The Home of Steven Barnes
Author, Teacher, Screenwriter


Wednesday, April 07, 2010

Met with my animation agents. Pitched four ideas. They liked three of 'em. Nice. What were your all-time favorite cartoons?

14 comments:

Shady_Grady said...

Favorite cartoons were "Underdog", "Rocky and Bullwinkle Show", "Looney Tunes" and "Thor".

Mark Jones said...

Johnny Quest, baby! Okay, yeah, the animation was incredibly cheap and limited, and they had like three voice actors total...but man!

Pirates! Lasers! Secret bases! Mummies on the rampage! Dinosaurs! ("Kill, Turu, kill!") Rocket ships! Submarines! Hover vehicles! Invisible Monsters! Robot spies! Evil Geniuses! Pulp Action Out The Yin-Yang! It was glorious.

I hated Bandit with a white-hot passion (even as a young kid I hated the "comic relief" crap), but otherwise I love that show even now.

Lobo said...

Robotech.

It was the first cartoon I saw that treated it's audience like adults and told a complex, coherent story.

I still haven't seen anything else like it.

Although Fist of the North Star is just plain fun.

Marco said...

If you don't count "The Incredibles" or the first five minutes of "Up," I'd have to choose the classic Warner Brothers Buggs Bunny cartoons as The Best. The part of "Hillbilly Hare" in which Buggs plays the fiddle for two square-dancing hillbillies is probably my single favorite bit of funny cartooning.

Marco

Nancy Lebovitz said...

Mighty Mouse was my top favorite. Others I liked were Rocky and Bullwinkle (some sections) and Tom Terrific.

Anonymous said...

Gargoyles, best cartoon I ever saw.

Marty S said...

Bugs Bunny and Tom & Jerry

Steven Barnes said...

Loved Jonny Quest. First cartoon with a brown-skinned kid, even if he was Indian. The gay subtext on the show is just hysterical to watch now, but I sure never caught it first tiem around...

Pagan Topologist said...

I thought I had already posted this, but maybe not; I can't find it.

My all time favourite animated work was "Peter Pan". Of course, I saw it when I was about ten years old; I might well feel differently now. The only two others that even come close were "Who Framed Roger Rabbit" and "Shrek."

Ethiopian_Infidel said...

My second favorite cartoon's the early 70's Star Trek Animated (STA). IMHO, STA conveyed the wonders of space while espousing humanistic and rational values (most rare for Saturday morning fare!). The series also featured scripts in Larry Niven and other accomplished science fiction writers.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M2P5MUXTQD8


My all-time favorite cartoon's Thundarr The Barbarian. Once you get past the obvious Star Wars and Conan ripoffs (Sunsword cum lightsabre, Mok cum Wookie, etc), you're treated to an fabulous action feast in an exotic, richly imaged world. Apart from the detailed and dark "broken Moon" vistas, the Thundarr scripts were often well written, sometimes even mining classics like The Odyssey or Macbeth. Plus the series was ahead of its time racially, featuring a smoking sexy brown heroine, Princess Ariel, during the otherwise lily-white 80's cartoon lineup.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qF_x8wCQedw&feature=related

suzanne said...

the ones I posted
never made it to virtual print
here they are again

Heckle and Jeckle
Roadrunner
The Incredibles
and the newly out
secret of kells
looks like it'll be in this list
after I see it

8020 said...

As a kid:
The Smurfs or the Star Wars C3PO/R2D2 cartoon
As an adult:
Batman of the Future (or any of the other Timmverse DC cartoons)

All these shows were very well scripted and had a lot of heart. IIRC the Star Wars cartoon regularly had inter-racial couples - quite forward looking for an eighties cartoon - and as the product of one myself it made me feel a little less odd.

eric said...

Sealab 2020
Johnny Quest
Skyhawks

I remember one Saturday morning when they preempted my morning cartoons for the Watergate hearings. I was _soooo_ pissed.

Anonymous said...

I loved looney tunes, rocky and bullwinkle, and jonny quest, actually most of what other have mentioned. i would also include the pink panther cartoons and hong kong phooey!