Buffalo News - Drawing ATTENTION

Buffalo News - Drawing ATTENTION

You sit down in front of the TV with a bowl of cereal and a few hours to kill watching cartoons.

But this isn't the Saturday morning of your childhood. The only mention of Scooby and Shaggy comes when a superhero-turned-lawyer defends them against charges of drug possession. Instead of Bugs and Elmer chasing each other through the forest, you get a giant milkshake stuffing his meatball roommate into a clothes dryer.

One thing is clear: These aren't your little brother's cartoons. They're the new generation of animated television, "adult cartoons," and they're raking in viewers in the coveted 18-34 demographic.

From the runaway hit "Family Guy" to cult favorites like "Home Movies" and "Tom Goes to the Mayor," adult cartoons make up a quirky, pop-culture-lampooning, potty-humor-spewing genre that isn't following mainstream TV's rules.

Where did it come from?

The success of offbeat shows like "Aqua Teen Hunger Force" even has the show's creators scratching their heads.

"Who would have ever thought that a sitcom about a pack of fries, a milkshake and a wad of hamburger meat would have become so popular?" said Keith Crofford, vice president of production at Adult Swim, the Cartoon Network block of shows that draws many adult cartoon viewers.

The genre has its roots in the edgy humor of "The Simpsons" and "South Park" and the knowing comedy of the original "Muppet Show." Then, in 1999, along came a bizarre little sitcom called "The Family Guy." After a few seasons, Fox yanked the series, which had drawn criticism from groups such as the Parents Television Council for its vulgarity and sexual humor.

But the show wasn't done yet. Strong DVD sales of "Family Guy's" first three seasons prompted an unprecedented about-face: Fox picked the series back up for a new season that began this summer.

The show became the mainstay of a new wave of animation. In 2001, Cartoon Network packaged some of its original shows in a nighttime block called Adult Swim. With strong lead-ins from better-known shows like "Family Guy" and "Futurama," the block began to pick up speed with the young adult demographic advertisers crave.

Once adult animation proved its staying power, other networks jumped on board, though they've had trouble reproducing Adult Swim's success. Spike tried out the short-lived "Stripperella," "Gary the Rat" and a "Ren and Stimpy" redux. Even SciFi chimed in with "Tripping the Rift," a fantasia of bouncing digital flesh and crude intergalactic humor that's about to start its second season.



Creating a cult hit

Viewers say the success of Adult Swim is as simple to understand as it is tough to re-create: The shows are funny.

"It's always been this weird, absolutely random humor," said Joe O'Connell. The 18-year-old follows a couple of adult cartoons and runs a Web site about one of them, the comedy "Home Movies."

Plus, the shows have a cult allure. They cater to a generation that has always liked discovering the next hit - whether it's in movies, music or TV - before anyone else.

"You have to get it in order to like it," O'Connell explained. "In some ways, that's part of the appeal."

Getting the chance to develop that kind of slow-growing audience was a rare gift in the ratings-focused television world, said Nick Weidenfeld, head of program development at Adult Swim.

"It had this chance to grow really organically," he said.

Adult Swim is based in Atlanta, far from TV's epicenters in Los Angeles and New York. That outsider status lets writers and animators stay focused on their shows' "geek appeal," a factor Weidenfeld said can't be underestimated.

Animation is a very freeing medium, fans say. On hand-drawn shows, characters can be anyone from baby Stewie of "Family Guy," who speaks with a precise British accent and is bent on world domination, to the 1960s cartoon hero who now hosts a talk show on "Space Ghost Coast to Coast."

"It's very spontaneous," 23-year-old Abigail Purcell said of animation. "You can't do that with regular, everyday human actors."



Attracting women

Purcell is part of the growing female audience for adult animation. While the shows on Adult Swim mainly attract men, some women are now picking up "Family Guy" DVDs and checking out the better-known shows for what Purcell calls her "comic outlet."

When adult cartoons' audience still skewed toward socially challenged college boys, women like Purcell were less likely to watch them. Now that at least a few shows have become more mainstream, Purcell and her friends have picked up on their subversive humor. Still, "for some people, it's like a secret indulgence," she said.

Developers like Weidenfeld and Crofford hope to build more Abigail Purcells into their audience while holding onto the Joe O'Connells of their base demographic by keeping their best-known shows around while developing new hits at their Atlanta base. They're branching out, too, with video games based on some of the most popular shows on the way in 2006.

"We all love cartoons, but this is bigger than cartoons," Weidenfeld said. "We're never going to just stay limited."

But their cartoons will probably always be the main attraction for today's young adults, who have grown up on "The Simpsons" and similar shows, O'Connell said.

"There's no mentality of "cartoons are for kids,' " he said of his peers. "It's just an animation generation."