Anyone who knows me knows I love cartoons. I grew up habitually reading the daily comic strips, the sunday funnies and had quite an extensive collection of comics. I still read these things on a regular basis... it's just now we call them "graphic novels" and other such things to justify being a grown man who reads comics. I say to hell with that. I read and still collect comics and all other assorted illustrated ephemera that goes along with them. My personal favorites however are Looney Toons and all the other Classics like Tom and Jerry and I have the DVD collections to prove it.
Now imagine my surprise when I was surfing the other day and came across an article in the Daily Mail website detailing the artistic works of one James Cauty. His gig is to 'reinvent' classic 'toons with a new story and put a new 'spin' on them. The basis of the article was how bloody violent and horrible these images were, and was cautioned as to these aspects before being able to view them in the slideshow. My reaction? It's about damned time someone did this with cartoons. Violent? Yep. Bloody? Yep. Funny? Fuck yeah! I laughed my balls off when I saw them, and figured I have to share as this is too good to let slide by. As we see from this first:
Who hasn't wanted to see that fucking Roadrunner get his? I know in all the years of watching ole Wile E. I always wanted to see that smarmy cocky "Beep Beep" Bird get his. In the pic, you see that Cauty thought the same, and the others in his show seem to show that same "Finally they got what was coming to them!" attitude.
I mean how many times did we see Daffy in "Rabbit Season" get his head blown off? I mean myself, I always liked the Daffster more than any of the other Warner Toons. I mean he's so human. Venal, Twisted, Greedy and Grasping, he's just perfect. Cauty got this one right too. Bugs got it just a bit more radically than I would have done, but hell, it's not my art. Then, this next one we can all agree was "about time" as well:
Now I know it's an MGM Cartoon, but who hasn't wanted to see that self-righteous little fucking rat get his? I know I'm thrilled with the above... the look of satisfaction captured on Tom's face is just about right too... "Yeah... thats right... who's the cat and who's the rat? Yeah... Take THAT and THAT and THAT!!!" Hee.... God... But I saved the best for last. Try this:
Yeeeeeeah!!! "Tastes Great, Less Filling!" is the title I thought when I first saw this. I mean out of ALL the Looney Toons and out of ALL the people who I've ever talked to, almost to a person did everyone say that they positively LOATHED Tweety Bird. Between his 'widdle bird' voice that sounds like fingernails on a blackboard, to his constantly fucking over Sylvester, (who only wants to eat the little yellow bastard) FINALLY in this piece does Cauty put the final nail in Tweety's coffin so to speak. Sylvester finally gets to have himself a Tweety Snack.
Now... The funniest part about this? It seems in the "Big Brother Knows Best" nightmare that England has become, the article that I read and grabbed these images from are all a "Ooh how horrible and twisted" and "..how this will damage the youths who may see it." What a load of crap. Myself? I think the work is brilliant, and if I was in a position to do so, I'd be winging it to England to see the exhibition, if not outright purchase one of these 'new classics.' I just thought I had to share. Let me know what you think.
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