I like to use my children as an excuse for all the toys I have and the cartoons I watch, but the truth is that it’s for me.  I love them, and I can’t hardly wait for the new shows to start up again.  We save up our shows and watch them on Saturday in between making Waffles and cleaning up the house.  Most of the shows have been on mid-season breaks, so I thought that I would start to make a list of the their start dates.

Avengers Earths Mightiest Heroes    ~    April 1 on Disney XD
Ben 10 Ultimate Alien    ~    February 4 on Cartoon Network
Clone Wars    ~    Started on Cartoon Network
G.I. Joe Renegades    ~    Not returning.
Green Lantern the animated series    ~    March 3 on Cartoon Network
Kung Fu Panda Legend of Awesomeness    ~    5 more episodes in Season One TBA
Lego Ninjago Masters of Spinjitzu    ~    ??? I need to find out more information about this one
My Little Pony    ~    Started on HUB
Napoleon Dynamite    ~    3 episodes have played, but I haven’t watched any yet…
Scooby Doo mystery incorporated    ~    Season 2 starting in May on Cartoon Network
Ultimate Spider-man    ~    April 1 on Disney XD
Thundercats    ~    Second season confirmed, air date TBA
Transformers Prime    ~    Feb. 18th on Hub
Young Justice    ~    Titled Young Justice: Invasion, an air date is TBA

In addition to these titles, Disney XD will launch an all-new Marvel Comics dedicated block called Marvel Universe.  It will include the above mentioned Ultimate Spider-Man and the return of The Avengers: Earth’s Mightiest Heroes as well as new animated short-form series and some live-action parts.

Not to be out done,  Cartoon Network will launch an entertainment block called DC Nation.  It will include the above mentioned Young Justice and Green Lantern: The Animated Series, as well as a series of animated shorts.  The theme for the shorts and other series will be about Plastic Man, a possible live-action Blue Beetle, chibi versions of The Teen Titans, Amethyst Princess of Gemworld (I have no idea what that is), Lego Batman, and some other Batman shorts.

It looks like I’m going to be starting my Saturdays earlier to get all these cartoons in. 

Some of you may recall ALL THE WAY BACK to 2001 when Burger King launched the Subservient Chicken. This interactive advertising program was created to promote some new BK sandwich as part of their “Have it Your Way” campaign. It was a pretty advanced application at the time. When you went to the site you would find somebody in a dressed in a chicken suit, standing in their living room, and waiting to take direction from you. You can type in commands such as “lay an egg”, “dance”, or “die” and the chicken would do it!  The video looked like it was a live web cam, so it was this AMAZING piece of technology.

Fastforward to 2010 when live streaming video content can happen from your phone and reality TV is a anchor of the broadcast networks and we find “ControlTV“. I got a Facebook invite from series co-creator Matthew Senriech to join the Facebook group and help the show’s star Tristan get a little direction in his life. So ControlTV is a live-streamed, online reality experiment that gives viewers control over Tristan. Subservient TRISTAN! The camera crew will start to document Tristan’s every move on Wednesday October 6th and will allow the online audience to vote on every major aspect of his life. Pick out his clothes, tell him what to eat, or who he should date (insert lyrics to AQUA’s “Barbie Girl”). The show will fun for six weeks. So it’s Subservient Chicken meets the Truman Show meets social networking. The show is presented by Ford and Sprint but that doesn’t mean that Burger King can’t swamp the voting and have him eat one of their Chicken Sandwiches!

I love witty t-shirts.

 
You can go buy the shirt here.  Thanks to SuperPunch for making my day! 

One of the things that I really enjoy about the new Star Wars: The Clone Wars TV show is classic feel.  The original Star Wars movie is based off of the cliff hanger serials that George Lucas watched as a kid.  So it makes sense that these new cartoons open up with a movie reel voice over prompting us with all the pertinent information from previous episodes.  That’s why I was so excited to see that the WWII era has these shows.  One of the things that I got most excited about was the way that some of the vehicles have been decorated with nose art like some of the old bombers.  I’ve decided to try and put together a series of my own Star Wars nose art images.  Here’s one of the first ones.

Here’s some news from an article in Entertainment Weekly and re-posted by Dark Horizons about the future of the TV line up.  Just for fun marked the shows I care about in red.

ABC

STAYING: Brothers and Sisters, Castle, Desperate Housewives, Grey’s Anatomy, Lost, Private Practice, Ugly Betty

GONE: Cupid, Dirty Sexy Money, Eli Stone, In the Motherhood, Pushing Daisies, Surviving Suburbia, The Unusuals

UNSURE: Samantha Who?, Scrubs

CBS

STAYING: The Big Bang Theory, CSI - All Three Series, Ghost Whisperer, How I Met Your Mother, The Mentalist, NCIS, Numb3rs, Rules of Engagment, Two and a Half Men

GONE: Flashpoint, Harper’s Island,  Eleventh Hour Now a long shot. Hearing the crew is looking for other work.

UNSURE: Gary Unmarried, New Adventures of Old Christine, Without a Trace, The Unit

FOX

STAYING: 24, American Dad, Bones, Family Guy, Fringe, House, Lie to Me, The Simpsons, ‘Til Death

GONE: King of the Hill, Prison Break, Sit Down Shut Up

UNSURE: Dollhouse (it’s a long shot), Terminator

NBC

STAYING: 30 Rock, Chuck, Friday Night Lights, Heroes, Law & Order, Law & Order: SVU, Medium, The Office, Parks and Recreation, Southland

GONE: Kath & Kim, Kings, Knight Rider, Lipstick Jungle, Life

UNSURE: Law & Order: Criminal Intent, My Name is Earl

The CW

STAYING: 90210, Gossip Girl, One Tree Hill, Smallville, Supernatural

GONE: Everybody Hates Chris, Reaper

UNSURE: The Game, Privileged

In the TV show “Chuck” (which I LUV), Chuck Bartowski opens an email from an old college friend that downloads the entire CIA/NSA database into his brain.  The database is known as the intersect and from then on in the show, Chuck is referred to as the Intersect.  With this database in his brain he is able to help the CIA/NSA on missions.  So, I just watched the trailer for the new Transformers movie and it looks like Shia LaBeouf’s character in the movie finds and ancient Cybertronian object that puts all kinds of information in his brain.

When I was a kid I would LIVE for Saturday mornings.  We would wake up early and watch cartoons for HOURS!  We didn’t have cable so we were at the mercy of the broadcast station choices.  Now that I have children of my own, I’ve seen a shift in the cartoons that are on Saturday.  The excitement is still there, but the choices are a bit more limited.

One of my favorite cartoons was Battle of the Planets also known as G-Force.  The series is centered around five young superhero ninja in the employ of Dr. Kozaburo Nambu of the fictitious “International Science Organization” to oppose a group of technologically advanced villains, known as Galactor, from trying to take control of the Earth’s natural resources.  Each of the Five member team is equipped with a special wrist device that, aside from being a communicator, enabled the characters to change into their super suits when the proper gesture and voice command, “Bird Go!”, is given.  (from Wikipedia)

The show was pretty fun, but as is the case with most of these cartoons from my youth, my memories of the show are better than the actual show.  That is why I’m keenly interested to see what the new 3D movie version of this story turns out like.  You can see more over at io9.com.

As rumors about auditions for the Live Action TV series began to circulate, the gang over at Lightsabre have found a video to give us a taste of what the show could be like.  Well, not really, but it’s fun.  According to the article at Lightsaber, the deal that George Lucas made with 20th Century Fox would call for the original movie to be made into a weekly television series if the saga’s first big screen outing hadn’t been a success.

In voluntary cooperation with bloggers in your area, this blogger is participation in a test of the free sketch card system.  :D   Jason over at SUPERPUNCH blogs about toys, and games and art and all kinds of fun stuff.  I’ve been reading his blog even before he had mentioned me on it.  When he saw that I had been working on some sketch cards for the Star Wars guys over at RebelScum he asked if I would be willing to offer a sketch for his readers.  You can go over to SUPERPUNCH and leave a comment about his blog post with a suggestion for a character that you would like to see drawn by me.

Steve Coogan is producing a British version of the 1990s time traveling series Quantum Leap.  Tom Basden, British comedy writer and member of the two-man show Cowards, will play the main character, school teacher Owen Malloy.  I really enjoyed the original series, I guess that means it’s about time to recreate it.