Drawn Or Alive #6: The Addams Family VS The Addams Family VS The Addams Family VS The Addams Family

It's a monster sized edition of Drawn Or Alive as four seperate branches of The Addams Family jostle for rightful inheritance to their creator's legacy! The first live-action adaptation from 1964, and the first screen version to boot, dances a deadly tango with Hanna Barbera's 1973 effort, the dearly beloved movie from 1991 and the second go from ol' HB inspired by that same movie in 1992. It's a family feud like no other; they may all be Addams, but only one gets the seat at the head of the table!

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Show #205: The Venture Brothers Series 4 and 5

Our boys have grown up so much! And that's just us going off on a longer-than-expected tear about the Venture Brothers when we thought we had the measure of them. Jackson Publick and Doc Hammer saw that coming though, proceeding to sweep aside sizeable swathes of their world of aimless adventurers and vacuous villains to allow something new to grow. It was a tough row to hoe for both the creators and the fans incensed at the change, but did all their hard work pay off? Teenage rebellion, the sins of the fathers and a catchy hit single underscore an immense inventory of a turbulent time, still keeping a little space for a Post-Podcast Repaste of course.

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Show #204: Osmosis Jones

Seasonal ailment Joseph Wade spreads the word about one Osmosis Jones, a Piet Kroon and Tom Sito cartoon film that got hit with a bad case of the Farrelly Brothers for the live-action segments of its cops & robbers caper inside Bill Murray's decaying body. It's gross, it's educational and for some it was the apex of their celebrity at the start of the millenium (with a soundtrack to match!). TV spin-offs and other animated fantastic voyages await our diagnosis, and if you can stomach it there's a Post-Podcast Repaste to help you get your strength back.

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Drawn Or Alive #5: The Tick VS The Tick VS The Tick

 Masked avenger Brian Smith answers the clarion call of justice as the unstoppable force meets the immovable object meets the inevitable cliff edge! A Drawn Or Alive first, it's a triple header of titles all adapting comic crazy Ben Edlund's big blue maroon as he thwarts crime in animation in 1994 before becoming larger than live-action in 2001 and 2016 respectively. With Edlund himself pitching in rather than working these ideas out on the page each version could be deemed the realest deal, but what makes each Tick... tick? There's no time to waste chum, as evil is out there handcrafting mischief for the swap meet of villainy!

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Drawn Or Alive #4: A Chinese Ghost Story VS A Chinese Ghost Story - The Tsui Hark Animation

Tsui Hark, writer/producer/director plus visionary, seemed hardly content with his contribution in 1987 to the gnarly adaptation of Qing dynasty novel Strange Tales From A Chinese Studio. A decade later he saw fit to realise the true scope of the collection of fables within the supposedly boundless limits of animation. With the original already a groundbreaking hit in special effects that spurred on a nascent cult film appreciation scene in Hong Kong & China, what could its cartoon counterpart bring to the table beside being another outlet for Hark's incredible enthusiasm & self-belief? It is a strange tale indeed, filled with spirits, romance, musical numbers and explosive exorcisms, pitting two rough & ready productions against each other in an eerie encounter from which only one will emerge drawn or alive!

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Show #203: The Venture Brothers Part 2

 
Arch-villain Brian Smith is unleashed to cast a wiser eye upon the awkward transitionary phase of the Adult Swim darling in our second retrospective chunk, comprising series 2 and 3. While we get a better sense of the cartoon it would become, and the ambitions of Jackson Publick and Doc Hammer for it beyond an outlet for coarse humour, The Venture Brothers still had a lot of growing up to do. The good news is you get a whole lot more: more dumb-voiced duos! More genuine pathos! Ever more oblique cultural references! And more to come way down the line with the prospect of a movie to cap off the whole lot. It's bigger, it's louder, and it's got an appetite for a Post-Podcast Repaste to match!

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OH! That's A Baseball Episode! #5: Johnny Bravo, Cow & Chicken and The Grim Adventures Of Billy & Mandy

 

The other side of a great rivalry is at bat next, the creative contemporaries to the Nicktoons outfit that were the Cartoon Cartoons from Cartoon Network. That's a lotta cartoons! A lot of very popular cartoons at that but only the finest contain an obligatory baseball episode therein: Death stalks the ballpark at the behest of Billy & Mandy; I.M. Weasel talks ERAs and OBPs; and Johnny Bravo strikes out in all senses of the phrase. 

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