The second of the three Community animated shorts has been released. You can watch “Abed’s Master Key Part 2” here below.

Other than a couple of nice running gags involving Super Soakers and Danny Glover, I didn’t get much laughs out of this cartoon. I understand that the purpose of these shorts is to help increase awareness of Community before the show returns next week, but shoddy Flash animation is hardly the way to go. Despite having the participation of the show’s cast there’s just not much life or even hilarity to be found here. Plus they’re too damn brief; each short runs less than two minutes and that’s not including the intros and outros. I would have preferred live-action webisodes with sharper writing. Maybe the final part of “Abed’s Master Key” will make it all worthwhile.

On Monday we brought you the news that NBC would be producing a series of animated shorts to mark the return of Community from its mid-season hiatus.

The first of the shorts has premiered online today. You can watch “Abed’s Master Key Part 1” here below.

Featuring the voices of the Community cast, “Master Key” finds Abed (Danny Pudi) becoming Dean Pelton’s (Jim Rash) “depu-dean” and being given a master key to all of Greendale Community College, something the rest of the gang will likely attempt to exploit in the next two shorts.

Community is coming back to television in less than two weeks. It’s about time. For so long I’ve missed hanging out in the halls and on the grounds of Greendale Community College with Jeff and the gang. It’s been three months since the show went on hiatus and a lot has happened in that time. Dean Pelton even won an Oscar. Truly amazing.

NBC is rolling out the red carpet, or rather raising the Greendale butt flag (E Pluribus Anus), for Community‘s return by releasing a three-part series of animated promotional shorts this week, with each short to premiere over three consecutive days.

I’ve made it clear in the past that in recent months Community has become one of my absolute favorite television comedies of all time. So as I and millions of fans of the show around the world anxiously await its still-undated return it’s time that we take stock of Community‘s limitless supply of awesomeness and how it can be applied to other geek-related properties.

We’ve seen the Community‘s cast of characters depicted in fan artwork as Batman villains and the Avengers. Now artist Aviv Or has outdone them all with his vision of Greendale Community College’s finest study group as Marvel Comics’ uncanny team of super-powered mutants, the X-Men.

You can check out a full gallery of Or’s artwork here below.

That time is almost upon us, my new favorite part of the Christmas season: the annual holiday (that’s right Fox News, I said “holiday” – blow me) episode of my favorite television comedy series Community. You can check out a preview of the episode here below.

Last year the show delivered a classic send-up of the Rankin-Bass stop-motion animated holiday specials of the 1960s while delving into the complex personality of the show’s sweetly enigmatic pop culture obsessive Abed (Danny Pudi). This year finds Greendale Community College’s most diverse (in more ways than one) study group getting involved in the school’s annual Christmas pageant when the Greendale Glee Club gets sidelined.