Warner Brothers Upcoming Animation Green Lantern

Cartoon Network will be premiering Green Lantern, the Animated Series in fall 2011, coinciding with the live-action Green Lantern movie, The CGI animated series will air on Cartoon Network starting in November, 2011, which will hit theaters in June of that same year.

The Green Lantern cartoon series represents yet another facet of DC Entertainment and Warner Bros’ plan for total brand expansion reported on DCE/WB’s latest plans for their slate of upcoming superhero movies.

Story of Green Lantern
In a universe as vast as it is mysterious, a small but powerful force has existed for centuries. Protectors of peace and justice, they are called the Green Lantern Corps. A brotherhood of warriors sworn to keep intergalactic order, each Green Lantern wears a ring that grants him superpowers. But when a new enemy called Parallax threatens to destroy the balance of power in the Universe, their fate and the fate of Earth lie in the hands of their newest recruit, the first human ever selected: Hal Jordan.

Hal is a gifted and cocky test pilot, but the Green Lanterns have little respect for humans, who have never harnessed the infinite powers of the ring before. But Hal is clearly the missing piece to the puzzle, and along with his determination and willpower, he has one thing no member of the Corps has ever had: humanity. With the encouragement of fellow pilot and childhood sweetheart Carol Ferris (Blake Lively), if Hal can quickly master his new powers and find the courage to overcome his fears, he may prove to be not only the key to defeating Parallax…he will become the greatest Green Lantern of all.

One thing is fairly certain, though; Warner Bros is putting a lot of stock into Green Lantern not just becoming one of their tent pole film franchises, but a household brand name along the lines of Batman.

Lionsgate's Alpha and Omega Animation Trailer

Lionsgate has debuted the trailer for the animated feature film Alpha and Omega starring voice work from Hayden Panettiere and Justin Long as Kate and Humphrey, two wolves who are trying to get home after being taken by park rangers and shipped halfway across the country. Humphrey is an Omega wolf, whose days are about quick wit, snappy one-liners and hanging with his motley crew of fun-loving wolves and video-gaming squirrels. Kate is an Alpha: duty, discipline and sleek Lara Croft eye-popping moves fuel her fire. Humphrey's motto is to make laugh. Kate's motto I'm the boss. And they have a thousand miles to go. Back home rival wolf packs are on the march and conflict is brewing. Only Kate and Humphrey can restore the peace. But first, they have to survive each other.

Hayden Panettiere provides the voice for Kate, while Justin Long is hired to voice Humphrey. They are additionally joined by Christina Ricci, Danny Glover and Dennis Hopper among many others on the cast ensemble. "Alpha and Omega" is made in 3-D and is due for September 17 U.S. release.

It looks like the Madagascar storyline, added a little Lion King and turned the animals into wolves.

The Pinky Show Animated Political Project

Illegal Immigration is one of the most divisive issues in America today. Pinky asks Bunny for his take on what’s really going on. Added bonus: Daisy tells us how to solve the whole problem in 5 minutes.

The Pinky Show is the animated political project of two creators from California who, for the purposes of this article, asked to be referred to by their animated character names: Pinky and Bunny. It is an online endeavor that offers up documentary cartoons on a host of political issues.
The Pinky Show is the original super lo-tech hand drawn educational TV show. We focus on information & ideas that have been misrepresented, suppressed, ignored, or otherwise excluded from mainstream discussion. Pinky presents and analyzes the material in an informal, easy to understand way, with helpful illustrations.

The show is narrated by Pinky kitty journalist, and the style is simple, compelling and interminably cute. The analysis is astute and rendered in a way suitable for young and old alike. For anyone interested in education, it is a veritable feast of audiovisual materials aimed at challenging many of the one-sided dominant social and political myths and ideologies circulating in North American public culture.

A quick glance through their archive gives a sense of the political territory this creative group has staked out for itself: Hawaii’s illegal appropriation by the United States; the dangers to imagination and intelligence posed by public education; the role of world’s fairs in the colonization of the global south; the American occupation of Iraq; a kitty treatise on class, power and agency; creepy children’s toys; GMO’s; new forms of apartheid; illegal immigration.

4Kids Entertainment Presenting "Penelope" for Preschool Kids

4Kids Entertainment International will be presenting Penelope, the preschool property that it has begun representing in the L&M market, excluding Asia and France.

Penelope is based on the best-selling book series by Anne Gutman and Georg Hallensleben about a cute 3-year-old blue koala with a funny red nose, insatiable curiosity and a great sense of humor. Penelope is a wonderful edutainment property which has been a real success in Japan over the last few years.

Penelope is a beautiful, short-form animated series about a preschool-aged koala whose boundless energy and never ending curiosity send the kid on various explorations of imagination and of the natural world.

This Penelope is a three-year-old koala with blue fur and a funny red nose; the child is constantly interested in self-expression, interacting with friends and family, and discovering more about the surrounding world. Naturally, Penelope is a television animation for pre-K audiences, placing additional emphasis on the visual and language arts.

Penelope encourages the young characters at its center to broaden their personal worlds by exploring open fields, climbing trees, playing a new musical instrument, or putting paint to canvass. Penelope enjoys hanging out with family, and often breaks out into reverie upon seeing or hearing something new around town, school, or even at home. Penelope was a co-production by Nippon Animation, NHK Enterprises and Shirogumi, Inc., with music by Yuko Fukushima and screenwriting by anime industry veteran Michiru Shimada. Episodes for the cartoon are only five minutes in length, but are rather substantial, visually-speaking. The artworks, guided by series background designer Yuta Sukegawa, retain the hand-painted look and feel of the original children's books. The tactile visual aesthetic is ideal for preschool viewers, and successfully expands Penelope's five-minute adventures into something much more.

Spiderman Artist Randy Emberlin’s Art Camps of Summer

Professional instructor Randy Emberlin, best known for his work on Amazing Spider-Man and G.I. Joe, will be teaching two Art Camps this summer, the Cartooning and Comic Book Art Camp and The Animation Art Camp. Camps run Monday-Thursday, 9am-3:30pm during the weeks of July 5-8 and August 2-5, 2010.

In the Cartooning and Comic Book Camp students learn how to draw comic book Super-Heroes, Cartoon Characters, Funny Animals, Japanese Manga and Animae. The children will be able to design their own Comic Book Characters using model sheets and make full-sized Comic Book Covers and Sound Effects Action Posters. In the Animation Art Camp, students will explore cartoon animation using Zoetrope strips, flip books and Digital Camera Pixelation.

This summer Students will be offered a unique educational experience learning to draw their favorite comic book Super-Heroes with Spiderman artist Randy Emberlin.

Jim Hill’s Young Age Shrek

Jim Hill’s back with even more answers to your Disney related questions. This time around, he talks about all the struggles that the “Shrek Forever After,” “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs” and “Pinocchio” story teams went through.

The idea of giving moviegoers a taste of teen-aged Shrek’s life in the fourth film of this series was to reveal how closely the ogre & Princess Fiona’s lives were intertwined. That long before the storyline of the first “Shrek” had officially gotten underway these two characters had actually crossed paths.

Shrek has reached the age when ogre parents traditionally kick their children out of the house. And almost immediately after he’s left home, this teenage ogre finds himself being pursued by an angry mob. And as Shrek racing down the street, trying to evade capture, he’s almost run down by a royal procession.

The idea that Mike was trying to get across here was that if it hadn’t been for that royal procession coming along the mob would probably have caught this teenaged ogre and killed him. So in a way Fiona rescued Shrek long before Donkey & this ogre came along and rescued the princess from the Dragon’s Keep.

But in the end, Mitchell and the “Shrek Forever After” story team dropped this particular flashback. Well, as fun as it may have been to stage a sequence in this film where young Princess Fiona and teenage Shrek almost meet. In the end, this interesting tangent didn’t really service the movie’s story. If anything, this flashback and along with another one that was supposed to have touched on Puss in Boot’s origins. Which occurring to Mike was at least a half hour long and had too many dark touches. “This would have been the ‘Schindler's List’ of animation,”. “There’s a reason that we didn’t put that version of Puss in Boots’ back-story into production. It was way too depressing” slowed down the story that DreamWorks Animation wanted to tell with the fourth installment of this popular film franchise, which is sort of a Shrek-ish version of that holiday perennial, “It's a Wonderful Life.”

Now where this gets interesting is the very idea that Mike Mitchell described to me (i.e. Shrek being forced to leave home at a young age by his parents. He and Fiona then meeting on the road as she’s taken to the Dragon’s Keep) wound up being the opening number of “Shrek the Musical,” which FYI begins its National Tour at Chicago’s Cadillac Palace Theater on July 13th.

Waking Sleeping Beauty Walt Disney’s New Animated Bomb

Waking Sleeping Beauty will matter only to those who grew up on Walt Disney’s animated films.

Don Hahn’s documentary focuses on a decade in which the all but moribund Disney animation department, re-energized by a handful of new movers and shakers, came out of its coma and blazed a path that would lead to “The Little Mermaid,” “Aladdin,” “Beauty and the Beast” and “The Lion King,” among other successes.

The film works on several levels. The judicious use of clips from those great films reminds us of why they became such an essential part of our shared film experiences. Also, this is a story of strange bedfellows and strained friendships that ultimately flew apart.

And it allows us to dwell, if only for a few moments, in the heart of Disney animation, where goofy guys and gals sit at drawing boards and decorate their walls with goofy cartoons and often star in their own goofy home movies. “Waking Sleeping Beauty” is also about one of the most influential culture-creating institutions in the world.

By the mid 80s, Disney animation was in such trouble that there was talk of shutting it down and focusing exclusively on live-action films. After all, “Splash” was a huge hit for the company, while the animated bomb “The Black Cauldron” failed to earn back half its production costs and was trounced at the box office by “The Care Bears Movie.”

Of course, Disney animation is now riding high again with ‘WAKING SLEEPING BEAUTY’ as a result of its post Katzenberg acquisition of Pixar. Maybe in a decade Hahn will make a sequel and bring us up to date.

Warner Brothers New Series of Looney Tunes

Worried that the low profile of the Looney Tunes cast of characters among children is the start of that’s all folks for the historic cartoon franchise; Warner Brothers is embarking on a five-alarm rescue effort.

A new 26-episode half-hour series, “The Looney Tunes Show,” is headed toward Cartoon Network in the fall and will star Bugs Bunny and Daffy Duck as odd-couple roommates in a contemporary cul-de-sac. Yosemite Sam, Tweety Bird, Sylvester, Marvin the Martian and Porky Pig are their neighbors.

Meanwhile, Road Runner and Wile E. Coyote are going back to work in movie theaters in a series of 3-D shorts. The first of these shorts Warner has approved three, and three more are in development will play ahead of the movie “Cats & Dogs: The Revenge of Kitty Galore,” which arrives in theaters July 30.

ToonSeum Continues Toon Series in China

The ToonSeum continues its Toon in series with a screening of selected works by seminal Chinese animator Te Wei. These rare classics, completed in the late 1950's and 60's, showcase the painstaking art of watercolor animation.

Te Wei's beatific shorts are serene portraits of nature and motion. A popular artist in China throughout the 1960's, Te Wei became a victim of Mao Zedong's Cultural Revolution and was no longer able to continue producing films. Much of his work fell into public domain and was introduced to American audiences in the old cartoon calvacade variety shows of the 1970's and 80's. Te Wei died in February at the age of 95.

"Te Wei's animation is, in every sense of the phrase, a painting come to life,” said ToonSeum Manager John Mattie. "The meditative pacing and fluidity of the work is simply breathtaking. As a child, these cartoons were so mysterious, so different from anything else I'd seen. Viewing them again as an adult has been just as revelatory."

Included in the screening will be "Where Is Mama" and "The Cowboy's Flute." This screening is appropriate for all ages. Guests will also be able to view the current exhibit "The Art of AKIRA," a celebration of Japanese cel animation.

Hub New Cartoon Channel Launches for Kids

When the Hub launches Oct. 10, the kids' cable network will have more than just increased competition from the Disney Channel, Nickelodeon and Cartoon Network to contend with. The joint venture between Discovery and Hasbro, the world's second-largest toy company, will also have to sell itself to fellow toy marketers such as Mattel.

Hub CEO Margaret Loesch, a 30-year veteran producer of animated shows including Hasbro properties "G.I. Joe," "Transformers" and "My Little Pony," is keenly aware of the network's challenges in the marketplace as well as from government scrutiny. That's why the network will launch in 60 million homes with only 25% of its programming based on Hasbro toys, while the rest of its slate will be a mix of animation and live action shows geared at different demographics across multiple day-parts, but primarily focused on children 6 to 12 years old.

The Hub has added the hit animated preschool series Animal Mechanicals to its slate. The network, a new joint venture between toymaker Hasbro and Discovery Communications, picked up the rights to the 55 x 11 min. series from Decode Enterprises. Animal Mechanicals is produced by Halifax Films in Canada under commission from the CBC.

The Hub the new kids' service from Discovery Communications and Hasbro has unveiled a lineup of original and acquired series from, among others, Hasbro Studios, DHX's Halifax Film and Moonscoop. The new Discovery/Hasbro JV debuts in place of Discovery Kids in 60 million homes this fall.

China Booming in Cartoon Industry

Compared with Chinese native cities, such as Shanghai, Beijing, Changsha and Guangzhou, which have occupied positions in the first phalanx in China's cartoon industry, the very industry in Hangzhou city, Zhejiang province, although having not taken the preemptive opportunity from the very beginning, has become a great new force that has suddenly grown up within about five to six years. In 2004, there was hardly any output for cartoon products in Hangzhou yet; while in 2009, it came to be that almost one sixth of the output of originally created cartoons all over the country were from Hangzhou and about a quarter of excellent cartoons were "made by Hangzhou originality".

Referring to the rapid growing up of Hangzhou's cartoon industry, what cannot be ignored is China International Cartoon & Animation Festival settled in Hangzhou.

All famous giants and enterprises come together and march towards the new height
Wu Jianrong, Board Chairman of Zhejiang Zhongnan Group Animation Video Co., Ltd (Zhongnan Animation for short), which has currently become the leading enterprise in the cartoon industry, told the reporter that Zhongnan Animation had created 24 classic cartoons relating to 12 themes within the short 6 years by now since 2004 when Zhongnan Animation developed the first big cartoon picture. Zhongnan Animation has also had its created cartoon products sold towards 63 countries and areas and become the cartoon enterprise that has made the most volume of foreign exchange earned by export.

Similar to Zhongnan Animation, this is the very character of cartoon enterprises in Hangzhou that they grow up along with the successful operation on China International Cartoon & Animation Festival. Up to now, there have been 5 nation-level cartoon bases and 135 cartoon enterprises in Hangzhou, with employees beyond 10,000 persons. Among these enterprises, some of them are those famous ones invited from China and overseas.

After the first session of Festival, famous cartoonist Yao Feila established the Summer Island Film, Television and Cartoon Production Co., Ltd in Hangzhou, which attracted a batch of new generation of cartoonists settling in Hangzhou.

After the second Festival, Jade Dynasty Group Limited, a cartoon group, established symbiosis with Hangzhou.

After the forth Festival, Shueisha Inc, the biggest cartoon group in Japanese, jointly ran the National Xinxing Cup Animation Contest with cartoon companies in Hangzhou, so as to discover excellent cartoon and animation talents.

After the fifth Festival, Greatdreams Cartoon Group, the biggest cartoon and animation enterprise in China, has also settled in Hangzhou.

Government's guidance for promoting integrated "3 Kinds of Forces"
In Hangzhou, the developed cultural and creative industry profits from the mechanism, being good at using the "material hands" and the "immaterial hands". That is also suitable to the practice of conducting a sound Festival and promoting the development of cartoon industry. As told by Ye Ming, Deputy Party Secretary of Hangzhou Municipal Committee in charge of the cultural and creative industry, it is to exert the function of integrating "3 Kinds of Forces" of Government's guidance, enterprises as main body and market distribution.

As early as 2005, Hangzhou issued the industry policy leading in China, and further improved it increasingly. The Hangzhou Government invests RMB50 million yuan as a special fund annually on developing the cartoon and game industry, which is mainly devoted to supporting key projects, allowance and encouragement. Since the beginning of 2010, the special fund has amounted to RMB70 million yuan.

In 2008, the Hangzhou Government guided related financial agency to launch the first claims trust industry for cultural and creative industry, built a financing service platform for cartoon and animation enterprises and irritated financial agencies to provide financing service for small-and-middle-sized cartoon and animation enterprises.

Recently, Huang Kunming, Party Secretary of Hangzhou Municipal Committee and Member of the Standing Committee of the CPC Zhejiang Provincial Committee, pointed that what should be done is to conduct a sound China International Cartoon & Animation Festival and take it as the an effective springboard for speeding the transformation of the economy development method, so as to further drive the development of cultural and creative industry, especially the cartoon and animation industry, drive the development of tourism, especially the exhibition tour, .better give publicity to the brand of "Oriental Capital of Leisure" and improve the quality of people's life, especially the cultural life.

Top 5 Best Cartoon Characters of All Time

1. Homer J. Simpson (The Simpsons)

Created: 1987
Creator: Matt Groening
Voice: Dan Castellaneta
The first two seasons of The Simpsons were focused on Bart, but as it became Homer centric, the show became something truly special. He’s the everyman at our laziest, hungriest, dumbest and drunkest. Yet thanks to good heart buried under all those doughnuts, he’s also the hero that repeatedly saves the day or at least restores everything to a status quo which has endured for two decades and more than 450 episodes.
2. Bugs Bunny (Looney Tunes)
Created: 1938
Creator: Tex Avery
Voice: Mel Blanc
The coolest cat in cartoon history is a rabbit or a hare. That slight taxonomic difference was never addressed during his many antics, but he held an enviable insouciance through them all, whether being hunted with Elmer Fudd’s shotgun, Yosemite Sam’s pistols or Marvin Martian’s ACME Disintegration Pistol. His only flaw: a poor sense of direction (especially when tunneling through New Mexico).

3. Tom and Jerry
Created: 1940
Creators: William Hanna and Joseph Barbera
Silent film mostly went away with the advent of the talkies, but Hanna and Barbera’s Tom and Jerry didn’t need dialogue to enrapture generations of children. The 114 shorts were created between 1940 and 1958, but they feel like they belonged to my childhood in the late ‘70s, just like they’ll feel like a part of my kids’ childhood when they grow up.

4. Mickey Mouse
Created: 1928
Creator: Walt Disney
Voice: Walt Disney
It’s easy to lose sight of the cartoon character Mickey in the shadow of the mascot for the Disney Empire. There might not be a Disney empire but for the charms of an enthusiastic adventurous mouse.
5. Wile E. Coyote (Looney Tunes)
Created: 1948
Creator: Chuck Jones
Voice: Mel Blanc
Charlie Brown will never kick his football, and Wile E. will never catch the Roadrunner. These are among the first truths learned by any kid in America, even as they’re exposed the beauties of the Western desert. His clever plans and box of oft-malfunctioning ACME tricks resulted in our favorite coyote falling off cliffs, getting crushed by stones, and at the center of crater-inducing explosions; no cartoon character suffered more for our entertainment.

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Jeff Smith's "Bone" a Traditional Feature Film

While computer generated animation has helped deliver its share of modern movie classics, its technological limitations can sometimes give releases a definite time stamp. That's why in the case of adapting Jeff Smith's "Bone" as a feature film, some feel that traditional, hand-drawn animation might be better suited for bringing the Bones to life.

Cartoon Brew's pointed out "Bone" fan Andrew Kaiko's hand-drawn Flash test animation makes a pretty strong case for the appeal of a 2-D feature. Culling audio from TellTale Games' "Bone" video game, Kaiko's delivered a glimpse into what could have been.

We haven't heard too much about the "Bone" film's progress of late, but it'll be nice to have this clip on hand to compare it with whatever Warner Bros. and Animal Logic ("Happy Feet") eventually release online. Geeks of Doom have reported that Smith himself would have preferred 2-D, but 3-D was the more cost-effective solution.

Really, Smith's storytelling seems like it could thrive in any number of dimensions, so long as dancing penguins are kept out of the mix. While a feature adaptation of Jeff Smith's wonderful, enduring graphic odyssey is in the works, it'll be an entirely computer-generated affair and it won't have half the hand-hewn charm of this fan created short.

Turkish Short Animation Film Won DotFest

A Turkish short animation film became the winner of the International Online Short Film Festival DotFest in the category of Animation. The film by Serdar Kocak from the Anadolu University Fine Arts Faculty Department of Animation competed against 400 short films. Animated DotFest contest in the branch became the first in a short film called ''Balance''.

Kocak said the cartoon heroes of his film came to mind while he was thinking of a symbol for a tattoo, adding that he used those heroes in his short cartoon film made for his term paper.

He said the film showed that the world was formed with a balance. “There is only one drawing in the film. But I featured two characters, symbolizing a woman and a man, in a single drawing. One of the characters puts great effort to reach the other sitting on a balance board. But the other does not care about it. But later on, the foot of the former slips. This is why the balance board becomes unbalanced and this character comes near to the other one. As they finally come together, a fly destroys the balance of the balance board again. I try to tell in this film that everything is not the same as they are seen, everything in the world is on a balance, and there are also factors that destroy this balance. My film was appreciated by my friends and teachers.”

Kocak said he joined the competition through the Internet and became one of the first 10. “Jury members selected my film among these 10 films from France, Russia, England, Hungary, the United States and Turkey.”

Avi Arad’s Planning to Develop Pac-Man Movie

Avi Arad, once the head of Marvel Studios, will be making an appearance at the E3 conference this July with Namco, the company celebrating the 30th anniversary of Pac-Man and producing the uncharted movie, is scheduled to appear at Namco Bandai's 30th birthday celebration for Pac-Man on June 15. He will help the company announce a new Pac-Man project, which many feel will be the announcement of a Pac-Man movie.

While the game company will be announcing new console, arcade and mobile versions of the classic game, Arad will be on hand to announce a "mystery" project related to the franchise. Since Arad is a movie producer, it doesn't take a detective to figure out that they're going to be developing a PAC-MAN movie.

Adding fuel to the speculative fire is the fact that Steven Paul, Arad's production partner, and his Crystal Sky company have been looking to make a Pac-Man movie since 2002. Paul made a $200 million deal in May 2008 with Grosvenor Park to finance 5 films, including Pac-Man and Castlevania. The pair worked together on numerous films, and Paul is a producer on the upcoming Tekken movie.

How exactly would one make a movie about a circular yellow creature chomping pellets and chasing ghosts? Well I suppose the simplest choice would be to develop a 3D animated film with Sony Pictures Animation or something like that. An update of "Pac-Man" cartoon is using modern CG animation.

All New Episodes of American Dad! On FOX

A new episode of American Dad! With its new episode entitles "An Incident at Owl Creek" that released on FOX. It’s a best show that you gonna wish to watch all the time. Season 5 episode 17 online or looking to get a sneak peak of the new episode named "An Incident at Owl Creek".

You’re favorite Adult Cartoon Animation is back for episode number 17 of the new season and once again you will need to tune in at 21:30 ET on FOX to watch it on TV.

Synopsis of the episode: In preparation for a neighborhood pool party, Stan tells his family to get in tip-top shape. But when an accident ruins the Smith family name, a humiliated Stan fakes his family’s deaths and moves everyone out of Langley Falls to escape his shame in the all-new "An Incident at Owl Creek" episode of AMERICAN DAD.

Top 5 Martial Art Heroes of Animation

There have been many martial artists in animation. Some of these characters are the perfect embodiment of stealth and cunning, others wield remarkable power, and still others are remarkably skilled and look spectacularly awesome on the screen. As tough as it is to choose, the following is a list of five particularly impressive animated martial artists that have more than proven their remarkable abilities. Enjoy and let loose with what you think!

1. Son Goku
This choice might risk being cliche, and it's certainly tempting to think of Goku as the "Japanese Superman" and focus on his immense strength. However, this doesn't do the hero of the Dragon Ball saga justice. Throughout his many adventures, Goku was a fighter that never backed down and always put up a serious fight whether he was overmatched, equaled, or clearly superior to his opponent. He was once a youth that fought just about all of his future allies at least once, earning their friendship or at least respecting in return. This could never have been accomplished with strength alone, which Goku had from the beginning of Dragon Ball. He also learned much about the art of fighting from many different teachers, destined to surpass them all in time.

In the Dragon Ball Z series, he fought an incredible variety of powerful and skilled opponents over time and proved his worth against each one time and again. Take for instance his battle against the Cell, who Goku was able to hold his own against despite the villain knowing just about every technique that he and his friends did. Goku didn't win every battle he fought, but he could be counted on to come back for more and show remarkable perseverance.

2. Kenshiro
Kenshiro from Fist of the North Star was inspired by the examples of martial arts legend Bruce Lee and Max Rockatansky from Mad Max. Kenshiro was pretty much overkill personified. This man does not defeat his opponents. He dominates them, and he mostly does it with raw strength and his martial arts skills instead of energy blasts that blow apart the landscape. He does this through his fictional Chinese art Hokuto Shinken, wherein the martial artist destroys or manipulates his foe by striking his acupressure points.

Some of his abilities are powerful enough to destroy limbs, some are actually subtle enough to affect the nervous system and make the opponent's body act involuntarily. Incapacitation, decapacitation, and even gruesome outright destruction often befall Kenshiro's foes; no defense is safe against his flurry of fists. Woe upon the post-apocalyptic tyrants and thugs who challenge him.

3. Batman
Batman is one of the most capable American superheroes, and he isn't super. He is a man that pushes his considerable talents as far as he can make them go. Interestingly enough, the nature of Batman's martial arts prowess has been subject to revision over the years. It's probably easiest to concur with the general consensus of comic book writers these days, which holds that Batman has studied just about every type of martial art worth knowing and is able to effectively use their techniques as needed.

All this is fine and Batman does have plenty of useful tools and gadgets as well, but as any serious fan would agree Batman's greatest skills are his wits and intelligence. Batman also excels at thinking on his feet and predicting what actions his foes will take next before they do them. In short, Batman excels at fighting on his terms in a way that very few do.

4. The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles
If nothing else, the TMNT are arguably the most famous martial artists in animation ever since the original 1987 cartoon. They may have arguably started out being best known for "Cowabunga!" and Pizza rather than their fighting prowess, but much has changed since the Turtles first came to television.

In the original comic by Kevin Eastman and Peter Laird, they were hardcore and took no prisoners. When their second cartoon series came along in 2003 from 4kids, much of the fun was kept but inspiration was also taken from the Turtles' comic book origins. It certainly helped that the Turtles were mostly opposed by villains that usually offered a serious fight, including a much meaner and tougher version of the Shredder. This trend continued in very underrated 2007 film TMNT, where the turtles had plenty of slick moves and were perhaps shown at their most ninja-like: lithe, agile, skilled, and more than capable at striking lethally from the shadows. In their long animated history the TMNT's ninjutsu skills have certainly been tested, and one sure wouldn't want to bet against them in a fight.

5. Spike Spiegel
Before Mugen's improbable breakdancing swordplay in Samurai Champloo, there was Spike's martial arts in Cowboy BeBop. Spike is a user of Jeet Kune Do, a real discipline of martial arts founded by Bruce Lee that calls on the user to use simple, direct movements with a variety of moves from different styles--in short, to practice a style of fighting that defies style and is flexible "like water."

Sure, he carries a trusty sidearm, but when things get up close and personal Spike relies on his considerable skill and finds ways to survive. Given his difficulty against some tougher opponents like Vicious and Vincent Spike isn't quite as superior as other martial artists on this list, but he's got the skill and he's got the style. When Spike is fighting at his best, he makes martial arts look easy and very cool.

Cartoon Network Strong Rating Series Ben 10: Ultimate Alien and Generator Rex

The Cartoon Network series Ben 10: Ultimate Alien and Generator Rex debuted to strong ratings, prompting the network to order additional episodes of each series. The series’ premieres on April 23 were the top-rated programs on all television in their time-slots for boys ages 6-11 and boys ages 9-14, according to preliminary Nielsen Media Research data.

Cartooon Network has ordered 32 more episodes of Ben 10: Ultimate Alien and 20 more episodes of Generator Rex. Both series were created by Man of Action, which consists of Joe Casey, Joe Kelley, Duncan Rouleau, and Steven T. Seagle, and are produced at Cartoon Network Studios in Burbank, California.

Highlights of Ben 10: Ultimate Alien and Generator Rex original series’ premieres compared to the same time period last year include the following:

• Ben 10: Ultimate Alien increased kids 6-11 ratings (3.8) by 280% and delivery (925,000) by 290%, kids 2-11 ratings (3.2) by 220% and delivery (1,304,000) by 219%, and kids 9-14 ratings (3.1) by 288% and delivery (756,000) by 272%.

Ben 10: Ultimate Alien follows 16-year-old Ben Tennyson as his secret identity has been revealed to the world and he’s now an international mega-star super hero, loved by kids the world over but distrusted by many adults. Armed with a mysterious new Omnitrix, Ben is able to transform into hyper-evolved versions of his aliens and will see action in places he’s never been.

• Generator Rex increased kids 6-11 ratings (4.4) by 267% and delivery (1,070,000) by 275%, kids 2-11 ratings (3.7) by 236% and delivery (1, 513,000) by 227%, and kids 9-14 ratings (3.6) by 350% and delivery (874,000) by 346%.

Generator Rex, from the creators of Ben 10, takes viewers on an adventure full of fun, action, wish fulfillment and teenage drama. Rex is a young super agent who, with his incredible ability to create mechanical weapons and vehicles from his own body, must balance his adrenaline-fueled adventures with the everyday ups and downs of being a teenager.