Cartoon Jesus Destroys The World
A vintage film clip depicting the son of God’s vengeful return to Earth for Armageddon, during which he will smash cars, blow up buildings, and smite non-believers harshly and painfully. Seeing one of the bible’s most central predictions in animated form, one realizes that Jesus is essentially the American Godzilla:
The Radical 1930s Cartoons Of Syd Hoff
Cartooning legend Syd Hoff wrote comics for the New Yorker for 44 years and illustrated dozens of children’s books. However, under the alias A. Redfield, he also created work with a harder-hitting tone for the Daily Worker and New Masses. Via Phil Nel, a collection of Hoff’s political cartoons, which remain as poignant and relevant as ever, in light of the world we live in today:
Aum Shinrikyo Cult Recruitment Anime
Japan’s Tokyo-based Aum Shinrikyo (”Supreme Truth”) religious cult reached peak notoriety in 1995 when members conducted a string of terrorist attacks on the subway system, releasing sarin gas that killed thirteen people and injured thousands. Police raided the group’s compound and found a massive biological weapons stockpile including anthrax and Ebola cultures and chemicals that could produce enough sarin to kill millions of people.
Before their undoing, the cult used anime videos as their recruitment tool, portraying the secret origins of human life and the heroics of founder/guru Shoko Asahara. Even unsubtitled, they’re a fascinating view:
Mike Huckabee’s 9/11 Cartoon Movie
Curious how the worst terrorist attack in U.S. history will be taught to future generations? Here’s a clue via presidential candidate Huckabee, who’s hawking an educational 9/11 cartoon at $9.95 a pop. No mention of the two wars we entered into in the aftermath or even Osama bin Laden’s stated reason for the attacks (the presence of U.S. troops in Saudi Arabia). Refinery29 writes:
There’s now a 9/11 cartoon movie courtesy of Mike Huckabee, co-founder of Learn Our History, a for-profit company whose mission is to get kids excited and educated about history. The first initiative, an animated DVD series, has flicks on subjects like the American Revolution, and, perhaps more tellingly, “The Reagan Revolution.” The September 11th cartoon really explains, according to the literature, “How the ongoing War on Terror protects Americans at home and American ideals abroad.”
Good Grief, Charlie Brown! Peanutweeter Brings Peanuts Together with Twitter
From Angela Watercutte on WIRED’s Underwire:
Everyone has at least one funny person they follow on Twitter just for the lulz, but sometimes the things they say would be even more laughable if they weren’t constantly spewing from the same avatar.
Peanutweeter changes that. The @Peanutweeter Tumblr blog and Twitter feed fulfill a very simple idea: Matching somewhat random Twitter posts with less-random Peanuts comics. The results are hilarious.
“The site arose from the concept that the amusing and sometimes outrageous tweets out there would be even funnier or sometimes darker if they came from someone that everyone could identify with,” site creator T. Jason Agnello told Wired.com by e-mail.
Are The Smurfs Racist, Sexist Fascists?
Meaghan Murphy writes on Fox News:
Sacre bleu! The Smurfs may not be as innocent as they look.
The tribe of little blue creatures who live peacefully among the mushrooms are “steeped in Stalinism and Nazism,” according to a French sociologist.
“Collective work always focuses on self-sufficiency for food and energy,” Antoine Buéno states in Le Petit Livre Bleu (The Little Blue Book). “The Smurfs do not have private property; their leader is Papa Smurf who shows very authoritarian and paternalistic characteristics.”
Buéno also makes the connection that the little blue men’s biggest enemy, the magician Gargamel, seems to have a Jewish background — citing similarities to the anti-Semitic images of the World War II era.
The French writer also claims that the Smurfs do not just resemble Nazis, but sexist Nazis to boot! Smurfette—traditionally the only woman living in the Smurf’s village — allegedly meets the Aryan ideal of beauty with her blonde hair and refined…
Kartoonz Fer Krist’s Sake . . .
Found these bizarre clips on Youtube . . . from an old RTÉ series called “Give Up Yer Aul Sins”
Pretty amazing in its own way. The narrative content shows a pretty deep familiarity with the characters and plots central to the Christian drama, even if its skimpiness with the gorey brutality of The Passion seems a little naive. I guess I have to keep in mind that this thing was produced by foreigners, so I shouldn’t expect them to demonstrate the sublte mastery of an American artiste like Mel Gibson…
Psychedelic Anti-Marijuana PSA
“It’s the hula-hoop of the jet generation.”
Out of several decades worth of iconic anti-marijuana television scare-verts, my favorite is this vintage American Medical Association PSA, which appears to have definitely been made by animators who were high on something.
Episodes Of ‘The Simpsons’ To Be Edited Following Japanese Nuclear Crisis
Via Entertainment Weekly:
Japan’s nuclear power plant crisis is no laughing matter in Springfield: Networks in several European countries are reportedly reviewing episodes of “The Simpsons” for any “unsuitable” references to nuclear disaster.
An Austrian network has apparently pulled two eps, 1992’s “Marge Gets a Job” and 2005’s “On a Clear Day I Can’t See My Sister,” which include jokes about radiation poisoning and nuclear meltdowns, respectively.
Al Jean — exec producer of the animated Fox comedy featuring inept family man/nuclear power plant worker Homer Simpson — tells EW that he can appreciate the concern.
“We have 480 episodes, and if there are a few that they don’t want to air for awhile in light of the terrible thing going on, I completely understand that,” says Jean, citing the previous example of the 1997 episode “Homer Versus the City of New York” that was pulled after 9/11 because it included key scenes at the…
The ‘Nuclear Boy’ Viral Video Sensation From Japan
For those of you who haven’t already seen this video, currently making the rounds of weirdness aggregation sites everywhere, here’s the Japanese cartoon that explains the Fukushima nuclear reactor crisis to children. Apparently Kazuhiko Hachiya’s “Nuclear Boy” is actually playing on national TV in Japan.
The Lost Ads of “A Charlie Brown Christmas” Of Yesteryear
The first Peanuts TV special followed six years of animated advertisements selling Ford motor cars, and originally, even “A Charlie Brown Christmas” featured two scenes advertising Coca-Cola!
One of the deleted scenes still appears in a YouTube video, which shows Snoopy tossing Linus into a sign which reads “Danger.” (According to Wikipedia, that sign originally read: “Coca-Cola” — and the hymn at the end of the program was interrupted by a voice-over thanking “the people in your town who bottle Coca Cola.”)
Maybe “A Charlie Brown Christmas” was ultimately the cartoonist’s own silent protest against the commercialization of his work…
‘Demon Squirrel’ Stars In New Russian Anti-Alcoholism Campaign (Video)
Man, this rodent needs to lay off the sauce. Via BBC News:
A Russian cartoon on alcoholism featuring a red-eyed “demon squirrel” with “the shakes” has had more than a million views on YouTube.
The squirrel rants about “chasing spiders up the walls” with a friend, who then murders his wife. The public information ad has created a buzz word, “kudyapliki” — imaginary creatures the squirrel and his friend want to hunt during their binge. “Are you on the booze yourself?” he asks at the end. “I’ll be seeing you.”
The Cartoon Adventures Of Vladimir Putin
My favorite new cartoon is Vladimir Putin Action Comics, about the in-office adventures of the former president and current prime minister of Russia. The ultimate lesson is that within the exterior of a hard, authoritarian man lies a soft, fuzzy center.
Famous TV Cartoon Characters As Skeletons
Artist Michael Paulus has skeletal versions he created of 22 cartoon icons on his website:
Writes Michael Paulus:
Animation was the format of choice for children’s television in the 1960s, a decade in which children’s programming became almost entirely animated. Growing up in that period, I tended to take for granted the distortions and strange bodies of these entities.These Icons are usually grotesquely distorted from the human form from which they derive.
I decided to take a select few of these popular characters and render their skeletal systems as I imagine they might resemble if one truly had eye sockets half the size of its head, or fingerless-hands, or feet comprising 60% of its body mass.
These characters have become conventions that are set, defined, and well-known personas in our culture. Being that they are so commonplace and accepted as existing I thought I would dissect them like science does to all living objects —…
Donald Duck Meets Glenn Beck
Artist Jonathan McIntosh created a bitingly satiric Donald Duck cartoon remix by weaving together dozens of classic Disney cartoons to tell the story of an unemployed, frustrated Donald Duck who finds comfort in the radio program of one Glenn Beck.
Will Donald’s feelings of disenfranchisement lead him to be persuaded by his radio’s increasingly paranoid and xenophobic rhetoric?
Tea Party Comics
Editorial cartoonist Ward Sutton gave the Boston Globe’s comics page a tea-party-friendly makeover; “There’s a growing concern among a certain segment of the country that the comics page is out of step with mainstream values.” Check out the patriotic versions of strips such as Calvin and Hobbes:
Everybody Draw Muhammad Day! Threat
"Everybody Draw Muhammad Day!" cartoon by Molly Norris
“Everybody Draw Muhammad Day” is a satirical cartoon that Molly Norris had drawn in response to the censorship of South Park’s episode featuring Muhammad.
With constant threats sent to artists who have depicted images of Muhammad, Norris is no exception. Anwar al-Awlaki ranted in Inspire, an English-language Al Queda magazine, about the potentially fatal results if such artists continue to draw blasphemous caricatures.
He has most recently added Norris to hit list. The NY Daily News details:
A CHARISMATIC terror leader linked to the botched Times Square car bomb has placed the Seattle cartoonist who launched “Everybody Draw Muhammad Day” on an execution hit list.
Yemeni-American cleric Anwar al-Awlaki — the radical who has also been cited as inspiring the Fort Hood, Texas, massacre and the plot by two New Jersey men to kill US soldiers — singled out artist Molly Norris as a “prime target,” saying her…
EyePhone (iPhone Parody) “Mysteriously” Disappears From Online Clips of ‘Futurama’
The Wrath of Steve Jobs! Laura June writes on Endgadget:
Remember how awesome and clever Futurama was? Well, if you missed it, your chances to see it in its original form might be slowly dwindling. It seems that Comedy Central has wiped out the reference in the dialogue to the “EyePhone 2.0.”
So, while we don’t have any conspiracy theories brewing about what happened, it’s a pretty odd thing to scrub, and we figure there are two possibilities: either Comedy Central is trying to cover their on this one, or they got a late night email from … someone.
