Debuting tonight on Fox, Son of Zorn could well be network TV's most absurdly high-concept new comedy. Ostensibly, the sitcom premise concerns a suburban family consisting of a soon-to-be remarried single mother (Cheryl Hines) and her teenaged son whose daily lives in Orange County, California are upended by the unexpected return of the boy's well-meaning but obnoxious, selfish and none-too-bright biological father; who has moved back to the area and seeks to reconnect with them.

The gimmick? Said returning father happens to be Zorn: a musclebound, sword-wielding barbarian superhero who hails from the magical island of Zephyria - and, as befits the character and his world's obvious inspiration as a parody of He-Man & The Masters of The Universe, Zorn appears as a cartoon character (voiced by Jason Sudeikis) rendered in the style of the 1980s He-Man animated series from Filmation.

It's been awhile since a major network has taken a chance on an Alf-esque "concept show" sitcom like Son of Zorn, and it remains to be seen whether a mix of Gen-X nostalgia for MOTU and broadcast television's reliable success with the "idiot dad" formula is enough to turn the series itself into a hit. But crossing animation and live-action is a subgenre with a long and storied history dating back almost to the beginnings of filmmaking itself. While it would be almost impossible to explore every example of the form, here's a detailed guide to some of the most noteworthy moments on the long road that (thus far) has led up to Son of Zorn.

THE ENCHANTED DRAWING (1900)

Believe it or not, the first known animated cartoon was itself part of an early live-action hybrid silent short by inventor and experimental filmmaker J. Stuart Blackton. Like many early film pioneers, Blackton's work made use of "stop-action" trick photography to wow audiences with films where objects and people seemed to appear and disappear as if by magic. With The Enchanted Drawing he added a new wrinkle: In the film, Blackton himself draws a face, a bottle of wine and a glass on a large canvas; then pulls the bottle and glass out into the real world - causing the drawn face to change its expressions and thus become the first example of filmed cartoon animation.

GERTIE THE DINOSAUR (1914)

Winsor McCay is today best ed as one of the greatest cartoonists and comic-strip creators who ever lived, a legend in the medium thanks largely to his genre-defining creation of the Little Nemo strip. But he was also, for a time, a Vaudeville performer and filmmaker; and with Gertie the Dinosaur he brought those latter ions together with singularly unique results. Footage of the (still!) highly-detailed animated Brontosaurus would be projected on a screen behind McCay, who would time his routines to appear as though he was giving the character commands and even appear to leap into the cartoon himself at the climax. Considered a technical highpoint for the medium until the later emergence of Walt Disney's productions, for several decades Gertie was popularly regarded as the most widely known work of early animation in the world.

OUT OF THE INKWELL (1920s)

The "animation as magic trick" conceit continued to dominate the genre well into the 20s, with pioneering cartoon brothers Max and Dave Fleischer contributing this landmark series in the format. While the title referred to the framing conceit of the shorts, wherein animated figures would cavort on the drawing paper of a live-action Max Fleischer after leaping from an inkwell (or the head of a fountain pen); the real significance of the Inkwell franchise was the brothers' revolutionary development of the "rotoscope" animation technique. Live action footage was photographed and traced/embellished in order to create an unprecedented degree of realistic movement, a technique Fleischer would further refine for their legendary Superman shorts and that Walt Disney would utilize for Snow White a decade later.

WALT DISNEY'S THE ALICE COMEDIES (1923-1927)

Walt Disney did his first professional work as an animator at small-time Laugh-O-Gram Studios in Kansas City, Missouri. The run down studio (which was in such disrepair that Walt shared his workspace with mice said to have inspired... well, take a wild guess) eventually failed, leading Walt to head for Los Angeles and his destiny. But before he did he produced a short feature called "Alice's Wonderland" wherein footage of a live actress was inserted into an animated world to interact with cartoon characters. Once in L.A., Disney scored a contract to produce a whole series of "Alice Comedies" on the same theme, ultimately making 57 shorts and accruing enough money (and experience) to eventually strike out on his own.

ANCHORS AWEIGH (1945)

In the Golden Age of the Hollywood studio system, actors and filmmakers were routinely contracted on an exclusive basis to specific studios. That exclusivity included the animators of pre-feature short-subjects and their creations, so it wasn't unusual for cartoon characters to be counted as part of a studio's "stable" alongside popular human actors. MGM's Anchors Aweigh takes that sensibility to the next level; not only building the studio itself into the storyline (the plot: Frank Sinatra and Gene Kelly are Navy sailors on leave in Hollywood who try to help a struggling actress score an MGM contract) but staging a now-legendary sequence wherein Kelly performs a show-stopping tap dance routine opposite Jerry the Mouse from Tom & Jerry. The scene inspired other studios to try similar crossovers with their cartoon properties, but this remains easily the most famous example.

SONG OF THE SOUTH (1946)

Walt Disney Pictures' most notorious feature, racially-insensitive caricatures and dialogue. While the merits of releasing or releasing the film on those issues are debatable, what's unquestionably a shame is that the film's unavailability also means missing out on its groundbreaking live-action/cartoon integration - the detail and complexity of which was unmatched at the time. In particular, the use of shadows and shading to mimic the lighting conditions of the live footage and matched tacking-shots were ahead of any other such techniques seen in the same era.

MY DREAM IS YOURS (1949)

Like most other attempts by rival studios to mimic MGM's big-star musical success in the 40s, this odd radio-biz love-triangle story was not successful in its day with either audiences or critics despite the presence of Doris Day and Eve Arden in the main cast. Today, the film is ed almost exclusively for a technically-impressive (if bizarre) Easter-themed dream sequence which features a pair of cameos from Bugs Bunny and Tweety Bird. The Looney Tunes pair (complete with Mel Blanc vocals) perform comedy and dance alongside human actors in bunny costumes to the tune of Hungarian Rhapsody No.2 for the amusement of a sleeping child - it's as odd (and out of place) as it sounds.

MARY POPPINS (1964)

It was the part of the film most despised by Mary Poppins' cantankerous original creator P.L. Travers, but the lengthy sequence where Mary, Bert and the Banks children leap into an animated world via a chalk drawing could well be the film's most iconic moment - not in the least because it features the classic song “Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious." The human/cartoon fusion was also a huge leap forward, looking as good or better than many subsequent attempts and re-cementing such scenes as a staple for higher-end Disney product for many years after.

THE INCREDIBLE MR. LIMPET (1964)

One of the most bizarre big studio movies of the 60s, this oddly grim-humored comedy from Warner Bros. attempts to mimic the Disney formula (complete with Don Knotts as marquee star) with a story about a distracted dweeb with a marine life fixation (Knotts) who falls off a pier and is transformed into a fish, plunging immediately into underwater adventures rendered in animation. In a decidedly un-Disney-like twist, the whole thing takes place during World War II, so when Mr. Limpet discovers that his fish form possesses weapon-strength sonic powers he seeks out an old U.S. Navy friend and offers to use his "thrum" to help destroy Nazi U-Boats. A remake has been planned on and off for many years, failing to come together on multiple occasions for stars and filmmakers including Jim Carrey, Mike Judge, Richard Linklater, Sarah Silverman and Key & Peele; among others.

BEDKNOBS AND BROOMSTICKS (1971)

So goes the legend, Disney kept up development of this big-budget fantasy feature (which shares several plot details and actors with Mary Poppins) in part so that if P.L. Travers did ultimately Angela Lansbury as a WWII-era British witch in training (by correspondence course!) who takes in a group of war orphans who in turn help her in her quest for a magic amulet that involves an extended romp in a cartoon kingdom of anthropomorphic soccer-playing animals. While technically impressive, the animation sequence can't compete with Poppins', and the film is better ed for its one-of-a-kind finale; an epic action sequence where Lansbury repels a Nazi invasion of England by raising an army of "living" medieval armor and weapons.