Jun 19, 2015

Nick's "Pig Goat Banana Cricket" Brings Adult Comics to Children's TV

Johnny Ryan and Dave Cooper's bawdy comic sensibilities are being cleaned up for kids in the new Nickelodeon series "Pig Goat Banana Cricket."

Premiering July 18, holding down a 10:30 a.m. Saturday slot, the 26-episode absurdity follows the eponymous animals, fruits, and insects living in treehouses mixed with walking fruits, sea creatures, robots, and more who make their home in a fantastic metropolis called Booperite City.

The series is based on their comics published in Nickelodeon magazine, but will likely not feature the same wild adult themes and visuals found in Cooper's Puke and Explode or Ryan's Angry Youth Comix. However, "Pig Goat Banana Cricket" still bears the imprint of those sins and should be acceptable to mature audiences familiar with newer TV series like "Adventure Time" and lighter versions of older classics like "The Ren and Stimpy Show."

While both have deep credentials in underground comics, "Pig Goat Banana Cricket" is their first full-time animation project. However, both had previously worked in animation: Cooper designed for Futurama, and Ryan designed and wrote for the Cartoon Network series Mud.

"Pig Goat Banana Cricket," produced by Nickelodeon Animation Studios in Burbank, is something of a risqué career move for the two. It will be interesting to see if their blasphemous sensibilities can be successfully integrated into the world of Saturday morning cartoons.