Tonight’s A to Z Challenge is inspired by a recent connection I made with an amazing artist. Ryan Snarr, a very talented marketing and advertising talent, reached out to me recently to chat about my love of sports cartooning, which is a passion he and I both share. I am very excited to interview Ryan and share his work with you. Spoiler alert, his artwork is freaking incredible. Stay tuned for that article in just a few days time. Anyway, I was thinking of art and cartoons and how much I love the cartoon world, so I thought tonight’s A to Z challenge would focus on generating an alphabet size list of awesome cartoon characters. How many of these lovable, despicable, tragic, and/or heroic cartoon characters do you recognize from your days of watching Saturday morning cartoons? Here is my list from A to Z…

A – Apache Chief – this dude is tall, then chants an ancient Indian phrase and becomes like 20 feet tall

B – Batman – the gadgets on the belt, can’t have enough serum to offset laughing gas, that’s for sure

C – Catwoman – the movie tells the tale of a woman taking on the characteristics of a cat, she was part gymnast, part ninja, 100% deadly if you took her lightly

D – Daffy Duck – Bugs Bunny gets a lot of the praise for Looney Tunes, but Daffy held his own as the cracked up prankster duck to the hunter Elmer Fudd.

E – Elastigirl – The wife of Mr. Incredible and Mom to some Incredible kids, Elastigirl is every bit the hero of the original Incredibles movie

F – Firestorm – hung out with Spiderman’s Peter Parker and Iceman’s Bobby Drake, then became a human torch capable of flying around the city fighting bad guys/gals

G – Green Goblin – Spiderman’s nemesis in cartoons and in the movie adaptations, he had a prototype glider that we may see here in our not so distant future

H – Homer Simpson – the most incredible cartoon Dad of all time. The beers, the donuts, the lack of common sense, the Doh!, what an icon.

I – Iceman – Firestorm, Spiderman, and Iceman formed Spiderman and Friends. Bobby Drake would stand up, blast his body with an ice laser motion, accompanied by an awesome sound effect, and become Iceman.

J – Joker – the laughs keep on coming when Joker is around. The movie versions have had some major actors take on the role. Nicholson, Ledger, and Phoenix to name a few.

K – Kingpin – a larger than life supervillain that was wicked huge. Sort of reminded me of a rather large Lex Luther

L – Lex Luther – the top of the supervillain food chain in many SuperFriends episodes. Lex Luther always wanted to take over the world, I wonder what he would have done with it had he succeeded just once

M – Mighty Mouse – A mouse who could fly, was powerful enough to take on others much larger, and a pretty cool theme song

N – Jimmy Neutron – my kids watched this show on Cartoon Network for years

O – Doctor Octopus – one of the best villains to go up against Spiderman. He was a smart guy, made a terrible mistake in his calculations, and gained mechanical arms like an octopus.

P – Pops – One of the strangest characters on an already strange show, Pops was the pseudo man in charge of a bunch of misfits on the TV show, “Regular Show.”

Q – Quagmire – this dude’s voice and antics on Family Guy are so hilarious. YouTube is filled with funny Quagmire stuff.

R – Rigby – The weird raccoon character on “Regular Show” who teamed up with Mordecai the Blue Jay for massive pranks.

S – Shadow Spy – My one and only attempt to create a superhero character. Drawings and story are now in a vault tucked away for safe keeping.

T – Thing – thing was a regular guy, an astronaut even, then went to space with Mr Fantastic, and all heck broke loose in his body on a cellular level. The end result, a man becomes a giant rock.

U – Underdog – a superhero Dog that can fly and get the better of nasty criminals and no gooders? Sign me up.

V – Venom – Spiderman had a lot of strange enemies, including Venom. Venom was kind of like Spiderman, only he came from outer space as some goopy thing, then attached itself to a human for “bonding.”

W – Wolverine – in the comics, Wolverine had the yellow suit. In the movies, they sort of went away from that. I like the comics Wolverine so much better.

X – Professor Xavier – You can’t have the X-Men without Professor Xavier. His powers of the mind are the envy of most who desperately want to know what someone else is thinking at the time.

Y – Yogi Bear – Hey there Boo-boo. It’s me, Yogi Bear. Maybe a character named after the famed Yogi Berra. Or was Lawrence Berra named after the famous cartoon? Chicken or the egg???

Z – Buzz Lightyear – Toy Story is such an awesome film, I just loved all the characters, the movie’s premise, the comradery amongst the toys when the humans leave the room.

Well, there you have it. I had a choice at S to go with Spiderman or Superman. I left out a lot of the Simpsons like Chief Wiggins, Marge, Bart, and Lisa. I used to have a SuperFriends encyclopedia with so many kickass heroes and villains, that would have been really useful for tonight’s challenge. X-Men, Spiderman, Toy Story – all have so many great characters. And the shows my kids watched like Dora, Regular Show, SpongeBob – I could go on and on there. And as for Shadow Spy, my pen is unfortunately running low on ink so I will pass on explaining that one. So, how did you do on your list? Any that I missed that are your cartoon favorites? Let me know.