ABSTRACT
All the previous chapters were based on what we can learn from the history of live comedy. This one chapter is devoted to giving your animated characters cartoon powers. It should be obvious how important it is to lay the groundwork in reality. Comedy is about understanding human nature, and having fun with it. If you start and finish with that in mind, you can then do anything you can imagine to make it cartoony. You can place your order with the Acme company for anvils and dynamite. Your characters can fly, fall, or move at the speed of light. They can manipulate matter as well as the minds of their opponents. They can do the things real people could only dream of. Actors, however, do their best to achieve what they can. The poet Theodore De Banville wrote of the English pantomime actor John Rich:
Between the adjective “possible” and the adjective “impossible” the English Pantomimist has made his choice: he has chosen the adjective “impossible.” He hides where it is impossible to hide, he passes through openings that are smaller than his body, he stands on supports that are too weak to support his weight; while being closely observed, he executes movements that are absolutely undetectable, he balances on an umbrella, he curls up inside a guitar case and throughout, he flees, he escapes, he leaps. And what drives him on? The remembrance of being a bird, the regret of no longer being one, the will to become one again. 1
