Cartoon

Justin Bieber made the hearts of Beliebers worldwide pitter-patter on overdrive when he posted a racy cartoon picture of himself, shirtless, embracing a topless brown-haired girl in bed. The girl was labeled a "Belieber. " Talk about throwing red meat to the masses. Sigh. The "Baby" singer has been scrutinized since the weekend he visited the Anne Frank House in Amsterdam and left a 20-word note in the museum's guest book. He said Frank, who died of typhus while imprisoned at a Nazi concentration camp, was a "great girl.

Television's latest animated superhero sports a purple skirt and cape, pink gloves and white go-go boots. She is also a he. Meet SheZow, the star of a cartoon debuting Saturday on the Hub, a kids' cable channel co-owned by cable programming giant Discovery Communications and toy manufacturer Hasbro Inc. In "SheZow," a 12-year-old boy - named Guy - uses a magic ring to transform himself into a legendary crime fighter. When evil lurks, Guy says, "You go girl!" and becomes SheZow.

It's probably not easy to bastardize stand-up comedy and rock 'n' roll in the same performance, but Mark McCollum pulled it off rather effortlessly Tuesday at the Improvisation in Irvine. The 1987 $100,000 "Star Search" comedy champion, McCollum builds his act around rock parodies, sprinkling the set with impressions of cartoon characters and of three-dimensional figures from Yoda to Jacques Cousteau, a bit of stand-up material and some shameless hucksterism. (We'll get to that later.

Re "'Angry Girls' unleashed," Column One, April 25 I am saddened by the fact that "Angry Little Girls" comic strip artist Lela Lee is profiting by making fun of her Korean upbringing and heritage, thereby perpetuating a stereotype. The fact is that not all Korean parents are as strict and demanding as Lee's, and not all Korean children eventually dismiss their parents and live in a state of "disconnect. " The irony here is that Lee's entrepreneurship and her apparent "achievement" have most likely been because of the upbringing she makes fun of. Kee Kim La Habra The "Angry Little Girls" article sounded so familiar, and I'm not Asian.

Conrad's derisive cartoon (Feb. 11) of Pat Robertson's candidacy was unfortunate. Making a mockery of his religious faith only highlights the fact that the media welcome ministers of the left like Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Jesse Jackson but ridicule men of the cloth on the right. This double standard is not about religion, it is about the politics of religion. JAMES JOSEPH La Mirada

"In our house, we don't like thrill rides," says Mimi Pond in her latest installment. "Thirty years of self-employment is thrill enough. " She goes on to show bits and pieces of her frugal lifestyle. And yet, she says, "We're still having trouble making ends meet. It's pathetic!" What follows is her quest for a mortgage modification. Note: To enlarge the cartoon, select the control and plus-sign keys at the same time.  ALSO: Photo gallery: Ted Rall cartoons The Supreme Court saved my lifeline Healthcare ruling gives GOP an 'It's.

Michael Ramirez's Nov. 13 cartoon (Opinion) implying that the Democrats "navigated" the U.S. into the Iraq war is a blatant example of revisionism. Make no mistake, this is Bush's war and history will not be so kind -- or blind -- as to why we went in. RICHARD PLAVETICH Laguna Beach

Re Bil Keane's "The Family Circus" cartoon of Oct. 15 (captioned, "This (evening) is the bestest time of day. Dinners are Cookin', kids are bathed and daddys come home.") This is an insult to the working mothers and women you serve. CELLA MOREY Venice

I was shocked to see a new cartoon strip in your Sunday comics section, "Spy vs. Spy" (April 14). The timing could not have been worse for trying to make the use of explosives funny. I am appalled at the insensitivity, in light of current events, in the Middle East in particular. Linda Lane McCall El Segundo

The controversial cartoon that appeared this week in the University of Texas at Austin's Daily Texan showed a mother sitting in a chair labeled "the media" reading to a child from a book titled, "Treyvon [sic] Martin and the case of yellow journalism.” The mother says: “And then the big bad 'white' man killed the handsome, sweet, innocent 'colored' boy.” The cartoon appeared in the paper Tuesday, just as students and residents held a rally in downtown Austin for Trayvon Martin, the 17-year-old youth shot and killed by a neighborhood watch volunteer in Florida.

Charles McKay makes a detailed spreadsheet of the authors he wants to hear during the Los Angeles Times Festival of Books, typing in his first and second choices and getting tickets ahead of time. Jerry Oborn, from San Diego, said she goes about it another way: "I just wander around. " But McKay and Oborn both said they finish the festival the same way - with a long list of new books to read. "It takes us months to get through all these books by authors who inspired us," said McKay, who lives in the South Bay. McKay and Oborn were among the 150,000 people expected to attend The Times' 18th annual book festival, being held this weekend at USC. In clear, hot weather Saturday, visitors listened to poetry, watched cooking sessions, danced to local bands and shopped at dozens of makeshift bookstores.

Justin Bieber made the hearts of Beliebers worldwide pitter-patter on overdrive when he posted a racy cartoon picture of himself, shirtless, embracing a topless brown-haired girl in bed. The girl was labeled a "Belieber. " Talk about throwing red meat to the masses. Sigh. The "Baby" singer has been scrutinized since the weekend he visited the Anne Frank House in Amsterdam and left a 20-word note in the museum's guest book. He said Frank, who died of typhus while imprisoned at a Nazi concentration camp, was a "great girl.

President Obama's date with a dozen Republican senators has so caught my imagination that I cannot quite let it go. The idea of the president picking up the tab for dinner in a swanky Washington restaurant for 12 of his most staunch political foes sounds like an improbable plot twist straight out of “The West Wing.” But, as I learned long ago, political reality is almost always more weird and fascinating than political fiction. In my mind, it's easy to visualize the film version of the dinner.

"Out There," which premieres Friday on IFC, is a rather lovely coming-of-age cartoon series from Ryan Quincy, who spent 14 years on "South Park. " It is nothing like that. Coming-of-age stories tend to be told by the misfits and weirdos and refuseniks of Normal Life, and this is no different. Our heroes are Chad (voiced by Quincy himself, whose slightly flat, unaffected delivery works well for this) and his strange new pal Chris (Justin Roiland), "the kind of friend who would shove you into the abyss and then jump right in after you. " Invisible to their peers except as occasional targets of mockery, they spend their days "off to the side, riding a wave of obscurity, observing the tableaux of teenage bliss.

Seth Green slumps on a bench seat in a 1970s Winnebago that's parked inside of Stoopid Buddy Stoodios in Burbank. A nasty case of strep throat has him feeling low. But the fact that "Robot Chicken," the off-color stop-motion animated series Green created with Matthew Senreich was renewed for a seventh season, perks him up a bit. "We thought it was the same generation as us who grew up watching the same TV shows and eating the same cereal," says...

Let us consider Nick Cannon, who is never long out of sight but busy out of sight as well. He may currently be seen as a version of himself on Kevin Hart's BET reality-show parody, "The Real Husbands of Hollywood," and when it's in season, as the host of NBC's "America's Got Talent. " He co-hosted ABC's "Disney Parks Christmas Day Parade" special in December; a revival of his MTV improv-games series "Wild N Out" is currently in production; and simply by virtue of being married to Mariah Carey and the father of their twins, he remains more or less constantly in the public eye. Now Cannon has created "The Incredible Crew" - not for Nickelodeon this time but Cartoon Network - a single-camera sketch comedy already in progress.

My wife and I both, once again, thoroughly enjoyed Traveling in Style magazine (March 18). However, there was one disappointment. After seeing two of them, we assumed the cartoon articles on different places were to be a continuing part of the magazine. We hope these cartoon articles have not been discontinued as we find these to be clever, amusing and informative. WILLIAM MUNNELL Pasadena

This week the University of Texas student newspaper let go of its editorial cartoonist after an uproar over a cartoon about the Trayvon Martin shooting -- or, rather, about news coverage of the event and its aftermath. As my colleague Molly Hennessy-Fiske reported, the offending cartoon "showed a mother sitting in a chair labeled 'the media' reading to a child from a book titled, "'Treyvon [sic] Martin and the Case of Yellow Journalism.' "The mother says: "And then the big bad 'white' man killed the handsome, sweet, innocent 'colored' boy.'" . . . "On Wednesday, as students gathered to protest the cartoon with handmade signs saying, 'Daily Texan Racist,' the newspaper's editorial board published an apology editorial , saying that the cartoonist responsible, Stephanie Eisner, had left the paper.

Pop music + cartoon animation + pubescent audiences + sugary breakfast cereal ads = hit entertainment. In the 1960s and '70s, that equation briefly produced a string of clever, endearing animated feature films and Saturday morning TV serials that still give today's frenetic, hyper-edited animated flicks a run for their money. Some were instant classics, like "Yellow Submarine," with the Fab Four's music set to Heinz Edelmann's memorable designs. Others, like the Jackson 5 cartoon serial that originally ran on Saturday mornings on ABC from September 1971 to October 1972, slowly sank into the post-syndication ether, leaving barely a trace.

Lucille Bliss, who provided the voice of the cartoon character Crusader Rabbit in the early days of television and gained recognition a generation later as the voice of Smurfette in the 1980s television hit "The Smurfs," has died. She was 96. Bliss died Nov. 8 from natural causes at an assisted living center in Costa Mesa, according to the Orange County coroner. Bliss parlayed a childhood love of radio theater into a career as an animation voice actress that stretched more than 60 years.