The Dot and Line’s Best Writing of 2017
A look back at a year of hits.
If 2016 felt rotten and exhausting and bad, one thing was certain: we were all due a lot more. The fact is that 2017 wasn’t much better and was arguably much more relentless. So. Much. Happened. And most of it had nothing to do with cartoons: An orange 12-year-old took the highest office in the land. The Women’s March. The greatest Oscars self-own of all time. A massive solar eclipse. The #MeToo movement. Hollyweed.
Through all that insanity, the writers and editors behind The Dot and Line relied more than ever on animation to keep us sane. Despite the fact that 2017’s major animated feature releases left a lot to be desired, American television acquitted itself admirably with smart seasons from BoJack Horseman and Rick and Morty and a stirring debut run from Netflix’s Big Mouth. The DuckTales reboot, against all odds, wasn’t just good, but artistically fearless, proudly feminist, and able to hold its own every week. Internationally, we were able to tout the staggering labor of artists from Spain, Iran, Colombia, Japan, and elsewhere and look forward to covering more in the new year.
In a development for our still-young (not yet 2-year-old, not yet money-making) enterprise, cultural events informed and contextualized our coverage of animation more than ever. The fight over the Affordable Healthcare Act became a story on the work of legendary animator Chuck Jones, who earned one of his Academy Awards for a short that broke down that very topic. The ongoing public health disaster that is gun violence in America led us to report on Tower, a film of shock and awe based on the award-winning journalism of Pamela Colloff. Our pieces on Bob’s Burgers, The Simpsons, Moral Orel, and Pokémon explored the simple and complicated statements each make about class, gender, religion, and race, respectively.
The enduring relevance of Avatar: The Last Airbender and The Legend of Korrra proved irresistible targets to cover in weeklong packages twice this year, in equal parts for their mastery of character-driven story arcs and emotional trauma. Our examinations of “In a Heartbeat”—a short, animated tale of queer love whose viral fanfare preceded the much noisier Oscar buzz around Call Me by Your Name—and hit series like Steven Universe, Star vs. the Forces of Evil, and others continue, for the moment, to celebrate humanity’s differences, rather than cast them into oblivion. Writing and editing that kind of stuff probably felt best of all.
All of that represents some of the work we tried to do this year between the “Pickle Rick” jokes and the dumb pranks. Here are the 15 stories in the set that we are proudest of. We can’t wait to do more in 2018. Thanks for reading, and see you then.
Toon up or tune out,
EVB + JHM
In which and Corinne Segal and Amelia Kidd give Ginger’s feelings the Dr. Scratchansniff treatment.
In which someone—in this case, David S. Atkinson—finally writes a Dot and Line piece on The Simpsons.
In which Katie Bohri gives us a hell of an environmental lesson.
In which katie van brunt gives us a hell of a history lesson.
In which we get a hell of an animation lesson.
‘BoJack Horseman’ Gives Us TV’s First Out-and-Proud Asexual Icon
And he is magnificent.
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In which Sammy Nickalls shows how we finally see all of one of BoJack Horseman’s main characters.
In which Alex Kingsepp discovers a hell of a tea-brewing lesson.
In which Tiana Camacho lets someone contracted by Disney school us on Moana.
In which a cartoon debunks everything Paul Ryan stands for.
In which we reckon with one of America’s greatest evils.
In which Sam Reynolds shows how these two artists explain their “punk,” very weird film about sex and coming of age.
In which Amanda Ramsaran explains how Pokémon managed to do something unusually surprising.
In which Alex Costello unlocks a powerful, often forgotten show.
In which Sean Fitz-Gerald and Kayla Rae Whitaker bring books into the cartoon conversation.
In which we honor our mandate as a site called “The Dot and Line.”
Thanks for reading The Dot and Line, where we talk about animation of all kinds. Don’t forget to👏 for this article and follow us on Twitter and Facebook.
