Worlds Within Worlds...

This thread on TCJ is a lot of fun. It is multiple pages long, just of people talking about their favorite cliched imagery and aspects from cartoons and comics. Stuff like plop-takes, fights as balls of smoke with arms sticking out, the piano rigged with a bomb but the person playing it keeps missing the key, phrases like "which way did he go George, which way did he go?", etc. There's also some discussion of how some of this stuff is based on old movie references that most people have long forgotten.

I'm all for realism at times, but I wish we'd have more of the iconic "cartoonish" aspects in comic books at times. It seems like most of the stuff is currently limited to comic strips and archie. I know some people get annoyed that things like superdeformed characters show up so much in manga, but I think it can be a lot of fun when it is done right..