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Author Stephen Marche has a problem: he wants to share comics and animated cartoons with his son, but everything is racist. He told the world about his predicament in the most recent issue of the New York Times Magazine. He used the words ‘racism’ and ‘racist’ nine times to describe everything from Asterix to Dumbo to Tintin. Amazingly, Babar gets a pass because, Marche explains, “my son won’t be turned into a more effective colonist by stories of elephants riding elevators.”

Marche seems to lack a fundamental understanding of the cartoon medium, an art form whose essence is rooted in caricature and exaggeration. He finds offensive stereotypes everywhere he looks, including Blue Sky’s Ice Age, DreamWorks’ Madagascar and Pixar’s Monsters, Inc.:

Sulley and Mike, on the way into the office, happen to pass an orange squidlike grocer with a handlebar mustache who kind of talks-a-like-a-this. Perhaps that kind of stereotype is not as gruesome or upsetting as the one in the original Fantasia, but I had the distinct impression, as my son laughed at the scene, that my Italian immigrant grandfather was turning over in his grave.

Asterix gives Marche the biggest headache. As he reads it to his son, he wonders:

What is [my son] going to ask when I explain that for 400 years, white people took black people from their homes in Africa, carried them across the ocean in chains, beat them to death as they worked to produce sugar and cotton, separated them from their children and felt entitled to do so because of the difference in the color of their skin?

Amazingly, this thoughtfulness comes from a man who admits in the article that he told his son, “I don’t know why the pirates have a gorilla,” when his son asked him about a black character in Asterix.

I can only imagine that Marche would have a coronary if he ever watched this piece of animation:

PS – Go here to read a blistering takedown of Marche’s piece.

Cartoon Brew | Permalink | No comment | Post tags: Asterix, Dumbo, Monsters Inc, New York Times, Racism, Stephen Marche

The image above is the first still from Asterix Et Le Domaine Des Dieux, a new CG feature currently being produced in France. Notably, the director is Louis Clichy, who created shorts like A quoi ça sert l’amour? before animating at Pixar on WALL·E and Up. The production studio, VFX/post house Mikros Image, announced earlier this month that they’ve launched a new studio dedicated to feature animation, and they intend to produce a film every 18-20 months.

Here is some of Clichy’s personal work:

(via Catsuka, h/t Jonezee99)

Cartoon Brew | Permalink | 5 comments | Post tags: Asterix, France, Louis Clichy, Mikros Image

Over at Parc Asterix, the French theme park based on René Goscinny and Albert Uderzo’s Asterix comic books, there’s an innocent kid’s merry-go-round that just doesn’t look quite right. Asterix’ pal Obelix is used as a model for a merry-go-round seat with, I think, unfortunate results. (Click thumbnails below to enlarge)

(Thanks, Bill Sauder)

Kirsty McHugh

By the time that you read this, fair readers, I will be on my way home to Glasgow for the weekend to see my mum. I’m very excited. However, for those of you stuck at your desks, allow me to entertain you with some of my favourite recent blog posts and articles.

Sad news for the BBC Radio 4 listeners amongst us: Norman Painter, who has been the voice of Phil Archer since The Archers began in 1950, has died at the age of 85.

How important is similar taste in books in a relationship?

According to recent research, literacy  changes the structure of the brain.

Maurice Sendak tells parents worried by Where the Wild Things Are to ‘go to hell’.

A dog from Shropshire has been named the world’s oldest. Atta boy Otto!

The battle for Jack Kerouac’s estate.

Philip Stone of The Bookseller on books by celebrities.

Queen Victoria’s celebrity hippo.

A vexed owl. The second-last photo is my favourite.

An article celebrating 50 years of Asterix.

Cool

The Addictive Weirdness of Mattias Adolfsson – Swedish illustrator and  Europe’s Bizarrio No. 1

Jennifer: I hesitate to ask, your right brain is so hyperactively active who knows what it will let loose, but from where does all this creativity come! Inherited, evolved or from somewhere, dare I ask where, else?

Mattias: Evolved perhaps, but It might have been inherited from my father. My Father was a very funny man, he never got to get an education but I think he had great potential as a Illustrator as well. He came from poor conditions though and had to leave school early.

The Melon Mine Ball House

Bird of Paradise

Sketched Whilst Wandering

The Frontline Sky Ark

Jennifer: As a kid, did you get the bedtime story treatment? What were you favourite stories? What were the illustrations/illustrators you remember most vividly?

Mattias: I really can’t remember getting the bedtime story treatment, but my mother started sticking books in my hands at an early stage (she continued until late in my teens suggesting books, she still does it). I’m rather Euroscentric in my upbringing, my favourite Illustrators as a child where: Oscar Andersson,  Tove Janson , Kjell Aukrust ,  and with Richard Scarry as an exception to the rule.

Osckar Andersson

Tove Janson

Kjell Aukrust

Richard Scarry / Scary

As for stories, I early got hooked on European (gallic) comics, Tintin and Asterix, I used to read them and still do.

Herge's Tintin

Jennifer’s Comment: I think readers will agree there are some  curious elements of these influences seeping through.

[Mad's master of detailed mayhem can't help himself, even his website in seminal form features, Groo, an example of his madcap  characterisations.]

All three artists have an anarchic humour both lauding and subverting utopian ideals and just about everything else in between, Herge, of course, being the subtle one of the three. Where do readers see Mattias flitting in and out of here?

Jennifer: You refer to your love of Mad Magazine’s Sergio Aragones what drives you to detail so transfixing, so almost maddeningly effusive? It is an art in itself to take in all of some of your creations at once! [Can we accuse you of having anything to do with behind the scenes of Where’s Wally?]!

Mattias:

I think the main influence in this is the books of Richard Scary, (where’s Wally is not something I have seen, but I’ve heard it mentioned often). Sometimes I get a craving for leaving the very detailed work as it is hard to take it in, it is lousy as traditional art.

[Note from Jennifer: No, Mattias please don't. We LOVE the detail!]

"Soupilification" Tree

Big Red Animal Bus

Sargasso

Death-Star

The detail is mindblowing and maniacal and insidiously addictive. You could study it for hours and still pick out new facets.

Jennifer: I think I mentioned to you once how your incredible machines reminded me of the crazy inventions depicted by Heath Robinson last century. You feature many maniacal machines in your work, what is the fascination?

Mattias: I’m not sure, to be frank I’m not that into machines, sometimes I use the drawing as some kind of meditation, they start to live by themselves.

[Jennifer: The Machine has a life. Mattias' machines have a humour and character like no other I have seen comparable.]

Horse Powers

City Dweller

Jogger

Migration2

Jenny Wagner once said that no children’s book should have a mchine at its heart. In the case of Mattias’ robottic house machines, I would have to disagree. They verge into the realm of the Iron Man, I Robot and even Bicentennial Man. There is a drama and pathos about them that mitigates against the sometimes bleak black humour of civilisation gone  in search of itself.

Jennifer: The architectural elements of your work have also been compared to Hayao Miyazaki. What inspires you particularly about brick, stone and wood construction?  You tell how you started out to be an architect but diverged. How did that come about?

Mattias:

I love buildings and especially of the older kind. Though, when I started studying Architecture, I soon found out that I wasn’t too good designing modern houses. So now I can design what building I want, not having to think about the dwellers.

Captains

Floaters

Church

Ship of the Desert

Oltec-Space

Jennifer:  Your recent scholarship sojourn in Greece produced a wealth of work which we all saw evolve over the months on your blog site. Tell us about winning the scholarship and where you see the outworkings of that experience taking you?

Mattias: Well winning was not that hard, it goes to professional Swedish Illustrators ( and I guess not too many can leave home for one month). I’d love to do more traveling and drawing but, in order to do that, I’d have to finance it in some way, maybe via some magazine.

Jennifer’s note: Mattias sketched the most ordinary and extraordinary and made them all ‘art’. He interspersed his online blog diary with the mind expanding mischief his followeres have come to love. These, not necessarily from that period, exemplify.

Grumpy disher - dishwasher/toiletcleaner

House Flower1

Left Dragon

Learning to Fly

Over Ambitious

We’re delighted to hear from two British boys who responded to our plea for information about books that children love. Alistair, who is nine and a half, says that books he has recently read for fun are books in the Young Bond series by Charlie Higson, Horrid Henry by Francesca Simon, and The Tale of Despereaux by Kate DiCamillo. His favorite authors are Michael Morpurgo, Charlie Higson, and Francesca Simon, with Hurricane Gold (in the Young Bond series) and Tiger of the Snows by Robert Burleigh among the books that he has discussed with his friends. Morpurgo’s The Wreck of the Zanzibar is one of the books he has read for school that he enjoys and among his favorite books in a series are The Chronicles of Narnia, the many adventures of Harry Potter, and Young Bond. Books he has read more than once are volumes of Tintin, Asterix, Harry Potter, and The Making of Monkey King and Monkey King Wreaks Havoc in Heaven, both by Debby Chen. A book that he found in the library that he longed to keep is one about BMW motorcycles–and, he assures us, although he’s a boy, he does enjoy reading books in which girls are central characters!

Ben, who is seven and a half, loves to read pop-up books, encyclopedias, stories with pictures, and Adam Frost’s Ralph the Magic Rabbit. Books that he has read more than once are Tintin books, Steve Parker’s Larger than Life, which he says is amazing and has recommended to his friends, Surprising Sharks by Nicola Davies, and If I Didn’t Have Elbows by Sandi Toksvig. His favorite writers are J.K. Rowling, Julia Donaldson, Herge, Francesca Simon, and Dick King-Smith. When it comes to books that he has borrowed from the library and wishes he could keep, he simply admits there are “loads.” He too enjoys books about girls, but not ones about sports!

Thanks to Alistair, Ben, and Evan for responding to our questions, which can be found at The Tiger’s Bookshelf: Asking the Kids

We would love to hear from more readers–perhaps a girl or two?

Check out The Tourists, this brilliant short animated film about humans on a beach by Malcolm Sutherland. Don’t miss his galleries of animations, drawings, sketches, this great comic (Oola Dug) and abstract art.

I bumped in Malcolm in the hallway here at the NFB where he’s currently animating a new project with his abstract illustrations.

Michael Sporn writes about Ann Schaumberger’s tile art in Manhattan’s Fifth Avenue subway station (above).

He also has a great post about Keith Godard’s series of floating hats at 23rd Street station.

And another set of photos from Janet Zweig’s series of working silhouettes at the Prince Street station.

Publishers, are you reading? These images are an art book waiting to happen.

Also of interest:
Michael Sporn’s Animation Blog: Splog
(Book) Keith Godard, This Way — That Way
Terminus: Short film set in Montreal metro