Love it, hate it, threaten to boycott it -- Icebox.com is keeping 'toons cool. With clever, offbeat series like "Zombie College" and "Garbage Island," The online cartoon channel is staking a claim for itself as a home for edgy, original animated shorts.
The site is one of many that have sprung up over the last two years to take advantage of Macromedia's Flash animation technology. Whereas typical web images are related as a series of dots, the vector graphics approach used by Flash represents images as precise combinations of geometric shapes. The cartoons maintain sharp clarity at any display size and the files are considerably smaller than if they were rendered in virtually any other format. There's no Road Runner needed here--with files this small even surfers with dialup connections can get in on the fun.
Where to start? Fans of "The Simpsons" and "King of the Hill" should check out the aforementioned "Zombie College," a cheerfully goofy mix of college humor and the walking dead created by two writer/producers from FOX's hit animated tandem.
Also worth catching is the singularly impressive "Garbage Island." This wildly imaginative cartoon tells the story of an orphan in a strange land where every day is Christmas. Each child can have any toy he wants under one condition: each day all of the previous day's toys are thrown away, whisked off to the mysterious Garbage Island. Garbage Island constantly surprises, walking a fine line between endearing children's entertainment and richly textured surrealism, calling to mind the odd tone of "Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory."
Other Icebox hits include: "Hard Drinkin' Lincoln," Mike Reiss's foul-mouthed and irreverent saga of an inebriated and insulting Abraham Lincoln; "Meet the Millers," a wicked satire of 1950's Americana; and the dry sci-fi sendup "Starship Regulars."
"Ren and Stimpy" creator John Kricfalusi's latest creation "Weekend Pussy Hunt" (stop snickering, it's about a cat) likewise calls Icebox home.
Icebox also offers its visitors "Mr. Wong," the controversial cartoon that made headlines when Asian-Americans protested the show's use of racial stereotypes in its humor. The show's producers (some of whom are Asian-Americans themselves) deny the charges, claiming that "Mr. Wong" is intended as satire.
The jury's still out on that one, but if you'd like to check out "Mr. Wong" or any of Icebox's other offerings, make sure you've installed the latest version of Macromedia's Flash Player. Just visit Icebox's home page and they will refer you to Macromedia's site if you're not up-to-date. Their Flash Player is a free download and one worth having.
