Former Pitt News cartoonist finds Internet success

Ardent Pitt News readers might remember a comic featuring the misadventures of a boy named Douglas and his friend Business Cat a few years back. That comic, titled “Our New Electrical Morals,” is now the latest cartoon on the online channel Cartoon Hangover.

The cartoon’s creator, Mike Rosenthal, graduated from Pitt last year and currently studies television production as a graduate student at Boston University.

Rosenthal started submitting comics to The Pitt News in 2008, beginning with a short titled “King Jember,” a comic about a king who just can’t seem to get the whole “ruling over people” thing right. Rosenthal then moved on to new material with more advanced graphics in his comic “Mr. Map’s Ice Cream Show,” the slightly morbid story of an ice cream shop owner who is continuously harangued by young customers.

“No wonder your wife left you,” one of the characters says to Mr. Map after learning of his grape ice cream.

Shortly after “Mr. Map’s Ice Cream” stopped running, Rosenthal began submitting the “Our New Electrical Morals” cartoon. The cartoon consisted of a back-and-forth between Douglas and his profit-minded friend, Business Cat, as they engaged in a reduction ad absurdam of different topics.

Another Pitt alum and former Pitt News contributor Noah Levinson played a crucial role in getting the offbeat comics to print.

“The layout editor at the time would come up to me and say, ‘I don’t get these comics, but I think you would,’ and I would email back and forth with Mike making small edits,” Levinson said in an email.

The two shared a pen-pal-style relationship for some time before a professor, identifying the pair’s similar writing styles, arranged for them to meet. From there they collaborated on a number of screenplays and short films.

“We sort of hit it off and just knew we had to work on stuff together,” Levinson said.

Levinson, who now works as a writer in New York City, says Rosenthal has always been a work horse, diligently updating his portfolio with new endeavors.

This diligence is what caught the attention of Cartoon Hangover, a part of Frederator Studios. Though Frederator is best known for shows such as “Adventure Time” and “The Fairly OddParents,” the studio has produced 16 different television series since its founding in 1998. Rosenthal says he submitted a cold spec, or unsolicited script idea, for them during his last few months at Pitt.

“I emailed them out of the blue, and they responded saying they didn’t take specs but would accept a longer script,” Rosenthal said

He then returned with his undergraduate research project from the previous summer, a 30-minute short film script, but the company rejected him again — this time his work was too long.

Finally, Rosenthal made a five-minute short based on the characters he thought up for The Pitt News and, as he puts it, “They went for it.”

After all of their communication, the producers at Cartoon Hangover were surprised to find that Rosenthal was still an undergraduate.

“The first thing they asked was what my schedule looked like. I told them I was getting ready to take my finals, and they didn’t really know what to say,” Rosenthal said.

Rosenthal now works with a team of creators, making his ideas come to life. “Our New Electrical Morals” layout designer Kenny Pittenger divides his time between Rosenthal’s cartoon and designing the backgrounds for the latest SpongeBob Squarepants film set to be released next year.

“Working with Mike has been a real pleasure. He knows exactly what he wants and doesn’t want, thank goodness, so, even though it took the better part of a year from start to finish, the process of making this short went pretty smoothly” Pittenger said in an email.

The show is another in a growing trend of cartoons appropriate for adults. The days when cartoon-watching was relegated to kids eating brimming bowls of cereal on Saturday mornings are over. Shows such as “Adventure Time,” “Archer” and the programming on Cartoon Network’s “Adult Swim” have re-established the idea that adult humor can fit into an animated format.

“Well, when animation began, it was geared toward an adult audience,” said Pittenger. “Somehow, along the way, it became associated with children’s entertainment.”

“I think the resurgence of animation for adult audiences is a positive thing, and the Internet is a perfect vehicle for that. Animation is just another method of storytelling, and I think it’s very limiting to look at it as something that is only for kids,” he continued.

Rosenthal has always been passionate about cartoons, and he sees no reason for them to be reserved for children. His favorite cartoon right now is “Adventure Time,” which he describes as “just great.” Rosenthal says the character of Lumpy Space Princess is one he’d like to see developed.

“There’s just so much they could do with LSP, and I hope they do it,” Rosenthal said.

The first episode of “Our Electrical Morals” is online now and already has nearly 200,000 views, so Rosenthal can continue to develop his own characters of Douglas and Business Cat in the future.