BREW Co-editor Jerry Beck has two more comic con highlights to plug:#1 Wonderful World of Animation Art gallery (booth #215) along with Clampett Studio Collections will welcome the top voice talents from the popular Batman, Justice League of America, and Teen Titan cartoon series on Saturday July 24th, from 1:30-3:30pm for an exclusive two-hour authorized signing event. Scheduled to attend are ADRIENNE BARBEAU (Catwoman), KEVIN CONROY (Batman), SUSAN EISENBERG, (Wonder Woman), PHIL LAMARR (Green Lantern), SCOTT MENVILLE (Robin), GEORGE NEWBERN (Superman), TARA STRONG (Batgirl) and NICHOLLE TOM (Supergirl).#2 SpongeBob SquarePants writer and voice of Plankton and Larry Lobster, Mr. Lawrence, will sign cels on Sun. July 25th from 11:00 -12:30 PM at a special Nickelodeon booth (check with booth #215 for details).Needless to say, there are literally too many things of interest for fans of animation, comic books and motion pictures at this mega-event. My head is already spinning…

The producers sent some images from their new Comedy Central series, DRAWN TOGETHER, which will be previewing at the San Diego Comic Con on Thursday. Go here for an exclusive first look at some images of the series and the main characters.

The more things change, the more they remain the same.Back in the 1970s, animation fans waited impatiently, for many long tortuous months, for a new edition of Mike Barriers FUNNYWORLD. Today with the internet, we have the advantage of being able to read Barrier’s articles and opinions online at anytime. But now we have to wait several months for Mike to update his website.Well Mike updated it today. He’s just back from a trip to Europe with observations on Disneyland Paris, additional corrections to his Carl Barks research, and a nice letter from Steve Worth about Art Babbit.Good to have you back Mike!

Two more events of interest have been brought to our attention:DreamWorks Animation will have a booth (#4321) which will screen first-look footage from “Shark Tale,” “Father of the Pride,” “Madagascar,” “The Wallace and Gromit Movie,” and “Ghost in the Shell 2: Innocence.” Representatives from DreamWorks will also be doing mini portfolio reviews and taking reels from 10:00AM to 12:00PM and from 2:00PM to 4:00PM on both Friday, July 23rd and Saturday, July 24th in Comic-Con’s Portfolio Review Area.On Thursday (7/22) at 4:30-5:30 in Room 6AB, a panel and preview of Comedy Central’s Drawn Together an animated “reality” series tells the “true story of eight diverse cartoon characters from all over the animated universe who live together under the same roof and have their lives taped”. Matt Silverstein, Dave Jeser, and Pete Avanzino will be on the panel. It sounds like a fun series, with characters such as “Captain Hero,” a Saturday morning super hero of the 70′s; “Clara,” a naive fairy-tale princess; “Toot,” a black & white heart throb from the 20′s; and “Spanky Ham,” a foul-mouthed Internet download pig.San Diego Comic Con

FOX has just scheduled the all-new half-hour CGI special “Popeye’s Voyage: The Quest for Pappy” for telecast on Sunday, Dec. 19. King Features has placed all it’s bets on this 3-D TV-DVD special to renew the public’s interest in its Popeye franchise.If they only understood that if they allowed the re-release of the original Paramount classic cartoons, the public would re-discover the original charm of the animated characters – a charm that made Popeye a sensation in the 1930s and again in the late 1950s.For those of you want to see how Popeye should be animated, here’s some eye candy for ya: A group of original pencil animation drawings from the Max Fleischer Popeye cartoon SOCK-A-BYE BABY (1934) have been collected and are flashed sequentially at this website.

Not since Orson Welles performed the voice of a planet (in the 1986 animated feature Transformers: The Movie) has an actors final performance been so embarrassing.Shortly before his recent passing, Marlon Brando voiced Mrs. Sour (see image at right) in BIG BUG MAN – an absolutely awful-looking hand drawn animated film about a candy factory worker (Brendan Fraser) who gets superpowers after insects bite him, set for release in 2006. Apparently Brando did it wearing a blond wig and a dress, with full makeup and white gloves, according to writer/co-director Bob Bendetson. “I guess it was part of his Method training or something,” Bendetson said.See a CNN report on this film here (Quicktime required) or read more about it here.

The San Diego Comic Con is so huge (80,000+ people expected this year), so overwhelming, so impossible to meet up with friends that I’m posting the list a panels I will try to attend so you can find me if you want…I will be hanging my hat on the convention floor at the Asifa-Hollywood table which is booth 5374 (across from the TokyoPop display). I cannot guarantee that I’ll stick to this schedule, but based on the advance programming scheduled posted on the comic con website – here’s what I hope to see:THURSDAY
2:30 GOLDEN & SILVER AGE PANEL – Room 8
3:00 COMIC CON’S 35th YEAR – Room 1B or…
3:00 – FREAKS & GEEKS REUNION – Room 6ab
4:40 – CFQ SUMMER MOVIE PREVIEW Room 6CDEF
6:00 – HISTORY OF U.S. ANIME – Room 7FRIDAY
11:00 – JACK ADLER – Room 8
1:00 – I’m interviewing SID JACOBSON – Room 3
1:00 – CHUCK McCANN – Room 5ab (I’m pissed I will miss the first hour of this…)
2:30 – THE INCREDIBLES & BRAD BIRD – Room 20
3:00 – CARTOON NETWORK PREVIEW – Room 6ab
4:00 – BOB CLAMPETT TRIBUTE (I’m on the panel) – Room 8
6:00 – TOM SITO on ANIMATION STRIKES – Room 7b
6:00 – THE INKWELL (new fanboy TV show) Room 9
9:00 – LADY DEATH screening (I predict I will skip this)SATURDAY
12:30 – Fred Ladd & GIGANTOR – Room 2
3:00 – SKY CAPTAIN & TEAM AMERICA preview (two movies I’m dying to see) – Hall H
5:30 – CARTOON NETWORK ADULT SWIM PANEL – Room 6ab
6:00 – ANIMATION DEVELOPMENT PANEL Room 2
8:30 – WORST CARTOON EVER (My screening!) – Room 6ab
10:00 – HAIR HIGH (Bill Plympton’s latest film) – Room 6abSUNDAY
Before I leave, I’ll check out the dealers room in the morning and juggle these:
1:00 – JOHNNY DC (DC’s kids comics panel) – Room 3
1:00 – JOSS WHEDON (Buffy creator) – Room 20
1:30 – TEACHER’S PET PANEL (Gary Baseman and co.) – Room 5ab
These panels are just the tip of the iceberg, and I reserve the right to change my mind and just sit in room 8 or 6AB the entire con. I’m already exhausted! Hope to see you there!

Leslie Cabarga wrote THE FLESICHER STORY. Leslie Carbarga designs great fonts. (In fact he designed the Cartoon Brew logo above)And now you can buy a button to celebrate Leslie Cabarga – Dennis Kitchen has unearthed his 1975 series of “Famous Cartoonists” pinback buttons and put them back for sale online. Others in the series includes Grim Natwick, R. Crumb, Sergio Aragones, Harvey Kurtzman, Carl Barks, and Hugh Hefner. There is a total of 54 different buttons! Collect them all!

Be afraid. Be very afraid.A Hello Kitty robot is going on sale in November. Equipped with an ultra-sound sensor and camera, the mechanical Kitty can tell if anybody is approaching. It can call a person’s name and start chatting by sorting 20,000 patterns of pre-registered conversations and picking phrases it feels are best suited to the occasion. They hope to sell 2,000 robot cats this year, priced at around 400,000 yen (3,710 dollars), by mainly targeting women in their 30s who are among the cat’s biggest fans. (link via Boing Boing)

If I could be one person in Hollywood history, I think I’d like to be Sammy McKim.Who? Sam McKim! He spent his childhood on the backlots of Republic and Columbia Pictures appearing in two dozen B-Westerns (with Charles Starret, Gene Autry and Ray “Crash” Corrigan) and four serials (including The Lone Ranger and Dick Tracy’s G-Men). After the war he pursued his love of art and became a artist for the Disney studio – mainly as one of the Imagineers, for 32 years (his conceptual paintings are among the most influential, and beautiful, for the Disney theme parks).What a career! Sadly, as Jim Hill notes today, McKim has passed away. I had my one and only chance to meet him earlier this year at Bill Justice’s birthday party. I asked him a lot of questions about making the serials… and what he thought about his boss, Walt Disney. He was in great spirits and I noted that looked like a double for Donald Rumsfeld (photo here)! But what a great guy.

Our buddy Mike Van Eaton at the wonderful Van Eaton Gallery on Ventura Blvd in Sherman Oaks, California recently came up with this wonderful piece of animation history: a 1933 Charles Mintz studio Christmas Card featuring photos of the entire staff!Check it out by clicking here! If you look close you’ll see the likes of Ed Benedict, Art Davis, Joe DeNat, Emery Hawkins and many other famous names – as well as the inkers, painters, producers and support staff. What a treasure this is! Thanks for sharing this with us, Mike.

The future of Disney animation? You decide: Click Here!(Thanks for “Rzetlin” on Animation Nation for the link)

Every two years the UCLA Film and Television Archives opens it’s vaults and presents it’s latest restorations to the public in a gala program called “The Festival Of Preservation”. The 12th edition of this incredible film series runs from July 22nd through August 21st, mainly at the James Bridges theatre in Melnitz Hall on the UCLA Campus.Relevant to us, however, is the bounty of restored animation showcased during the festival. Opening night (7/22) “Paths Of Glory”will preceeded by a restored version of George Pal’s anti-war Puppetoon TULIPS SHALL GROW (1942). On the following Sunday night (7/25) a restoration of the Max Fleischer Color Classic A CARTUNE PORTRAIT (1937) will screen preceeeding “Penny Serenade”.A previously lost Toonerville Trolley cartoon, TOONERVILLE’S BOOZEM FRIENDS (1921), will preceed a double bill “The Roaring Road” and Harold Lloyd’s A Sailor-Made Man.But the big day for us animation historians is Sunday August 1st at 2pm: A TREASURY OF SILENT ANIMATION. This program will include rare animation by Hugh Harman and Ub Iwerks, Earl Hurd and Lyman Howe, and “lost” subjects by pioneers Emile Cohl and Max Fleischer as well as surviving fragments by Paul Terry and J. Stuart Blackton. A partial list of the program includes:

• THEATRE DE HULA HULA (1917)
• LES METAMORPHOSES COMIQUES (1912) Directed by Emile Cohl
• INDOOR SPORTS (1921) Animation: William C. Nolan.
• JOYS AND GLOOMS (1921) Animation: John C. Terry.
• FELIX THE CAT WEATHERS THE WEATHER (1926)
• SICK CYLINDERS (1926) An “Oswald the Lucky Rabbit” cartoon.
• THE WANDERING TOY (1928) “Lyman H. Howe’s Hodge-Podge.”
• JIMMY GETS THE PENNANT (1917)
• KOKO PACKS UP (1925) Directed by Dave Fleischer
• DEEP SEA DIVING (1925) Red Seal Pictures.
• ANIMATED HAIR CARTOON, NO. 21 (1927) Directed by Sid Marcus.
• A MODERN MOTHER GOOSE (1924) Issue No. 1 of the Fleischer “Funshop” series.
• KOKO’S QUEST(1927) Directed by Dave Fleischer.• And surviving segments from films known and unknown, including early Vitagraph subjects, “Bobby Bumps,” “Aesop’s Film Fables,” “Mutt and Jeff” and other cartoon series.

This program is presented by Hugh M. Hefner and introduced by UCLA Archivist Jere Guldin.Do not miss this event! The live action films ain’t bad either. Check out the entire schedule HERE.

Reason #432 Why we love ebay…Who knew that Frank Moser – partner of Paul Terry from the early 1920s to the mid 1930s – was an artist known for his Hudson River landscape paintings? And who knew a guy that drew Farmer Alfalfa like this (at left) could paint like that (at right)? Somebody is selling an original oil painting on canvas of Frank Moser, painted by Moser himself – and signed on back – on ebay. What a find! What a mouse! What an absolute must for a Terrytoon completist! You have until Saturday to bid on this animation oddity here on ebay.If a lucky Brew reader gets it, let us know.
(Thanks to Mark Mayerson for the link)