It began early in my life. I just didn’t know what its name was yet. I’m bad with names, you see.

I was a toddler raised by Donald Duck and Bugs Bunny and Tom and that bastard Jerry. Well no, back then it was Jerry and that bastard Tom, but I digress. I loved cartoons. Bright colors, crazy sounds, a blatant disregard for the laws of Newtonian physics.

Anyone else feel sorry for Wile E. Coyote?

I could spend an entire afternoon watching cartoons. Forget afternoon, a whole morning. Waking up for Saturday morning cartoons would get me up at 7 in the morning. On a Saturday.

I was addicted. And I loved talking about cartoons. I would tell kids who hadn’t seen the one where Chip n Dale play that insane ‘Apple-Core-Baltimore’ game with Donald and they would listen, very patiently, not really understand what I was explaining to them because the source material itself was incomprehensible.

Before we go on, I confess. Most of my knowledge of Classical Music is because of its use in animation and motion pictures and references in books. So pay no attention if I make any pretentions.

By the way, that’s an emoticon I just used. I’m not gonna draw any more attention to the fact that I use them. Get used to them.

Anyway, cartoons. And Muppets too. Stuffed toy puppets with real heart. Moment of silence for Jim Henson. I hope you found your Rainbow Connection.

Pause.

So moving on, I next tuned into the Superfriends. Sorry Marvel, grew up with the JLA. After that, Heathcliff and the Junkyard Cats. (That Cleo. So… confusingly hot.)

Then my grandfather dropped the bomb on my developing mind. He bought me an original Betamax copy of the English dub of Galaxy Express 999. I was in preschool. It changed me forever. Stunning production values, mature, melancholic storyline, a galactic railway, and oh my God a shower scene. I was surprised my parents let me watch it at all.

I watched as much animation as I could. I had a taste for Japanese animation but any good animation would do. The Mysterious Cities of Gold. Voltes V and Voltron. The Smurfs and the Care Bears movies. Yes, I admit it. I watched the sissy stuff too. And in case of the Care Bear movies, considering the somewhat dark themes, I enjoyed it too, aside from the songs. (Seriously, few cartoons do song numbers right. The Little Mermaid-Beauty and the Beast-Aladdin trilogy with that songwriter who died. Very sharp, witty, insightful lyrics. I’ll check later.)

I started to draw my own little cartoons on the corners of my notebooks, with simple slapstick plots fought between Stick Figure White and Stick Figure Black. The animation was simple at best (I’m not much of a cartoonist even today) but the plots and characterization were complicated for a flipbook. Stick Figure White was more by the book, Stick Figure Black was sneaky, underhanded, but kept winning through unorthodox methods, like pulling a lightsaber on White. Being bored in class meant I had a lot of time on my hands to draw.

All this time I just kept watching. I saw He-Man and G.I JOE and Transformers and stuff everyone else saw. I saw Centurions. I saw Flight of Dragons. I saw Dungeons & Dragons and Visionaries and The Last Unicorn. I saw both versions of Lensman and still don’t remember the actual plot to this day, except for the fact that there were these aliens called the Boskone Empire and these Lensmen protecting the galaxy, a premise that Green Lantern totally ripped off. I saw Macross & Robotech (and recall that I actually preferred Robotech because the dub was better and the story made more sense).

It didn’t matter what I watched, just as long as I watched more and I watched better. I got by with videotapes from the local rental shop and TV specials like Sword of the Talisman and Once Upon a Time (aka Windaria).

And then, college happened.

(to be continued)