Genndy Tartakovsky's wild and wonderful cartoons

The Russian-American animator Genndy Tartakovsky’s action horror series Primal aired its most recent episode (Feast of Flesh, the ongoing third season’s third instalment) last week on Adult Swim, Cartoon Network’s nighttime programming block. This largely wordless animated show is set in a fantasy version of ancient history where Jurassic-era dinosaurs co-exist with Neanderthals, Iron Age humans, hominids, Ice Age mammals and an assortment of creatures from different parts of the prehistoric timeline. The overall aesthetic is informed by the drawings of the prolific American fantasy illustrator Frank Frazetta and the fantasy writer Robert E. Howard’s Conan stories. We follow the adventures of a brutally strong and fierce Neanderthal man called Spear and an unusually smart, resourceful female T-Rex called Fang. Forced into an odd-couple pairing following the losses of their respective families, they eventually become inseparable, hunting as a team, fighting off extreme weather and prehistoric predators.

Feast of Flesh was another reminder of Tartakovksy’s mastery over the medium, and why Primal has been consistently rated so highly since its debut. Newly reanimated, Spear sees a grasshopper whose distinctive teal colour reminds him of his best friend Fang (the two having been separated a few episodes ago). For a good two minutes, we follow a soft-eyed Spear following the grasshopper as it scurries up a tree, munches on a blade of grass, stops by a brook and finally settles down upon Spear’s hand, unafraid of the hulking man’s gaze. When it flies away again, a chameleon swallows it whole before the furious Spear forces the reptile’s jaws open, allowing the grasshopper to escape. It’s a brilliantly animated sequence and it demonstrates the possibilities of Primal, a show where the wordlessness only amplifies the technical virtuosity on display—the high-contrast colours and cinematic lighting, the “heavy metal fantasy” art style, the visceral and intensely rhythmic chase and combat sequences.

There’s perhaps no other animator Cartoon Network trusts more than the 56-year-old Tartakovsky. He is the creator of Samurai Jack (2001-2004; 2017 reprisal) and Dexter’s Laboratory (1996-2003), and a pivotal crew member on The Powerpuff Girls (1998-2005)—iconic, tone-setting shows that laid the foundations of Cartoon Network’s programming in the 1990s. In the 2000s, Tartakovsky’s profile grew significantly when George Lucas hired him to develop Star Wars: Clone Wars (2003-05), an animated series set in between the prequel trilogy films Attack of the Clones (2002) and Revenge of the Sith (2005). He went on to direct the first three feature films (and write the fourth) in the popular animated comic franchise Hotel Transylvania (2012-22).

What are the elements of Tartakovksy’s style? The answer lies in the two early-career works that most perfectly encapsulate his technique, his influences and his sensibilities—Dexter’s Laboratory and Samurai Jack. The latter is distilled Tartakovsky in terms of animation technique, whereas the former demonstrates his writing style. In the retro-futuristic Samurai Jack, the eponymous protagonist is sent hurtling into the future (via a time portal) by the malevolent, shape-shifting demon Aku, who has been terrorising the samurai’s village. Aku’s elegant, hand-drawn character design emphasises shadows and negative space, hinting at his dark magic. And Tartakovsky’s command over these elements comes to the fore in combat scenes, like the one from season 5 where Jack battles the daughters of Aku.

The economy and impeccable timing of this sequence is a marvel, as is the delicate interplay of light and shadow, elements being key to the magic of the Looney Tunes characters Tartakovsky grew up watching, especially Wile. E. Coyote, who he adored. The sound design keeps you on the edge of your seat, every swish of the sword, every clang of metal on metal is consequential and given that extra half-second to resonate in your ears—this owes something to Popeye as well as Max Fleischer’s Superman. Tartakovsky uses the falling snow in the backdrop to effect a stunning visual transition mid-fight. The closing moments of this episode even sneak in a musical reference to The Good, the Bad and the Ugly.

While not entirely wordless like, say, the first season of Primal, Samurai Jack featured minimal dialogue—most episodes were 20-odd minutes lengthwise but only about 2-3 of those minutes had spoken lines. By the time Samurai Jack happened in 2001, Tartakovksy already had a decade of working at Hanna-Barbera and Cartoon Network. Dexter’s Laboratory, in comparison, started airing in 1996, when Tartakovsky was just 26. It is by far his most personal work, thematically speaking. The show follows the adventures of the indefatigable, endlessly inventive boy-genius Dexter, who has a secret science laboratory hidden away in his bedroom. Dexter is socially awkward and speaks with an unspecified accent, in sharp contrast to his elder sister Dee Dee, an extroverted ballerina who’s popular at school and discovers her brother’s secret in the first episode.

Tartakovsky based the siblings’ dynamic on his own relationship with his computer scientist brother Alex—his self-portrait, if you will, is the creative, effervescent Dee Dee. At age 16, Tartakovksy lost his father to a heart attack. When he was in his mid-20s and working in Spain on the production of Batman: The Animated Series (1992-95), his mother died of cancer back home. Themes of parental loss and “replacement” can be seen all over Dexter’s Laboratory.

The siblings had moved to America from Russia when Tartakovsky was just seven years old. He desperately wanted to fit into the all-American high school hierarchy-matrix of jocks and nerds, cheerleaders and wallflowers. And underneath the gadgets and the highfalutin inventions, it’s what Dexter wants as well—in one memorable episode, he keeps getting hit while playing the classic (and utterly barbarous) gym game “dodge-ball”. His solution is to build the “Armored Cyber-Sonic Exo-Jock Jumpsuit”, returning to the gym geared up ready to unleash hell upon his enemies, like Dirty Harry meets RoboCop, characters embodying American absolutism in very similar ways.

Tartakovsky’s style, therefore, exists in a state of tension with Americana, which is one of the focal points of Kwasu David Tembo’s 2022 book Genndy Tartakovsky: Sincerity in Animation. In Tembo’s framing, Tartakovsky’s career shows the influence of being an immigrant and a TCK (Third Culture Kid). In this case, the “first” culture is Russia, the “second” America and the “third” is the hybrid culture that Tartakovsky internalised in his formative years, the all-sorts pop cultural broth of his diverse influences.

As Tembo notes, the “sincerity” of Tartakovsky’s approach is ideally suited to a medium like animation, where the aim is to make you feel everything with a child’s wide-eyed intensity. And this is exactly why Tartakovsky has been so successful and influential over 30 years.

Aditya Mani Jha is a writer based in Delhi.