Friday, February 15, 2019

The Big John K. Rant (Part 2) - George Liquor American And Rehashing The Same Idea Over And Over

There he is. The Danny DeVito wannabe that John Kricfalusi keeps on pitching

  Of course, there has to be mention of one certain character that John K had made. One character that time and time again had been pitched to over and over by him at many companies. That character's name is George Liquor. Yeah, that's his name.

George Liquor has been John K.'s "magnum opus" of some sort. Anytime that John tries to pitch a cartoon, he would mostly use this character (there are other stuff that he had pitched, but it will be talked about later). This might be due to George being some sort of cartoon imagining of John's own father. John has a weird relationship with his father, as in even though John's father was stated to be abusive to John, he would still basically worship him. The character of George himself is basically an extremely right-wing hardass. Think of Alex Jones of Inforwars.com fame mixed with Frank Reynolds from It's Always Sunny In Philadelphia.

Officially, George Liquor appeared in The Ren & Stimpy Show first, and he wasn't really well liked by the Nickelodeon executives. One reason was his name, as y'know, liquor is an alcoholic drink. Put two and two together, and you can understand why an explicit reference to that wouldn't fly by in children's media (except for anti-alcohol PSAs, but that's different). It was also that the last name sounded like "lick her", which would be oddly relevant, considering John's weird obsessions with girls.

With that said, when John was kicked off on the original Ren and Stimpy show, Nickelodeon would give George Liquor back to him, on the grounds that he wouldn't be a mass murderer or a pedophile. John would reply to the former with "How many people does he have to kill before he's a mass murderer?". Classy move there, John (I 'm being sarcastic, for those who might not pick up on that). The latter part would also be foreshadowing, as John had groomed children later on, but we'll get to that later.

So... what does John do with George Liquor since he has the rights to him? Well, the successes he had were from a music video, some webtoons, and some commercials and bumpers. Beyond that though, there were multiple failed pitches that John had done time and time again with the character and others. The reasons for these failings, in my opinion, would be because of John's issue with meeting up with deadlines due to his perfectionist attitude, the mannerisms and quirks of him that would put off people from working on his projects, and his inability to be professional (as in, not act like a politically incorrect asshole).

One problem I think is prevalent in what John has done would be that he keeps on using the same ideas over and over again for his pitches without tweaking anything about them so there would be a higher chance of getting the show pitched. That is, if his behavior wasn't already enough to deter people away from him. From the middle 1990's to now, George Liquor and his gang were stagnant on how they had behaved and what their motus operandi was. Of course, there were some modicums of success with the webtoons and such, but they weren't as huge as Ren and Stimpy, not by a long shot.

I think it would be a symptom of him blaming others for his own faults; thinking that he is always right on issues. You see it when he trash talks anybody who has a different way of cartooning that's not in his favorites (i.e. script-writing and less than hyperactive moments in cartoons).

Let's contrast the approach of John's pitches compared to Kyle Carrozza's pitches for his Mighty Magiswords show.


The first pitch was originally know as "Legendary Warriors for Hire" which had a similar premise to Magiswords, but the brother-sister duo of Prohyas (before Magiswords, he was called Prohias) and Vambre are a team of 4 characters (Prohias, Vambre, Phil, and Zange). Phil and Zange were later given different roles in Mighty Magiswords. Also, Vambre had pants, which would be quite ironic, if you know about her current reaction towards them (hatred). Finally, there wasn't any mention or anything related to Magiwsords in the pitch itself.

Vambre's character was also more of the sane woman in the Warriors for Hire pitch, while Prohias was a "ladies' man" instead of the loveable goofball we all know.

"Dungeons and Dayjobs" was after the Warriors for Hire pitch, but before the Magiswords show. This time, instead of having the show mean't for children, it was for adults. The tone of the pitch would be way different because of this change. Also, there wasn't any mention of the Magiswords still.

The reason why I'm comparing Kyle and John's style of pitching cartoons would be for two reasons. The first reason is because of a certain part of a webcomic Kyle had made back then called "Frog Raccoon Strawberry" that had a parody of John in it. Here it is:
I made this point (about the pitches, not Kyle's comic, silly) as a way to give praise toward Kyle for giving us some reasons to hate John before the scandal around him grooming children reared its ugly head (as in, people had learned more about them as time went on). This was released to Dummcomics at June 3rd, 2011, seven years until John's scandals had come on to light. 

Kyle, if you're reading this, I have to give thanks to you. You may not wanna come back to the whole John K. drama, but I think you're like the antithesis to him. You are much more kind and welcoming than him. I wish the best for you and your future.

The second reason I wanted to compare both pitches is how both Kyle and John had different ways of approaching studios. While John kept on using the same idea over and over for his George Liquor show, Kyle had changed his world from big details to small as a way for him to evolve. John never changed anything in his world. He is the definition of insanity: trying to do the same thing over and over and expecting different results.

The lesson here is that times change, and that you have to change with the times in order to catch up with the world. If not, you would end up like John K., who got stuck in his little own world and never got out.

P.S. If this seems to be me digging up old stuff on him, I'll say this: this rant is mean't to be an archival on the bad things John has done over the years and to show people what not to be as a cartoonist, through my opinion. You can disagree with me all you want though. You have the freedom of doing that.

2 comments:

  1. This is how an ''animation is cinema'' type person makes an rant on a cartoonist that actually draws good.

    ReplyDelete