IT’S SATURDAY MORNING: Celebrating the Golden Era of Cartoons, 1960s – 1990s by Joe Garner and Michael Ashley shoots for a mix of nostalgia and TV history in looking back at the 20th century when Saturday morning was cartoon heaven for kids. Along with Scooby-Doo’s many incarnations, this looks at The Flintstones, Josie and the Pussycats, Superfriends, Thundercats, Jonny Quest and Space Ghost, among multiple other shows.
The book is informative but the nostalgia angle didn’t move me at all for whatever reason. And I do have trouble with listing shows such as Transformers and Thundercats which I watched in the 1980s but on weekdays in syndication — they’re less part of the Golden Age the book invokes that a sign it was fading.
I’m a big fan of Will Eisner’s crimefighting Spirit (check out some of his splash pages like the one below to see why) and his graphic novel work such as Contract with God so I picked up his LIFE, IN PICTURES with enthusiasm. I was disappointed. 
The two longest stories look back at Eisner’s family’s history and his wife’s and they don’t work for me at all, being rambling (they’re recounting multiple stories with no overall point) and bleak, with antisemitism, classism, adultery, selfishness and racism on display, not to mention tragedy. Not that any of it feels inappropriate for the times and I respect Eisner for not taking on any sort of uplifting conclusion, but it still didn’t work for me.
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