In addition to the premiere of THE DRINKY CROW SHOW, last night boasted several new shows on Adult Swim, for which I dutifully record my impressions:

SUPERJAIL: First few minutes include eyeball injury and vomit explosion, so it fits right in. Later expands to cover starvation, torture, prison rape, eviscerated maggoty rabbits, etc. Animation much influenced by indy comics, with bits of Lynda Barry, Gary Panter, Richard Sala and every cartoonist ever published by Top Shelf. Basically this is the most incoherent, violent and irredeemable thing I have ever seen. Already picked up for a full season. Christy Karacas, Stephen Warbrick and Ben Gruber, step forward.

DRINKY CROW: “What do you prefer, Gabby, the unattainable ideal or the here and now?” While presenting much more in the way of intellectual nutrition, DRINKY also includes fucking whales, fucking flies…naval battles and…Mermaids. The combination of pen and ink and 3D animation was a little hard to get used to, but I can see it working.

FAT GUY STUCK IN THE INTERNET: I loved this. It’s like SAUL OF THE MOLE-MEN with a brain larger than a walnut. It was originally based on a web TV show called Gemberling, created by John Gemberling and Curtis Gwinn. Basically, hot shot computer programmer Germberling is sucked into the internet where he is met by Bit and Byte, who take him on a quest to find the Motherboard and save the internet. Gerberling is a dick and refuses at first because “He’s kinda got his own stuff going on” but the arrival of a bounty hunter named Chains (Gwinn) changes his mind and he learns that everybody needs friends. Riffing off great nerd lore like Tron, Reboot and Star Wars, this features fats guys in skin tights siuits with no underwear, Obi-Wan as played by Bill Cosby, and a cartoon sidekick housed in an old Atari computer. Plus the CGI backgrounds actually look great and imaginative. This has also been picked up for a full season and it’s got cult written all over it.

Crookdsipp
THAT CROOK’D SIPP: If Flannery O’Connor came back as a black rapper and decided to make a cartoon this is what it would be. Sort of based on an album by rapper David Banner, with a look heavily influenced by the look of classic children’s book illos, John K and Gene Deitch, to tell a story of about Antebellum family decreputude and racism in Mississippi. There were not as many decapitations or vomit explosions as usual, but there was plenty of squalor and sin. The story was kind of hard to follow, but Jacob Escobedo’s art direction was gorgeous. Unfortunately, this ABC Home and Carpet version of the Squidbillies is way too cerebral to ever catch on.

LET’S FISH: Yet another live action show about two homely, overweight white guys, which i guess IS the target audience, after all. The animation is very HB, and contrasts with the two homely overweight white guys almost getting eaten by angry natives who are actually more homely, overweight white guys. Humor topics include Nazis, butt fucking and French Cambodian cuisine. No.

Watch them all and vote for your favorites here. Drinky Crow is winning, followed by Superjail. That figures.

1 COMMENT

  1. All this stuff aired last night?

    My Tivo must have got things wrong last night. Only That Crook’d Sipp got taped. Dinky Crow got lost, and I didn’t know about these other shows.

    I was too busy mourning the death of Christopher on another famous Sunday cable network to even take notice.

    ~

    Coat

  2. All I saw was Superjail, and then I turnd off the TV. It was trash. I can get the good parts of Robot Chicken from Youtube, some I’m pretty much done with CN all togehter. I’m going to stick with Kim Possible.

  3. I know people love Maakies and Drinky Crow.
    But I just found it disturbingly nihillistic and depressing, and ridiculously violent.
    If that’s some peoples’ idea of hilarity, well…toke up and enjoy.

    Jeez, if I watched that thing stoned I’d probably want to kill myself.

  4. I watched these via the AS website last night, and they all turned me off. The animation of “Drinky Crow” was interesting to watch for several minutes, but some of the gross stuff was just too gross for me.

  5. “But Heidi, where’d you get THIS version? YouTube, I know, but the version I saw last night was slightly different as it was aired.”

    That is the internet version that aired on Channel 102 not the version made for Adult Swim.

  6. Geez, so much negativity here. I thought Drinky Crow was beautifully written and hilarious, but why does such a small crow have such a deep voice. One gets used to it, but really! Also at times it looked like video game cut scenes, but a monkey being sodomized by a whale and a philosophical quandry on desire is wonderful on its own.

    Superjail was beautifully animated, with funny pictures and wonderful main character, and a plot that’s all emotion. Which is great! Reminded me of a Looney Toons [Tunes?] cartoon.

    The live action stuff wasn’t bad. I look forward to more of Fat Guy, and Let’s Fish was a bit of an eyebrow raiser but it seems to be getting some high praise from people.

    Really, Adult Swim is the only place that airs experimental animation, foreign animation, and makes cartoons based on comic strips which aren’t necessarily spewing out doll after doll. Its great that they exist. But nobody doubted that.