This installment we conclude the story of the comic book that never was that would have featured animation historians Jim Korkis and John Cawley rescuing classic black and white cartoon characters from the evils of computer animation. Even though this was written over ten years ago, it is frightening to see how in some ways it is still a contemporary story. And if anyone in our reading audience has a copy of the John Bray version of the Gertie the Dinosaur cartoon that often runs in documentaries about dinosaurs and is always misidentified as the Winsor McCay version, please contact me to work out a trade from my personal Archives. I am in the process of putting together an article on the history of Gertie from a different perspective. You can tell the Bray version because instead of being white, the dinosaur has a lot of gray shading. This was Bray’s attempt to cash in on Gertie’s success with an unsuspecting public. And I promise not to inflict the readership with any other unpublished projects but this was one of those that has always remained near and dear to my heart and I just wanted it to have a larger audience and since websites are the fanzines of the new millennium, I figured this would be a good chance.
THE TOONVILLE MURDERS BOOK TWO
On television, Guenther the Dinosaur is blaming the animation industry for the death of his aunt, Gertie while Korkis and Debby ask Cawley to explain what he meant when he said it was murder. The door to the apartment swings open and Molly Moo Cow appears with a bucket of toon water, a mop and some rags and says if Debby wants the cleaning deposit back, she had better get to work.
The trio shove past the cow and race down the stairs. Behind the cow, the image on the television shifts into the weird shadowy form seen in Book One and laughs a crackling laugh. Outside the building, running to the police station, the trio don’t hear the cow’s death moo.
At the police station, the human policemen (who all resemble popular television policemen) refuse to believe there is any foul play since there is no motive and old, out of work toons could be depressed enough to commit suicide. They point out that some even go in for assisted suicide through “cel washing”. As the trio start to leave, they spot Foxette flirting with her boyfriend, Sgt. Frank Fox, a token toon policeman.
Cawley explains that Gertie was animated on rice paper, not cels like other toons, and shouldn’t have left a similar grey sludge. Although intrigued, Sgt. Fox knows he won’t be able to convince his superiors so he suggests a trip to Toonville to hunt for evidence. Toonville is not a minority ghetto (like Disney’s Toontown) but a tourist attraction similar to Olvera Street or Chinatown in Los Angeles, clean but oddly quaint. Foxette and Debby are
sent back to the Toon Placement Center to cross check information about other toon deaths.Toonville is alive with activity: humans tourists snapping pictures of famous cartoon landmarks and fallen anvils, sleazy toons trying to peddle counterfeit cels done in Taiwan, dozens of stores selling toon food (some of which explodes) and souvenirs. As Fox, Korkis and Cawley see all this while touring Toonville, they also spot toon pickets outside a Toon Movie House advertising a Computer Animation Festival. Guenther leads the protestors who carry signs saying “Computer Animation Kills”, “I’d Rather Do Saturday Morning Than Be Computerized”, “Walt Spins In His IceBox at 24 frames not 30”.
Korkis and Cawley try to talk to Guenther but he is suspicious of humans and thinks Sgt. Fox has sold out his toon heritage. “Gertie was a superstar, man,” he yells with a sneer, “but she was too animated, too funny for these cheap button pushers.”
Some human computer animators (caricatures of actual artists) come out of the movie house and taunt the toons with chants of “Go back inside your ink bottle!” The result is a riot between humans and toons with toon props and toon violence.
A black and white toon with human lips pulls Korkis and Cawley out of the way of a falling toon anvil. He is Jerry who identifies himself as having appeared in bit parts in CLUTCH CARGO and SPACE ANGEL cartoons. He says he has the information that they’ve been searching for and he’ll trade it to them in exchange for them featuring him prominently in their next book. They agree despite Sgt. Fox’s hesitation that Jerry doesn’t “look right”.
Jerry points them down a blind alley and as they go down it, they hear a crackling sound behind them. They turn and see Jerry’s image break up and transform into a variety of objects like a desk lamp, a ball, a tin toy and finally a gigantic baby with an evil glare and saliva dripping down its mouth.
“What is it?” stammers Korkis.
“That, gentleman, is state-of-the-art computer animation and it’s going to kill us,” replies Sgt. Fox.
Join us next time for “The Digitization Dance” or “The Baby with the Big Byte”.
THE TOONVILLE MURDERS BOOK THREE
As the gigantic baby advances toward Sgt. Fox, Korkis and Cawley, a huge toon hammer appears and smashes the figure of the baby which sputters, jerkily changes shapes and finally dissolves into a series of sparks on the ground. “These things never could handle the classic gags,” says Guenther holding the hammer.
The group decides that a computer programmer must be behind all this and they all return to the Toon Placement Center to plan their next course of action. Debby and Foxette reveal that a computer animator had been making inquiries about some of the old characters shortly before their deaths. The article that Korkis found in the first book was about a computer animator who claimed he had made a breakthrough in computer animation and had created characters that moved smoothly, had personality and could “handle the classic cartoon gags”.
“What may have happed to those toons is more horrible than death,” states Cawley.
Debby and Foxette go to the next room to get some other evidence they found but moments after they leave, they scream. Fox, Guenther, Korkis and Cawley break into the locked room and stare in horror at two inky smudge puddles on the floor.
The next scene is the studio of Lassiter Lucas, a computer animator who looks like Steven Spielberg—baseball cap, Hawaiian shirt, beard, glasses, etc. His studio is like an animal experimentation lab. Small cages filled with toon characters including Foxette, lab equipment, no windows but a flickering light coming from the doorway of the next room.
In the room, Debby Doodle is strapped to a table gridded off into small squares. Lucas uses a device on her that when he traces part of her, that part disappears and then re-appears on the large computer screen as a wire frame pattern. Debby is obviously terrified.
When Lucas is finished, Debby is trapped in a computer with her Uncle Dinky, Gertie the Dinosaur, Molly Moo Cow and dozen of others. They explain (in flashback form to show the action) how Lucas kidnapped them, left ink smudges so people would think they were dead and wouldn’t look for them, and digitized them into his computer world where he intends to dazzle his peers in the industry.
Lucas laughs and tells them that if they don’t behave he’ll scatter their images forever. “I can hardly wait to colorize you. Even your own animator will never recognize you when I am finished!” chortles Lucas.
The door to the studio swings open to reveal Sgt. Fox, Guenther, Korkis and Cawley. When his computerized henchmen had not returned earlier, Lucas prepared for trouble. Throwing a switch by the side of the computer screen, the entire studio becomes a computer animated battlefield with the types of dangers one might find in a computer video game. The quartet survive the gauntlet, throw the switch back to normal and capture Lucas.
“It will be a complicated and time consuming process to bring those toons back from that computer program,” states Sgt. Fox, “We’ll need the help of some top notch character animators or else they’ll come back looking the way Betty Boop did.” The characters are horrified. “Fortunately, since so many studios have laid off some of their top people, we should be able to find the talent we need at bargain basement prices.”
“At least we can share this story with the world,” says Korkis, “Maybe someday they’ll all learn that faster and cheaper is not necessarily better.”
THE END