Cartoon

What's up, doc? How about the release Tuesday of Warner Home Video's "Looney Tunes Platinum Collection Volume I" on Blu-ray, which features more than 50 of the looniest Looney Tunes cartoons. The set includes such beloved cartoons as "Rabbit of Seville," "What's Opera, Doc?," Duck Amuck," "Tweetie Pie," "For Scent-Imental Reasons," "One Froggy Evening," "Duck Dodgers in the 24th 1/2 Century," "Feed the Kitty" and "I Love to Singa. " And that's not all, folks. There are behind-the "Tunes" featurettes, "Chuck Amuck: The Movie," "The Animated World of Chuck Jones," which features nine cartoons from the amazingly fertile mind of Jones, a "How the Grinch Stole Christmas!

Thursday marks the return of Mike Judge's "Beavis and Butt-Head" to MTV, after 14 years — enough time for a baby to have grown up to be Beavis or Butt-Head. The cartoon, which began in part as an ironic, idiotic but not inaccurate commentary on the network's original bread and butter — the music video — will now include among its targets movies, viral videos and the kind of shows that have come to represent MTV in the duo's absence, series like "Jersey Shore" and "16 and Pregnant.

A salary dispute is threatening to end one of television's most beloved comedies. The actors who provide the voices for the long-running cartoon hit "The Simpsons" are at odds over a new contract with 20th Century Fox Television, the production company that makes the series for its sister broadcast network. The studio is seeking to dramatically cut the mid-six-figure pay per episode of the key actors who voice the show including Dan Castellaneta (Homer), Julie Kavner (Marge)

Jonah Hill's latest role is a flat character — literally. But turning to cartoons is not that surprising for a guy who grew up idolizing "The Simpsons. " A comic actor best known for his roles as chubby, not-quite-mature heroes in such films as "Superbad" and "Get Him to the Greek," the 27-year-old Hill is a co-creator, writer, executive producer and star of "Allen Gregory," which this fall joins Fox's Sunday night animation lineup. Hill and two writer friends developed the "Allen Gregory" concept after a feature they were planning failed to materialize He provides the voice of the title character, a precocious 7-year-old forced to adapt to life in a public school after his rich, flamboyantly gay father (French Stewart)

A man with a megaphone stands on a dirt lot with his fist in the air, facing a small crowd of teens in hard hats and safety glasses. "It's time to roll, baby, roll!" shouts Andrew W.K., the devout hard rocker, party animal and, since 2009, host of the Cartoon Network game show "Destroy Build Destroy. " Unshaven and dressed in his strict uniform of filthy white jeans and matching white T-shirt, W.K. is at the Agua Dulce Movie Ranch in Canyon Country for a final day of shooting the fourth season of "Destroy Build Destroy.

Julius is prepping for his Hollywood close-up. Last summer, Los Angeles billionaire Haim Saban bagged the chimp, spending about $50 million to buy Paul Frank Industries, the Orange County company that turned a whimsical drawing of a wide-mouthed sock monkey into a global fashion statement. Now, Saban's team is developing a promotional blitz to catapult Julius from smirking slacker found on vinyl wallets and T-shirts into a bankable media star. Saban Brands on Tuesday will unveil plans for the primate to headline a prime-time television animated Christmas special next year, a project that is intended to land Julius on the cartoon A-list along with such august characters as Charlie Brown and the Grinch.

It wasn't the type of celebration commonly held for a naive flying rodent and a not-so-smart antlered creature. Yet there was Los Angeles County Sheriff Peter Pitchess on that September day in 1961, presiding with actress Jayne Mansfield over the unveiling of a 15-foot-tall fiberglass statue of cartoon characters Rocket J. ("Rocky") Squirrel and Bullwinkle J. Moose on the Sunset Strip. TV Guide reported that the publicity stunt, heralding the debut of "The Bullwinkle Show" on NBC, drew "5,000 milling, screaming, caterwauling celebrants" outside the offices of the critters' creator, Jay Ward Productions.

Pity the poor cartoon character. Unable to speak for himself against those who would redraw or rewrite him, he is the slave and plaything of whomever owns the copyright. The human fan can only watch or not and note that in most cases the better work is not usually the latest, and that theatrical versions of old cartoons are almost invariably superior to their television revivals. But revivals there will be. "The Looney Tunes Show," which debuts Tuesday night on CN, at the big-kid-but-not-little-kid-friendly hour of 8 p.m., is the latest attempt to do something new with the Warner Bros.

Marilyn Davenport might be a racist. Or a moron. Or just a dotty old lady with a warped sense of humor, and a scant understanding of history. For whatever reason, Davenport didn't seem to realize the potential for offense in a cartoon she circulated depicting President Obama as the offspring of chimpanzees. It was just a joke, shared among friends — many of them, like her, leaders of Orange County's Republican Party. "I simply found it amusing regarding the character of Obama and all the questions surrounding his origin of birth," Davenport told the OC Weekly, which broke the story last weekend.