Gary Panter (designer of Pee Wee’s Playhouse) has a new book from PictureBox Inc. Panter is doing a book tour this month that might be of interest to Cartoon Brew readers, including a show in Chicago where he’s introduced by Chris Ware and an LA signing introduced by Matt Groening.

Note these dates:
Saturday, May 10th, Gary Panter at PictureBox Departmental Store, 121 3rd St. in Brooklyn NY.

Saturday May 24th at 1 pm, introduced by Chris Ware at the Museum of Contemporary Art, 220 E. Chicago Ave., Chicago, IL.

Tuesday May 27th, 2008 at 7:30 pm Lecture and Slideshow, at Skylight Books, introduced by Matt Groening, 1818 N. Vermont Ave., Los Angeles, CA.

For a complete list of other appearences including San Francisco, Texas, New York, Mexico, click here.

(Thanks, Hiland Hall)

Recently I became curious to find out what is the most viewed original piece of animation on YouTube. The answer turned out to be a bit of a surprise: Charlie the Unicorn. The original posting of the short has nearly 23 million views, while another copy of the short is approaching 9 million views. There are dozens of other copies of the film floating around YouTube, so it’s safe to say that Charlie the Unicorn now has well over 32 million views on the video sharing site.

Anyway the reason I mention all this is that the creator, Jason Steele, recently unveiled the long-awaited followup Charlie the Unicorn 2 (posted below). In less than a month, the video has garnered nearly 1.5 million views on YouTube. Jason also has a website Filmcow.com that offers hi-res QuickTimes of the shorts and an online store selling Charlie merchandise.

The two Charlie the Unicorn shorts are firmly rooted in the contemporary strain of nonsensical non sequitur humor. Sometimes this type of humor works (Pen Ward’s Adventure Time) and most of the time it doesn’t (Family Guy, almost everything on “Adult Swim”). In the case of Charlie the Unicorn, I have to concede that the humor works nicely, and the clumsy animation only heightens the effect. I wasn’t expecting this short to be the most viewed original animation on YouTube, but looking at the success of Charlie can perhaps offer some clues about the type of cartoons that resonate with today’s online animation audiences.

For those of you who think Beverly Hills Chihuahua will be the worst Disney CGI film of the year… submitted for your approval, Roadside Romeo:

Admittedly this Bollywood knock-off of Lady and the Tramp will only be released in India (on October 24th), but it’s still a Disney film. Oh, and check out the second teaser trailer for more furry-fan goodness. It’s a small world, after all…

A new exhibit opening at the Met today, entitled “Superheroes: Fashion and Fantasy,” is dedicated to exploring the “symbolic and metaphorical associations between fashion and the superhero”:

Featuring movie costumes, avant-garde haute couture, and high-performance sportswear, it reveals how the superhero serves as the ultimate metaphor for fashion and its ability to empower and transform the human body. Objects are organized thematically around particular superheroes, whose movie costumes and superpowers are catalysts for the discussion of key concepts of superheroism and their expression in fashion.

The exhibit is accompanied by a visually striking catalog designed by Abbott Miller. The Pentagram blog offers a preview of the book.

It’s been interesting to watch the convergence of fashion and comics over the past few years. While fashion designers are looking towards superhero comics for inspiration, comic artists and illustrators are jumping boldly into the world of fashion design, with notable examples including Paul Pope’s recent work for DKNY and James Jean’s designs for Prada.

I remember this site from a few years back and it’s now back online in blog form. The Journal of Cartoon Over-Analyzations doesn’t just analyze cartoons, it over-analyzes them and discovers hidden subtexts to cartoon characters that weren’t evident to even the creators themselves. A lot of it is tongue-in-cheek and seemingly designed to make fun of the pseudo-scholarly dissertations that so many academics have written about cartoons in recent times. Topics include: “My Little Pony is a lesbian-feminist separatist colony,” “Alchemical Symbolism in Smurfs,” and “Chromatic Sexism and Animated Felines.”

As I admitted in a post below, I’ve always been a fan of the original 60s anime of Speed Racer. One of my proudest moments came in the early 1990s, when I was co-running Streamline Pictures, and I had the opportunity to concoct my own Speed Racer “movie”.

My business partner Carl Macek had been acquainted with the Rocknowski’s (John and Jim), a father and son, who represented the U.S. rights to the Speed Racer property (I was never sure if they owned the rights outright or managed them on behalf of Tatsunoko studios). One day in 1992, Carl came into the office and told me we had the rights to make a Speed Racer movie - and handed it over to me to create something we could release theatrically. The good news is that the Rocknowski’s gave the old show to MTV to rerun - and it was suddenly a retro hit. The other good news was that I found out that the original series was shot in 35mm (many early anime series were shot in 16mm). MTV was running old, fading 16mm copies… the movie I would create would look pretty amazing in full color and 35mm clarity.

I decided I would make a theatrical “event” by creating an extra long Speed Racer TV show that the college crowd could either watch seriously or goof on, but at least it would be fun. I chose The Car Hater because it explains the gimmicks of the Mach 5 and is a particularly ridiculous episode, and and the Race Against The Mammoth Car as it was a particular favorite from my Channel 11 (WPIX) formative years. I threw in a Colonel Bleep cartoon to bridge the episodes and inserted several vintage animated commercials (from Playhouse Pictures). Rummaging the Rocknowski’s film vault I found the original uncut Mach Go Go Go opening animation and incorporated that into the beginning of the film, and left in all the additional violence I found in the uncut 35mm masters I got from Japan.

We called the theatrical feature, The Speed Racer Show and held our world premiere at the Nuart Theatre in West Los Angeles. That’s me, above, in front of the one sheet I had “wild posted” all over L.A. (click here to see the full image). The Rocknowski’s brought the original voices (U.S. dub), Peter Fernandez and Corrine Orr, out from New York and they did some local radio (KROQ) and TV (KTLA Morning News) and appeared at the opening night in person. Our first night was a smash, with lines around the block. Radio D.J. Richard Blade (from KROQ) was the M.C. of our first show and interviewed Corrine and Peter on stage. We partied at a local hotel afterward. Next to introducing Katsuhiro Otomo at the New York opening of Akira, this was my favorite moment of the entire Streamline Pictures experience.

The “film” I created was later sold to home video (the title changed to Speed Racer: The Movie). The poster, however, had an afterlife. It was used as a set decoration on the first episode (the pilot) of Friends. It’s prominently featured on the wall of Ross’ new apartment. In fact, it’s the only thing in his apartment (That’s Chandler, below, standing in front of it in the frame grab below - a frame from a hebrew subtitled clip on YouTube. If anyone has a better frame grab, please send it to me).

So that was my only professional involvement with Speed Racer. I had a great time, met many great people — and I wish the Rocknowski’s, and the Wachowski’s, all the best with their future efforts.

There is nothing particularly special about the two Kelloggs’ Froot Loops commercials posted below, except that my colleague Leslie Cabarga designed and painted the backgrounds in them.

I had asked Leslie, best known for his underground comics, The Fleischer Story, his illustration work and font design, if he ever made an animated cartoon. He handed me a fading 16mm reel with these commercials. He said they were produced in San Francisco, at Jeff Hale’s studio Imagination Inc. in 1975, about the same time The Fleischer Story was published. Leslie recalls Rudy Zamora Jr. being the director. This was his only professional work in animation.

And yes, that’s Paul Frees as the voice of Toucan Sam.

The Wachowski Brothers Speed Racer movie opens this week. I hope the new film is as much fun as the video below. In it, Speed Racer goes psycho. Brew reader John Kearns created it using only footage and soundtrack from the original Tatsunoko cartoon.

I love the original series. It’s one of my guilty pleasures. SciFiJapan.com has just post a number of excellent SPEED RACER reference pieces well worth reading, and bookmarking.

The first one is nice piece on the creation of the Tatsunoko studio and the origins of the Speed Racer character. The second post is a concise overview of the series, characters and the Mach 5. Read these and you’ll be all up to speed (pun intended).

(Thanks, John Cassidy)