Lio by Mark Tatulli for November 18, 2008

What a mean thing to do to poor Wile E.

It could have been worse - he could have been impersonating a telemarketer for Acme.

Wile E. could be doing very well for himself, depending on the outcome of his lawsuit (see http://www.geocities.com/TelevisionCity/3081/lawsuit.html)

Do you search the web after reading these comics for something to relate it to? You always have something runar. Gotta show this to my dad and grampa.

Runar rulez the internets!

Re: NipponKid

No, some of us just watched cartoons back in the day when they were made by real masters of the cartoon art, not the finger-paint imitators who had helped to slop together the nauseating bilge of the 70s, 80s and 90s. You have my condolences if you had to suffer watching that while growing up!

Question: Am I the only one here who always wanted to see Wile chow down on roast roadrunner? Not just to see the torment end, but also because the Coyote is a versatile character who doesn’t need that bird as a “partner” to entertain us, while the Roadrunner does nothing but smile and run around and is famous for it (Much like Paris Hilton).

They were kids cartoons. Nobody really expected them to be in-depth, Gweedo. But I agree with you there.

I’m twentyfour years old, and I still like many cartoons from the 80s and the 90s. It’s only during the 2000s, that I’ve noticed a decline in cartoons. Not that I’m a normal twentyfour-year-old, but still, the best cartoons aren’t just for kids, but for all ages.

And I have to agree with Margueritem. That was a really mean thing to do! And just like SherlockWatson, I always preferred Vile E Coyote over Road Runner, just like I always preferred Tom over Jerry and Sylvester over Tweety.

And just one more question, is Mark Tatulli really that good at copying other people’s drawings, or is it some kind of photoshop? But to answer my own question, I think he is, because my sister is almost that good at drawing, so a professional should be that good.

I am 23, and in my last year of college, and I still watch the old cartoons like looney tunes, scooby doo, tom and jerry, and even the smurfs on occassion!! I am also a big Winnie the Pooh fan..there are some things you will never outgrow :)

I seem to recall one time when Wile E. did catch the Roadrunner. He held up a sign that said “now what do I do.”

@Nipponkid - I have a very retentive memory, which I attribute to having learned to read at a very early age - I was the only reader in my kindergarten class, and that was pre-Sesame Street. I came across a reference to Coyote vs. Acme a short while ago, read the book in which it appeared, and when I saw this cartoon, wanted to post a reference to it and found that the original text was online and posted the link.

Benedick says: “They were kids [sic] cartoons. Nobody really expected them to be in-depth…”

Benedick, I disagree. Many cartoons worked on different levels, mostly because the classics were done by grown-ups who were not only aware that there were both children and adults in their audiences, but were also in the business of entertaining themselves. It’s in the 70s and beyond that the cookie-cutter cartoons stopped appealling to multilayered audiences. Chuck Jones said that if you couldn’t turn the sound off on a cartoon and still follow the storyline, it wasn’t a cartoon, it was “animated radio”.

Witness this dialogue from Rabbit Seasoning (1952):

Bugs Bunny: Would you like to shoot me now or wait till you get home? Daffy Duck: Shoot him now! Shoot him now! Bugs Bunny: You keep outta this! He doesn’t have to shoot you now! Daffy Duck: He does so have to shoot me now! [to Elmer] Daffy Duck: I demand that you shoot me now! [Elmer shoots him.] Daffy Duck: Let’sth run through that again. Bugs Bunny: Okay. [in a flat tone] Bugs Bunny: Wouldja like to shoot me now or wait till you get home? Daffy Duck: [flat tone] Shoot him now, shoot him now. Bugs Bunny: [flat tone] You keep outta this. He doesn’t hafta shoot you now. Daffy Duck: [with sudden passion] Ha! That’s it! Hold it right there! [to audience] Daffy Duck: Pronoun trouble. [to Bugs] Daffy Duck: It’s not: “He doesn’t have to shoot you now.” It’s: “He doesn’t have to shoot me now.” Well, I say he does have to shoot me now! [to Elmer] Daffy Duck: So shoot me now! [Elmer shoots him]

(See http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0045062/)

Nobody writing for just kids would ever have used the line “Pronoun trouble”.

May I disagree, runar? Just because of that ‘pronoun trouble’ bit, you can’t say that the cartoons were actually geared towards adults (which I wasn’t disagreeing with in the first place). The shows were geared towards kids under ten, am I not right? Kids nowadays under ten might have trouble telling you what a pronoun is unless they’ve payed attention in English, but kids back then actually listened to their teachers. Am I wrong in thinking that kids of that era would get that joke?

I don’t know how old you are, Benedick, but I have had the advantage of knowing people who did see these cartoons as kids when they were first run in theaters, and having been told that they can still appreciate them as adults because they can get all the things that went over their heads (yes, even knowing what pronouns are). I have had similar experiences with the Jay Ward cartoons (Rocky & Bulwinkle, Peabody & Sherman, Fractured Fairy Tales, &c.), which, while rather crudely drawn, had levels of verbal and sometimes visual humor that I sometimes see for the first time even today. As a child, there were many things that I found funny, not because I fully understood them, but because they were just plain silly, then came to understand the other layers as a teen or an adult. Hate to keep harping on it, but the “pronoun trouble” remark is the kind of thing that is both silly and sophisticated, which makes Maltese and Jones rank up there with the best comedy teams of all time.

According to biographies and autobiographies of the animators, writers and directors who actually worked on those cartoons, they weren’t worried about the audience; they trusted their instincts to know two things: If they thought it was funny, the audiences would think it was funny; If their bosses thought it wasn’t funny, the audiences would think it was funny. I have a different perspective on this - my co-workers and I used the same principle when I worked as a game designer. Had I been born fifty years earlier, I probably would have ended up at Termite Terrace.

wow he’s near a mental breakdown

lol

That’s the sort of gag the Animaniacs would pull, especially Yakko, Wakko, and Dot.