Among other things, your Mountain Times staff has been called animated. Sometimes cartoonish, we’re a lively lot. We enjoy a laugh, and we like what we do. It’s visible by the skip in our step, the whistle with our walk, and sports editor Steve Behr’s repugnant use of “jazz hands” as a bargaining chip/threat. While discussing The Simpsons’ 20th anniversary, making it the longest running sitcom in history, we ventured into a familiar realm for most of us – the obscure. Some of the finest cartoons, be it comics or animation, seldom reach much of the public eye, instead celebrating a cult status among the select few who dig that sort of thing. Your Mountain Times staff digs it, and here are some of our favorites.

Frank Ruggiero: Sam & Max: Freelance Police

Steve Purcell’s Sam & Max: Freelance Police have brazenly crashed through the digital divide, now starring in a series of episodic adventure games from Telltale Games.

“Bizarre” does little to describe Sam & Max: Freelance Police, but at least it’s a start. Originating in comic book form and later evolving into a popular ’90s computer game, an animated TV series, a Web comic and back into the computer game realm, Sam and Max are a duo of anthropomorphic private investigators: Sam a shrewd, six-foot-tall, fedora and suit wearing dog, and Max best described as an impulsive, “hyperkinetic rabbity thing.” Armed with switchblade-sharp wit and ridiculously large guns, the two careen through the streets of pop culture in their seemingly indestructible 1960 DeSoto, fighting crime with a brand of comic violence that’s vigilante at its most humorous.

Created by cartoonist Steve Purcell, the sky is never the limit in the misadventures of the Freelance Police. Typically starting with a phone call from the nameless “commissioner,” followed by an oddly descriptive exclamation from Sam, like “Jiminy Christmas Eve in a padlocked sweatbox!” the two set off on their bizarre quest, be it back in time to rescue ancient Egyptians from pyramid-building aliens, to the tropics to battle an ornery volcano god, to the cereal aisle of a local supermarket to exorcise a grocery demon, or on a road-trip vacation, where they encounter land pirates kidnapping manatees to take as their mermaid spouses.

The comics, cartoons and games are all packed with hysterical dialogue and clever one-liners, like Sam speaking on the phone, “I saw what you did. Keep the payments coming and nobody has to find out. Yeah, OK. Love you, too, Mom.”

Others harken back to a Marx Brothers style of wit, like when Sam reads a warning sign, “Please do not feed the submarine.”

“What can you feed a submarine, anyway?” Max asks.

“Nothing. Weren’t you listening?” Sam responds, while others offer biting (sometimes literally) social commentary.

“Gosh, Max,” says Sam. “Celebrity is just a never-ending set of arbitrary goals one accomplishes just to appease a dismissive and distracted – if not entirely absent – authority figure.”Max responds, “I don’t know if I agree, Sam, but I’ve begun my decadent slide into a depraved personal hell just in case.”

Sam and Max’s most recent incarnation comes from California-based Telltale Games, which produces downloadable Freelance Police computer games in episodic format, with each season featuring self-contained episodes with an overall story arc. A formerly out-of-print compilation of all the published comics, called Sam & Max: Surfin’ the Highway, has been re-released by Telltale and is now available for purchase online.

Scott Nicholson: Sympathy for the Coyote

It’s not very obscure, but I have always been a fan of Wile E. Coyote. A cynical genius that never gets his way nor wins the object of his appetite...no self-projection involved here in any way. I despise the Roadrunner, it’s a boring little twit that has no character and only one talent, whereas Wile had a magnificent lab, athleticism, craftiness, and a survival instinct that allowed him to endure hundreds of falling boulders. I only wonder why Wile, instead of ordering ballistic missiles from ACME, didn’t simply order out for pizza and leave that chicken-brain stick with feathers alone with its irritating beep.

In a similar vein, Marvin the Martian is seriously underrated. Another hapless character who is far ahead of his time, one can only sympathize with his having to deal with mere mortals who could use some more evolution.

Steve Behr: The Man Behind the Cartoon

My favorite cartoon is actually a cartoonist.

Unfortunately, and I hate saying this, Drew Litton is out of work. The most talented sports cartoonist I’ve ever seen, Litton lost his job when the (Denver) Rocky Mountain News went out of business for good last Friday.

Drew Litton has drawn some of Behr’s favorite sports cartoons, not counting Behr’s own rudimentary crayon-etched scribblings on Huddle House napkins.

The Rocky Mountain News was the paper I subscribed to when I was in college at Northern Colorado. I read it without fail every morning either before class, or during the breaks between. The Rocky went toe-to-toe with the Denver Post for years, making Denver a rare two-paper town.

Remember Jay Marioti, the big loudmouth of ESPN’s Around the Horn? He was a columnist with the Rocky before ending up in Chicago. He was a loudmouth with the Rocky back then, but never boring.

But back to Litton, who could cut to the chase of an issue faster than any columnist and certainly faster and better anybody who is on TV today. Forget all the talking heads or ESPN or FOX or anybody else. They’re all amateurs. Litton said what had to be said with a simple drawing.

One of my all-time favorites was when the Oakland Raiders knocked the Denver Broncos out of the playoffs late in December. The cartoon was classic: The Grinch wearing a Raiders helmet. I believe the caption was “How the Grinch stole Christmas.”

Summed up how this Broncos fan was feeling.

Another was when Denver Nuggets guard Mike Evans was quickly turning into one of the most popular basketball players in the mid 1980s because of his 3-point shooting. Yet he had one of the smallest contracts in the NBA.

The cartoon was of Nuggets GM Vince Boryla eating steak, while Evans was pictured eating Alpo. About a month later when Evans got a big raise, Evans was eating steak and Boryla had the Alpo. Hopefully, Litton and everybody else at the Rocky will land on their feet. Our entire industry is struggling with the Internet changing everything and with the economy messing things up. I’d love to see what Litton had to say, or draw, about that.