This weekend on the internet, many people are expressing their dismay that the traditional Saturday Morning Cartoons are officially no more. While I understand the sentiment, I think that the 24/7 availability of such through streaming, DVD sets and dedicated cartoon networks kind of undermines any sense of loss I might have had. Of course, I’m not entirely immune to the lure of “What Used To Be”, as I truly miss the days when editor-in-chief Jim Shooter mandated that comic scripts identify each character by their name upon their appearance, leading to amazing/stupid full-page moments that end up being nothing more than introductory word balloons. Sure, comic book storytelling has improved in many ways, but sometimes you just need a quick rudimentary explanation of who in the hell these people actually are, leading us to today’s retroactive continuity query…
The MS-QOTD (pronounced, as always, “misquoted”) also misses theme songs, traditional old-school themes like ‘Laverne & Shirley’ had, even though the three second theme to ‘The Mindy Project’ is adorable, asking: Which traditions, devices or tropes of pop culture that creators used to (but no longer) use do you most miss?
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As I was watching Star Wars Rebels this weekend, I noticed that I really miss hand drawn western animations, everything is made with computer now. They still do it in asia, but never in american productions. Cgi is not necessarily bad, but well made hand drawn animation is vastly superior.
I don’t mind some computer animation, but in the cases of some series, it comes across looking really cheap and lazy.
I tried not to agree with this (like you said, CGI itself is not bad), but the monotony of it compared to the much wider variety of hand drawn animation styles is wearing. This is probably at the top of my list for the same reasons. Like I said, I don’t hate CGI, I just wish there was more variety.
Even with the easy availability, I still feel a loss at the end of the old non-cable not entirely educational Saturday morning cartoons. It was a tradition I still indulged in even now at age 34. As unthinkable as it sounds in this day and age, not everyone has cable or internet to turn to, and even some with cable only get a very basic package (mostly local channels and a few others, no Nickelodeon or Cartoon Network or Disney Channel).
I miss the days when big event comics were a rarity rather than the norm.
I kind of miss the comic book issues where Superman fights thinly-veiled Popeye. Alisha also makes the good point of when big crossovers were a rarity.
I kind of wish there were more 2-d animated projects, with significantly less or no celebrity voices, but real voice actors.
Traditional Animation. I really kind of miss that look…
I miss dialogue or speech bubbles on comic covers–also those little blurbs or footnotes *as seen in issue 35 :)