Welcome to Ectomo’s 33rd Mostly-Weekly Saturday Morning Cartoons Show. Today we present to you a smorgasbord of delectable animated dishes; a smattering of drama, horror, humor, and vintage erotica served up steaming hot for your enjoyment. So sit back, relax, and prepare to have you senses assaulted with ‘toonage!.
• Don Hertzfeldt. welcomes you to the show!
• Transformers: “”More Than Meets the Eye Parts 1-3″. Over an hour of thinly veiled toy commercials masquerading as a children’s cartoon. Learn how the Autobots and the Decepticons came to Earth and which plastic and die-cast metal action figure to beg for! Seriously though, while the cartoon doesn’t hold up particularly well and while it is just a glorified toy commercial, I still can’t shake my love for Transformers.
• Comedian Louis C.K. uses animation to explore some of his father issues.
• Eveready Harton in Buried Treasure: A piece of animation history; the first pornographic cartoon. Rumor is that it was made for a private party in honor of the great Windsor McKay and that such visionaries as Max Fleischer and the Mutt and Jeff studio were involved.
• The Real Ghostbusters: “The Boogieman Cometh”. One of my favorite episodes of this show, the design for the Boogieman is just brilliant, his oversized head, replete with glass-shard like teeth, and cloven hooves makes for a great image.
• Intermission, by Don Hertzfeldt.
• Welcome To Eltingville: “Bring me the Head of Boba Fett”. The first and only episode of this cartoon based on Evan Dorkin’s Eisner-Award-winning “Eltingville Comic-Book, Science-Fiction, Fantasy, Horror, and Role-Playing Club” published in the pages of Dork. Featuring four gentleman — Bill Dickey, Josh Levy, Pete DiNunzio, and Jerry Stokes — who are friends of a fashion, but geeks to the fullest. In this episode a battle erupts over the ownership of a Boba Fett figurine and hilarity thus ensues. Cameo by MC Chris, which I’m pretty sure was a prerequisite for [adult swim] cartoons for a while.
• Paranoia Agent: “The Holy Warrior”. Detectives Ikari and Maniwa interrogate Lil’ Slugger who confuses his realities and believes that the world around him is a medieval-style RPG while his quest is to defeat the evil Gouma who possesses other people to fight. Ikari and Maniwa follows Lil’ Slugger through his “journey” and see that it does coincide with all of the attacks — all except for Tsukiko Sagi. However, Lil’ Slugger points the detectives to where the old lady is who may posses the truth.
Wendy and Richard Pini, creators of long-running indy comic series Elfquest, are making the whole caboodle available free of charge at their website. New issues will be posted weekly until 30 years’ worth is online.
Comment from BoingBoing and Metafilter remind us why this is one of the best comics you’ve never heard of, but here’s a quick primer on why it rules.
• With Dave Sim’s Cerebus, it was among the first self-published comics to make it big, booting down the door for new talent the nation over. Its success as a graphic novel in mainstream bookstores helped infect the American mainstream with a European-esque appreciation for comics. Women actually read this. Women.
• Wendy Pini’s art is a melting pot of comics, manga and classical illustration. And she’s been at it since before most people had even heard of manga…
• The feral, omnisexual, hallucinogen-guzzling protagonists aren’t Tolkien-derived clichés, but a freakish medley of european lore, native american myth and hippy free love.
• No superheroes, magic wands or other arbitrary magics. It’s consistently plotted to tight rules of engagement and expertly crafted by the same wife-and-husband team thats been doing little else since 1977.
• It’s a neat blend of high fantasy and science fiction: the “elves” are aliens who wanted to impress us by appearing as angels, but got stuck in a genetic disguise by their slaves’ violent rebellion.
• All the fashions in it are either from the 1970s or the 1930s: everyone is either a pimp in furs and leather or something sculpted by Erté. They just don’t make ‘em like this any more.
• Winnowill is the best arch-villainess since Maleficent Cthulhu.
• It’s not over: the story’s final showdown, the creators write, has been written but not yet published.
• 6,000 pages of full-color classic indy brilliance free of charge. Precedent set.
• Issue #17’s Elf Orgy. If nothing else, a great name for a punk band. (Brownlee has already demanded scans, but I don’t have a copy to hand — any fans out there who can do the honors?)
Picking up pets offworld was generally frowned upon by the Company, as there were no quarantine facilities beyond the Oort.
Foreign mammalia carried strange strains of crippling flu, shed itchy fibers on cockpit upholstery, and left crumbly little fewmets in secret places, fewmets that became apparent, and airborne, as soon as a ship hit ohgee.
My good friend Max Brooks is an artist based slightly south of Seattle in a place called Olympia; in spite of his regional handicap he is a great artist, and most notably, cartoonist. Above we have Max’s adorable version of Lovecraft’s Old Ones.
I cannot suggest clicking through to the larger image enough as the conglomeration of tentacular beasts and multi-eyed monsters really must be seen in all it’s glory. Max is currently entertaining offers for his work and can be contacted at adorablepuppies AT gmail.com.
In sheer defiance of the World Wide Web Consortium's will, Ectomo was designed using a non-web-standard font. Luckily, it is included in the excellent font pack released by the H.P. Lovecraft Historical Society, which can be freely downloaded in Mac and PC formats here. Ectomo should still look fine without it, though.
