On weekday afternoons, my brother and I would often catch the old Marvel Super Heroes cartoons from the '60s. We always thought it was funny that it looked as if they cut the pictures out of the old comics books and shuffled them across the screen.
And this, in comparison to Hanna-Barbera's own "limited" animation, which was not as fluid as the classic theatrical cartoon shorts.
Catchy tune, though, innit?
And then I heard about Clutch Cargo, which apparently had an animation budget of 37 cents. I thought that it was a joke; surely the animation couldn't be that bad. Instead of animating the characters talking, they superimposed actors' mouths over the faces. That was a gag, right?
Well, after years of managing to avoid seeing it, I finally have experienced a Clutch Cargo cartoon.
Oh my.
And while I'm thinking about it, the first time I saw South Park: Bigger, Longer, Uncut, I thought of the old Marvel cartoons when the song "It's Easy, M'kay" came on.
The melody of "You can do it, it's all up to you, m'kay" reminded me so much of "When Captain America throws his mighty shield" that I still sing the latter in place of the former. At least on those occasions that find me singing that song, which, admittedly, aren't all that common, but still...
