| Cartoons for the adult in you
Sex and the City and The Sopranos are considered groundbreaking television today. People get all flushed and excited when they talk about the show’s taboos. "I can’t believe they said that." "They showed what?" I say big fat hairy deal. If you want thought-provoking, you want cartoons – and you want them on the Web.
Icebox.com is like the 18-and-over version of the Cartoon Network. Launched June 2000, it’s a fresh site brimming with clever writers and artists from a vast number of independent production companies who unite to provide some of the best Flash Animation on the Web. Unlike its contemporaries (Atom Films and Media trip), there’s minimal advertising to bother you and there’s only cartoons. This focus allows them to put out a huge variety of shows (22 to choose from) that are all funny and offensive in their own special ways. They use the freedom of the Internet to push the medium and state that they could never have this liberty with television – with shows like Jesus and his Brothers and Queer Duck, you quickly understand why.
As for talent, some old well-knowns pop up here. The folks from Spumco – the company guided by Ren and Stimpy’s John Kricfalusi – bring us George Liquor American. On the show Superhero Roommate, the whiny voice of Dave Foley of Kids in the Hall fame is instantly recognizable.
As the shows load, most give you the option of playing a game while you wait. Before Heaven starts (a show about people in heaven), you can help Princess Diana guide children across a mine field for Nobel Prizes. Now you definitely can’t do that on television. |
