Veteran TV artist Aaron Springer, long recognized in the industry for his strong cartooning skills, is finally getting his own TV series. Billy Dilley’s Super-Duper Subterranean Summer will premiere on Disney XD in 2017, the network revealed last Friday.
The comedy series follows Billy Dilley, an “eccentric science-obsessed seventh-grader,” and his lab partners Zeke and Marsha, who discover a magical world beneath the Earth’s surface during their summer break. Jessica McKenna (Comedy Bang! Bang!) will voice Billy, Tom Kenny (SpongeBob SquarePants) as Zeke, and Catie Wayne (Animalist) as Marsha. The series is based on a pilot that Disney TV Animation announced in 2014.
Springer first gained attention for his raunchy CalArts student film Baby’s New Formula (1995) which screened in Spike and Mike’s Sick and Twisted Festival of Animation. In the late-1990s, Springer developed his skills at Spumco on projects like A Day in the Life of Ranger Smith, the early online series Weekend Pussy Hunt, and the Bjork music video “I Miss You.” (Disclosure: In the early-2000s, Springer also drew a cover and a few interior comics for a zine I used to publish called Animation Blast.)