The One Hundred Greatest Cartoons

Channel Four, in the UK, are doing a series of "The One Hundred Greatest ...", such as albums, films etc. One of them is cartoons, and there are 105 up for nomination.

Something that quite pleasantly surprised me was that "The Adventures of Tintin" is listed (the 1990s Ellipse-Nelvana series). Hope everyone will vote for it to be included - if everyone were to on this forum, it should get into the top 100, anyway ! It'd have to be pretty unlucky to be one of the five that got axed to start with.

So vote for Tintin on The One Hundred Greatest Cartoons site !

Hmmm - there's quite a few of my favourite cartoons there, and I'm not sure I'd put Tintin in my top ten. As books, yes, but the animated series is - to me - okay, but not really great. Actually (gulp) if I'm really honest, I did buy the boxed set recently, and... was... slightly... disappointed... I remembered it as being better. I'll have another look again, I promise.

What??? The list doesn’t include Batman: The Animated Series - the best cartoon of the last fifteen years or so?? No Fleischer brothers Superman?? No Animaniacs?? No Pinky and the Brain??? No Aeon Flux?? No Gertie the Dinosaur?? Or did I just miss them?

The list is (as these things tend to be) so un-representitive, un-comprehensive and inconsistent that it beggars belief how they arrived at it – I suspect some bored twenty-something researchers and a copy of a book on cartoons from Bargain Books... How are you supposed to compare Fanatsia (or even Fantasia 2000) and Spongebob Squarepants??

Under the circumstances, as the whole thing is meaningless, I won’t mind trying to stuff the ballot and get Tintin in there...!

I voted for Tintin :) Fingers-crossed it makes it into the 100 !

I’ve voted too, now, but I am still not impressed with the list... (No Daria? No Kim Possible?? No Deputy Dawg???)

I voted but i hate these polls, always some awful currently popular thing always wins. I put Tintin in purely to see some Tintin clips and chat in the show

Rik

Well I have to admit I voted for Tintin too, on the basis of the stories (not the scripts) rather than the animation, as an animated cartoon constitutes the whole. You can suggest more nominations - and I included a few including Gertie the Dinosaur, jock123!

Best -G :-)

I agree with Jock123, the list itself is terribly disappointing - far too much of a hotch-potch of classic British kids TV and Disney blockbusters, but such is the eclectic nature of these “100 greatest” things. Even so, there are some very poor choices - I mean, “Captain Caveman” give me a break!

My own personal favourite is Fantastic Planet, originally a French production which actually won Grand Prix in the Cannes film festival in 1973 (it ain't in the list by the way but it's not that well known). My dad took me to the cinema to see it when I was very young and I've never been quite the same since...

Also, I agree about Gertie the Dinosaur - it really ought to be there as it's arguably the first most important animation ever made (although not the first). I've seen it a few times at the BD museum in Brussels where it's shown continually on a loop.

I definitely wouldn't have even included Tintin in the list if it was up to me - I don't think of it in any way as an important part of the animation genre (oooh, harsh!) but I might just vote for it because, as jockosjungle says, we may just get to see them (i.e some low grade celebs) gas about Tintin for a bit.

Its good to see Felix the Cat and Captain Planet up there, along with Warner Bros Cartoons. But what about Gumby?

I’ve never seen Gumby on British TV, only an occasional mention in animation books, so I have no idea his/her place in animation history, so perhaps that is an explicable omission.

Glad to see “Felix” is present!

I’ve only seen “Fantastic Planet” a couple of times, but it certainly has been on TV, and regularly gets mentioned in the literature, so it is a surprising one to miss. Mind you, I don’t think “Heavy Metal” is as well known as “FP”, or as significant, and it gets in...

Another odd one is that “Bagpuss” is missing - considering it was voted the all-time best children’s show only a couple of years ago! (No “Clangers”? No “Ivor the Engine?” No “Pogles” or “Pogle’s Wood”? No “Chigley”? No “Camberwick Green”? No “Trumpton”? No “Herbs” or “Adventures of Parsley”? No “Marine Boy” (first show I ever saw in colour!)?)

As to whether Nelvana’s “Tintin” deserves a place, well... I dunno: it earns brownie points for the fidelity with which it transferred Hergé’s style to the screen, which was seen as a real achievement at the time, but does it hold up now? There could be a case made for the BelVision series actually being the more seminal, memorable work, if only for that fantastic vocal introduction...

And I voted to include “Gertie”, so let’s see what influence we have!