Telecomics

rdf:langString Telecomics

rdf:langString Telecomics (also known as Tele-Comics and NBC Comics) is the name of two American children's television shows broadcast from 1949 to 1951. Along with Crusader Rabbit and Jim and Judy in Teleland, the Telecomics broadcasts were some of the earliest cartoon shows on television, although they were essentially a representation of comic strips on screen, with a narrator and voice actors talking over still frames, with only occasional moments of limited animation. The 1949 show, Tele-Comics, was syndicated by Vallee-Video as a 15-minute show made up of four three-minute segments: Joey and Jug, Sa-Lah, Brother Goose and Rick Rack, Secret Agent. The second show, initially broadcast as NBC Comics from September 1950 to March 1951, was created by cartoonist Dick Moores and Disney animator Jack Boyd, who founded the company Telecomics, Inc. in 1942. The NBC version introduced four new stories: Danny March, Kid Champion, Space Barton and Johnny & Mr. Do-Right. After the show was cancelled, the existing episodes were distributed in syndication as Telecomics through the end of the 1950s. During the 40s, there were several other similar attempts to present static cartoon images in early television; in fact, in 1947, Billboard reported that there were five different production companies all trying to produce similar shows, including a second company called Telecomics, Inc., run by syndicator and licensed-character magnate Stephen Slesinger. These three companies—Moores & Boyd's Telecomics, Inc.; Slesinger's Telecomics, Inc.; and Vallee-Video—are often confused by animation historians, who claim that Tele-Comics and NBC Comics were produced by the same company.