Sick Little Monkeys The Unauthorized Ren Stimpy Story

"Thad Komorowski's book documents the entire story behind Nickelodeon's first cartoon hit, The Ren & Stimpy Show, utilizing extensive interviews with the program's key players, justifying the show's important role in the recent history of animation. A great read." - Jerry Beck

Fully revised and bursting with new information, interviews, and illustrations-it's everything you wanted to know about Ren & Stimpy - but were afraid to ask!

This is an exploration of the potent blend of Arthurian legend, cartoon animation, and cultural and artistic trends from 1933 to the present. In more than 170 theatrical and televised short cartoons, televised series and specials, and feature-length films from The Sword in the Stone to Shrek the Third--all covered in this book--animators have repeatedly brought the Round Table to life. Although these productions differ greatly in tone and intent--spanning spectra from comic to sober, fantastic to realistic, and entertaining to edifying--they share in the proof of Camelot's continuing relevance in the modern world.

The special 5th Anniversary Edition of SLIMED! An Entertainment Weekly “Best Tell-All” Book One of Parade Magazine's “Best Books About Movies/TV” Included in Publishers Weekly's “Top Ten Social Science Books” Before the recent reboots, reunions, and renaissance of classic Nickelodeon nostalgia swept through the popular imagination, there was SLIMED!, the book that started it all. With hundreds of exclusive interviews and have-to-read-‘em-to-believe-‘em stories you won't find anywhere else, SLIMED! is the first-ever full chronicle of classic Nick…told by those who made it all happen! Nickelodeon nostalgia has become a cottage industry unto itself: countless podcasts, blogs, documentaries, social media communities, conventions, and beyond. But a little less than a decade ago, the best a dyed-in-the-wool Nick Kid could hope for when it came to coverage of the so-called Golden Age (1983–1995) of the Nickelodeon network was the infrequent listicle, op-ed, or even rarer interview with an actual old-school Nick denizen. Pop culture historian Mathew Klickstein changed all of that when he forged ahead to track down and interview more than 250 classic Nick VIP’s to at long last piece together the full wacky story of how Nickelodeon became “the Only Network for You!” Celebrate the fortieth anniversary of Nickelodeon with this special edition of SLIMED! that includes a new introduction by Nick Arcade’s Phil Moore in addition to a foreword by Double Dare’s Marc Summers and an afterword by none other than Artie, the Strongest Man in the World himself (aka Toby Huss). After you get SLIMED!, you’ll never look at Nickelodeon the same way again. “Mathew Klickstein might be the geek guru of the 21st century.”—Mark Mothersbaugh

Everything that you need to know about reading, making, and understanding comics can be found in a single Nancy strip by Ernie Bushmiller from August 8, 1959. Paul Karasik and Mark Newgarden’s groundbreaking work How to Read Nancy ingeniously isolates the separate building blocks of the language of comics through the deconstruction of a single strip. No other book on comics has taken such a simple yet methodical approach to laying bare how the comics medium really works. No other book of any kind has taken a single work by any artist and minutely (and entertainingly) pulled it apart like this. How to Read Nancy is a completely new approach towards deep-reading art. In addition, How to Read Nancy is a thoroughly researched history of how comics are made, from their creation at the drawing board to their ultimate destination at the bookstore. Textbook, art book, monogram, dissection, How to Read Nancy is a game changer in understanding how the “simplest” drawings grab us and never leave. Perfect for students, academics, scholars, and casual fans.

Are germs gross, or great? Sick Simon learns how to be health-conscious during cold and flu season in this clever picture book from the author-illustrator of The Great Lollipop Caper. Simon is going to have the best week ever. Who cares if he has a cold? He goes to school anyway, and sneezes everywhere, and coughs on everyone, and touches everything. Germs call him a hero! Everyone else calls him…Sick Simon. When will it end? How far will he go? Will the germs take over, or can Sick Simon learn to change his ways?

Funnybooks is the story of the most popular American comic books of the 1940s and 1950s, those published under the Dell label. For a time, “Dell Comics Are Good Comics” was more than a slogan—it was a simple statement of fact. Many of the stories written and drawn by people like Carl Barks (Donald Duck, Uncle Scrooge), John Stanley (Little Lulu), and Walt Kelly (Pogo) repay reading and rereading by educated adults even today, decades after they were published as disposable entertainment for children. Such triumphs were improbable, to say the least, because midcentury comics were so widely dismissed as trash by angry parents, indignant librarians, and even many of the people who published them. It was all but miraculous that a few great cartoonists were able to look past that nearly universal scorn and grasp the artistic potential of their medium. With clarity and enthusiasm, Barrier explains what made the best stories in the Dell comic books so special. He deftly turns a complex and detailed history into an expressive narrative sure to appeal to an audience beyond scholars and historians.

Once upon a time ABC-TV's Moonlighting was among the most buzzed-about shows in the country, thanks largely to the bravado of creator Glenn Gordon Caron, who never met a television convention he didn't want to break, and the sizzling on-screen chemistry between glamorous erstwhile film star Cybill Shepherd and a New Jersey bartender nobody had ever heard of before named Bruce Willis, who bickered and flirted ceaselessly on screen and engaged in epic off-screen battles that all these years later remain the stuff of Hollywood legend. This combustible blend of creative brilliance produced some of the most acclaimed, audacious, and innovative programming of the eighties, including a black and white tribute to film noir, with an introduction by Orson Welles; a parody of Shakespeare's The Taming of the Shrew, written in iambic pentameter; an homage to The Honeymooners; and countless metafictive episodes breaking through the fourth wall — almost unheard of at the time for hourlong comedy-dramas. Without a doubt, Moonlighting helped pave the way for the era of prestige television we are now all enjoying. The real story of this pioneering television series and the extraordinary behind-the-scenes challenges, battles, and rewards has never been told — until now, Author Scott Ryan (The Last Days of Letterman, thirtysomething at thirty: an oral history, The Blue Rose, Scott Luck Stories) conducted over twenty interviews with the actors, writers, directors, and producers who made Moonlighting such a dynamic, unforgettable show, delving deep into their thoughts and feelings as they relive this magical moment in pop culture history in this full color oral history. New Interviews with: Cybill Shepherd (Maddie Hayes), Allyce Beasley (Ms. Dipesto), Curtis Armstrong (Herbert Viola), Glenn Gordon Caron Creator, Executive Producer, Writer Jay Daniel Executive Producer, Director Roger Director Writer, Producer, Season 4 Showrunner Allan Arkush Director Bob Butler and more.