Want to see an X-Ray of Hello Kitty?

Here's something strange and wonderful. Oregon illustrator Michael Paulus has done a series of 22 skeletal studies of present and past cartoon characters, ranging from Charlie Brown to Shmoo, a bizarre character shaped like a plump bowling pin with legs, but no arms that originated in Al Capp's Li'l Abner, but eventually went on to gain its own animated series in the late 1970s, as part of the animated series Fred and Barney Meet the Shmoo.

Paulus describes it this way:

These Icons are usually grotesquely distorted from the human form from which they derive. Being that they are so commonplace and accepted as existing I thought I would dissect them like science does to all living objects - trying to come to an understanding as to their origins and true physiological make up. Possibly to better understand them and see them in a new light for what they are in the most basic of terms.

Hat tip to Boing Boing