Why we love Bizarro.

In case you missed our earlier contest, here’s another brain teaser courtesy of our friends from Mental Floss. Can you tell the difference between these recent news stories and the plots from Scooby Doo? Take this quiz and test your knowlege. Sorry, no prizes for correct answers.

The winners of the Fleet Street Scandal book are David White and Cabel Sasser.

Don’t worry if you didn’t win a book. The book can still be ordered online at FleetStreetScandal.com,and Kevin and Chris will also be at the San Diego Comic-Con this week (Table E-4) where they’ll be selling the book, as well as lots of prints, including new ones like the pieces below:

For today’s contest, we’re giving away TWO signed copies of the book Fleet Street Scandal, a 48-page hardcover book collecting the digital artwork of Kevin Dart and Chris Turnham. It’s rare to find an artistic duo wherein both are equally talented, but Kevin and Chris each bring the goods to the table. In a blog post last year, I wondered why they weren’t working more regularly on animation entertainment projects. Well since then, Chris has done freelance work for Laika, and Kevin is currently doing an art internship at Pixar. I expect we’ll be seeing a lot more animation contributions from them in the future, but until then, be sure to check out the dazzling collection of illustration work they’ve compiled in Fleet Street Scandal.

For this contest, provide the answer to the following question in the COMMENTS section of this post. Instead of our usual procedure of choosing the first two correct answers, we will instead randomly choose two winners from all your correct answers posted between now and 3:15pm. If you have won anything from the Brew recently, please do not enter again. Here’s the the question:

Kevin and Chris came up with the name Fleet Street Scandal while looking through the London edition of a Czech artist’s series of worldly childrens’ books. What is the artist’s name?

CONTEST IS OVER! WINNERS WILL BE ANNOUNCED SOON. THE CORRECT ANSWER WAS MIROSLAV SASEK. THANKS FOR PLAYING

I just got word that Alexander Tatarski, an internationally known and praised animator, has passed away. He died yesterday at age 57.

Tatarski (spelled various ways, aka Aleksandr Tatarskii) was an animation producer, director and screenwriter and was managing director of Pilot Animation Studios, the first privately owned animation studio in Russia (which he co-founded with Igor Kovalyov). The studio is the country’s biggest producer of animation as well as home to a world-renowned school for animators.

His claymation opening for the Russian show “Good Night, Kids” has been airing for more than twenty-five years. He also directed several episodes of Cartoon Network’s Mike Lu and Og.

Here’s one of his early colaborations with Kovalyov, The Investigation is Held by the Koloboks:

(Thanks, Alexey Morozov)

Crush the Screamin’ Beans.

Okay, I admit it. I’m excited about seeing The Simpsons Movie. But why are they opening it on the same weekend as the San Diego Comic Con? Over 100,000 first day ticket sales will be busy at the Con buying comics or attending Mark Evanier’s panels. I predict The Simpsons Movie will have a helluva Monday night box office gross, when all the fans get home from San Diego.

In the meantime, I think this is the first official review of the film. It was posted today by the London Times - and it’s very positive.

We’ve posted other swipes from Preston Blair before (here, here, here and here) but this one is the mother of them all!

Steve Stanchfield and Mary Dixon spotted this arcade attraction at the Fowlerville Family Fair (in Fowlerville, Michigan) and it blew their minds:

We were greeted first by a great array of sideshow freaks, including a little guy named ‘Poobaa’ who the barker proclaimed as being the last living Muchkin from the Wizard of oz alive (he was 9 at the time). Poor Poobaa was made to swallow fire over and over to a bored looking crowd of locals.

Then, turning the corner, I see THIS. I’ve seen a lot of things before, but this is far, far beyond the normal Blair ripoff; it’s almost an outsider art homage! I took a bunch of pictures (forgive my not quite perfect alignment of the whole thing…). I have more if you want, but I think these tell the story pretty well. This is a walk though carnival attraction. I didn’t go inside, but I bet I would have seen Red in progression, the policeman and maybe even the hippos from Fantasia…

(Click on pictures above and below to see full sized images)