Toonami's actually been going quite well in the Asian markets for some time, even airing some sentai series like Kamen Rider and Power Rangers, so the fact that they're actually going to go to an all-action outlet actually sounds pretty cool. I don't think it'll fail like the UK's Toonami lineup for one reason and one reason only:

The UK folks tried to turn the Toonami brand into a POGO-like channel, and Asia already has POGO. Needless to say, I look forward to how our friends in the Far East are going to create a Toonami network.

To be clear, it's Dreamworks Animation that's making a play for Classic Media, not Dreamworks Pictures (the two companies have been separate since 2004).

It's an interesting acquisition should they be successful. Not only will they get rights to characters and properties known throughout the world, but they'll get a massive library of television shows in their arsenal as well. It'll give them more characters to play around with in other mediums, but I hope it'll inspire them to create more traditional animated series as well. They'll also get a piece of two digital kids channels, qubo and PBJ, so they might develop stuff for those outlets as well. Characters like Casper, Rocky and Bullwinkle, Underdog, Rudolph, Lamb Chop, Lassie, Postman Pat, Where's Waldo, Felix the Cat, Gumby, Mr. Magoo, and others would fit in nicely in all their future ventures, not to mention that theme park they're thinking of creating.

Here's hoping they'll restore the Harveytoons and UPA shorts and Jay Ward and Total TV shows they'll own to pristine form as well.

The pilot was MUCH better than the series. M.A.N.T.I.S.had some comic pedigree to it (Sam Hamm wrote many comics and the designer of the costume was comics illustrator Denys Cowan). If the show was a hit, Universal had plans to license the series with Milestone Media and tie the series into the Dakotaverse (and he would have been a cousin of another Milestone hero [hint: it's the character whose last name is also Hawkins]) and written by Hamm and drawn by Cowan, but Fox forced the series to make moronic changes, drop a lot of characters, and become something entirely different. The show bombed, the hero died in the last episode, and that's that.

As in who's making comics in Japan right now or all-time?

If we're talking about the present, I have much respect for Eiichiro Oda, Hiromu Arakawa, Felipe Smith, Yoshihiro Togashi, Masashi Kishimoto, Yellow Tanabe, and a lot of other.

But my favorite remains Akira Toriyama.

Not a coffee drinker by any stretch, so, I can't answer that.

For the same reason we need leap years:

To correct time for agriculture and societal norms. Otherwise, it'd be November 2013 now instead of July 2012.

No. Hollywood does what they want to with werewolves, but considering they're not real, they haven't lost their look. Yeah, the Twilight films have done damage, it's not unrepairable.

Vampires, on the other hand . . .

They have. Many times.

I'm cool. I'm not trying to be hostile, mind you. It's just some questions are a bit unclear and I wanted a bit of clarity before I answered it.. No hostility intended.

Are you asking why they don't air Tales From The Crypt anymore?

Because it's an older series that pretty much ran its course and ended, as most good things tend to do. It's not so widely available because it was a series produced for premium cable and modern day network broadcasting standards won't let the show get away with ultraviolence, nudity, and profanity like that show offered.

A heavily censored Tales From The Crypt is kind of like a eunuch at a brothel. What's the point?

Define "hand-drawn."

If you're talking about animation using ink and paint and shot on screen, never. Hand-drawn animation hasn't been the industry standard in films in decades, and most of the shows and films using 2D animation use a computer program for the ink and paint work. Toon Boom Harmony and Adboe Flash have become industry standards at nearly all studios, even Disney (which used Harmony for The Princess and the Frog and a proprietary software called CAPS from The Rescuers Down Under to Home on the Range) .

If you're talking about traditional two-dimensional animation, they might go back, but not any time soon. They did a few years ago with The Princess and the Frog. Pretty good movie. Unfortunately considering the fact that America is still 'Merica, it didn't do too well in theaters, and it kind of became a setback for the studio. A shame really, but you never know if they'll come back to traditional animation.

Never seen it, so I can't answer that.

Well, they're not on television. The first 16 episodes of the new series are out on DVD (at the time I wrote this, Amazon had both sets on sale for under $30). Amazon has them on their Instant Video service if you want to buy them.

But right now, the series is on hiatus for the moment, and it's not even certain if they'll make a second season, so if you want them to make one, support the series by buying them and every ThunderCats merchandise you can.

To be fair, that's something Funimation does for their syndicated fare. Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood's theme is cut too. In the past, Kekkeishi's theme was cut down by Viz a bit too, so it's clearly not Cartoon Network/Adult Swim's doing at all.

Cartoon Network feels that they need to compete with Nickelodeon and Disney Channel by airing and developing more original live-action series.

Of course if Cartoon Network actually paid attention to them, they'd realize that Nickelodeon and Disney Channel are actually developing more animated programs largely because they know their live-action shows are on borrowed time and that animation can go on as long as they get ratings. Spongebob Squarepants still gets high ratings, but stuff like The Legend of Korra, Kung Fu Panda, and The Penguins of Madagascar do quite well on Saturday mornings, and Phineas and Ferb is one of Disney Channel's biggest shows whose success has inspired Disney to create more shows like Fish Hooks, Gravity Falls, and the upcoming Wander Over Yonder.

If kids actually tuned in to the live-action fare on Cartoon Network, there would be more of it. But as it stands, live-action content has dropped from seven shows to just three for the foreseeable future, Level Up and a pair of upcoming shows, Nick Cannon's Incredible Crew and the live-action/animated hybrid Team Toon (I guess I'd consider Clutch Cargo: Fruit Edition, I mean Annoying Orange as live-action/animated too).

Comedy, action, suspense, mystery, noir, sci-fi, martial arts, some dramas (not the super sappy ones), and westerns.

Any kind of story you want to. There's a common misnomer that American comics have to be just superheroes.

It doesn't.

It's just that Hollywood likes to exploit the superhero side of comics. A lot of other comics tend to break out in Hollywood as well, but most folks don't even recognize nor acknowledge their comic book roots.

The Walking Dead, Tales from the Crypt, 30 Days of Night, 300, Cowboys and Aliens, The Road to Perdition, A History of Violence, Ghost World, American Splendor, Red, and so many other films and productions are all based on comics and don't have a superheroic theme about them.

American comic books are just as diverse as comics found in any other country. Crime, horror, drama, comedy, western, fighting, war, real life, satire, sci-fi, noir, espionage, adventure, mature, erotic, kid-friendly, sports, historical, alternative, autobiographical, musical, mystery, scientific, whatever you think of, you can make a comic about.

He's a marketable, non-threatening, slightly effeminate boy-next-door type that parents approve of and some of the 85% of girls that like boys (and about some of the 15% of boys who like boys) love that kid to death.

It's not that hard to understand. I don't get it myself, but then again, I wasn't meant to get it.

You know, if you actually go to Massachusetts Health Selector site and actually look into that, it's really as bad as people make it out to be. Most folks would end up paying somewhere between $0 (those households that make between $0 and, say, $40K a year) and about $200 (higher income above $100K a year) families) a month on health care. It's not as bad as people think it is.

That's the template, but, well, since 'Merica hates the President and barely tolerates the guy (who signed into legislation the MA plan in the first place) running against him, they'll hate it even though it'll help a lot of folks.

As for alternative medicine and new age medicine, if those that want to get rid of the ACA get their way, those alternative and new age medicines would likely be regulated if not outright banned.

Can't use drugs that aren't approved by the FDA, you know.

You like what you like. Nothing wrong with choosing one over the other.