In anticipation of the publication of our book, I thought it might be interesting to pull out a few of the memorable pieces and tell my side of the stories behind them.
I had been formulating the idea of doing a bunch of short cartoons starting in 1989, but it wasn’t until some wacko made me president of the venerable Hanna-Barbera studio (at a time when I had zero experience in cartoons) that I was able to really started to plan.
John Kricfalusi suggested that I speak to the uniquely talented Pat Ventura, an animation artist working under my nose as a writer who was working on Tom & Jerry Kids. Pat had been working as a gag man at Disney features, but he wanted the experience of working for a master, so he signed on to Joe Barbera’s last major project. John thought that since Pat loved Tex Avery (along with Laurel & Hardy, Buster Keaton, and the Fleischers) he might be interesting for my shorts notion.
I talked to Pat, and he was the one who convinced me to change my idea from a bunch of 3-minute shorts to classic length 7-minutes. His remake of Tex’s George & Junior was his first picture for What A Cartoon!. And this promotional poster was our weak attempt to participate in the revolution in poster making brought about by Frank Kozik in the 90s.
