The Big John K. Rant (Part 3) - Scams Without Labels: Six Years And Counting

No matter what John says about this short, unless he posts the finished product by some random miracle, it would never be done.

  Of course, since this is a big rant on John Kricfalusi, I just had to mention this infamous scandal. This cartoon John was peddling around as his spiritual successor to his Ren and Stimpy show. The cartoon is called Cans Without Labels, and as of February 16, 2019, it has been never released in its complete state. It has been six years since its due date of February 2013, and considering it's the same month as of now, consider this a six year anniversary of absolutely nothing.

The first mention of this cartoon, if I can recall correctly, would be at August 6th, 2009, where it was yet another one of John's pitches for his failed idea of George Liquor. The link of the mentioning can be found right here (archived link is here in case John would take down his blog): https://web.archive.org/web/20180330004315/http://johnkstuff.blogspot.com/2009/08/cans-without-labels-live-pitch-at-comic.html

The cartoon idea came from John's very own childhood, as George Liquor, as previously stated, was based off of his father. John's father was a cheapskate with food and bought crappy off-branded canned food, that indeed, mostly did not have labels. John's weird relationship with his father is shown here yet again.

It started actual production around 2010-2011, and the Kickstarter page started at July 18, 2012. It has 3,562 backers donating $136,723. John's shrug off on responsibility on his own Kickstarter project had left many backers to be pissed off, since the cartoon hadn't been released, even though he claimed that it was done.

The cartoon itself is about George Liquor having dinner with his nephews Slab and Ernie. The main appetizer is, of course, the namesake of the cartoon: cans without labels. George then opens one of the cans and it has a face in it, much to the nephews' dismay. George then forces them to eat the cans or he would beat them with his belt. What a story right there!

A video of what's been shown to be done of the cartoon was uploaded by the YouTuber known as Flying Eggplant. Here is the video in its entirety up on top of this paragraph.

As you can see, it is a very rough draft of unfinished animation of the cartoon, which deteriorates into nothing but voices drafted onto pencil and pen sketches and chicken scratch. The animation, what amount there is of it, is uncanny at best. For each frame that John animates, he had to make the characters spaz out and move their body parts as if they weren't connected to each other. While I have no problem with this at all, it contributes to the downfall of John, as he basically redoes the same frame over and over again based on the slightest mistake he sees.

As where the money went, many people, including me, think that the most likely scenario would be that John blew it all on his selfish vices, and not for the cartoon that he was making. It's the most likely because even now, the cartoon's still not finished. The previous mentioned claim by John that the cartoon was finished was likely a big fat lie, as John has proven himself to be a huge liar.

One detail that had to be mentioned would be about John's advertisement for one of his other characters, that being Sody Pop. John would design her to be his way of basically making fanservice. One of the Kickstarter rewards describes you getting a "sexy Sody Pop pencil enhancer" and that she was "everyone's favorite cartoon vixen". One of the goals that would've happened if the kickstarter donation had exceeded to $180,000 would be a teaser of a cartoon starring Sody Pop. Let's just say that the character that John was advertising was fifteen years old. FIFTEEN. Don't believe me? 

Here you go. It states it on one of John's failed pitches of his George Liquor show. The reason why I'm stating this is because John has a weird fascination with teenage girls, and it transcends to reality when he harassed Robyn Byrd and Katie Rice, along with other girls who want to be anonymous. Having Sody Pop being of that age while wearing skimpy clothing doesn't make John look good when it was revealed to a broader audience on Buzzfeed that he had done hurtful things to women of Sody's age range. 

If you wanna have a laugh, go check out the annotated version of it by Annoverse, which has the same video up above, but adds MST3K-styled text boxes around it that make fun of John and his shortcomings and morbidness. The video can be seen here:

Some topics that are referenced in the annotations would be referenced in detail in future parts, so be on the look out for them in the near future. Let this video take you on the dark side of John's mind.

In short, Cans Without Labels was a disaster right from the beginning as John was never reliable to make cartoons on time. That's one of the reasons why Nickelodeon kicked him off on The Ren and Stimpy Show. And John wonders why he's never going to be in business ever again, ever since the sex scandals had happened.

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.