A finely drawn history of a critical period in the history of animation.
Entertaining history of early cartoon animation.
Demonstrating impassioned research and technical know-how, Mitenbuler presents a series of historical anecdotes that, sequenced together, bring to life one of the world’s most beloved art forms. When Winsor McCay, creator of the “Little Nemo” comics, debuted his first moving drawings in 1911, he jolted an entire industry to its feet. During the next few decades, a network of feuding production studios emerged, each trying to one-up the other with their inventiveness and intellectual properties. It was a cutthroat business, often leaving animators at odds with their executives. Otto Messmer, for example, the artist behind Felix the Cat, was frequently overlooked while his producer, Pat Sullivan, basked in fame and merchandising success. A rivalry brewed between Walt Disney, whose new animation studio wowed audiences with shorts like the “The Skeleton Dance” (1929), and Max Fleischer, the man behind the Betty Boop and Popeye cartoons and inventor of technical marvels like the rotoscope. Mitenbuler chronicles the debut of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs in 1937 and the unusual production of Disney’s 1940 music-animation hybrid Fantasia while also giving ample time to the rambunctious crew behind Looney Tunes and the various hijinks on the Warner Brothers lot. The narrative crackles with captivating charm, adding color and nuance to a cast of familiar cartoon faces. The author is skilled at exploring historical context and tracks how most turns in the industry were reactionary, shifts in response to not just popular trends, but to labor politics, the Great Depression, and World War II. In the words of a Disney memo on his studio’s core philosophies, “we cannot do the fantastic things based on the real unless we first know the real.” Mitenbuler, too, proves adept at this tenet and, like a one-man animation department, effortlessly renders both celluloid and background.
A finely drawn history of a critical period in the history of animation.Pub Date: Dec. 1, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-8021-2938-3
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Atlantic Monthly
Review Posted Online: Aug. 31, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Not so deep, but a delightful tip of the hat to the pleasures—and power—of glamour.
A coffee-table book celebrates Michelle Obama’s sense of fashion.
Illustrated with hundreds of full-color photographs, Obama’s chatty latest book begins with some school portraits from the author’s childhood in Chicago and fond memories of back-to-school shopping at Sears, then jumps into the intricacies of clothing oneself as the spouse of a presidential candidate and as the first lady. “People looked forward to the outfits, and once I got their attention, they listened to what I had to say. This is the soft power of fashion,” she says. Obama is grateful and frank about all the help she got along the way, and the volume includes a long section written by her primary wardrobe stylist, Koop—28 years old when she first took the job—and shorter sections by makeup artists and several hair stylists, who worked with wigs and hair extensions as Obama transitioned back to her natural hair, and grew out her bangs, at the end of her husband’s second term. Many of the designers of the author’s gowns, notably Jason Wu, who designed several of her more striking outfits, also contribute appreciative memories. Besides candid and more formal photographs, the volume features many sketches of her gowns by their designers, closeups on details of those gowns, and magazine covers from Better Homes & Gardens to Vogue. The author writes that as a Black woman, “I was under a particularly white-hot glare, constantly appraised for whether my outfits were ‘acceptable’ and ‘appropriate,’ the color of my skin somehow inviting even more judgment than the color of my dresses.” Overall, though, this is generally a canny, upbeat volume, with little in the way of surprising revelations.
Not so deep, but a delightful tip of the hat to the pleasures—and power—of glamour.Pub Date: Nov. 4, 2025
ISBN: 9780593800706
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Nov. 7, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2026
A virtuoso performance and an ode to an undervalued medium created by two talented artists.
The veteran actor, comedian, and banjo player teams up with the acclaimed illustrator to create a unique book of cartoons that communicates their personalities.
Martin, also a prolific author, has always been intrigued by the cartoons strewn throughout the pages of the New Yorker. So when he was presented with the opportunity to work with Bliss, who has been a staff cartoonist at the magazine since 1997, he seized the moment. “The idea of a one-panel image with or without a caption mystified me,” he writes. “I felt like, yeah, sometimes I’m funny, but there are these other weird freaks who are actually funny.” Once the duo agreed to work together, they established their creative process, which consisted of working forward and backward: “Forwards was me conceiving of several cartoon images and captions, and Harry would select his favorites; backwards was Harry sending me sketched or fully drawn cartoons for dialogue or banners.” Sometimes, he writes, “the perfect joke occurs two seconds before deadline.” There are several cartoons depicting this method, including a humorous multipanel piece highlighting their first meeting called “They Meet,” in which Martin thinks to himself, “He’ll never be able to translate my delicate and finely honed droll notions.” In the next panel, Bliss thinks, “I’m sure he won’t understand that the comic art form is way more subtle than his blunt-force humor.” The team collaborated for a year and created 150 cartoons featuring an array of topics, “from dogs and cats to outer space and art museums.” A witty creation of a bovine family sitting down to a gourmet meal and one of Dumbo getting his comeuppance highlight the duo’s comedic talent. What also makes this project successful is the team’s keen understanding of human behavior as viewed through their unconventional comedic minds.
A virtuoso performance and an ode to an undervalued medium created by two talented artists.Pub Date: Nov. 17, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-250-26289-9
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Celadon Books
Review Posted Online: Aug. 30, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2020
PERSPECTIVES
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