The Delbert Cartoon Report

Today we look at a recent Warner Archive release that took everyone by surprise.  It's Popeye the Sailor for the first time on Blu-ray, and we see just how great it is. The Blu-ray itself continues where Popeye the Sailor 1941-1943 left off when released 10 years ago.  Now celebrating 90 years of his debut in Thimble Theater, Popeye cartoons began in 1933 under Max Fleischer.  Over the years, there was some trouble between them and their distributor, Paramount.  In the end, because Popeye was so popular that he even beat Disney at #1 cartoon character (until Bugs Bunny came along) that Paramount wanted to control the studio altogether, and due to personal issues between the Fleischer brothers, it became so much easier to oust the Fleischers and continue the studio and the character on their own.  Renamed Famous Studios, they continued to turn out Popeye cartoons until 1957 which was their biggest breadwinner out of all the other more original characters ...

Celebrating its 20th anniversary,  Ed Edd n Eddy was one of Cartoon Network's most popular and longest running original series.  In honor of their anniversary, here are some facts about the Eds, and also some of my personal opinions of the series. FACT:  It is currently the longest lasting Cartoon Network original Spanning 5 seasons (there was a so called season 6, but it was only one episode), 4 TV specials, and a TV movie, this show lasted longer than the Powerpuff Girls despite them making the bigger bucks, and saw multiple eras of Cartoon Network from the golden era which mixes new series with classic cartoon reruns and Toonami to the dark days when Cartoon Network picked up a ton of live action shows.  It was one of the top rated kids shows in America. OPINION: But in season 5, they jumped the shark The season premiere showed many changes.  The first one is the transition from cells to digital ink and paint.  The biggest one can be f...

Ah, 2018....it had its ups and its downs.  But overall it comes down to what you thought.  These Cheers and Jeers of 2018 in animation may help you decide how good or how bad this year was. Best Animated Feature This award goes out to the best feature of the year based off of reviews, popularity, and box office numbers.  For most of the year, it was kind of bland thanks to sequal after sequal.  However, one surprise last minute hit turned the tide Yeah yeah I know, another Marvel movie which Disney has been milking too much of, but this animated feature stood out.  It was based off of many comic books with many different versions of Spider Man including Spider HAM, and even an anime like character named Penni Parker (making it seem more mainstream than ever).  Of course the immense popularity of Incredibles 2 and Wreck It Ralph 2 made them hits, but were either too corporate in my book or had some issues with strobe lighting (really, I thought th...