of all of his insecurity, and it’s a weakness that’s just waiting to be exploited, and which is holding him back from discovering and acknowledging so many other good things about himself.

e.) and last but not least we’ve got what is by far his biggest current failing (and I say not to put him down, but rather in that same spirit of “learning to acknowledge your own weaknesses” which he himself has so readily embraced), which is that he is still only focused on himself. mind you, I’m not saying that he’s a bad person, or that he doesn’t care about other people! but I am saying that he is self-centered, and that’s just a fact, and I would defy anyone to try and argue otherwise tbh. he is constantly and completely focused only on his own goals. and on top of that he also has great difficulty seeing things from any perspective other than his own, which has been the cause of numerous clashes and misunderstandings with other people, some more disastrous than others (see: that one time he thought Deku must be looking down on him because he couldn’t conceive of a situation where anyone would actually want to accept help from someone else, rather than being self-sufficient, and thus assumed that Deku’s attempt to help him was in fact an insult). he casts himself in the role of the main character, and dismisses most everyone else as “extras.” and it took him an extraordinarily long time to learn the importance of learning from and helping other people (and again, this was something which had to be explicitly spelled out for him. I’ll say it again and again if I have to, because it’s so important in understanding where Bakugou is coming from and what his mindset is in all of this. he had to have it spelled out, because it was genuinely something which wouldn’t have occurred to him otherwise, because it’s so alien to everything he grew up believing up till that point, and because he has so much difficulty seeing other perspectives).

and again, I’m not saying this to dump on him or imply that he doesn’t care! because he does; we’ve seen that demonstrated on multiple occasions. he has compassion for others. he wants to do the right thing and he wants to be a good person, and he tries very hard in his own way. but he is nonetheless still stuck in his own perspective. he struggles with empathy and being able to see from other people’s points of view. and that is a huge barrier to his becoming the greatest hero of all time, and it’s probably the most difficult barrier to overcome. the behavior is something he can and has been chipping away at little by little, but the root causes of the behavior are still there.

anyway. so now that I’ve said all of that, which probably could have been its own essay in and of itself, how would losing his quirk do anything to address these issues? so let’s now break that down point by point as well, using the same alphabetical numbering system as before. I’m skipping the first one because I’ll address it further down, so we’ll start with b.

b.) it makes him more vulnerable in that it’s a huge blow to his pride. how is that a good thing you ask? because pride is always a double-edged sword. the downside is that losing it hurts his self-esteem (but more on that in a sec), but the upside is it opens him up more to accepting kindness from other people, and allowing himself to express kindness and caring himself in return. pride is almost always the biggest obstacle in doing that. so the short of this is that it could lead to us seeing a more open, willingly vulnerable side to him that would strengthen his relationships and serve him well in the long run.

c.) in a similar vein, the ego check would probably help to address some of his emotional instability as well. a not-insignificant chunk of his tactless exterior is basically just a projection; a tough guy persona he’s constructed over the years as part of his neverending quest to be strong. there’s also a fair amount of insecurity (interpreting everything other people say in the worst way possible and reacting with defensive hostility), arrogance/boastfulness, and fear of vulnerability (aka weakness) mixed in as well. so I could see the whole experience leading to a softening of his personality. in my ideal world this would mostly be just temporary, with his usual Bakuattitude gradually being restored piece by piece as his soul searching adventures wear on and he starts acting like his old self more and more. but I do think that in the end, the loss of that insecurity in particular would go a long way towards helping him gain the ability to chill out just a little bit more when the situation calls for it.

d.) it strips him of that physical strength he’s depended on and defined himself by his whole life. sometimes we need to lose something in order to see and appreciate the other things we take for granted or don’t even realize that we have. Katsuki has so many other qualities that make him a good person and a great hero. he’s intelligent, perceptive, brave, resourceful, and extraordinarily determined. he’s strategic and analytical and quick-thinking. he inspires devotion in others and is a natural leader. and he is honest and sticks to his principles and stands up for his beliefs. there is so much more to admire about him than just strength. so many other kinds of strength that he has. and stripping his quirk away would force him to see that at long last. he’s not just a nobody without his power. the things that make him a worthy hero at his core have very little to do with his quirk.

e.) and then the big one -- learning to see past himself. the truth is that Bakugou has always led a relatively privileged life. he was good at everything, the things he wanted came very easily to him, and he’s basically been at the top of the food chain since he was very young. but the downside of this is that it led to a deep-seeded fear of losing all of that, or failing to live up to it. and because he feared weakness so much, he’s spent his entire life looking down on weaker people. his fear of weakness led to him despising anyone with those “weak” qualities that he secretly feared, rather than having compassion for them. add to that the fact that he just has a hard time seeing outside of his own perspective, and we’ve got a situation in which perhaps the only way for him to really gain that kind of compassion and empathy is to experience some of these things for himself.

becoming quirkless is a way of presenting new challenges to him that he would have never faced otherwise. it forces him to answer questions he’s always been too afraid to ask. it forces him to look at himself in a way he never has before, to take a good long look at his own fears and desires. what if you can’t become the number one hero? do you just give up? do you stop trying? do you stubbornly push back against the inevitable? what happens if you do become weak? do you just accept that for the rest of your life? just sit back and watch as everyone else moves on without you? how can you fight without a quirk? what can you do without a quirk? why did you want to become a hero in the first place? why did you seek out strength? what was it for? why do you struggle with everything you have to reach the very top??

and I’d like to think that some of the answers to those questions are, yes, I am still strong. and, no, I can’t give up. and, no, I won’t accept defeat, no matter what. and, I’m not sure, but no matter what happens I’ll keep on fighting. and, because the person I admired taught me to never, ever give up. and, because I wanted to surpass my limits. and, because I want to be the best version of myself.

and that is growth. and it’s precisely the kind of growth you can’t achieve until you’ve searched deep within yourself and laid your soul out bare. and it will make him a better character, and a better hero in the end. and that’s what we’re all here for isn’t it? that’s literally what this story is about. the journey of these kids growing up to become spectacular heroes. so, just, I don’t know. is it really such a great surprise that I want to see it?

anyways, this was by far the longest of these answers and this post is really starting to wear on, so let’s just get to the last one and wrap this up.

5. losing his quirk would mean him falling hopelessly behind Deku, and playing second fiddle to him when he should be Deku’s equal. it would render his whole story and all of his development meaningless.

okay, listen. first of all, this argument often comes bundled with a whole host of other arguments about Bakugou’s relationship with Deku, and how the narrative has already given him numerous other “losses” to Deku, and how this would just be the latest and greatest loss of all. and I’m just going to say it straight up: this argument is ridiculous to me. actually, what it reminds me of is the very same flawed mindset that Bakugou himself has which I mentioned earlier (the forgotten point 4.a), where he is obsessed with comparing his progress to Deku’s at all times, and only considers himself a success if he beats out Deku. the idea here is basically that Bakugou and Deku are running along parallel tracks with the same end goal/finish line of becoming a hero. and so if Deku gets too far ahead and starts lapping Bakugou or something, then it’s like a slap in the face with regard to all of Bakugou’s hard work, and it makes Bakugou’s whole journey pointless because no matter what, he’ll never be able to catch up, especially if he loses his quirk, which is like the metaphorical equivalent of him spraining his ankle.

the thing is, this entire analogy is flawed. first of all, if Bakugou doesn’t sprain his ankle at some point, he'll miss out on discovering and healing a separate underlying injury that’s been unknowingly hampering his progress this entire time. and second, the race isn’t timed. it’s more like an infinite series of races where the finish line is never actually set in stone, because the finish line isn’t actually “beat the other person”; the finish line is “run as fast and as far as you possibly can, and do it in a better way than anyone has ever done before, and while you’re at it maybe stop and save a few million people, because being the best runner isn’t actually about being faster than each other, even though that admittedly makes this a pretty crappy analogy.” anyways though, so what this means is that the sheer magnitude and scale of this race is such that little victories and losses here and there are ultimately meaningless in the big picture. maybe Bakugou sprains his ankle. maybe Deku breaks an arm or two or three or four. maybe someone shows up at some point and starts uprooting the entire track all around them and they have to put the whole race aside for the time being, because what the fuck. and maybe after spraining his ankle, Bakugou eventually comes zooming back ahead on a segway. and maybe Deku stops running for a while without Bakugou there, because he loses sight of his goal without his rival there to keep him on pace.

but anyway! the point is that declaring a winner and loser in this race before we reach the end is kind of absurd in that it ignores the whole nature of the race and how long-term it is. you see the beauty of the race is that it’s actually the opposite of footraces in real life. in this race, the longer the two of them run, the faster and stronger they become. and this same logic applies to any hurdles which are placed in their lanes along the way. the goal of these hurdles isn’t to trick or punish or humiliate them; it’s to help them get even faster and stronger and ultimately closer to their goal. and also, tbh? it’s a long, long race you guys. and so sometimes, as a fan, you almost start to want to see those hurdles. because otherwise it’s just a lot of endless running and running and running. so yeah, go ahead and throw in a damn hurdle or two and some traffic cones and maybe even a long jump here and there. because that’s part of what makes the thing great to watch in the first place.

and I don’t care whether or not Deku is ahead right now, because I also love Deku too by the way, and because I’m not invested in prematurely declaring a winner. and if Bakugou himself gets upset that Deku is ahead? if Deku pulling ahead of him is enough to send him spiraling into despair, and questioning everything about his life, and losing hope and purpose? well then honestly I would say that’s all the more reason for him to go on and get that new character development, because I don’t want him to always be hindered by those kind of toxic thoughts his entire life. their rivalry should serve to make each other better, not bring each other down. so if Bakugou’s ego is still so fragile that he can’t handle a loss to Deku -- a loss, mind you, not the loss, because ultimately these are all just little battles, and not the actual war -- then I want him to grow the fuck up and get the fuck over that, goddammit. he’s a bigger person than that. I want him to grow beyond that. I want him to develop the real, actual confidence that allows him to bounce back from something like that, and to move on better and wiser and stronger, instead of getting dragged down by the pettiness of it all.

in short, if losing to Deku would really be enough to render his story meaningless, then maybe it’s time for Bakugou to find some meaning in his story that’s not dependent on him winning or losing to Deku. because I for one am not actually in this thing just to see which character “wins.” I couldn’t care less who actually wins. I just want to see my boy grow up big and strong and self-actualized, the better to kick ass without anything holding him back. that’s it.

so this brings me at last to the end of this seemingly neverending post. I have no doubt this won’t be the last of my quirkless!Bakugou debate posts in spite of me trying to comprehensively address every single point I could think of lol. but for now it’s my best attempt. and by the way, if it doesn’t actually happen, that’s fine! I love the idea, but I’m not gonna go full on “oh happy dagger” with it if it doesn’t actually pan out lol. the downside is it will mean that I’ve posted this entire 5600-word dissertation for nothing, but you know what, sometimes that’s just how fandom goes.

181. the case of the stuttering pig (1937)

disclaimer: this review contains antisemitic content, stereotypes, and imagery. i in no way endorse any of this, but it’s just as important to bring awareness to these depictions rather than shove them under the rug. please, PLEASE let me know if i make any mistakes or say something offensive, i want to take responsibility for my actions and use this as an opportunity to educate myself. any outside commentary is more than welcome. thank you for your patience and understanding.

release date: october 30th, 1937

series: looney tunes

director: frank tashlin

starring: mel blanc (porky, the guy in the third row), billy bletcher (lawyer goodwill), sara berner (petunia)

just in time for the halloween season, we explore one of tashlin’s best directorial efforts to date. the case of the stuttering pig (its title derived from the case of the stuttering bishop, a warner bros. film released only 4 months prior) is the first of many warner bros. cartoons to take a jab at the ever popular dr. jekyll and mr. hyde. here, porky and his family (4 brothers and petunia, who serves as his sister rather than a love interest) are terrorized by the nefarious lawyer goodwill, the family lawyer who turns himself into a mr. hyde facsimile, hoping to kill the family in order to snag some inheritance money.

frank tashlin’s cinematography is in peak form as the cartoon opens to a ghastly exposition--william tell’s “the storm” rages alongside a furious storm. intricate camera angles include an upshot on a giant old house, trees whipping in the wind against the flashing lightning, and a close up of the window shudders snapping against the exterior. the snaps of the window shudders soon melt into the droning tick of a clock inside, an upshot exposing dynamic, drawn out shadows against the walls. tashlin handles the contrast between values exceptionally well. backgrounds are crisp, clear, and pronounced.

cue a vertical pan of porky’s siblings (patrick, peter, percy, portus, and petunia) all lined up against the wall in a row of chairs. each appear apprehensive, obviously on edge. not porky, though. porky’s at the very end of the row, looking on with a hilariously blank smile plastered on his face. 

suddenly, a knock at the door interrupts the silence. cue the famous tashlin jump cut: we only see volney white’s animation of porky jumping out of his seat, but the next shot reveals all of the siblings hanging from a chandelier, with porky trepidatiously inquiring “who-who-who-who-who-who’s theh-the-the-the-the-there...?” you can still feel mel’s attempts to distinguish his own unique porky stutter from the authentic stutter provided by joe dougherty--this delivery is more dougherty-esque than some of his others. 

billy bletcher’s syrupy sweet vocals ring out from behind the door, the disembodied voice introducing himself as lawyer goodwill. the decision not to showcase who’s behind the door is a smart one. suspense is absolutely rife all throughout the cartoon, and the beginning is no exception. with a peppy “okey deh-eh-eh-deh-do... oh-oh-okey deh-deh... okay!”, porky is followed by his siblings as he happily allows this mysterious lawyer goodwill inside. the suddenly calm, almost wholesome atmosphere inside, reassured by the self-proclaimed friendly presence of lawyer goodwill is disrupted as soon as the door opens, wind howling and blowing the entire family down the hallway as goodwill fights his way inside, his face (and head, for that matter) completely concealed by his hat and collar. tashlin plays on this as goodwill removes his hat, a mere nub placed where his neck should be as a waterfall of rain pours out from the hat. nevertheless, goodwill reveals himself, a portly yet good-natured looking fellow as he tells the children it’s time to attend to “business”.

lawyer goodwill gathers the kids around to discuss the matter of their late uncle solomon (a pig caricature of oliver hardy, just one of a handful) and his will. the animation is slightly blurred and jittery from the double exposure effects of the shadows--animation historian mark kausler has this to say (transcribed from his excellent commentary that i’m partially parroting):

“they used to hand crank the cameras here. this was before electric drive animation cameras--that’s why the shadows are so flickery, because they had to back the film up and then re-expose it to get the transparency of the shadow.”

uncle solomon’s will states that his heirs will inherit his money. however, if something were to happen to them, then lawyer goodwill gets the cash instead. goodwill exits the house, reassuring that nothing will happen to the kids... “...i hope!”

there’s a gorgeous, moody upshot of the porch as goodwill lumbers down the steps. volney white is at the hand of this scene, easy to spot thanks to his telltale speed: goodwill practically glides across the screen as he heads towards offscreen, only to whip back and put a hand over his hear, nefariously straining to hear if he’s being followed. volney’s pose and expression are as strong as ever--i made a reel of his animation awhile ago if you’d like to check it out!

bob bentley takes over to animate goodwill’s transformation into the monster--his animation is very meticulous and well crafted. a good way to spot him is to see if characters have thicker eyebrows in some scenes than others. goodwill swaps clothes in favor of a hat and cape almost effortlessly, gliding across the screen like butter. the flow isn’t interrupted, not even by the overlay of tables decorated with test tubes, skulls, etc. 

all of goodwill’s potential queries on how to transform into a hideous beast are answered with a bottle of “jekyll and hide juice” (starting at only $9.99! call now and get another FREE at no cost to you! it’s a steal, folks!)  nestled conveniently on his shelf of various poisons. he pours the concoction into a cocktail, acting like a regular bartender as he shows off by pouring the mixture from glass to glass. tashlin’s timing, both behaviorally and comically, are succinct as goodwill finally downs the mixture. he grips the table, taking heaving breaths, staring at the audience, until... nothing. he heaves a dubious shrug. 

instead, goodwill opts to use a milkshake mixer (a relatively new invention whose novelty value would have scored much bigger laughs then than it does today, but still remains amusing at the very least) to mix his concoction, downing it once more.

bob bentley’s animation of the monster is nothing short of gorgeous. well defined, well crafted, and dimensional. however, it does encapsulate antisemitic stereotypes and caricatures, from the big nose to clawed hands and pointy ears, as well as the desire for money. as skillful as the animation is, and as solid as the cartoon is, these are problems that still need to be addressed. understand that when i’m praising the animation, i’m focusing on the techniques themselves and the technicalities behind it, not the content that’s being animated itself. (thank you anon for taking the time to educate me! it’s much appreciated.) 

billy bletcher snarls in his trademark deep voice, even quipping “you wouldn’t think i was lawyer goodwill now, would you?” he talks directly to the audience, getting right close in their face, jabbing his spindly finger and bulbous nose. he even goes as far as to berate his public by screeching “you bunch of softies! YEAH, YOU IN THE THIRD ROW! ya BIG SOFTIE!” the fourth wall breaking is nothing short of genius. just IMAGINE seeing this in a dark, packed movie theater! the effect would be phenomenal! (especially if you were the guy in the third row! i’m sure all of the third-row-sitting patrons felt quite satisfied at these showings.) the monster vows to dispose of the family, sneering at our inability to help save our heroes.

said heroes are contentedly socializing in the living room, peppy porky talking about how safe and sound they are in their own little house. so, of course, that serves as the cue for a gnarly hand to grab the light switch and kill the lights. i love the detail of the shadow creeping along the wall before you even see the hand itself--little decisions like that go such a long way.

the lights go out, and all we hear is the pluck of an electric slide guitar. the lights come on, and one of porky’s alliteratively named siblings is gone, with an x cleverly marked in his place. the ritual occurs four times, with porky remarking each of the names of his fallen siblings (”peh-peh-patrick!” “eh-peh-peh-peh-eh-peter!” “eh-peh-peh-eh-peh-percy!” “puh-portus!”). the lights go out once more, and x’s mark where porky and petunia were just sitting prior. definitely an artsy and interesting way to convey the kidnappings--even more so when we see porky and petunia trepidatiously popping their heads out from behind the armchair after the camera trucks in on their deserted spot.

volney white animates the close up of petunia clutching to porky, stuttering (from fear, that is) “g-g-gee, p-p-porky, i’m scared!” her voice here is provided by sara berner as opposed to berneice hansell, who voiced her in her last appearance in porky’s romance. ironically, hansell would take over for petunia again after bob clampett adopted (and subsequently redesigned) her character. you can hear the evolution of her voice here. 

porky reassures her that they’ll find the brothers as we cue a clever pan from inside to outside the house, spotlighting the basement. the backgrounds are so gorgeous and moody! we find the pigs tied up in stocks, with the monster sneering about how he’ll do away with all the pigs once he nabs porky and petunia. once more, our ever-aware villain resorts to heckling the poor sap in the third row: “and if that guy in the third row comes up, I’LL FIX HIM TOO! you big CREAMPUFF!” again--this is exceedingly entertaining to watch 83 years later on a laptop screen, but imagine what a riot this would be in theaters! frank tashlin understood that the audience was paying to watch his cartoons, and he knew how to make it worth their time. the cartoons catered to the audience rather than the studio executives always make for the best ones--tex avery was especially keen of this, as we’ll soon explore.

back to porky and petunia, both cautiously traipsing down the hallway as porky calls the names of his fallen brothers, both straining to hear any signs of life. while the poses aren’t nearly pushed to the same extremes as they would be in tashlin’s second directorial stint from 1943-1946, they’re still quite nice and accentuated just enough. certainly stronger than the poses present in the other directors’ cartoons. seeing as tashlin was a newspaper cartoonist, his illustrative, comic look translates well into his own cartoons. it’s almost as if his comic art has leapt right off the page, but also meshes well enough with the animation to have a good sense of motion to it. it’s the best of both worlds.

while porky is unaware, petunia is yanked off screen by a hand protruding from a trick wall panel. suddenly, the villain himself tinkers behind porky, mimicking his movements. porky even manages to grab a hold of his gangly hand, assuming it’s petunia, going so far as to look him straight in the eyes and shush him. the volney white animated villain looks strikingly different than that of bob bentley’s--volney’s is exceedingly more streamlined and design driven, especially around the eyes. he’s not nearly as hairy, grotesque, or dimensional. not that that’s a bad thing! in fact, i love when animators are able to make their styles so distinguishable from the other animators. not only is it fun, it makes identifying animation much easier.

when porky finally realizes that he’s being stalked by the monster, he does the signature volney white eye take and runs for the hills, er, stairs. tashlin’s speed dominates as porky scales flights of stairs at lightning speeds--it’s dizzying to even watch! eventually, porky jumps right into the arms of the monster, clinging to him (thinking it’s petunia) as he describes what he just saw: “i eh-seh-saw the most teh-teh-teh-eh--awful leh-leh-lookin’ man, all beh-beh-big and beh-beh-eh-bleh-black... beh-beh-BIG teeth...” all the while, porky is grabbing onto the villain’s nose and clinging to him like a baby. the animation is positively hilarious, especially when porky recognizes who he’s being cradled by, actually connecting nose to snout as he lets out a scream and barrels down the staircase once more, the same footage from before just in reverse. a wonderful scene with great dialogue and hilarious animation. bob clampett would borrow this in his own jeepers creepers just two years later, with a ghost in place of the monster.

porky locks himself in the basement, discovering his siblings tied up in stocks (”leh-leh-land sakes alive!”), his attempts to free them interrupted by the sound of the villain knocking the door down. interestingly enough, after we pan to the monster infiltrating the premises, the next shot is the entire family huddled in a corner, indicating that porky did manage to free them after all. the technique is reminiscent of the cartoon’s beginning, where we see only porky jump out of his seat before showing all of the siblings hiding in the chandelier. 

just as it looks like the pig family is bacon, a random chair from offscreen is lobbed at the monster, sending him tumbling right into the stocks. the family is just as perplexed as the viewer, asking in unison “who DID that?”

“ME!” mel blanc’s gruff, more natural voice rings out from behind the screen. the locked up monster ogles at the audience, pointing a gangly finger as he snarls “who are YOU?” mel’s tough guy new yoik accent snarls back “I’M DA GUY IN DA THOID ROW, YA BIG SOURPUSS!” iris out on a deflated, dejected villain--just IMAGINE witnessing this in real time in the theaters! 

this cartoon is one of the reasons why frank tashlin is one of my favorite directors of all time. it’s got all of the tashlin essentiasl. the effects animation by A.C. gamer at the beginning is lovely, doing a wonderful job of establishing such an eerie mood. the raging, wild storm juxtaposes perfectly with the unsettlingly still atmosphere inside the house. lawyer goodwill makes an excellent villain, topped off with billy bletcher’s vocals and bob bentley’s skilled animation. the constant fourth wall breaking with him... need i say more? it’s such a great way to involve the audience with the picture and really suck in their attention, especially that ending. the animation is excellent, the backgrounds are gorgeous, it’s absolutely rife with atmosphere. this is tashlin’s best effort thus far and one of his best efforts overall.

however, the antisemitic stereotypes and caricatures should be accounted for. while i do say you should watch this one to get an idea of frank tashlin’s mastery as a director, tread with caution and discretion. i absolutely don’t endorse these concepts. so, if you do want to watch it, you can go to HBOmax or click this link, just be advised.

Arplis - News: The old Green Lantern battery is running on low, as we’ve almost reached the present, so it’s time to wind down this review of non-career superheroes and their various exploits and follie

s. While time, however, is running out, the creative spark still continues to flow through several recent productions, bringing back classic characters in new powerful misadventures. To start things off on a highly positive note, we’ll first review a couple of episodes from Pink Panther and Pals, the most recent (and one of the best) revivals of the DePatie-Freleng franchise. While Panther is visibly modified into a junior adolescent form, his spirit and pantomme humor remain intact, and comic inventiveness continues to excel. This is also true of the revival of his stablemates, the Ant and the Aardvark, one of whose episodes shall be the first examined. In Zeus Juice (3/7/10), Aardvark is having more trouble than usual keeping up with Ant (who in this incarnation has the personality of a wise-cracking Chris Rock instead of a Dean Martin drawl, though Aardvark retains his Joey Bishop persona), as ant prides himself on working out, and claims to be the speediest thing in the jungle. Before he can build up his muscles, Aardvark realizes he must develop muscles to build up. So he goes on line looking on the web for a quick-fix muscle builder. He encounters an ad for a super-juicer – a mixmaster with recipes guaranteed to provide super strength and vitality. Purchasing the product, Aardvark first tries a mixture to produce legs of steel – a concoction of fruit juices and fish oils. At first, nothing – then his legs begin to swell, and his feet start pounding the turf of their own volition. His legs take off like the Road Runner, with Aardvark’s long nose trailing helplessly behind on the ground. He finally manages to come to a stop, conveniently at the door to ant’s anthill. A pound on the ground from his “thunder thighs” jostles Ant out of his bath and up the hole, where he sees the new physique of his adversary. Racing for dear life, Ant looks back and reacts, “He’s a freak of nature. I can’t outrun that freight train.” Instead, Ant hides begind a rock – a few feet from the edge of a cliff. Aardvark sees the cliff coming, and tries his best to stop, skidding until he is hanging onto the cliff with his arms, his legs danging over the edge. “You know what he needs?”, comments Ant, “Ant-i lock brakes.” As Aardvark grabs Ant with his nose, Ant climbs up Aardvark’s face and yanks on his ear, which acts as an ignition key to stat Aardvark’s legs again. Aardvark is pulled by the sheer speed of his legs off the cliff face and onto mid-air. Looking down in horror, Aardvark tells us, “Next time, I’ll use flying fish oil.” As he falls, Ant meanders home, stating “I better call somebody to clean that up.” If at first you don’t succeed. Aardvark’s next recipe is for super-vision. His eyes develop red swirls – and suddenly fire a laser beam at his front door, leaving a charred hole. “Suddenly I’m in the mood for a barbecue”, he says. He arrives at ant’s home, and invites him to come out to observe his “new look”. Ant believes Aardvark’s been eating too many jalapenos, which would account for the red swirlies in his eyes. But a blast from Aardvark’s lasers blackens the surface of the anthill. “After all this time, it looks like you finally got me”, says Ant. “Go ahead, fry me.” Aardvark revs up his eyes for a fatal blow, but Ant produces a mirror at the last split second – and the reflected beam chars Aardvark’s head to a powder. “I’d stay out of the sun if I were you”, retorts Ant. “Your head looks a little well done.” Recipe #3: Super smell. Aardvark’s already pronounced nose develops biceps of its own, prompting Ant to inquire if his sinuses are acting up. Aardvark turns on his vacuum power at super level – but only succeeds in sucking himself into his own nose, rolling him up like a pill bug. “Hey, you need a ride home?” asks Ant, giving him a kick to roll him back to his cave. Recipe #4: Since physical strength has failed, how about a super mind? Aardvark returns to Ant’s hill with lobes swollen five times their normal size. Ant inquires, “It looks like that hurts.” “Well, a little”, responds Aardvark, “…but enough already! Now you’ll never outsmart me.” So ant instead poses him a question he’s been pondering for years: “Why can’t you ever catch me?” The old unanswerable question trope strikes again, and, as Ant produces an umbrella to avoid the splatter, Aardvark’s head explodes. Aardvark is finally through with the juicer, dumping it in the trash can. He returns to the ant hill, vowing to get his meal the good old fashioned way. Turning on his vacuum nose, he miraculously sucks out the Ant on the first try. “I did it. It’s a miracle”, shouts Aardvark. Suddenly, from inside his nose, Aardvark is repeatedly judo flipped. Out of his nose emerges Ant – buffed like a miniature Hercules, thanking Aardvark for turning him on to the juicer. Aardvark lays prone on the ground, and closes with the line, “Next time I’m hungry, I’ll order pizza.” Pink! Pow! Kaboom! (Pink Panther and Pals, 8/13/10) – Pink Panther faces the same dilemma as Bart Simpson in an earlier post in this series – an irresistible collector’s comic in a comics store window – and only a buck to his name. When proprietor Big Nose (who’s priced the collectible with a tag reading “$$$”) sees Pink’s single bill, not only does he respond with humiliating laughter, but for the price hands Pink a stack of blank paper and a pencil – draw your own. Ponk returns home, and sets to work from the inside out – leaping onto the paper itself, drawing a box around him, and filling in the details as he goes. He draws in a city – but finds it inhabited by a humongous green monster, who begins a destructive rampage. Pink realizes he holds the upper hand, as his pencil is equipped with an eraser, and begins to erase the giant’s toes. The giant flings him into the skies with a snap of his fingers. Pink counters by drawing a super suit around himself (some padding might have helped, as it deflates from muscular build to his puny skinny form the moment after it is drawn). Pink begins some playful fun with the monster, drawing two windows in mid-air so he can pop in and out of them. When the giant looks in, Pink pencils his face with clown make-up, then holds up a mirror to emphasize the embarrassment. Pink next pulls a “Duck Amuck” tribute, changing the backgrounds behind the monster in mid-chase, causing him to slide on ice into a snowdrift (leaving a hole in the snow in the silhouette of a jackass), then coming out the other side as a giant snowman. Pink changes the background again to a desert scene, and melts the giant’s snow away. He draws and offers to the perspiring giant a huge glass of water – then renders his need totally unnecessary by drawing him into the middle of the ocean. Pink flushes him away by pulling a plug, returning the background to a cityscape. The giant returns from the sewer, but Pink crosses him out with the pencil and redesigns him as a baby in a baby carriage. But even a baby monster has powers, and the creature lets out with a super-bawl that has the power of an atom bomb – sending the entire comic book blasting through Pink’s roof, to land outside on a city sidewalk. Back in the comic, Pink finds himself prone on the ground, and the giant somehow regrown to his original form. On top of that, the giant has taken Pink’s supersuit, and tears the suit in half. The giant generates a force field from his fists, which encircles Pink – and from which emerge an army of giants like himself. Still wielding the pencil, Ponk faces the situation with determination, and a heroic glint in his eye, as the camera angles change to a tribute to anime. Swinging the pencil like a Samurai, Pink erases giant after giant in a ferocious battle – until the street is cleared, save the original monster, for a final showdown. With a roar, the monster charges at Pink, and Pink charges at the monster. They meet in the center, Pink wildly swinging his pencil. Pink lands unharmed, but the point breaks off his pencil tip. The giant chuckles fiendishly – but looks down to find his parts separated from each other by broad strokes of emptiness from the eraser. With a clatter, he disassembles and falls in a heap of parts to the ground. Pink has reached the last panel on the comics page, and exits the completed book. As fate would have it, the sidewalk on which the comic landed is right outside Big Nose’s shop, as Big Nose returns to open up. He spies the new comic on the ground, and is impressed by its artwork. He reaches into his pocket for some cash for a purchase – but Pink insists on a trade – for the collector’s item in the window. Reluctantly, Big Nose can’t resist, and the rare prize becomes the panther’s own. Inside the shop. Big Nose settles down to read Pink’s masterwork, when the huge green hand of the monster emerges from its pages and hauls Big Nose inside, the pages closing as thuds, thumps, and leaping pages denote the battle resuming all over again within. Then there is Garfield (as promised from last week’s article). He’s undergone some considerable changes in recent times – the first being a move to CGI (in a few feature films, and then in a series of direct to video features starting with Garfield Gets Real). Garfield’s Pet Force (6/16/09) is one of these, and not very super at all. Some primary problems of this feature series were as follows. First, instead of keeping Garfield rooted in reality, he, Jon and Odie are now residents of Cartoon World, outwardly aware of their fictional nature, something like Heckle and Jeckle. (One particularly good line results from this, in a scene where Garfield is twisted like a spiral in a torture device, but feeling no pain – “I’m a cartoon character. I do squash and stretch for a living.”). Instead of being a career cartoonist, Jon now takes Odie and Garfield to a TV-like studio, where they “film” a comic strip for each issue. And the various animal characters actually talk, and Jon and Liz can understand them, instead of merely being heard by the audience through thought projection. The whole thing is rather unnerving for old-school fans of the show. Top that with the fact that the personalities of two of the principals are altered or watered-down. Garfield still gets jokes on food, fatness, and laziness, but seems to have lost the power to insult or belittle, making no particular zingers about canine stupidity or even Nermal’s ability to aggravate. And Nermal, instead of playing the innocent or thriving on reputation as world’s cutest kitten, now seems to have swapped personalities with Scrappy Doo, just generally diving into trouble. Egad! Plotwise, it’s a convoluted tale of a parallel universe, in which an animal superhero squad are the guardians of the kingdom of a Jon-lookalike monarch, who shares with Jon a complete lack of talent in attracting women. Garfield’s parallel (Garzooka) talks in a resonant superhero voice, is muscular in build, stands about four times taller than Garfield, and is leader of the Pet Force – his powers being super strength, and radioactive hairballs. Odie’s counterpart specializes in stunning blows with his tongue. The counterpart to Arlene (Garfield’s new girlfriend) gives icy stares that freeze her victims in place. And Nermal’s counterpart has super speed. Enter a counterpart to Liz, visiting from another planet. King Jon falls for her instantly, babbling out an instant proposal of marriage. Oddly, she accepts – only for purposes of getting her hands on a set of keys to the royal arsenal, to obtain the kingdom’s latest invention – a molecular scrambler gun that not only mutates its targets into combinations of each other’s parts, but renders them mindless zombies under the shooter’s control. Three of the Pet Force are so mutated, and only Garzooka escapes, nabbing away the Klopman crystal (a counterpart to the original series’ recurring references to the Klopman diamond), which is the scrambling gun’s power source. With the assistance of the gun’s inventor, Garzooka also obtains vials of serum to endow the powers of his mutated comrades to new replacements, and the space coordinates of the only other residents of the galaxy with DNA matches to his fallen comrades. He takes off in a space ship to find the “matches” – Nermal, Odie, and Arlene. Garfield himself gets rather left out of the superhero action (since Garzooka is still in charge), while his friends take the serum and acquire the powers within. Garfield’s only real connection to the storyline is a brief assignment to guard the Klopman crystal – which, despite slipping it into a glass of lemonade as an “ice” cube, is eventually discovered by the villainess who follows Garzooka to Cartoon World. The villainess zombifies most of the population, and orders them to obliterate the Pet Force. The Force heads for a tall tower in the center of town, in hopes of using the structure as a giant harpoon to spear the villainess’s ship, while the zombie army pursues and corners them for a showdown. Garfield finally decides, against his nature, to become “involved”, and, standing on the shoulders of one of the co-workers at the comic-strip studio, devises a Garzooka disguise, luring the zombie army back to the studio to march en masse into a trap door opening to the cellar. The diversion allows the Pet Force to harpoon the ship. The villainess counters by mutating half the buildings in town into a giant metallic monster. Garfield somehow survives the chase, trips up the monster, obtains the ray gun, and mutates the villainess into a “good” girl who apologizes and accepts the position as loving queen. The film tells a story, yes – it’s just not a Garfield story. The Garfield Show, a more recent revival, at least returns the characters to the contemporary suburbs. However, it retains from the prior incarnation the animal characters continuing to talk with actual lip movements. It compromises a bit back toward the old days, striving for a halfway poont between the original and the non-abrasive Garfield, and between the “cute” verses the proactive Nermal. Super Me (12/21/09) – Garfield and Nermal watch the television adventures of hero “Ultra Powerful Guy”. Garfield as usual won’t share his snacks with Nermal during the viewing, and yields the bag of potato chips only when its contents have been emptied. Nermal stands up for himself, telling Garfield he doesn’t need his snacks, as he can get them all by himself. “This I gotta see”, said Garfield. Nermal seats himself on the sidewalk, and puts on his most adorable cute-kitten face and irresistible meows. A car stops abruptly, its occupants mesmerized by Nermal’s cuteness – and they just can’t resist handing over to Nermal an entire pepperoni pizza with mushroms and Canadian bacon. Garfield’s jaw drops in amazement, as he races over to get a share of the take. But now it’s Nermal who claims to have nothing left to share. Garfield complains that he’d bet Nermal would share if Ultra Powerful Guy were around – then states to the audience, “Idea happening.” Fashioning a supersuit out of old clothes from Jon’s closet, Garfield follows Nermal to a phone booth where Nermal is looking up local cat shows to win, and props a broom against the booth door, trapping Nermal inside. He then dives on the broom from the roof of the booth in his outfit as Ultra Powerful Guy, making a “rescue”. Nermal reacts in disbelief that Ultra Powerful Guy is so short and round in build, but feels indebted to him in view of the timely rescue. Garfield convinces Nermal that superheroes need to eat, too, and suggests as a reward that Nermal turn on some of his “cute” magic to drum up an entree. Nermal repeats his performance at the curbside, and stops another motorist in his tracks, who just happens to have a heaping plate of spaghetti and meatballs. This reward suits Garfield fine. After devouring it, he notes “You know what goes great after spaghetti for desert? Anything!” He rigs another rescue of Nermal, pushing a trash dumpster to roll down a steep hill. Garfield rides atop the dumpster to issue a timely warning for Nermal to get out of the way. At the foot of the hill, two would-be bank robbers debate holding up the bank, but are fearsome that Ultra Powerful Guy might be in the vicinity. On cue, Garfield’s trash dumpster reaches the end of the line, and Garfield falls inside the trash. Garfield emerges with a banana draped over his head, noting that this never happens to Batman. He removes his soiled mask – and the crooks believe they’ve just witnessed the hero’s true secret identity – a fat cat. Unafraid, they decide the time is ripe for bank robbery after all. Garfield meanwhile returns to Nermal, demanding a reward of a banana cream pie with chocolate sprinkles. Nermal’s best “cute” face only reaps a chocolate cream pie with banana sprinkles. “Close enough”, saus Garfield. An alarm nearby reveals the crooks making a getaway from the bank. Nermal pyshes a reluctant Garfield forward to apprehend the culprits. The crooks state they are not afraid, as they know Ultra Powerful Guy’s secret and his weakness. They drop before Garfield a catnip mouse. Nermal sees instant hearts, and flips onto his back to play with the toy. Garfield isn’t affected in the least, and states that nect time, they should try stuffing the mouse with lasagna. Their plan not working, the crooks head for their getaway car, catching Garfield’s cape in the door. Another predicament Garfield insists would never happen to Batman. Garfield is dragged down the street, frantically yelling for assistance and to let him off at the earliest opportunity. But who should arrive to stop the getaway, but Ultra Powerful Man himself, thanking Garfield for delaying the crooks long enough for him to arrive. Nermal catches up to congratulate the hero on the amazing capture – then notes that there are now two of them. He asks which is the real one, and both Garfield and the hero chime in unison “I am”. “Now c’mon, that’s not fair”, says Nermal, and asks them again. “I am” comes the simultaneous reply. “Aw, really, which one of you is it?” Garfield and the hero exchange winks, as they are starting to enjoy this, and for the remainder of the night, continue to frustrate Nermal with their united response of “I am”. The Amazing Flying Dog (12/22/09) seems more aimed at the younger viewers than usual, attempting to build a meager plotline about Odie’s daydreams of being a caped superhero and flying to the rescue of a cute poodle he has his eyes on. His daydreams include a rescue of the pooch from a burning building (using flying power to pull her from a fiery balcony, and ice breath to blow out the fire), and from the passenger seat of a car careening without brakes backwards down a steep hill. Garfield keeps waking him from his dreams, and eventually breaks it to him that “Dogs can’t fly!” Then Garfield tries to cross a road under construction, and his feet get caught in fresh asphault. The poodle tries to rescue Garfield, and gets stuck too. Here comes the steamroller. Odie hears the calls for help, and gives one last try to jumping off the roof. His ears extend, and he soars aeronautically like Dumbo, swooping in to make a nick of time rescue. Garfield turns to the audience, asking in complete puzzlement, “Did you see…” – and then awakes from his own dream about Odie. The episode peacefully ends, with the nagging question of what is life, and what is reality? The Caped Avenger Rides Again (9/10/12) – Jim Davis expected a long memory from his viewers, harkening back in this installment to his original “Caped Avenger” from 1988 previously reviewed in these articles – without barely so much as a recap to establish Garfield’s previous venture into superherodom. Jon is making a personal appearance at a comic book store to sign autographs, and Garfield brings along his Caped Avenger outfit just in case. To no viewer’s surprise, nobody shows up for Jon’s nom de plume. The store proprietor, an old-timer in the business, is disappointed at the lack of turnout, and says he’s tries everything to drum up buisiness, but attendance has slipped off drastically. He even has a rare first edition comic on display as another attraction, but still no interest. The comic isn’t even his – only there on a loan from its owner, with the condition that an armed guard be posted on duty at all times. Mysteriously, when everyone is engaged in conversation, a crash is heard. The front window is broken, and the guard seemingly knocked unconscious, with the rare first edition gone. Upon reviving the guard, he claims the assailant wore a mask, and can provide no detailed description. Garfield reverts to his Caped Avenger costume to play amateur sleuth, and Odie joins him in the same Superman style outfit used in the 1988 episode, as his sidekick, Slurp (Garfield lifting a line of dialogue straight out of the original cartoon, that the sidekick must never dress better than the superhero). They skulk through some back alleys for clues, as the film suddenly becomes slightly 2D for a flashback to provide an origin story (much in the way cutaway sequences were used in some of the “Power Pig” episodes for side-trips in the storyline of the original show). A few reasonable gags appear in the flashback. Garfield searches for an image that will strike fear in the hearts of the criminal element, so fashions his first costume as his own scariest nightmare – a pizza with anchovies. Not very effective. Converting to proper attire, the Avenger and Slurp hit the streets. Hearing a citizen’s cries of a despicable – and dangerous – villain robbing the bank, Garfield decides this is a job for – his sidekick, and tells Odie to look him up when it’s over in Bermuda. But the robber (a lobster-clawed supervillain) blocks Garfield’s attempt to exit carrying a surfboard. Garfield tries to convince the villain to give up, in view of Garfield’s devastating super powers. Garfield demonstrates super speed by running clear around the world – arriving back about a minute later, completely winded, and complaining that he was held up in a traffic jam in Luxembourg. Garfield demonstrates super strength by lifting the heaviest object in the vicinity – himself – eventually losing his grip, as he acknowledges “Jon was right, I do need to lose a few pounds.” Instead of surrendering, the villain throws Garfield through a brick wall. As Garfield notices the stray bricks on his side of the wall, something clicks in his memory, and he reverts back to reality, returning with Odie to the shop. The glass of the broken window is outside, not inside the store, indicating that the thief nroke the window from the inside. The security guard is spotted attempting to sneak out of the store – with comic book hidden inside his coat. An obligatory chase (in which Garfield uncharacteristically runs at a speed far beyond the expected velocity of an overweight cat) leads to a blind alley, with an inclined board the only route over a fence. Garfield and Odie find it first, and lay a trap. As the guard mounts the board to leap over the wall, Garfield and Odie position a trash dumpster on the other side, then slam its lid down as the guard lands inside, Garfield sitting on the lid to prevent the guard’s escape. The police make the arrest, the comic book is retruned, and the comics store has a new attraction that finally draws customers – the Caped Avenger in person. Garfuels asides to the audience, “Batman, eat your heart out.” The Superhero Apprentice (9/10/12) – Last time, we were expected to remember an episode from 1988. This time, we’re unbelievably supposed to forget a central plot point from the previous episode in the same half-hour! All memory is supposed to disappear that Odie has already been used twice as a sidekick. The comic book store has been saved by the publicity of the Caped Avenger’s solving of the comic book mystery, and its proprietor has invested in an expected shipment of Avenger action figures, which has fans lined up around the block awaiting delivery. Footage of the Avenger’s capture of the criminal (now how did they happen to have camera shots of the dumpster capture in the blind alley?) has gone viral, only eclipsed by a #1 video of the world’s cutest singing kitten – Nermal. But Nermal fears the Avenger’s popularity is striking too close to home, and might topple him from the #1 berth. Meanwhile (ignoring Odie’s previous involvement in the chase and capture), the comic book guy reveals in a news interview that consensus of fan opinion is that the Avenger should take on a sidekick. Garfield ponders this as a serious issue, realizing all the past great heroes had sidekicks. Odie prances around, demonstrating his willingness to join up – but choosy Garfield instead holds open interviews for the position. All applicants disappear after Garfield lets slip that they’ll be placing their life on the line for no pay. One runaway (a Chihuahua) encounters dejected Nermal, and the dog’s costume gives Nermal the idea that the only way to counter a superhero is with a supervillain. Nermal recruits the dog as his own assistant, and acquires a wrestling mask and cape as a disguise for himself. That night, the newly-evil duo doctor a “bat-signal” for the Avenger outside the comics store, to make the Avenger’s image paunchy and ridiculous. They also show up at the unveiling of the action figures. Garfield, however, also arrives, having seen video footage of the attack on his signaler, and, sensing a need for assistance, has finally relented and hired Odie as his partner “Slurp”. The delivery of the figures is interrupted by the Chihuahua nipping at the truck driver’s heels, while Nermal commandeers the truck, with just one catch – he doesn’t know how to drive. The truck takes off on a downhill road, with puny Nermal clinging to the spinning steering wheel, unable to reach the brakes. Garfield pursues, stumbling on a street trash can and running atop it like a log roller, finally thrown onto the roof of the moving truck. The truck crashes into the fence of a trash collection center, throwing Garfield and Nermal over the fence and into a chute for trash disposal. Inside, they face a conveyor belt of chopping and shredding contraptions, with a flattening wheel at the end of the belt. Garfield and Nermal race against the speed of the belt to keep from being pressed into pizzas. Odie appears, looking through a hatchway above. Garfield calls him for “doggie tongue”, and Odie lowers his long appendage down the hole, where Garfield grabs it like a rescue rope, and also grabs Nermal, with Odie hauling them out to safety, a split second before Nermal’s cape would have dragged him into the machinery. For all their effort, the action figures fail to sell, as now all public attention has shifted to Slurp, with footage of his rescue taking the #1 web slot, knocking Nermal’s video out of the lead once and for all. Nermal decides to take his meow-singing act to the streets, and Garfield, also through with superheroing, joins him. The Looney Tunes Show was all about a tenuous marriage of media – the Looney Tunes gang, in a contemporary “Friends” style new millennium sitcom? While occasionally generating a winning situaion, there usually seemed to me a certain uneasiness at pressing the characters into “everyday” situations. (I’ve wondered if the group might have been better-fitted to a 1960’s sitcom. Imagine Bugs and Lola Bunny as Dick Van Dyke and Mary Tyler Moore. Daffy and his girlfriend as Morey Amsterdam and Rose Marie. And Elmer Fudd as Richard Deacon. For a son, we could even revive Clyde from “His Hare-Raising Tale”.) However strange the series may have been on the whole, the writers found a combination of genres that clicked for their series finale – Super Rabbit (5/23/13) (not to be confused with the original 1943 classic of the same name). Daffy’s looking for quick cash, so raiding through Bugs’ stuff for something to sell. Bugs attempts to guard an old knick-knack (a glass carrot) with a tall tale. “I’m not the bunny you think I am. My real name is Kal El. I was born long ago on the planet Krypton.” Daffy stops him cold. “Krypton? That’s Superman’s home planet. I fell for that once, but I’m way too smart to fall for it again.” Bugs qualifies his statement – “That’s ‘Crypton’ with a ‘C’” – and Daffy buys into the tale, hook, line, and sinker. Bugs spins a yarn of his exploits guarding the city of Metropolis – an adventure unique in its presentation, retaining much of the zaniness of the Looney Tunes stars while telling in the background of the action a pretty straightforward Superman story, complete with all the dark backgrounds and elaborate special effects that have become standard to the Warner DC Universe. It succeeds in coming off as the best of both worlds. Bugs has a comic exploit outwitting Marvin the Martian as Braniac (including a visually-inventive scene with Bugs taking pot-shots at Marvin with his own miniaturizing-enlarging ray, until every part of Marvin has eigher expanded gigantically or shrunken substantially. ‘I’m a regular Pablo Picasso”, says Bugs. He next tackles Elmer Fudd as Lex Luthor, eventually blasting him out of his supersuit and leaving him only a pair of striped shorts, and kicking the remains of Luthor’s armor into space. But Elmer informs Bugs that he has just succeeded in launching a radioactively unstable generator within the suit into deep space. The suit turns out to be on collision course with the Phantom Zone in which General Zod (Daffy Duck) and two minions (one his girlfriend, the other a robot) have been imprisoned. The blast frees the prisoners, and Zod and his companions plot the conquest of Earth. Amidst a ticker-tape parade, Bugs’s enjoyment of the side-perks of being a hero is interrupted by Zod’s trio. Battling is work for underlings, so Zod leaves his companions in charge to make short work of Super-Rabbit, who is forced to surrender beneath the foot of Zod’s robot. Zod sets up a palace, complete with huge golden idol of himself, and a chorus of slaves who attempt to compose for Zod a new national anthem (“My Country Tis of Thee” played in a minor key with new lyrics hailing Zod). Bugs meanwhile visits the Fortress of Solitude, where the spirit of his father states he had his defeat coming, as he had softened under the effects of showboating for the attentions of fame rather than fighting for the right. Bugs is advised to learn the adversaries’ weaknesses, and make them his own strengths. Making an entrance at Zod’s palace as reporter Clark Kent, Bugs deduces that Zod’s girlfriend is constantly being put down by him, while the robot is treated by Zod as a brainless infant. Revealing himself for battle, Bugs puts in the right words of flattery to each of the minions in the course of the fray, acquiring friends among Zod’s ranks. He finally confronts Zod polishing his statue, and when Zod orders his cohorts to attack, they step away, leaving Zod to battle alone. An epic confrontation on a Superman scale follows, with laser eye beams cutting buildings in half, vehicles thrown as weapons, and a flying chase through the tunnels of a subway. Bugs finally outmaneuvers Zod upon his emergence from the tunnels, grabbing Zod’s cape from behind and flinging him into his own golden statue. As Zod lies dazed at the foot of his own image, Bugs says, “Hey Doc, kneel before yourself”, then uses his laser vision to cut through the base of the statue. As the statue collapses, Zod, seeing it about to topple, screams “I’m going to hurt me!” Then crash! – and Bugs stands alone. Concluding his story to Daffy, Bugs claims he banished Zod and his minions to another Phantom Zone, then gave up his powers, realizing power corrupts. This is where Daffy suspends his belief in the story – feeling that no one would give up such power and super-goodies – and leaves to hock Bugs’s stuff anyway to finance his date for the evening. The scene changes to a movie theatre, playing “The Mark of Zorro”. Daffy and his date, dressed in what appears to be period attire, decide to save a ridiculously small number of seconds getting back to their car by going down a dark alley. Fans of Batman can see what’s coming a mile away – a Crime Alley accosting by a hoodlum. Who should arrive to save the day but – Bat-Rabbit. The hero hands pearls back to Daffy’s date, while Daffy offers no reward, since he didn’t specifically ask to be saved anyway. As the ducks leave, Bat-Rabbit reveals himself to us as Bugs, delivering in his best impersonation of Kevin Conroy his own signature line, “Ain’t I a stinker?” While I’m usually a fan of Rowan Atkinson in his appearances in person on big or small screen, I’m rather underwhelmed by his “Mr. Bean” animated series. Superhero Bean (2/22/16) is little more than a time-filler, with no actual powers whatsoever, merely chronicling Bean’s costumed attempts to trail a domestic burglar on the rooftops. Not a genuinely funny moment in the whole slow-paced episode. Super-Wacky (Cartoon Network, Wacky Races (revival),10/29/18) tries to pack a lot in, but forgets entirely that the premise of the show is to conduct races – instead devising a far-out plot on the personalities of the show’s characters alone. Peter Perfect rules the roost as the superhero guardian of a city, until one day he faces the challenge of – superhero oversaturation. Suddenly, all the current Wacky Racers (excepting Dastardly and Muttley) have transformed into superheroes too, and want in on a piece of the city’s action. In competition with Petet’s super chin-laser, Penelope Pitstop flies, turns everything she touches pink (as she admits, more of a curse than a power), and carries a radioactive lasso that makes anyone caught in it utter bad puns. I.Q. (junior counterpart to Professor Pat Pending) is half cyborg, with a robotic arm that often acts out of control with a mind of its own. The Gruesome Twosome have bat powers and invisibility. Meanwhile, Dick Dastardly is Wackopolis’s resident super villain, with a head swollen with psychic powers to control minds, and Muttley possesses a sonic snicker that can bring down walls. Dastardly hypnotizes the mayor to outlaw super-heroes, but the racers plot their strategy to bring her out of it. Part of the plan is to round up “the best team of heroes the legal department will let us use on this show”. The open auditions attract an overflow of old Hanna-Barbera stars, including Snagglepuss, Rosie the Robot, Space Ghost, Hong Kong Phooey, Winnie Witch, and Jabberjaw (this on top of a one-shot cameo for Quick Draw McGraw as El Kabong in the opening scene). All the applicants flunk out (Snagglepuss even exiting stage right), leaving the original racers to forge on alone. They head for the mayor’s office, and battle an army of flying Muttley robots (a harken back to Muttley’s rotor tail flying in “Dastardly and Mettley in Their Flying Machines”). Then, taking the battle to Dastardly’s lair (which Peter had a map to all the time), the group, except for Peter, succumb to Dastardly’s mind control, until Peter reminds them of the greater strength of their super-friendship. Muttley carries Dastardly to an escape as the racers break freee of his brainwashing – but Dastardly returns in the final frames of the episode at the helm of a giant town-stomping robo-Muttley. The racers launch into the fray again, and are stopped in a freeze frame for “The End” and a last insertion of a merchandising advertisement for their super products. Snowball, the rebellious rabbit who led a revolution against the human race in 2016‘s The Secret Life of Pets, undergoes a nearly complete personality transformation to keep him in the storyline in The Secret Life of Pets 2 (6/7/19). His new little girl owner is into superhero shows, and dresses him in a miniature mask, suit and cape as “Captain Snowball”. Snowball adapts to the new role, now determined to be the protector of the world rather than its overthrower, and incorporates his love of kung fu moves into the act. A short 2D segment provides the closest to superpowers he demonstrates, including socking a bad guy through the side of several buildings, and an ultrasonic roar. In real life, minus anything but his own speed and fight moves, he becomes involved in a rescue mission to save a rare white tiger who is being abused by a sinister circus owner determined to train him to perform death defying feats. Snowball must outwit a quartet of wolves who serve as guards to keep the tiger in and strangers out (including a humorous chase through various midway attractions), release the tiger from its cage, and attempt to find the tiger a hiding place in the apartments of the big city. Eventually, the whole cast of the franchise are drawn into the action, as the wolves and circus owner close in, and tranquilize the tiger, transporting him back to the circus train. Snowball uses an RC vehicle to catch up with the train, and engages in a battle of fisticuffs with the circus owner’s maniacal monkey, climaxed by shooting the monkey out of a cannon. Snowball and several of the other pets, together with the tiger, gang up on the villain in the engineer’s cab, and the tiger is eventually freed, and finds a new home amongst the flock of felines in the apartment of a neighboring cat lady. Just as Snowball is content and confident in his life as a superhero, his little girl changes his outfit to fit her latest craze – dressing him as a fairy godmother. Snowball surprisingly accepts the role with glee, confident that he can face any new challenge after surviving the last one. (A direct to video short, “Super Gidget”, released on the home editions of the feature, was unavailable for review – anyone with nformation on it is invited to comment below.) DarkBat (8/29/19), from New Looney Tunes, is an interesting character mashup. Hubie and Bertie (together with an unknown fat mouse who seems to be new to the series) run a fruit stand for mice with the spillage from a human fruit stand, trading for cheese as currency. They are set upon by an unusual posse of cats – Sylvester, Claude Cat, and Pete Puma, in what may be their first onscreen meeting. But to the rescue comes the unexpected arrival of a small winged caped crusader – DarkBat. The deep-voiced vigilante, runs the cats a brief merry chase, landing alternately on their “heads, shoulders, knees and toes” in mimic of a children’s game-song to draw stick blows from the other cats upon whoever he lands on, then playing a game of “whack-a-mole” among the produce with Pete, armed with what DarkBat guarantees is a mallet that will only bash bats, but manages to hit only the other cats instead. Darkbat finally tries the mallet himself, smashing Pete on the head, then declaring, “You’re right. Defective.” With some banana peels, DarkBat caises the three cats to slip into a packing crate, which DearkBat nails shut and labels for delivery to Nome, Alaska. Hubie and Bertie thank DarkBat, but inquire as to his true identity. DarkBat is quite eager to share, pulling off the cowl to reveal the most unlikely choice for a superhero among the classic warner toons – Sniffles the Mouse! In his “can’t sop talking” mode, Sniffles babbles on how isn’t it something, that he can put on this costume, and it lets him do all sorts of crazy things. “Pretty cool, huh?” he asks. “It was until you took the mask off”, aays the fat mouse. But Sniffles flies off into the night (interesting that he would choose to become a bat, when a real bat was the cause of his change to talkative personality in The Brave Little Bat in 1941), while the mice comment that there goes another superhero who’s just a little batty. Writers will again be writers, trying to milk a good one-shot idea for extra episodes. Bonjour, DarkBat (8/29/19) pits Sniffles’ super-alias against Blacque Jacque Shellacque. Unfortunately, with the “cat out of the bag”, so to speak, as to DarkBat’s true identity, the element of surprise for an ending is gone, so the episode has to rely entirely on its gag content to justify itself. Actually, it manages to not fare badly on such count, dealing with a war inside Shelacque’s cheese shop when he wrecks rivals Hubie and Bertie’s curbside cheese wagon. A duel sequence uses everything in the shop as weaponry, from French breads to kitchen utensils down to tasting toothpicks. And the dialogue packs in every bad cheese pun the 4 1/2 minutes can handle – including using a high-pressure Brie dispenser to turn Shellacque into “de-brie”, and DarkBat telling Hubie and Bertie that only the Gouda guys win. Not too shabby an effort. Still funny, but becoming formulaic, is a final installment. Smoothie Operator (1/30/20). Same premise as previous episode, different villain. Yosemite Sam shuts down the mice’s smoothie stand to stop competition with his own. More bad puns on fruits and vegetables. Battles with alternating hot and cold ingredients, and a final chase with a jet-propelled motorcycle. A lot of action, but not as original. I’m sure there’s a few I’ve missed along the way. If anyone has any favorites that didn’t receive print space here, your input below is as always appreciated. The holidays (such as they are) are nearly upon us, and next week, it’s time for celebration – as the song goes, “if only in our dreams”. The post Reign of the Supertoons (Part 11) appeared first on . #Garfield #PinkPanther #AnimationTrails #DaffyDuck

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Module Reflection

     Over the course of the module I worked in two groups, the first, ‘My Adventure,’ for which I was just the modeller, and the second, ‘ROOMS,’ where I was far more involved, both conceptually and technically, and will thus be the focus of this reflection. Though officially filling the roles of Art Director and Lead 3D Artist, I was heavily involved in almost all parts of production.

     Unlike my other group, this one started out with only an idea of what was to be made: a piece focusing on the weirdness of self-isolation, and how it made people feel. The presented idea was isometric rooms, with small contained scenes based on how people felt being cooped up inside. From this I developed the art style we would use, using simple, polygonal models with a hybrid material to give a pixelated, security-camera look, as interior security cameras are usually in the corner of a room. The set style did not stick, later changed to depict a cross-section of a more complete building, which I designed, but the core art style remained. I proposed and designed a more theatrical look to the environment, styling the individual rooms more like stages, where each could support the narrative told whilst also providing potential for environmental storytelling, and context for the animated characters. In order to differentiate between the ‘real’ and the ‘imagined,’ 2D animation would be used, but placed in the 3D scenes, rather than composited in over the top, as this would allow it to better interact with the characters and setting, and remain consistent with the theatrical look. The overall aesthetic was to be a pastel, cardboard-looking ‘doll house’ effect, to help emphasise both the feeling of being placed by a situation beyond your control, reflecting the theme of the piece, and to show how people construct their own worlds by way of imagination.

     I had no part in the initial story development, and was simply given a list of scene ideas based on a range of people’s responses to an anonymous online questionnaire. From these concepts I was responsible for creating the script, starting with developing the ideas into multi-part stories taking place in and across multiple rooms, and laying the required rooms out in space, from which I developed the building plan, and then how these stories would be timed and spaced across it. This took multiple revisions, and collaborations from other team members, finally resulting in a single consistent story. After testing various camera movements, we decided on having near-continuous steady motion, but only directly horizontally or vertically, without zoom or rotation. The camera slowly tracks across the rooms on one floor, before stopping, then ascending or descending to the next. I also came up with the ideas to make the animation loop, in order to show the repetitive nature of life in lockdown, but later developed this to also have the camera movement partially loop once within the animation, creating a sense of déjà vu, where the viewer would believe the animation to have looped, but as it progresses the differences start to become more noticeable, causing the viewer to question what they previously saw. This would help to connect the viewer to the characters, challenging their perception of the passage of time.

     Whilst developing the overall look and how the animation would play out, I was also responsible for the majority of the technical development. The project was initially planned to have a low-poly, stylised look, but nothing more specific than that. From playing around with settings for vertex normals and edge hardness I found a modelling style that looked effective, using a moderate level of faces, more than ‘low-poly’ would typically consist of, but making each face individually visible, rather than blending them together. Using ramp shaders highlights this further, but only along the colour borders, and also removes a lot of detail, and the option for textures. I tested colour blending to make a hybrid material setup, where I could still use textures and realistic lighting, but with exaggerated transitions between light and shadow, and, after a little experimentation, I found that a 3:1 ratio between textures and ramps gave the best effect, with an almost pixelated look as the model moves. The model I tested this on was an unfinished character for another project, and didn’t have any features, but this was decided to be incorporated into the look. Keeping the faces blank made them appear as representations of characters, keeping the focus on their actions, rather than personality, and better for an audience to identity with. Putting this into motion, in order to test a scene out, I had to construct a set, and work out how to best utilise the lighting and environment. I decided to use a cylindrical background, painted with the look of the sky over the course of a day, so that as the main directional light rotated and changed colour to represent the passage of time, the environment would match. Simple textured planes placed behind the scene, visible though the windows, appear to parallax as the camera moves and give a sense of depth. I did some basic character animation, testing out the use of dynamic clothing, as well as making sure the hybrid materials worked on the environment as well as they did on the character. I also tested the use of animated 2D planes in the scene for things the characters were imagining.

     Once the tests and planning had been signed off, I began on making the actual assets, which would be used in a short, three room test render to accompany the treatment document, depicting the scenes of yoga, sailing in a cardboard box, and camping under a duvet. A single character base was made and UV’d, with individuals made by adjusting this with some minor scaling and sculpting. Though sharing the same base UVs, each model’s were optimised to better match the adjusted geometry. These models were given a basic rig and sent to the animators to animate whilst I modelled the clothes, in order to save time. With the building layout still not finalised at this time, I modified the same set from my tests to house the characters, and updated the lighting setup to better represent the scenes we were depicting. As not all the furniture assets were to be modelled by me, the other modellers each sent me a small batch of assets which I modified to match the style of the characters, then sent back to be used as reference for future assets to keep the aesthetic consistent. Finished models were UV’d by me, then moved to the asset library on the Google Drive, along with the UV exports to be textured. Once the animation was completed I placed the characters in the scene, with some slight adjustments to the timing of the keys, as well as the poses, to make sure the limbs didn’t clip through each other, which would mess up the dynamic clothing. For the camping character I had to export the animated model as an alembic so I could delete some of the faces around the joints, and use this modified mesh as the collider for the clothes. Once the main assets were done I could arrange and populate the rooms, applying the textures and setting up all the materials. Some assets, such as the beds, the fan, the tent, the clutter, and anything dynamic, like the curtains, were modelled be me, to best use the time we had. Anything I modelled I also textured, the set included, as our texture artist was also busy on another project. Though used very little in the rooms we had chosen to demonstrate, I also did the 2D animation for the scenes. The grass and shark fin were still planes with deformers and key frames, though the fire was animated frame-by-frame. Once all the scenes were fully built I did a second lighting pass, making sure the mood and ambience was correct, with a bright, shiny yoga scene, a slightly harsher and more desaturated sailing scene, and the dark, flickery firelight of the camping scene, complete with shadows from invisible trees. I then rendered the frames, and handed them over to receive the post-production.

     Whilst my other group was very rigid, with everyone having specific roles, the lack of interaction and contribution from the group in the more conceptual aspects lead to a very stiff project that changed very little from conception to production, this group was the opposite. With everyone providing development suggestions, the project changed and evolved over the course of Research and Development, and ended up a far stronger piece than originally conceived. This open, flexible nature provided more opportunities for me to contribute to the group, collaborating on and assisting with parts of development that my roles did not cover, and, especially at the end, filling in for absent or work-laden team members. Overall, this project was more engaging, and thus more enjoyable to be a part of.

Arplis - News: The old Green Lantern battery is running on low, as we’ve almost reached the present, so it’s time to wind down this review of non-career superheroes and their various exploits and follie

s. While time, however, is running out, the creative spark still continues to flow through several recent productions, bringing back classic characters in new powerful misadventures. To start things off on a highly positive note, we’ll first review a couple of episodes from Pink Panther and Pals, the most recent (and one of the best) revivals of the DePatie-Freleng franchise. While Panther is visibly modified into a junior adolescent form, his spirit and pantomme humor remain intact, and comic inventiveness continues to excel. This is also true of the revival of his stablemates, the Ant and the Aardvark, one of whose episodes shall be the first examined. In Zeus Juice (3/7/10), Aardvark is having more trouble than usual keeping up with Ant (who in this incarnation has the personality of a wise-cracking Chris Rock instead of a Dean Martin drawl, though Aardvark retains his Joey Bishop persona), as ant prides himself on working out, and claims to be the speediest thing in the jungle. Before he can build up his muscles, Aardvark realizes he must develop muscles to build up. So he goes on line looking on the web for a quick-fix muscle builder. He encounters an ad for a super-juicer – a mixmaster with recipes guaranteed to provide super strength and vitality. Purchasing the product, Aardvark first tries a mixture to produce legs of steel – a concoction of fruit juices and fish oils. At first, nothing – then his legs begin to swell, and his feet start pounding the turf of their own volition. His legs take off like the Road Runner, with Aardvark’s long nose trailing helplessly behind on the ground. He finally manages to come to a stop, conveniently at the door to ant’s anthill. A pound on the ground from his “thunder thighs” jostles Ant out of his bath and up the hole, where he sees the new physique of his adversary. Racing for dear life, Ant looks back and reacts, “He’s a freak of nature. I can’t outrun that freight train.” Instead, Ant hides begind a rock – a few feet from the edge of a cliff. Aardvark sees the cliff coming, and tries his best to stop, skidding until he is hanging onto the cliff with his arms, his legs danging over the edge. “You know what he needs?”, comments Ant, “Ant-i lock brakes.” As Aardvark grabs Ant with his nose, Ant climbs up Aardvark’s face and yanks on his ear, which acts as an ignition key to stat Aardvark’s legs again. Aardvark is pulled by the sheer speed of his legs off the cliff face and onto mid-air. Looking down in horror, Aardvark tells us, “Next time, I’ll use flying fish oil.” As he falls, Ant meanders home, stating “I better call somebody to clean that up.” If at first you don’t succeed. Aardvark’s next recipe is for super-vision. His eyes develop red swirls – and suddenly fire a laser beam at his front door, leaving a charred hole. “Suddenly I’m in the mood for a barbecue”, he says. He arrives at ant’s home, and invites him to come out to observe his “new look”. Ant believes Aardvark’s been eating too many jalapenos, which would account for the red swirlies in his eyes. But a blast from Aardvark’s lasers blackens the surface of the anthill. “After all this time, it looks like you finally got me”, says Ant. “Go ahead, fry me.” Aardvark revs up his eyes for a fatal blow, but Ant produces a mirror at the last split second – and the reflected beam chars Aardvark’s head to a powder. “I’d stay out of the sun if I were you”, retorts Ant. “Your head looks a little well done.” Recipe #3: Super smell. Aardvark’s already pronounced nose develops biceps of its own, prompting Ant to inquire if his sinuses are acting up. Aardvark turns on his vacuum power at super level – but only succeeds in sucking himself into his own nose, rolling him up like a pill bug. “Hey, you need a ride home?” asks Ant, giving him a kick to roll him back to his cave. Recipe #4: Since physical strength has failed, how about a super mind? Aardvark returns to Ant’s hill with lobes swollen five times their normal size. Ant inquires, “It looks like that hurts.” “Well, a little”, responds Aardvark, “…but enough already! Now you’ll never outsmart me.” So ant instead poses him a question he’s been pondering for years: “Why can’t you ever catch me?” The old unanswerable question trope strikes again, and, as Ant produces an umbrella to avoid the splatter, Aardvark’s head explodes. Aardvark is finally through with the juicer, dumping it in the trash can. He returns to the ant hill, vowing to get his meal the good old fashioned way. Turning on his vacuum nose, he miraculously sucks out the Ant on the first try. “I did it. It’s a miracle”, shouts Aardvark. Suddenly, from inside his nose, Aardvark is repeatedly judo flipped. Out of his nose emerges Ant – buffed like a miniature Hercules, thanking Aardvark for turning him on to the juicer. Aardvark lays prone on the ground, and closes with the line, “Next time I’m hungry, I’ll order pizza.” Pink! Pow! Kaboom! (Pink Panther and Pals, 8/13/10) – Pink Panther faces the same dilemma as Bart Simpson in an earlier post in this series – an irresistible collector’s comic in a comics store window – and only a buck to his name. When proprietor Big Nose (who’s priced the collectible with a tag reading “$$$”) sees Pink’s single bill, not only does he respond with humiliating laughter, but for the price hands Pink a stack of blank paper and a pencil – draw your own. Ponk returns home, and sets to work from the inside out – leaping onto the paper itself, drawing a box around him, and filling in the details as he goes. He draws in a city – but finds it inhabited by a humongous green monster, who begins a destructive rampage. Pink realizes he holds the upper hand, as his pencil is equipped with an eraser, and begins to erase the giant’s toes. The giant flings him into the skies with a snap of his fingers. Pink counters by drawing a super suit around himself (some padding might have helped, as it deflates from muscular build to his puny skinny form the moment after it is drawn). Pink begins some playful fun with the monster, drawing two windows in mid-air so he can pop in and out of them. When the giant looks in, Pink pencils his face with clown make-up, then holds up a mirror to emphasize the embarrassment. Pink next pulls a “Duck Amuck” tribute, changing the backgrounds behind the monster in mid-chase, causing him to slide on ice into a snowdrift (leaving a hole in the snow in the silhouette of a jackass), then coming out the other side as a giant snowman. Pink changes the background again to a desert scene, and melts the giant’s snow away. He draws and offers to the perspiring giant a huge glass of water – then renders his need totally unnecessary by drawing him into the middle of the ocean. Pink flushes him away by pulling a plug, returning the background to a cityscape. The giant returns from the sewer, but Pink crosses him out with the pencil and redesigns him as a baby in a baby carriage. But even a baby monster has powers, and the creature lets out with a super-bawl that has the power of an atom bomb – sending the entire comic book blasting through Pink’s roof, to land outside on a city sidewalk. Back in the comic, Pink finds himself prone on the ground, and the giant somehow regrown to his original form. On top of that, the giant has taken Pink’s supersuit, and tears the suit in half. The giant generates a force field from his fists, which encircles Pink – and from which emerge an army of giants like himself. Still wielding the pencil, Ponk faces the situation with determination, and a heroic glint in his eye, as the camera angles change to a tribute to anime. Swinging the pencil like a Samurai, Pink erases giant after giant in a ferocious battle – until the street is cleared, save the original monster, for a final showdown. With a roar, the monster charges at Pink, and Pink charges at the monster. They meet in the center, Pink wildly swinging his pencil. Pink lands unharmed, but the point breaks off his pencil tip. The giant chuckles fiendishly – but looks down to find his parts separated from each other by broad strokes of emptiness from the eraser. With a clatter, he disassembles and falls in a heap of parts to the ground. Pink has reached the last panel on the comics page, and exits the completed book. As fate would have it, the sidewalk on which the comic landed is right outside Big Nose’s shop, as Big Nose returns to open up. He spies the new comic on the ground, and is impressed by its artwork. He reaches into his pocket for some cash for a purchase – but Pink insists on a trade – for the collector’s item in the window. Reluctantly, Big Nose can’t resist, and the rare prize becomes the panther’s own. Inside the shop. Big Nose settles down to read Pink’s masterwork, when the huge green hand of the monster emerges from its pages and hauls Big Nose inside, the pages closing as thuds, thumps, and leaping pages denote the battle resuming all over again within. Then there is Garfield (as promised from last week’s article). He’s undergone some considerable changes in recent times – the first being a move to CGI (in a few feature films, and then in a series of direct to video features starting with Garfield Gets Real). Garfield’s Pet Force (6/16/09) is one of these, and not very super at all. Some primary problems of this feature series were as follows. First, instead of keeping Garfield rooted in reality, he, Jon and Odie are now residents of Cartoon World, outwardly aware of their fictional nature, something like Heckle and Jeckle. (One particularly good line results from this, in a scene where Garfield is twisted like a spiral in a torture device, but feeling no pain – “I’m a cartoon character. I do squash and stretch for a living.”). Instead of being a career cartoonist, Jon now takes Odie and Garfield to a TV-like studio, where they “film” a comic strip for each issue. And the various animal characters actually talk, and Jon and Liz can understand them, instead of merely being heard by the audience through thought projection. The whole thing is rather unnerving for old-school fans of the show. Top that with the fact that the personalities of two of the principals are altered or watered-down. Garfield still gets jokes on food, fatness, and laziness, but seems to have lost the power to insult or belittle, making no particular zingers about canine stupidity or even Nermal’s ability to aggravate. And Nermal, instead of playing the innocent or thriving on reputation as world’s cutest kitten, now seems to have swapped personalities with Scrappy Doo, just generally diving into trouble. Egad! Plotwise, it’s a convoluted tale of a parallel universe, in which an animal superhero squad are the guardians of the kingdom of a Jon-lookalike monarch, who shares with Jon a complete lack of talent in attracting women. Garfield’s parallel (Garzooka) talks in a resonant superhero voice, is muscular in build, stands about four times taller than Garfield, and is leader of the Pet Force – his powers being super strength, and radioactive hairballs. Odie’s counterpart specializes in stunning blows with his tongue. The counterpart to Arlene (Garfield’s new girlfriend) gives icy stares that freeze her victims in place. And Nermal’s counterpart has super speed. Enter a counterpart to Liz, visiting from another planet. King Jon falls for her instantly, babbling out an instant proposal of marriage. Oddly, she accepts – only for purposes of getting her hands on a set of keys to the royal arsenal, to obtain the kingdom’s latest invention – a molecular scrambler gun that not only mutates its targets into combinations of each other’s parts, but renders them mindless zombies under the shooter’s control. Three of the Pet Force are so mutated, and only Garzooka escapes, nabbing away the Klopman crystal (a counterpart to the original series’ recurring references to the Klopman diamond), which is the scrambling gun’s power source. With the assistance of the gun’s inventor, Garzooka also obtains vials of serum to endow the powers of his mutated comrades to new replacements, and the space coordinates of the only other residents of the galaxy with DNA matches to his fallen comrades. He takes off in a space ship to find the “matches” – Nermal, Odie, and Arlene. Garfield himself gets rather left out of the superhero action (since Garzooka is still in charge), while his friends take the serum and acquire the powers within. Garfield’s only real connection to the storyline is a brief assignment to guard the Klopman crystal – which, despite slipping it into a glass of lemonade as an “ice” cube, is eventually discovered by the villainess who follows Garzooka to Cartoon World. The villainess zombifies most of the population, and orders them to obliterate the Pet Force. The Force heads for a tall tower in the center of town, in hopes of using the structure as a giant harpoon to spear the villainess’s ship, while the zombie army pursues and corners them for a showdown. Garfield finally decides, against his nature, to become “involved”, and, standing on the shoulders of one of the co-workers at the comic-strip studio, devises a Garzooka disguise, luring the zombie army back to the studio to march en masse into a trap door opening to the cellar. The diversion allows the Pet Force to harpoon the ship. The villainess counters by mutating half the buildings in town into a giant metallic monster. Garfield somehow survives the chase, trips up the monster, obtains the ray gun, and mutates the villainess into a “good” girl who apologizes and accepts the position as loving queen. The film tells a story, yes – it’s just not a Garfield story. The Garfield Show, a more recent revival, at least returns the characters to the contemporary suburbs. However, it retains from the prior incarnation the animal characters continuing to talk with actual lip movements. It compromises a bit back toward the old days, striving for a halfway poont between the original and the non-abrasive Garfield, and between the “cute” verses the proactive Nermal. Super Me (12/21/09) – Garfield and Nermal watch the television adventures of hero “Ultra Powerful Guy”. Garfield as usual won’t share his snacks with Nermal during the viewing, and yields the bag of potato chips only when its contents have been emptied. Nermal stands up for himself, telling Garfield he doesn’t need his snacks, as he can get them all by himself. “This I gotta see”, said Garfield. Nermal seats himself on the sidewalk, and puts on his most adorable cute-kitten face and irresistible meows. A car stops abruptly, its occupants mesmerized by Nermal’s cuteness – and they just can’t resist handing over to Nermal an entire pepperoni pizza with mushroms and Canadian bacon. Garfield’s jaw drops in amazement, as he races over to get a share of the take. But now it’s Nermal who claims to have nothing left to share. Garfield complains that he’d bet Nermal would share if Ultra Powerful Guy were around – then states to the audience, “Idea happening.” Fashioning a supersuit out of old clothes from Jon’s closet, Garfield follows Nermal to a phone booth where Nermal is looking up local cat shows to win, and props a broom against the booth door, trapping Nermal inside. He then dives on the broom from the roof of the booth in his outfit as Ultra Powerful Guy, making a “rescue”. Nermal reacts in disbelief that Ultra Powerful Guy is so short and round in build, but feels indebted to him in view of the timely rescue. Garfield convinces Nermal that superheroes need to eat, too, and suggests as a reward that Nermal turn on some of his “cute” magic to drum up an entree. Nermal repeats his performance at the curbside, and stops another motorist in his tracks, who just happens to have a heaping plate of spaghetti and meatballs. This reward suits Garfield fine. After devouring it, he notes “You know what goes great after spaghetti for desert? Anything!” He rigs another rescue of Nermal, pushing a trash dumpster to roll down a steep hill. Garfield rides atop the dumpster to issue a timely warning for Nermal to get out of the way. At the foot of the hill, two would-be bank robbers debate holding up the bank, but are fearsome that Ultra Powerful Guy might be in the vicinity. On cue, Garfield’s trash dumpster reaches the end of the line, and Garfield falls inside the trash. Garfield emerges with a banana draped over his head, noting that this never happens to Batman. He removes his soiled mask – and the crooks believe they’ve just witnessed the hero’s true secret identity – a fat cat. Unafraid, they decide the time is ripe for bank robbery after all. Garfield meanwhile returns to Nermal, demanding a reward of a banana cream pie with chocolate sprinkles. Nermal’s best “cute” face only reaps a chocolate cream pie with banana sprinkles. “Close enough”, saus Garfield. An alarm nearby reveals the crooks making a getaway from the bank. Nermal pyshes a reluctant Garfield forward to apprehend the culprits. The crooks state they are not afraid, as they know Ultra Powerful Guy’s secret and his weakness. They drop before Garfield a catnip mouse. Nermal sees instant hearts, and flips onto his back to play with the toy. Garfield isn’t affected in the least, and states that nect time, they should try stuffing the mouse with lasagna. Their plan not working, the crooks head for their getaway car, catching Garfield’s cape in the door. Another predicament Garfield insists would never happen to Batman. Garfield is dragged down the street, frantically yelling for assistance and to let him off at the earliest opportunity. But who should arrive to stop the getaway, but Ultra Powerful Man himself, thanking Garfield for delaying the crooks long enough for him to arrive. Nermal catches up to congratulate the hero on the amazing capture – then notes that there are now two of them. He asks which is the real one, and both Garfield and the hero chime in unison “I am”. “Now c’mon, that’s not fair”, says Nermal, and asks them again. “I am” comes the simultaneous reply. “Aw, really, which one of you is it?” Garfield and the hero exchange winks, as they are starting to enjoy this, and for the remainder of the night, continue to frustrate Nermal with their united response of “I am”. The Amazing Flying Dog (12/22/09) seems more aimed at the younger viewers than usual, attempting to build a meager plotline about Odie’s daydreams of being a caped superhero and flying to the rescue of a cute poodle he has his eyes on. His daydreams include a rescue of the pooch from a burning building (using flying power to pull her from a fiery balcony, and ice breath to blow out the fire), and from the passenger seat of a car careening without brakes backwards down a steep hill. Garfield keeps waking him from his dreams, and eventually breaks it to him that “Dogs can’t fly!” Then Garfield tries to cross a road under construction, and his feet get caught in fresh asphault. The poodle tries to rescue Garfield, and gets stuck too. Here comes the steamroller. Odie hears the calls for help, and gives one last try to jumping off the roof. His ears extend, and he soars aeronautically like Dumbo, swooping in to make a nick of time rescue. Garfield turns to the audience, asking in complete puzzlement, “Did you see…” – and then awakes from his own dream about Odie. The episode peacefully ends, with the nagging question of what is life, and what is reality? The Caped Avenger Rides Again (9/10/12) – Jim Davis expected a long memory from his viewers, harkening back in this installment to his original “Caped Avenger” from 1988 previously reviewed in these articles – without barely so much as a recap to establish Garfield’s previous venture into superherodom. Jon is making a personal appearance at a comic book store to sign autographs, and Garfield brings along his Caped Avenger outfit just in case. To no viewer’s surprise, nobody shows up for Jon’s nom de plume. The store proprietor, an old-timer in the business, is disappointed at the lack of turnout, and says he’s tries everything to drum up buisiness, but attendance has slipped off drastically. He even has a rare first edition comic on display as another attraction, but still no interest. The comic isn’t even his – only there on a loan from its owner, with the condition that an armed guard be posted on duty at all times. Mysteriously, when everyone is engaged in conversation, a crash is heard. The front window is broken, and the guard seemingly knocked unconscious, with the rare first edition gone. Upon reviving the guard, he claims the assailant wore a mask, and can provide no detailed description. Garfield reverts to his Caped Avenger costume to play amateur sleuth, and Odie joins him in the same Superman style outfit used in the 1988 episode, as his sidekick, Slurp (Garfield lifting a line of dialogue straight out of the original cartoon, that the sidekick must never dress better than the superhero). They skulk through some back alleys for clues, as the film suddenly becomes slightly 2D for a flashback to provide an origin story (much in the way cutaway sequences were used in some of the “Power Pig” episodes for side-trips in the storyline of the original show). A few reasonable gags appear in the flashback. Garfield searches for an image that will strike fear in the hearts of the criminal element, so fashions his first costume as his own scariest nightmare – a pizza with anchovies. Not very effective. Converting to proper attire, the Avenger and Slurp hit the streets. Hearing a citizen’s cries of a despicable – and dangerous – villain robbing the bank, Garfield decides this is a job for – his sidekick, and tells Odie to look him up when it’s over in Bermuda. But the robber (a lobster-clawed supervillain) blocks Garfield’s attempt to exit carrying a surfboard. Garfield tries to convince the villain to give up, in view of Garfield’s devastating super powers. Garfield demonstrates super speed by running clear around the world – arriving back about a minute later, completely winded, and complaining that he was held up in a traffic jam in Luxembourg. Garfield demonstrates super strength by lifting the heaviest object in the vicinity – himself – eventually losing his grip, as he acknowledges “Jon was right, I do need to lose a few pounds.” Instead of surrendering, the villain throws Garfield through a brick wall. As Garfield notices the stray bricks on his side of the wall, something clicks in his memory, and he reverts back to reality, returning with Odie to the shop. The glass of the broken window is outside, not inside the store, indicating that the thief nroke the window from the inside. The security guard is spotted attempting to sneak out of the store – with comic book hidden inside his coat. An obligatory chase (in which Garfield uncharacteristically runs at a speed far beyond the expected velocity of an overweight cat) leads to a blind alley, with an inclined board the only route over a fence. Garfield and Odie find it first, and lay a trap. As the guard mounts the board to leap over the wall, Garfield and Odie position a trash dumpster on the other side, then slam its lid down as the guard lands inside, Garfield sitting on the lid to prevent the guard’s escape. The police make the arrest, the comic book is retruned, and the comics store has a new attraction that finally draws customers – the Caped Avenger in person. Garfuels asides to the audience, “Batman, eat your heart out.” The Superhero Apprentice (9/10/12) – Last time, we were expected to remember an episode from 1988. This time, we’re unbelievably supposed to forget a central plot point from the previous episode in the same half-hour! All memory is supposed to disappear that Odie has already been used twice as a sidekick. The comic book store has been saved by the publicity of the Caped Avenger’s solving of the comic book mystery, and its proprietor has invested in an expected shipment of Avenger action figures, which has fans lined up around the block awaiting delivery. Footage of the Avenger’s capture of the criminal (now how did they happen to have camera shots of the dumpster capture in the blind alley?) has gone viral, only eclipsed by a #1 video of the world’s cutest singing kitten – Nermal. But Nermal fears the Avenger’s popularity is striking too close to home, and might topple him from the #1 berth. Meanwhile (ignoring Odie’s previous involvement in the chase and capture), the comic book guy reveals in a news interview that consensus of fan opinion is that the Avenger should take on a sidekick. Garfield ponders this as a serious issue, realizing all the past great heroes had sidekicks. Odie prances around, demonstrating his willingness to join up – but choosy Garfield instead holds open interviews for the position. All applicants disappear after Garfield lets slip that they’ll be placing their life on the line for no pay. One runaway (a Chihuahua) encounters dejected Nermal, and the dog’s costume gives Nermal the idea that the only way to counter a superhero is with a supervillain. Nermal recruits the dog as his own assistant, and acquires a wrestling mask and cape as a disguise for himself. That night, the newly-evil duo doctor a “bat-signal” for the Avenger outside the comics store, to make the Avenger’s image paunchy and ridiculous. They also show up at the unveiling of the action figures. Garfield, however, also arrives, having seen video footage of the attack on his signaler, and, sensing a need for assistance, has finally relented and hired Odie as his partner “Slurp”. The delivery of the figures is interrupted by the Chihuahua nipping at the truck driver’s heels, while Nermal commandeers the truck, with just one catch – he doesn’t know how to drive. The truck takes off on a downhill road, with puny Nermal clinging to the spinning steering wheel, unable to reach the brakes. Garfield pursues, stumbling on a street trash can and running atop it like a log roller, finally thrown onto the roof of the moving truck. The truck crashes into the fence of a trash collection center, throwing Garfield and Nermal over the fence and into a chute for trash disposal. Inside, they face a conveyor belt of chopping and shredding contraptions, with a flattening wheel at the end of the belt. Garfield and Nermal race against the speed of the belt to keep from being pressed into pizzas. Odie appears, looking through a hatchway above. Garfield calls him for “doggie tongue”, and Odie lowers his long appendage down the hole, where Garfield grabs it like a rescue rope, and also grabs Nermal, with Odie hauling them out to safety, a split second before Nermal’s cape would have dragged him into the machinery. For all their effort, the action figures fail to sell, as now all public attention has shifted to Slurp, with footage of his rescue taking the #1 web slot, knocking Nermal’s video out of the lead once and for all. Nermal decides to take his meow-singing act to the streets, and Garfield, also through with superheroing, joins him. The Looney Tunes Show was all about a tenuous marriage of media – the Looney Tunes gang, in a contemporary “Friends” style new millennium sitcom? While occasionally generating a winning situaion, there usually seemed to me a certain uneasiness at pressing the characters into “everyday” situations. (I’ve wondered if the group might have been better-fitted to a 1960’s sitcom. Imagine Bugs and Lola Bunny as Dick Van Dyke and Mary Tyler Moore. Daffy and his girlfriend as Morey Amsterdam and Rose Marie. And Elmer Fudd as Richard Deacon. For a son, we could even revive Clyde from “His Hare-Raising Tale”.) However strange the series may have been on the whole, the writers found a combination of genres that clicked for their series finale – Super Rabbit (5/23/13) (not to be confused with the original 1943 classic of the same name). Daffy’s looking for quick cash, so raiding through Bugs’ stuff for something to sell. Bugs attempts to guard an old knick-knack (a glass carrot) with a tall tale. “I’m not the bunny you think I am. My real name is Kal El. I was born long ago on the planet Krypton.” Daffy stops him cold. “Krypton? That’s Superman’s home planet. I fell for that once, but I’m way too smart to fall for it again.” Bugs qualifies his statement – “That’s ‘Crypton’ with a ‘C’” – and Daffy buys into the tale, hook, line, and sinker. Bugs spins a yarn of his exploits guarding the city of Metropolis – an adventure unique in its presentation, retaining much of the zaniness of the Looney Tunes stars while telling in the background of the action a pretty straightforward Superman story, complete with all the dark backgrounds and elaborate special effects that have become standard to the Warner DC Universe. It succeeds in coming off as the best of both worlds. Bugs has a comic exploit outwitting Marvin the Martian as Braniac (including a visually-inventive scene with Bugs taking pot-shots at Marvin with his own miniaturizing-enlarging ray, until every part of Marvin has eigher expanded gigantically or shrunken substantially. ‘I’m a regular Pablo Picasso”, says Bugs. He next tackles Elmer Fudd as Lex Luthor, eventually blasting him out of his supersuit and leaving him only a pair of striped shorts, and kicking the remains of Luthor’s armor into space. But Elmer informs Bugs that he has just succeeded in launching a radioactively unstable generator within the suit into deep space. The suit turns out to be on collision course with the Phantom Zone in which General Zod (Daffy Duck) and two minions (one his girlfriend, the other a robot) have been imprisoned. The blast frees the prisoners, and Zod and his companions plot the conquest of Earth. Amidst a ticker-tape parade, Bugs’s enjoyment of the side-perks of being a hero is interrupted by Zod’s trio. Battling is work for underlings, so Zod leaves his companions in charge to make short work of Super-Rabbit, who is forced to surrender beneath the foot of Zod’s robot. Zod sets up a palace, complete with huge golden idol of himself, and a chorus of slaves who attempt to compose for Zod a new national anthem (“My Country Tis of Thee” played in a minor key with new lyrics hailing Zod). Bugs meanwhile visits the Fortress of Solitude, where the spirit of his father states he had his defeat coming, as he had softened under the effects of showboating for the attentions of fame rather than fighting for the right. Bugs is advised to learn the adversaries’ weaknesses, and make them his own strengths. Making an entrance at Zod’s palace as reporter Clark Kent, Bugs deduces that Zod’s girlfriend is constantly being put down by him, while the robot is treated by Zod as a brainless infant. Revealing himself for battle, Bugs puts in the right words of flattery to each of the minions in the course of the fray, acquiring friends among Zod’s ranks. He finally confronts Zod polishing his statue, and when Zod orders his cohorts to attack, they step away, leaving Zod to battle alone. An epic confrontation on a Superman scale follows, with laser eye beams cutting buildings in half, vehicles thrown as weapons, and a flying chase through the tunnels of a subway. Bugs finally outmaneuvers Zod upon his emergence from the tunnels, grabbing Zod’s cape from behind and flinging him into his own golden statue. As Zod lies dazed at the foot of his own image, Bugs says, “Hey Doc, kneel before yourself”, then uses his laser vision to cut through the base of the statue. As the statue collapses, Zod, seeing it about to topple, screams “I’m going to hurt me!” Then crash! – and Bugs stands alone. Concluding his story to Daffy, Bugs claims he banished Zod and his minions to another Phantom Zone, then gave up his powers, realizing power corrupts. This is where Daffy suspends his belief in the story – feeling that no one would give up such power and super-goodies – and leaves to hock Bugs’s stuff anyway to finance his date for the evening. The scene changes to a movie theatre, playing “The Mark of Zorro”. Daffy and his date, dressed in what appears to be period attire, decide to save a ridiculously small number of seconds getting back to their car by going down a dark alley. Fans of Batman can see what’s coming a mile away – a Crime Alley accosting by a hoodlum. Who should arrive to save the day but – Bat-Rabbit. The hero hands pearls back to Daffy’s date, while Daffy offers no reward, since he didn’t specifically ask to be saved anyway. As the ducks leave, Bat-Rabbit reveals himself to us as Bugs, delivering in his best impersonation of Kevin Conroy his own signature line, “Ain’t I a stinker?” While I’m usually a fan of Rowan Atkinson in his appearances in person on big or small screen, I’m rather underwhelmed by his “Mr. Bean” animated series. Superhero Bean (2/22/16) is little more than a time-filler, with no actual powers whatsoever, merely chronicling Bean’s costumed attempts to trail a domestic burglar on the rooftops. Not a genuinely funny moment in the whole slow-paced episode. Super-Wacky (Cartoon Network, Wacky Races (revival),10/29/18) tries to pack a lot in, but forgets entirely that the premise of the show is to conduct races – instead devising a far-out plot on the personalities of the show’s characters alone. Peter Perfect rules the roost as the superhero guardian of a city, until one day he faces the challenge of – superhero oversaturation. Suddenly, all the current Wacky Racers (excepting Dastardly and Muttley) have transformed into superheroes too, and want in on a piece of the city’s action. In competition with Petet’s super chin-laser, Penelope Pitstop flies, turns everything she touches pink (as she admits, more of a curse than a power), and carries a radioactive lasso that makes anyone caught in it utter bad puns. I.Q. (junior counterpart to Professor Pat Pending) is half cyborg, with a robotic arm that often acts out of control with a mind of its own. The Gruesome Twosome have bat powers and invisibility. Meanwhile, Dick Dastardly is Wackopolis’s resident super villain, with a head swollen with psychic powers to control minds, and Muttley possesses a sonic snicker that can bring down walls. Dastardly hypnotizes the mayor to outlaw super-heroes, but the racers plot their strategy to bring her out of it. Part of the plan is to round up “the best team of heroes the legal department will let us use on this show”. The open auditions attract an overflow of old Hanna-Barbera stars, including Snagglepuss, Rosie the Robot, Space Ghost, Hong Kong Phooey, Winnie Witch, and Jabberjaw (this on top of a one-shot cameo for Quick Draw McGraw as El Kabong in the opening scene). All the applicants flunk out (Snagglepuss even exiting stage right), leaving the original racers to forge on alone. They head for the mayor’s office, and battle an army of flying Muttley robots (a harken back to Muttley’s rotor tail flying in “Dastardly and Mettley in Their Flying Machines”). Then, taking the battle to Dastardly’s lair (which Peter had a map to all the time), the group, except for Peter, succumb to Dastardly’s mind control, until Peter reminds them of the greater strength of their super-friendship. Muttley carries Dastardly to an escape as the racers break freee of his brainwashing – but Dastardly returns in the final frames of the episode at the helm of a giant town-stomping robo-Muttley. The racers launch into the fray again, and are stopped in a freeze frame for “The End” and a last insertion of a merchandising advertisement for their super products. Snowball, the rebellious rabbit who led a revolution against the human race in 2016‘s The Secret Life of Pets, undergoes a nearly complete personality transformation to keep him in the storyline in The Secret Life of Pets 2 (6/7/19). His new little girl owner is into superhero shows, and dresses him in a miniature mask, suit and cape as “Captain Snowball”. Snowball adapts to the new role, now determined to be the protector of the world rather than its overthrower, and incorporates his love of kung fu moves into the act. A short 2D segment provides the closest to superpowers he demonstrates, including socking a bad guy through the side of several buildings, and an ultrasonic roar. In real life, minus anything but his own speed and fight moves, he becomes involved in a rescue mission to save a rare white tiger who is being abused by a sinister circus owner determined to train him to perform death defying feats. Snowball must outwit a quartet of wolves who serve as guards to keep the tiger in and strangers out (including a humorous chase through various midway attractions), release the tiger from its cage, and attempt to find the tiger a hiding place in the apartments of the big city. Eventually, the whole cast of the franchise are drawn into the action, as the wolves and circus owner close in, and tranquilize the tiger, transporting him back to the circus train. Snowball uses an RC vehicle to catch up with the train, and engages in a battle of fisticuffs with the circus owner’s maniacal monkey, climaxed by shooting the monkey out of a cannon. Snowball and several of the other pets, together with the tiger, gang up on the villain in the engineer’s cab, and the tiger is eventually freed, and finds a new home amongst the flock of felines in the apartment of a neighboring cat lady. Just as Snowball is content and confident in his life as a superhero, his little girl changes his outfit to fit her latest craze – dressing him as a fairy godmother. Snowball surprisingly accepts the role with glee, confident that he can face any new challenge after surviving the last one. (A direct to video short, “Super Gidget”, released on the home editions of the feature, was unavailable for review – anyone with nformation on it is invited to comment below.) DarkBat (8/29/19), from New Looney Tunes, is an interesting character mashup. Hubie and Bertie (together with an unknown fat mouse who seems to be new to the series) run a fruit stand for mice with the spillage from a human fruit stand, trading for cheese as currency. They are set upon by an unusual posse of cats – Sylvester, Claude Cat, and Pete Puma, in what may be their first onscreen meeting. But to the rescue comes the unexpected arrival of a small winged caped crusader – DarkBat. The deep-voiced vigilante, runs the cats a brief merry chase, landing alternately on their “heads, shoulders, knees and toes” in mimic of a children’s game-song to draw stick blows from the other cats upon whoever he lands on, then playing a game of “whack-a-mole” among the produce with Pete, armed with what DarkBat guarantees is a mallet that will only bash bats, but manages to hit only the other cats instead. Darkbat finally tries the mallet himself, smashing Pete on the head, then declaring, “You’re right. Defective.” With some banana peels, DarkBat caises the three cats to slip into a packing crate, which DearkBat nails shut and labels for delivery to Nome, Alaska. Hubie and Bertie thank DarkBat, but inquire as to his true identity. DarkBat is quite eager to share, pulling off the cowl to reveal the most unlikely choice for a superhero among the classic warner toons – Sniffles the Mouse! In his “can’t sop talking” mode, Sniffles babbles on how isn’t it something, that he can put on this costume, and it lets him do all sorts of crazy things. “Pretty cool, huh?” he asks. “It was until you took the mask off”, aays the fat mouse. But Sniffles flies off into the night (interesting that he would choose to become a bat, when a real bat was the cause of his change to talkative personality in The Brave Little Bat in 1941), while the mice comment that there goes another superhero who’s just a little batty. Writers will again be writers, trying to milk a good one-shot idea for extra episodes. Bonjour, DarkBat (8/29/19) pits Sniffles’ super-alias against Blacque Jacque Shellacque. Unfortunately, with the “cat out of the bag”, so to speak, as to DarkBat’s true identity, the element of surprise for an ending is gone, so the episode has to rely entirely on its gag content to justify itself. Actually, it manages to not fare badly on such count, dealing with a war inside Shelacque’s cheese shop when he wrecks rivals Hubie and Bertie’s curbside cheese wagon. A duel sequence uses everything in the shop as weaponry, from French breads to kitchen utensils down to tasting toothpicks. And the dialogue packs in every bad cheese pun the 4 1/2 minutes can handle – including using a high-pressure Brie dispenser to turn Shellacque into “de-brie”, and DarkBat telling Hubie and Bertie that only the Gouda guys win. Not too shabby an effort. Still funny, but becoming formulaic, is a final installment. Smoothie Operator (1/30/20). Same premise as previous episode, different villain. Yosemite Sam shuts down the mice’s smoothie stand to stop competition with his own. More bad puns on fruits and vegetables. Battles with alternating hot and cold ingredients, and a final chase with a jet-propelled motorcycle. A lot of action, but not as original. I’m sure there’s a few I’ve missed along the way. If anyone has any favorites that didn’t receive print space here, your input below is as always appreciated. The holidays (such as they are) are nearly upon us, and next week, it’s time for celebration – as the song goes, “if only in our dreams”. The post Reign of the Supertoons (Part 11) appeared first on . #Garfield #PinkPanther #AnimationTrails #DaffyDuck

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