The Best American Animation Writing 2018
A roundup of our 15 favorite stories about cartoons published during the past year by outlets not called The Dot and Line.
Another year, another massive backlog of Pocketed, Instapapered, or otherwise bookmarked stories about animation. Our reading list is long, as it should be, and it gets longer by the day.
Here are some of our favorite pieces of written analysis, reportage, argument, and feature writing on animation that we got to read, but had no part in publishing, this year. We’ve highlighted some of our favorite things about each piece below. Enjoy your holiday binge-watching, friends, but don’t forget to binge-read too!
Important Note! We read as much as we possibly can, but we’re neither perfect nor do we wish to live in a world filled with only our opinions. If you feel we missed a particularly awesome piece of writing (or just want to say hi), send us a note at thedotandline@gmail.com, and we’ll include it and quote you!
Lisa Simpson has been an essential character for cartoons, feminism, and comedy at large for the past 30 years. This examines why.
An important examination of othering and its consequences in child-geared animation.
We can’t endorse The Proud Family or this essay or this episode enough.
Full disclosure, a Dot and Line editor is quoted in this story, but that doesn’t make its analysis—of the crazy decision to announce 70 more episodes of Rick and Morty at once—any less worth reading.
SyFy has gotten very good at oral histories, and this look at Gargoyles is a welcome throwback to one of the most intense animated series of the ’90s. (This one, on the Disney Afternoon, is pretty great, too.)
No argument published in any medium was more correct this year than this one.
This piece by Harry Waksberg is a clear-eyed look at the benefits and limits of Our Cartoon President, and it lands here: “It’s worth considering whether we can make fun of homicidal insanity.”
Remarkably, people watch Big Mouth with their kids. This piece breaks down the making of the show better than most.
It’s not often that we get something this well-composed about the effect of anime on real-world spaces.
Always respect the horse girls. And watch She-Ra, which The Dot and Line did not cover this year, but which is terrific.
We don’t mean to end this list on a down note, but Kim Masters’s investigation of one of the most powerful men in American animation is a must-read for anyone who grew up on his work.
Another down note, but 2018 saw the #MeToo shine a light on the world of cartoons as well—and the darkness some of us would be surprised to find within it. This piece is spectacularly reported. Read and reflect. We’ll be better off for it.
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