What’s Old is New Again: Battle Beasts
What’s Old is New Again: Battle Beasts by Jerry Whitworth
Battle Beasts 1 by Dan Brereton
The 1980s of the United States was a huge time for television animation, giving birth to franchises with toy and comic book tie-ins and whose effect is seen even today with properties like G.I. Joe (with an upcoming live action adaptation G.I. Joe: Retaliation), Thundercats (an updated television series currently on Cartoon Network), Masters of the Universe (a new comic book series recently announced for DC Comics), My Little Pony (a wildly popular new animated series on the Hub network), and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (upcoming live action film and a CGI animated series for Nickelodeon). One such series is Transformers, currently airing an updated CGI animated version on the Hub in Transformers: Prime and three blockbuster live action films with a fourth announced in the future.
Read MoreAmerica, Japan, and Korea: A Cycle of Animation
America, Japan, and Korea: A Cycle of Animation
by Jerry Whitworth
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The United States of America was one of the world’s leading developers into creating hand drawn animation, with Walt Disney an early visionary. Characters like Mickey Mouse, Felix the Cat, Betty Boop, and Popeye just a few examples of a new form of media brought to the big screen and later, when it was invented and made available to the public, for television. Some of the action provided viewers would partly be captured in the emerging American comic book market around this same time (developing into its own phenomenon with the release of Action Comics #1 in 1938), using deliberate sequences of juxtaposed images (phrasing coined by author Scott McCloud). Studios caught on and comic books became another medium to sell their cartoon characters to youths. Comics and cartoons would have a longstanding relationship present today and for the foreseeable future.
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