Ko-Ko’s Earth Control (1928)

Ko-Ko’s Earth Control (1928)

„Ko-Ko’s Earth Control“ is a 1928 animated silent short film directed by Dave Fleischer.

The short opens with a rapid sketch of the globe by the cartoonist, with Koko the Clown and his idiotic dog Fitz walking around, circumnavigating the globe. Eventually they stumble upon a building, and discover Earth Control Center, a control room where levers that control various aspects of the Earth, and the solar system, are located.

Being curious, Koko monkeys around with controls for the weather, and making it go from day to night and back.

However, Fitz is an idiot and seems more interested in a large lever. The sign on the wall behind the lever cautions that it should not be touched. It warns that if pulled the world will come to an end. Naturally, Fitz is overcome by the total desire to pull the switch. Koko reads the sign and is horrified.

The two protagonists are not evil, but they are as clueless as they are chaotic. Koko immediately does everything in his power to stop Fitz, which of course makes Fitz all the more determined to pull the damned thing. Despite Koko’s best efforts, Fitz finds the lever far too tempting, and pulls it. Then the world goes topsy-turvy and out-of-control. The animation becomes surreal, with volcanoes and earthquakes, monsters, the sun and the moon in competition and all manner of strange things.

A 1928 Black & White animated silent short film, directed by Dave Fleischer, produced by
Max Fleischer.

One of the most fascinating cartoon characters ever created is Koko the Clown, though he’s largely forgotten these days. If he’s remembered at all by the average person, it’s as a sidekick to Betty Boop.

Produced by the most influential cartoon pioneer of all times, Max Fleischer, and directed by his talented brother Dave. Dave Fleischer was responsible for many gems with appealing characters, outstanding music and visuals that were inventive and with innovative animation techniques. His series of Out of the Inkwell cartoons were among the best early efforts of silent cartoons.

Dave Fleischer was the youngest of five brothers and grew up in Brownsville, Brooklyn, a poor Jewish neighborhood. By the time he was born, his father had lost his means of livelihood due to the mass production of garments. Dave worked as an usher at the Palace Theater on Broadway, where he was exposed to vaudeville. This experience contributed to the development of his sense for gags and comic timing, which came into play in 1921, when Dave joined forces with his older brother, Max, in starting their first cartoon animation production studio, Out of the Inkwell Films, Inc. in a dingy basement apartment in midtown Manhattan. At one point, the family lived in Coney Island, and Dave became interested in being a clown for one of the sideshow amusements. This clown character would be recalled a few years later in connection with Max’s early experiments with his first major invention, „The Rotoscope“ and was the source of their first character who evolved into Koko the Clown in the pioneering series, Out of the Inkwell. Around 1913–14, Dave began working as a film cutter for Pathé Exchange the American branch of Pathé, the French company that was the world’s largest film production and distribution company, and the largest manufacturer of film equipment in the first decades of the 20th century.

Max Fleischer began his career at The Brooklyn Daily Eagle. Beginning as an errand boy, he advanced to photographer, photoengraver, and eventually, staff cartoonist. At first, he drew single-panel editorial cartoons, but then graduated to the full strips „Little Algie“ and „S.K. Sposher, the Camera Fiend“. These satirical strips reflected his life in Brownsville and his fascination with technology and photography. Both displaying his sense of irony and fatalism. It was during this period he met newspaper cartoonist and early animator, John Randolph Bray, who would later give him his start in the animation field.

Drawn in thick marker pen, Fleischer gives the animation a bold appearance. The perfect mixture of different techniques and visual tricks. Ink drawing. Frame by frame stop-motion animation. Abstract images painted over glass Animated paper figures. Innovative camera movements. The use of archival footage and transparencies. The combination of animation and live-action.

The bizarre and surreal gags and logical and sarcastic invention places it as a classic in cartoon history.

It came out the same year as Mickey Mouse debuted.

René Clair’s surrealist short „The Crazy Ray“ (a/ka/ „Paris qui dort“) (1927) predates this.

The animation style of the buildings’ collapse was later used by Monty Python in their TV series.