About MichaelBarrier.com
I began publishing Funnyworld magazine more than forty
years ago as a vehicle for the kind of writing about animated films
and comic art that I could find nowhere else:
- Critical writing that measured animated films, comic books,
and comic strips against the high standards already set by the
best filmmakers and cartoonists
- Consistently accurate historical articles and reporting on the
most important current films
- Interviews in which important creators talked about their careers
and explained how they had produced some of their best work
Funnyworld fulfilled that mission for more than ten years.
Then, for a variety of reasons, I left it behind and concentrated
my efforts on the research and writing for Hollywood
Cartoons: American Animation in Its Golden Age, a critical
history of Hollywood animation that was published in hardcover by
Oxford University Press in 1999. (It was reissued as a trade paperback
in October 2003.)
Much has changed since Funnyworld ceased publication, with
both magazines and Web sites now offering coverage of animated films
and comic art far beyond anything that I could have imagined in
the seventies. As valuable as some of these new resources are, I
don't see any real equivalent to Funnyworld in today's print
and electronic marketplaces. Thus the rationale for this site: to
scrutinize animated films and comic art through electronic means
as I've done in the past in print.
Much of the content of MichaelBarrier.com is similar to that of
Funnyworld:
- Commentary on current films, books,
and comics
- Essays on a variety of animation- and
comics-related subjects
- Interviews with leading creators
In addition, the site includes these pages:
This site includes some actual animation, the "flip book"
on the home page. Milton Gray contributed three such "flip
books" to Hollywood Cartoons—here's what his demonstration
of "rubber hose" animation should look like when you flip
the corners of the book's pages.
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