Happy Holidays with Classic Cartoons

by Gary Scott Beatty, Publisher and Editor, MuskegonOnline.NET

We say happy holidays this month with 1930s cartoons from Ub Iwerks and Fleischer Studios.

Jack Frost (below) helps a bear cub combat Old Man Winter in this 1934 Ub Iwerks ComicColor cartoon.The song "I Don't Have to Worry, I Don't Have to Care" was written by Carol Stalling, who would become best known for his Warner Bros. cartoon orchestra soundtrack work. Note to children: the wringer washer is how people used to wash clothes. http://muskegononline.net/1212/cartoon-1212.html

1936's Christmas Comes But Once a Year (below) comes from Fleischer Studios, with a strangely adult-absent orphanage and Jack Mercer (Fleischer Studios voice of Popeye) as Grampy. Max and Dave Fleischer had decided years prior to tone down Betty Boop to make her more family-friendly, and her invention-creating grandfather was one of the additions. http://muskegononline.net/1212/cartoon-1212.html 

These Works are in Public Domain and not Derivative as specified by U.S. copyright law (title 17 of the U.S. Code). 

Classic Cartoons: Toys

by Gary Scott Beatty, Publisher and Editor, MuskegonOnline.NET

With the toy buying season upon us, we look at classic cartoons starring toys this month.

http://muskegononline.net/1112/cartoon-1112.html

Van Beuren Studio's A Toy Town Tale, produced in 1931, makes more sense than a lot of Van Beuren Studio cartoons from this period. (No, I don't know what the man in the moon has to do with awakening toys, or what happened to the elephant.) This includes the songs Silent Night, Parade of the Tin Soldiers (by Leon Jessel), and the 1911 ragtime hit Oh, You Beautiful Doll (by Seymour Brown and Nat D. Ayer).

Van Beuren Studio's Toy Time (1932) is a cartoon musical featuring mice playing with toys, and the most emaciated cat I think I've ever seen in cartoons.

Are You Ready for Some Football?

by Gary Scott Beatty, Publisher and Editor, MuskegonOnline.NET

http://muskegononline.net/0912/cartoon-0912.html

This month we guy-theme, with Flip the Frog playing real football, 1933 style, and saving the girl in ocean adventure in Stormy Seas.

Ub Iwerks was a two-time Academy Award winning animator who co-created Mickey Mouse with Walt Disney and was Walt Disney's collaborator in the formative years of Disney's studio (Steamboat Willie, Plane Crazy). Iwerks opened his own studio in 1930, under contract with MGM, producing Flip the Frog shorts, the Willie Whopper series and more.

The Goal Rush, 1932. With no shoulder pads and a simple leather helmet, Flip flirts with a flapper, then bites, burrows and mayhems his Nertz team to victory. Flip may seem a little audacious, but so was Mickey Mouse in the early cartoons Iwerks produced with Disney. He is relatively well behaved here, compared to some of his other exploits.

Stormy Seas. Flip does guy stuff, like spitting tobacco, flexing the tattoo on his wrist, punching out a swordfish, and rescuing the girl. Sure it's goofy, that's the charm of early cartoons -- anything can happen for a laugh.

Cartoon Politics

by Gary Scott Beatty, Publisher and Editor, MuskegonOnline.NET

 http://muskegononline.net/0812/cartoon-0812.html

Political parties have long recognized the impact of drawings with their messages. This month we look at Make Mine Freedom (1948) and Hell Bent for Election (1944).

Make Mine Freedom. Produced by John Southerland Productions, Make Mine Freedom (below) was one of a series of media projects by Harding College to persuade against the threat of Soviet and Maoist socialism. Today, the Harding American Studies Institute (ASI) promotes going "back to the fundamental values that made this country great."

This is directed by Joseph Barbera and William Hanna, who formed Hanna-Barbera in 1957, after MGM shut down its animation studio. Hanna-Barbera was one of the first studios to recognize the value of limited animation for television, producing The Flintstones, The Yogi Bear Show, The Jetsons, Jonny Quest, Space Ghost, Scooby-Doo, Where Are You? and many others.

See parallels with Occupy Wall Street or the conservative ideology today? What do you think?

Hell Bent for Election. Sponsored by United Auto Workers, Hell Bent for Election (below) is a campaign film designed to win votes for Franklin D. Roosevelt in his re-election campaign against Republican opponent Thomas E. Dewey, a crusader against alleged inefficiencies, corruption and Communist influences in New Deal programs.

This is an early production by Industrial Films, which later became United Productions of America (UPA), the most influential animation studio of the '50s. Hell Bent for Election was made in animator Zack Schwartz's apartment with moonlighters from local Hollywood animation studios, including director Chuck (Road Runner) Jones. Although UPA was overshadowed by Warner and Disney financial successes, its modernist design style in the '50s influenced studios to look beyond realism.

Defeatist hot air? Win the war? What do you think?

Classic Ub Iwerks Cartoons Feature Kids

BY GARY SCOTT BEATTY, PUBLISHER AND EDITOR, MUSKEGONONLINE.NET

Animator Chuck Jones, who once worked for Ub Iwerks' studio, said it best. "Iwerks is Screwy spelled backwards."

Ub Iwerks was a two-time Academy Award winning animator who co-created Mickey Mouse with Walt Disney and was Walt Disney's collaborator in the formative years of Disney's studio (Steamboat Willie, Plane Crazy).

Iwerks opened his own studio in 1930, under contract with MGM, producing Flip the Frog shorts, the Willie Whopper series and more. He later produced the independently distributed ComicColor Cartoons shorts.

Below is a ComiColor from 1934 without a talking animal in sight! This Happy Days cartoon is based on Reg'lar Fellers, a newspaper strip created by Gene Byrnes and syndicated from 1917 to 1949. The strip was a comic book in 1940 and a radio series in 1941.

(See the video on http://muskegononline.net/)

Iwerks Studios' Flip the Frog, below, may seem a little audacious, but so was Mickey Mouse in the early cartoons Iwerks produced with Disney. Flip is well behaved here, compared to some of his other exploits. Flip was funny, but didn't keep Iwerks Studios going. Flip was born in 1930 and over by 1933.

(See the video on http://muskegononline.net/)

Those interested in classic cartoons can visit the The ASIFA-Hollywood Animation Archive, a 501(c)(3) non-profit museum, library and digital archive dedicated to serving the worldwide animation community. A project of ASIFA-Hollywood, the archive receives support from The Walter Lantz Foundation. Go to http://www.animationarchive.org and prepare to be entertained.

These Works are in Public Domain and not Derivative as specified by U.S. copyright law (title 17 of the U.S. Code).

Editor and Publisher Gary Scott Beatty has been working in printing and publishing for over 35 years, including editing Muskegon's On the Shore magazine and typesetting Muskegon Magazine. In 2008 he won a Xeric Foundation Grant to publish Jazz: Cool Birth, a murder mystery in a 1957 jazz club with illustrations inspired by '50s album cover design. This and his other Aazurn Publishing books can be purchased through Amazon.com. Worldwide, he edits and publishes Indie Comics Magazine, 64 pages of the best story and art from today's independent comic book creators.

Celebrate Spring with Color Classics

BY GARY SCOTT BEATTY, PUBLISHER AND EDITOR, MUSKEGONONLINE.NET

We continue to celebrate spring with Max Fleischer Color Classics featuring ants and vegetables.

These cartoons, Ants in the Plants (1941) and The Fresh Vegetable Mystery (1939), were among the last Color Classics produced before the company moved on to make Technicolor cartoons starring their Gabby character from the full length 1939 feature Gulliver's Travels.

Don't expect the urban, jazz crazy tales of the Fleischer brothers' early years in these Color Classics. Although their Koko the Clown dominated '20s cartoon popularity and Fleischer Studios' Betty Boop was a household name, the enforcement of the Hays Code in 1934 kept Fleischer cartoons from the racey, dark, city-oriented subject matter that made their early cartoons unique.

The Color Classics, obvious nods to Disney's successful Silly Symphonies series, have their own visual charm, aided by the Stereoptical process developed by Fleischer Studios. If many of the backgrounds look real, it's because they are -- drawn animation cells were positioned in front of scale model, three dimensional dioramas, giving an amazing depth to many scenes.

The opening scene to Ants in the Plants is a good example of the Stereoptical process, as the camera pans downhill toward the ant village.

(Video at MuskegonOnline.NET)

Those interested in classic cartoons can visit the The ASIFA-Hollywood Animation Archive, a 501(c)(3) non-profit museum, library and digital archive dedicated to serving the worldwide animation community. A project of ASIFA-Hollywood, the archive receives support from The Walter Lantz Foundation. Go to http://www.animationarchive.org and prepare to be entertained.

These Works are in Public Domain and not Derivative as specified by U.S. copyright law (title 17 of the U.S. Code).


Editor and Publisher Gary Scott Beatty has been working in printing and publishing for over 35 years, including editing Muskegon's On the Shore magazine and typesetting Muskegon Magazine. In 2008 he won a Xeric Foundation Grant to publish Jazz: Cool Birth, a murder mystery in a 1957 jazz club with illustrations inspired by '50s album cover design. This and his other Aazurn Publishing books can be purchased through Amazon.com. Worldwide, he edits and publishes Indie Comics Magazine, 64 pages of the best story and art from today's independent comic book creators.

Jazz: The Hot and the Cool

In this story, first printed in Indie Comics Magazine in 2011, I try to capture the sense of loss lifetime musicians must have felt seeing their livelihood, and the jazz they devoted their lives and talents to, slipping away with the arrival of a new music. Little did anyone realize cool jazz would soon give way to the rockabilly kids were enjoying in the new suburbs, as explored with considerably more humor in last month's "Jazz: Rockabilly."

Read "Jazz: The Hot and the Cool" on MuskegonOnline.NET here.

Springtime Cartoon Classics Full of Color

It's spring, a favorite theme for early animators.

Once color came to motion pictures, early animation artists loved playing with the design potential presented by spring: bright flowers, blue skies, butterflies, and cute, young animals.

The ComiColor Cartoon below was produced by Ub Iwerks Studio in 1935. Iwerks was Walt Disney's collaborator in the formative years of Disney's studio (Steamboat Willie, Plane Crazy). The ComiColor cartoons take advantage of Cinecolor, the two color film process detailed in February's MuskegonOnline.NET. Watching them, it's hard to believe this is a two color process.

You might think characters in this short were based on designs from Disney's Fantasia, but Summertime was released a full five years before. Creatures from myth and legend have always been popular with cartoonists. Here, a young pan character ushers in spring, despite the objections of Jack Frost.

(Video at MuskegonOnline.NET)

Below we revisit Molly Moo-Cow from Van Beauren Studios. As discussed in last month's MuskegonOnline.NET, two Disney veterans were brought in to the Van Beauren Studio in 1934 to raise the style and quality of the company's cartoons. The result was the handsome Rainbow Parade series.

(Video at MuskegonOnline.NET)

Those interested in classic cartoons can visit the The ASIFA-Hollywood Animation Archive, a 501(c)(3) non-profit museum, library and digital archive dedicated to serving the worldwide animation community. A project of ASIFA-Hollywood, the archive receives support from The Walter Lantz Foundation. Go to http://www.animationarchive.org and prepare to be entertained.

These Works are in Public Domain and not Derivative as specified by U.S. copyright law (title 17 of the U.S. Code).

Editor and Publisher Gary Scott Beatty has been working in printing and publishing for over 35 years, including editing Muskegon's On the Shore magazine and typesetting Muskegon Magazine. In 2008 he won a Xeric Foundation Grant to publish Jazz: Cool Birth, a murder mystery in a 1957 jazz club with illustrations inspired by '50s album cover design. This and his other Aazurn Publishing books can be purchased through Amazon.com. Worldwide, he edits and publishes Indie Comics Magazine, 64 pages of the best story and art from today's independent comic book creators.

Apples to Apples: Buying Locally

BY GARY SCOTT BEATTY, PUBLISHER AND EDITOR, MUSKEGONONLINE.NET

Americans "vote" with their dollars with every purchase.

I'm at the grocery store buying apples. A quick look at the label shows apples imported from Chile in the bin next to apples grown in Michigan. They cost the same. Why should I buy the apples grown in Michigan? It benefits me, my family and my community.

While I have nothing against the fine people growing produce in Chile, I know my dollars, combined with the dollars of other Muskegon consumers, makes a difference in this county I call home.

Americans invest in businesses with their purchases every single day. We "vote" for products with our money every time we buy them, and we "vote" for the business selling the product. "Voting" as a group, our capitalism is every bit as powerful as voting for our politicians, perhaps even more powerful, because we don't wait four years to "vote" with our money -- we do it every time we make a purchase.

All it takes to invest in your county, your state and your country is reading labels and buying from local businesses.

The benefits to communities and residents are well-documented. Studies have shown that when you buy from an independent, locally owned business, rather than a nationally owned business, significantly more of your money is used to make purchases from other local businesses, service providers and farms. This strengthens the community economic base. Economic impact studies repeatedly reveal that locally-owned businesses generate a premium in enhanced economic impact to the community and tax base.

Small businesses are the backbone of our national economy, creating and providing jobs. Local businesses often hire people with a better understanding of the products they are selling and take more time to get to know shoppers. If we're interested in customer service we should shop local businesses.

Our shopping habits also contribute to our range of choices. A multitude of small businesses, each selecting products based not on a national sales plan but on their own interests and the needs of their local customers, guarantees a much broader range of product choices.

Owners who live in our community are more invested in the community's future. Non-profit organizations also benefit from local and regional shopping, making our own community a better place to live. Town centers require comparatively little infrastructure investment and make more efficient use of public services as compared to nationally owned stores entering the community.

Where we shop, eat and play keeps our community unique. One-of-a-kind businesses give our area a distinctive character and add to our sense of home. Tourism also benefits from this, as people on vacation seek out businesses that give them a sense of being somewhere, not just anywhere.

Local purchases requiring less transportation also reduce our environmental impact. Town centers contribute less to sprawl, congestion, habitat loss and pollution.

Buying locally spurs the regional economy, benefits non-profit organizations, helps keep our area unique, reduces environmental impact, increases customer service and contributes to our range of product choices. I encourage everyone here in Muskegon County to explore your regional buying options: county, state and nation.

You've already begun! Muskegon Online.NET is locally owned and produced, and our advertisers are local businesses. Just by coming here monthly to enjoy our free magazine, you are contributing to the quality of life in Muskegon County, Michigan, USA. Your friends and neighbors thank you!

Editor and Publisher Gary Scott Beatty has been working in printing and publishing for over 35 years, including editing Muskegon's On the Shore magazine and typesetting Muskegon Magazine. In 2008 he won a Xeric Foundation Grant to publish Jazz: Cool Birth, a murder mystery in a 1957 jazz club with illustrations inspired by '50s album cover design. This and his other Aazurn Publishing books can be purchased through Amazon.com. Worldwide, he edits and publishes Indie Comics Magazine, 64 pages of the best story and art from today's independent comic book creators.

Jazz: Rockabilly

WRITTEN AND ILLUSTRATED BY GARY SCOTT BEATTY, PUBLISHER AND EDITOR, MUSKEGONONLINE.NET

Gary Scott Beatty's full color, Xeric Grant awarded book Jazz: Cool Birth is available on Amazon.com.

Editor and Publisher Gary Scott Beatty has been working in printing and publishing for over 35 years, including editing Muskegon's On the Shore magazine and typesetting Muskegon Magazine. In 2008 he won a Xeric Foundation Grant to publish Jazz: Cool Birth, a murder mystery in a 1957 jazz club with illustrations inspired by '50s album cover design. This and his other Aazurn Publishing books can be purchased through Amazon.com. Worldwide, he edits and publishes Indie Comics Magazine, 64 pages of the best story and art from today's independent comic book creators.

Celebrate St. Patrick's Day Month with Little Men in Van Beuren Cartoons

BY GARY SCOTT BEATTY, PUBLISHER AND EDITOR, MUSKEGONONLINE.NET

This month we celebrate St. Patrick's Day with two Van Beuren Studio cartoons from the 1930s featuring leprechaun cousins.

With offices across the street from Fleischer Studios in New York (see last month's Color Classics article), the Van Beuren Studio produced a steady stream of oddly unfocused, stream-of-consciousness cartoons for the blossoming black and white film market in the late '20s and early '30s.

As the Walt Disney Studio became the cartoon market leader in style and popularity it became necessary to up the quality of Van Beuren cartoons.

Producer Amedee Van Beuren decided to hire two Disney veterans to up the cartoons' quality. In 1934 he brought in Burt Gillett, who had recently directed Disney's highly popular The Three Little Pigs, and Tom Palmer, who had worked for virtually every studio in town.

The result was the handsome Rainbow Parade series. Parents, caution: this cartoon features beer drinking in quantities!

Molly Moo Cow and Rip Van Winkle here.

The Sunshine Makers is a cartoon from Van Beuren Studio sponsored by Borden's Milk. The message appears to be drinking milk (or being doused in it) will make you happy.

The Sunshine Makers here.

Those interested in classic cartoons can visit the The ASIFA-Hollywood Animation Archive, a 501(c)(3) non-profit museum, library and digital archive dedicated to serving the worldwide animation community. A project of ASIFA-Hollywood, the archive receives support from The Walter Lantz Foundation. Go to http://www.animationarchive.org and prepare to be entertained.

These Works are in Public Domain and not Derivative as specified by U.S. copyright law (title 17 of the U.S. Code).


Editor and Publisher Gary Scott Beatty has been working in printing and publishing for over 35 years, including editing Muskegon's On the Shore magazine and typesetting Muskegon Magazine. In 2008 he won a Xeric Foundation Grant to publish Jazz: Cool Birth, a murder mystery in a 1957 jazz club with illustrations inspired by '50s album cover design. This and his other Aazurn Publishing books can be purchased through Amazon.com. Worldwide, he edits and publishes Indie Comics Magazine, 64 pages of the best story and art from today's independent comic book creators.

Navigating Muskegon County's New, Online Magazine is Easy (February 2012 MuskegonOnline.NET)

This article appears on MuskegonOnline.NET and refers to graphics in that article. I appreciate information about your experiences at MuskegonOnline.NET so we can build a very easy to use online experience for you. Comment at the bottom of this article, please.


I'm often frustrated by how complex websites are. Our site is designed simply for easy navigation. Enjoy!

See the chart at the top of this page. This is how the entire magazine is designed, simple to use and easy to navigate.

Always begin at the Contents Page. This is the first page to come up when you enter our site. The Contents Page will take you everywhere in MuskegonOnline.NET!

We don't feature confusing pop up windows or a lot of pages within pages. If you become lost, find this button to return to the Contents Page. It will be at the top left and bottom of every article page.

Click on an article listing. This will lead you to an ad. Many ads feature video and click through to the advertiser's website.

Many advertisers' websites feature information you can use. Don't worry about exploring! If you click on something in an ad, it will come up in a separate window, so you can always close that window and return instantly to MuskegonOnline.NET.

At the top of every ad is a sentence stating, "Advertisement. Click here to continue to the article." You do just that! Clicking on that sentence will take you through to the article you wanted to read.

When you are done with the article, simply find the "Return to Contents Page" button to return to the Contents Page. It will be at the top left and bottom of every article page.

In fact, you can click on blue, underlined words inside any article to take you to another place on the internet. That website will come up in a separate window, so you can always close that window and return instantly to your article.

You can click on a graphic that has an arrow (below) to play a video.

The volume control is at the bottom of the graphic box. Be sure your own computer's volume is turned up! Click "Full screen" on the bottom right to fill your screen with the video. The control panel remains at the bottom of the graphic so you can return to usual size.

Some readers may not have a fast enough internet connection to play video. It helps to play the video a little, then pause it as it loads. You can see a line graph below move from left to right. When the line graph is nearly to the end, click the arrow to play. A little jumpiness, especially during peak evening hours, is typical of internet video.

I know people who are afraid of exploring websites and the internet. I believe that fear has been fueled over the years by poorly designed, confusing websites. It saddens me that people whose lives would be greatly enriched by internet experiences shy away from this, our modern Library of Alexandria, a collection of the world's knowledge.

Tell them you enjoyed your visit to MuskegonOnline!

We know the web is a crowded place, with many flashy sites maneuvering for your attention. Thank you for coming here monthly, to listen to what some of your neighbors have to say and enjoy the color!


Editor and Publisher Gary Scott Beatty has been working in printing and publishing for over 35 years, including editing Muskegon's On the Shore magazine and typesetting Muskegon Magazine. In 2008 he won a Xeric Foundation Grant to publish Jazz: Cool Birth, a murder mystery in a 1957 jazz club with illustrations inspired by '50s album cover design. This and his other Aazurn Publishing books can be purchased through Amazon.com. Worldwide, he edits and publishes Indie Comics Magazine, 64 pages of the best story and art from today's independent comic book creators.

Jazz: The Tiki Room (February 2012 MuskegonOnline.NET)

A bonus for those who want to discuss Jazz: The Tiki Room from MuskegonOnline.NET below: the artist's statement from my Xeric Grant awarded book Jazz: Cool Birth. This does a good job explaining my thought processes working in this new (for me) Modernist style.


Yes, this style is MEANT to look old. 50 years old, as a matter of fact.

Through study of album cover design, television program title artwork, and common illustrations used in everything from health booklets to instruction manuals from the '50s, I have attempted to pull readers into the late night jazz clubs of 1957, feeling the music through the visuals. Ignoring paint and ink magazine illustration, a left over style from previous decades, I concentrated on the combination of flat and painterly used by artists working with T-squares and triangles, tracing paper, ruling pens and brush, preparing work for rotary letterpresses and similar hands-on intensive printing methods.

Alex Steinweiss and Jim Flora, wonderful craftsmen working on album covers for Columbia and RCA Victor respectively, obviously had a great influence on Jazz: Cool Birth. Little known illustrator Lou Peters and Disney designer Tom Oreb deserve a mention, as well as the great Mark Rothko and the rest of the abstract expressionists. But the look of Jazz: Cool Birth comes, mostly, from unknown, uncredited artists working in a beat style in a decade where nearly every printed piece contained some kind of drawn graphic.

Then there's the typography. Hand drawn, or typeset and carefully kerned and arranged by hand, jazz album type fascinated me from an early age. I have managed to find a font, Hairspray Redhead from Christian Schwartz Design, that approximates the famous Steinweiss Scrawl appearing on so many beautiful '50s album covers. My Futura and Bodoni typefaces are passable, but, like typographers predicted with the rise of desktop publishing in the '80s, the typefaces don't have quite the grace and balance of their '50s counterparts.

My tools are modern and digital, but the process of pushing things around on the page remains the same as 1957. What I learned from studying craftsmen of 50 years ago is to never let the tools dictate where something lays on a page. The modern computer typesetter's practice of distorting type rather than adjusting the letter spacing and kerning is lazy, uninformed and unattractive. Typography is a line-by-line art.

The missing link in this book is, of course, the music. But Monk, Miles, Coltrane, Mingus, Rollins and others are there, in the back, listening, taking mental notes on licks and trends. They don't need bodyguards and an entourage to slip into clubs. This is 1957, when few musicians made more than enough for expenses, studio time was a cost prohibitive dream and, like Dean says, "You know musicians, no gravy, no grease."

Gary Scott Beatty, 2008


Editor and Publisher Gary Scott Beatty has been working in printing and publishing for over 35 years, including editing Muskegon's On the Shore magazine and typesetting Muskegon Magazine. In 2008 he won a Xeric Foundation Grant to publish Jazz: Cool Birth, a murder mystery in a 1957 jazz club with illustrations inspired by '50s album cover design. This and his other Aazurn Publishing books can be purchased through Amazon.com. Worldwide, he edits and publishes Indie Comics Magazine, 64 pages of the best story and art from today's independent comic book creators.

Color Classics: Sentimental Charm (February 2012 MuskegonOnline.NET)

This month we celebrate Valentine's Day with three love-themed Fleischer Studios cartoons.

Don't expect the urban, jazz crazy tales of the Fleischer brothers' early years in these Color Classics from 1935 (Dancing on the Moon and Time for Love) and 1937 (Bunny Mooning). Although their Koko the Clown dominated '20s cartoon popularity and Fleischer Studios' Betty Boop was a household name, the enforcement of the Hays Code in 1934 kept Fleischer cartoons from the racey, dark, city-oriented subject matter that made their early cartoons unique.

The Color Classics, obvious nods to Disney's successful Silly Symphonies series, have their own visual charm, aided by the Stereoptical process developed by Fleischer Studios. If many of the backgrounds look real, it's because they are -- drawn animation cells were positioned in front of scale model, three dimensional dioramas, giving an amazing depth to many scenes.

Dancing on the Moon, below, was one of the last films made by Fleischer Studios using the two-color Technicolor process. Disney had acquired an exclusivity to three-color Technicolor process and it took the Fleischers years to take advantage of that technology. Although Dancing on the Moon does not feature jazz music from Cab Calloway or Louis Armstrong, like earlier cartoons, you will most likely be humming this goofy theme song by Charlie Tobias and Murray Mencher for hours to come. It's catchy!

(Video here at MuskegonOnline.NET)


Bunny Mooning, below, directed by Dave Fleischer. Voices include Jack Mercer, who later became the voice of Popeye for Fleischer Studios, and Mae Questel, the voice of Betty Boop on over 150 animated shorts until the character was retired in 1939.

(Video here at MuskegonOnline.NET)


We leave the Fleischer Studios Color Classics with Time for Love, below. Though the Fleischers would never recover from a disastrous move from New York City to Miami, Florida in 1938, their Popeye cartoons continued to be popular and their carefully drawn, scored and scripted Superman cartoons remain some of the best superhero stories on film.

(Video here at MuskegonOnline.NET)

Those interested in classic cartoons can visit the The ASIFA-Hollywood Animation Archive, a 501(c)(3) non-profit museum, library and digital archive dedicated to serving the worldwide animation community. A project of ASIFA-Hollywood, the archive receives support from The Walter Lantz Foundation. Go to http://www.animationarchive.org and prepare to be entertained.


These Works are in Public Domain and not Derivative as specified by U.S. copyright law (title 17 of the U.S. Code).

Editor and Publisher Gary Scott Beatty has been working in printing and publishing for over 35 years, including editing Muskegon's On the Shore magazine and typesetting Muskegon Magazine. In 2008 he won a Xeric Foundation Grant to publish Jazz: Cool Birth, a murder mystery in a 1957 jazz club with illustrations inspired by '50s album cover design. This and his other Aazurn Publishing books can be purchased through Amazon.com. Worldwide, he edits and publishes Indie Comics Magazine, 64 pages of the best story and art from today's independent comic book creators.