Casper collection

I'm sending you right back to Cartoon Brew to get the buzz on the new Casper The Friendly Ghost reprint collection. And I thought I was the only one who cared (now I know who's been outbidding me on ebay)! I'm really looking forward to this.

Farewell to Takamoto

Sad to report that the great Iwao Takamoto passed away a few days ago, leaving behind an incredible legacy of animated characters like Scooby Doo, Atom Ant, and the Gruesomes. Cute and creepy, just like we like 'em here at Monsterama, right ghouls? He'll be missed. Here's a link to a post from awhile back...

GeGeGe!!!

Thanks to Hino for pointing out that the long rumored and anticipated live action movie version of my beloved Gegege No Kitaro is due to debut this spring! Check out the two wicked trailers on the official Gegege no Kitarô site. The screenplay was written by Daisuke Habara, based on the super-awesome manga by Shigeru Mizuki, and it's directed by Katsuhide Motoki (Free & Easy series, Drugstore Girl). For those of you who need to catch up, Kitaro is a young half-yokai (goblin/spectre/monster) who lost his parents at birth. His father's soul lives in one of his eyeballs. Raised within the yokai clan, Kitaro keeps tabs on human society, and fights evil yokai monsters-- protecting virtuous human beings from these threats from the other world. For some reason, the filmakers have invented a human love interest for Kitaro. A high school girl named Mika is rescued by the uncanny Kitaro and gradually falls for him. Her character has been created specially for the film, although Kitaro did have a human girlfriend by the name of Yumeko-chan in the third animated TV series broadcast on the Fuji network from 1985 to 1988. Not that I'm complaining!

Bewitching Tricks

While on the subject of witches, here's a link to some fabulous Bewitched trivia, including altered Hanna-Barbera animation, lost theme music, and loads of bloopers.

Festival Hexe

What do you know? I guess sitting around on a runway in a crappy little airplane during a delay pays off sometimes. Otherwise I might have never read about Switzerland's Ski Witches. The The 25th Annual Belalp-Blatten Witches’ Race will be run January 21–27, 2007, and grew out of an old local legend of a drunken Witch from Blatten who turned into a raven and flew across the valley to hook up with some slutty sorcerer. Now bored of her nice, dull husband, she found him culling cherries from a tree when she returned and killed him by emptying her entrails into his eye. And now they have a fun all-ages ski to commemorate the story. Oh, and they get stinking drunk. I'm not making this up! The Witches’ Race ends in Blatten, exactly on the spot where the virtuous husband died-- apparently of accute entrail poisoning. More photos here.

El Frankenstein Jr.

Here are three beautiful Mexican trading cards from 1971 featuring Frankenstein Jr. from a Hanna-Barbera series. The airbrushy artwork is slightly wonky, but not as weirdly off-model as the British art I posted before. Enjoy...