an animated discussion

Cartoons are great. Good animation can be the coolest, most entertaining thing in the world, and despite being a grown man I'm not ashamed to say so.

What sort of loser would like cartoons past childhood? I'll tell you:

• Comic genius Mel Brooks, for one. He must, since he's remaking his 1980s masterpiece Spaceballs as an animated series. I can't wait for the continued adventures of Dark Helmet and Colonel Sanders, though sadly it just won't be the same without John Candy.

• Animator John Kricfalusi, godfather of Spumco animation and creator of Ren and Stimpy (not to mention Our Beloved Founder). Besides making some timeless cartoons of his own, john K. also maintains a blog called all kinds of stuff about animation, so he must think it's pretty cool.
  
• How about the JibJab guys? This blog was born on the day the Marmoset and I watched This Land and said, "Two dorky brothers getting famous from putting stupid stuff on the Web? Crap, why didn't we think of that?" Well, judge for yourself if that was a good thing...
• Even our own, beloved Marmoset was once an aspiring cartoonist. I haven't forgotten about Skippy the Yelling Bear, though he probably wishes I would.
  

Did you know anyone can be a cartoonist now? A new, open source (read: FREE) program called Monkeyjam lets anyone do their own animations. If only the Marmoset had enough free time to create further adventures of Herman the Alien Child... Of course, nowadays Stewie Griffin would probably sue and/or kill him, but I know who came first.