Charles Solomon

Editor

Internationally known animation historian and critic, Charles Solomon has written over 15 books books including Enchanted Drawings: The History Of Animation, The Art of Disney’s Frozen, The Making of Peanuts Animation, and Tale as Old as Time: The Art and Making of Disney Beauty and the Beast .

Articles By Charles Solomon

Independent

We live in an era of visual overload. Animation studios are producing images so detailed, they’re virtually indistinguishable from live action, but why do they want to? How does rendering every leaf in the background make a story more compelling? What does an audience gain by seeing each stitch in a cartoon character’s sweater? Why […]

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Anime

Although it’s technically a feature, Isao Takahata’s droll My Neighbors The Yamadas (1999), which is receiving its first release on Blu-ray, plays like a collection of comic sketches. It’s based on Hisaichi Ishii’s “Nono-chan,” a popular manga that may remind Americans of “Hi and Lois” or “Baby Blues.” Blandly middle income and middle class, Takashi […]

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Twenty years ago–July 7,1997–a lanky blond teenager slouched down to breakfast; his father and mother bid him good morning (“Did you sleep well, Sweetie?”). His reaction: “As usual, my parents were on my case.” Comics readers discovered “Zits,” written by Jerry Scott and drawn by Jim Borgman, a genuinely funny new strip that combined the […]

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Commentary

Although he wrote them in 1859, Charles Dickens might have been thinking of animation in 2017 when he penned the celebrated lines, “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the […]

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Anime

Rumiko Takahashi’s gender-bending martial arts comedy Ranma ½ debuted as a manga in “Shonen Sunday Comics” in 1988 and in animation soon after. Three decades later, it remains hugely popular in both Japan and the United States. Although Takahashi has said she wasn’t commenting on gender roles in Japan, its absurd premise suggests otherwise. Wiry, […]

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