Toon Time on the Tube

For years we’ve heard rumblings that the Internet will displace television. That rumor moved one step closer to reality this week when the primarily TV-based Cartoon Network extended its programming to the Web (https://www.cartoonnetwork.com) and introduced two interactive, online cartoons.

Gary Panter, the Emmy Award-winning designer of “Pee-wee’s Playhouse,” is the creative force behind “Pink Donkey and the Fly,” the new Web cartoon romance between a crazed fly and his love interest--an egomaniacal pink donkey. “B. Happy” is the creation of “Garbage Pail Kids” cartoonist Mark Newgarden and features a grumpy bluebird who descends from the clouds to remedy miseries of the earthbound.

“With Web Premiere Toons, we’re reverse engineering a bit,” said Sam Register, creative director of Cartoon Network Online. “A television show is linear. Artists’ imaginations are not. So we’re utilizing the interactive capabilities of the Internet . . . to create a new kind of animation program.

“Our dream scenario is that Web Premiere Toons catches fire to the point where we must throw the challenge back upon Cartoon Network to figure out how it might work on television.”