Combs Spouts Off

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Posts Tagged ‘cartoon’

Draw Mohammed Day

Posted by Richard on May 21, 2010

In support of South Park creators Matt Stone and Trey Parker, today is Everybody Draw Mohammed Day. I like the idea of depicting him doing mundane things like grocery shopping. But since I have essentially zero artistic ability, I'll just repost the twelve Jyllands-Posten cartoons that caused a world-wide frenzy of radical Muslim outrage in 2006.

 Jyllands-Posten cartoons

Check Reason Hit & Run, the Stranger, or this Facebook page later today for some of the drawings. Unless you're in Pakistan, which has blocked large portions of the internet to protect you from being offended.

UPDATE: Reason has chosen three winners from among the nearly 200 submissions they received. All three are quite clever. I think I like the second-place entry, Where's Mohammed, best. But I see why the winner won — it's at once clever, amusing, and a challenge to the viewer. 

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Best cartoon

Posted by Richard on July 12, 2008

Heh™. I'll drink to that.

UPDATE: And, via Instapundit , there's this related news. 🙂

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“Kill da wabbit, kill da wabbit”

Posted by Richard on July 8, 2007

This is quite the year for important anniversaries. It was fifty years ago this week that Warner Brothers released the greatest cartoon of all time, "What's Opera, Doc?" Steve Watt wrote a marvelous tribute to the Wagnerian classic and to Chuck Jones and his associates at the "Termite Terrace" animation studio:

It is the antithesis of the routine cartoon. In place of snappy one-liners we see Elmer Fudd and Bugs Bunny singing their parts with complete sincerity and commitment. The backgrounds are beautifully textured paintings. The score is powerful and moving. Bugs cuts a striking figure in a metallic brassiere before Madonna was even born. It's audacious and decadent and beautiful and bold and everything the vast majority of cartoons would never dare to be.

Chuck told me he and his team of writers and animators never saw themselves as making cartoons for anyone but themselves. … It was because they made cartoons to humour themselves, and because studio executives didn't much care what they did so long as they stayed on time and on budget, that "What's Opera, Doc?" was possible.

The key was placing it between two Wile E. Coyote and Road Runner cartoons in the production schedule. Formulaic by design, those ones could be done fast and cheap. Knock off the Coyote films ahead of schedule and under budget, reallocate the time and money to "What's Opera, Doc?" so the overall budgets remained intact, and voila! A masterpiece created right under the noses of studio executives who would have vetoed the idea long before Elmer Fudd could have raised his spear and donned his magic helmet.

Read the whole thing. (HT: Fark)

I'm sure Watt is right — this really should be experienced on the big screen (I've seen it on TV, but not in a theater). This YouTube video is a poor substitute, but if you've never seen it, you just have to watch. If you have seen it, you'll probably want to watch it again.

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Contemptible cartoon

Posted by Richard on June 23, 2006

Atlanta Journal-Constipation — sorry, Constitution — cartoonist Mike Luckovich came up with one of the most contemptible moral equivalence claims I’ve seen yet, and to drive his point home, he made the cartoon’s URL (the title) "pot-to-kettle.html":

Book on torture

 
I was going to compare and contrast, but I see that Sweetness & Light already did it, using some pictures that made the point without being too graphic. And don’t overlook Sweetness’ long list of "Related Articles."

I’ll just amplify a bit regarding the differences (but I’ll spare you the pictures):

  • American "torture": Humiliation and degradation. Sleep deprivation. Turning air conditioning way up. Playing Christina Aguillera music. Invasion of space by a female.
     
  • Al-Qaeda torture: Drilling holes in body with cordless drill. Gouging out eyes. Breaking and contorting limbs. Amputating limbs. Cutting off genitalia and stuffing in mouth. Eventually, using a dull blade, sawing off the head. Or cutting out the heart. 

Sweetness suggested (I think in jest), "Maybe Moslems have the right idea about how to handle cartoonists after all." Someone might want to point out to Mr. Luckovich that if America were really comparable to the Islamofascists, outraged good ole boys would be waving "Behead the Anti-American Cartoonist" signs outside the Journal-Constitution building, burning cars, threatening editors, and trying to shut the paper down.

Of course, right now I’m thinking that sounds like good, clean fun…
 

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What our friends in Riyadh are wishing

Posted by Richard on May 14, 2005

Un-effin’-believable. LGF noted that ArabNews is "the official English voice of the Saudi royal family" and presented their latest cartoon (click here for their full-sized version), apparently inspired by the D.C. plane scare:

Saudi wishful thinking

Notice that it says "Next time …" at the upper right.

Mr. President, the salary of this cartoonist is being paid by the folks you schmoozed with in Crawford.

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