Gene Deitch, an animation director with a long and varied career, has penned an on-line autobiography which is presently posted on the Animation World Network site. Here's a direct link to Mr. Deitch's memoirs, which are well worth the attention of any cartoon buff.
Any cartoon buff will also enjoy my pal Jerry Beck's website, Cartoon Research, from which I cribbed the above item. In payment, I will plug an upcoming installment of Toon Heads, the Cartoon Network series that digs up rare or otherwise special films. The episode that airs on Sunday, July 1 is subtitled "The Wartime Cartoons" and it's co-written by Jerry (with George Klein) and packed with clips and entire cartoons from that era. That's Sunday, July 1 on the Cartoon Network. It airs at 10:00 pm in most time zones but you'd better check, because you won't wanna miss it.
And another in my endless series of pals who write well — Andy Ihnatko — has a good article on comic collecting you can read here. And you can access Andy's fun website at www.cwob.com. Check out his portfolio of sketches featuring the Marvel character, Tigra. You can reach that directly by clicking here.
As you probably know: when a movie filmed in widescreen format is shown on TV or retooled for home video, they do a process called "panning-and-scanning" to it, cropping the image for the smaller screen area. Sometimes, we don't realize how much of the movie is missing due to this process. If you'd like to see some examples that make this point, click here.
The DVD release of It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World is currently slated for 9/18/2001. No word yet on when the complete 1776 will hit the same format.