‘Porky and Friends: Hilarious Ham’ Announced

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Hot on the heels of the 2nd Platinum Collection, we have this 18-cartoon set for fans of Porky Pig, as well as the smaller one-shot characters that come with him on the back of the collection. As always, the question is “If I have the Golden Collections, do I have to buy this?” Let’s find out.

Cartoons in this set will be (I’ll summarize the ones not out yet):

1) Tom Turk And Daffy (1944, Jones) – NEW TO DVD – Featuring a MYSTERY WRITER (and boy, is there a long, confusing story about that), this is a great early Daffy cartoon where he’s being an utter brat.
2) Wagon Heels (1945, Clampett) – GC5
3) Mouse Menace (1946, Davis) – NEW TO DVD – Art Davis’ first cartoon at Warners, this is another one pitting Porky against a mouse, this time utilizing a robot cat. It doesn’t go well.
4) One Meat Brawl (1947, McKimson) – NEW TO DVD – Porky and the Foghorn Leghorn dog are out hunting for groundhog, and the groundhog is determined to make them pay for it. McKimson’s earliest cartoons are some of his best.
5) Curtain Razor (1949, Freleng) – NEW TO DVD – Porky is a talent agent auditioning acts. A few gags (including the gasoline one) would be reused in Show Big Bugs by Daffy.
6) The Pest That Came To Dinner (1948, Davis) – NEW TO DVD – Can the world handle two Art Davis cartoons on one collection? Porky has termites, and tries various horrible methods to remove them.
7) Riff Raffy Daffy (1948, Davis) – NEW TO DVD – I guess the world can, as here’s a third Davis cartoon! I always liked ‘Daffy is screwy and Porky isn’t’ cartoons, though the question of how sane Porky is comes into question here.
8) Boobs in the Woods (1950, McKimson) – GC1
9) Dog Collared (1950, McKimson) – NEW TO DVD – Porky gives brief affection to a dog (no, not Charlie Dog), and lives to regret it.
10) Thumb Fun (1952, McKimson) – NEW TO DVD – A hitchhiking Daffy makes Porky’s life miserable. Some call this the final screwball Daffy cartoon, which isn’t true, but he *is* a screwball here.
11) Fool Coverage (1952, McKimson) – NEW TO DVD – I adored this cartoon as a kid. Daffy sells Porky insurance. “And one baby zebra!”
12) Corn on the Cop (1965, Spector) – NEW TO DVD – The final Porky Pig cartoon of the classic years. Shame it sucks. He and Daffy are police officers.
13) Corn Plastered (1951, McKimson) – NEW TO DVD – A wise-cracking crow annoys a farmer, who tries to kill him in various ways. The crow is a lot of fun.
14) Gone Batty (1954, McKimson) – NEW TO DVD – Stars Bobo the Elephant, in his 2nd and final cartoon, where he ends up at a baseball game.
15) Ant Pasted (1953, Freleng) – NEW TO DVD – Always nice seeing Elmer in a cartoon on his own. He’s taking on ants during a 4th-of-July picnic.
16) Dog Gone People (1960, McKimson) – NEW TO DVD – Another Elmer cartoon, but Arthur Q. Bryan had died by this time, so his voice sounds horrible. Elmer has to babysit his boss’s dog, who thinks he’s a human.
17) Bunny and Claude – We Rob Carrot Patches (1968, McKimson) – NEW TO DVD – The first of two appearances of Bunny and Claude, an obvious parody. Watch for the scene where it’s suggested they have sex on a pile of carrots. No, I’m not making this up.
18) The Great Carrot Train Robbery (1969, McKimson) – NEW TO DVD – And here’s the second B&C cartoon. It’s not as good.

So, worth getting? Well, 16 of the 18 cartoons are new to DVD. HELL YES! An absolute must-buy. Can’t wait.

Manga the Week of 9/5

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There is an awful lot of it, huh? I think Gon was annoyed at being by himself last week and called in his friends… and this isn’t even counting the Seven Seas titles my store is apparently getting in but Midtown isn’t.

Remember about a month ago when I said I’d heard good things about that long-titled quasi-incest thing? Turns out I was thinking of OreImo, out this week from Dark Horse, rather than Seven Seas’ Big Brother title. OreImo’s full title is Ore no Imōto ga Konna ni Kawaii Wake ga Nai, aka My Little Sister Can’t Be This Cute! This title has far less incest but just as many tsunderes, if not more, and is rumored to be good. So I will check it out to see if this is the case.

Bloody Monday from Kodansha Comics has hit lucky Number Seven, though I’ve gotten so far behind on it I may never catch up. Is it still the Japanese 24?

Sublime, Viz’s BL line, has Volume 1 of His Favorite. It has the typical BL seme with his arms around his man and a smirk on his face, but the fact that the other’s guy’s face, instead of fear or uneasiness, or even arousal, reads like “must control fist of death” made me smile.

Tempted as I was to give Hayate the Combat Butler the cover image just to see how many folks I could annoy, the clear winner this week is Vertical’s new Tezuka tome, the first part of Message to Adolf. I never got the series back when Viz put it out ages ago, so this was a must-buy for me. And it’s nice to see some late-period Tezuka as well, as this is a 1980s title. Vertical is also releasing the underappreciated yet fantastic penultimate volume of GTO The Early Years, and the adorably cute 9th (and penultimate?) volume of Chi’s Sweet Home.

PILE O’ VIZ time. Including some stuff Midtown is listing that I had thought would be next week. This includes the 11th volume of Watase Yuu’s shonen series Arata the Legend, 20th volume of still not cancelled and funny as hell Hayate the Combat Butler (Greece Edition), a new House of Five Leaves for you Ono fans, and 9th volume of recent License Rescue Loveless.

There’s also a pile of Jump stuff, which I was expecting this week. There’s new Bakuman! Two more volumes of Bleach, which is still not done with Aizen, believe it or not. Hunter x Hunter, taking time from its busy hiatus to give us a new volume. Naruto! One Piece! Two great tastes that few fans enjoy together, for some reason (can’t the ninja and pirate fans just get along?). And of course Psyren, which should be at the ‘exposition’ part of its fight/exposition/fight trend.

Shojo Beat is the bigger winner here, though, with some of my favorites out next week. There’s new Library Wars, new Oresama Teacher *and* a new Otomen. Now admittedly the three series have flaws. Library Wars doesn’t have enough war for some people; Otomen continues to be a BL series with no BL; and Oresama Teacher is written by Izumi Tsubaki, who is the ‘oooooh, shiny thing!’ of Beat authors. This does not make the series less awesome. Other titles out this week include Earl and Fairy 3and a new Fushigi Yuugi Sequel Thingy volume. (It is possibly that the title does not actually have the word thingy in it.)

Lastly, Viz’s younger fans will be delighted to hear there are new Fluffy Fluffy Cinnamonroll *and* Winx Club titles out next week.

That’s a lot. What’re you getting?